Strength Without Bulk - Page 3

also checked it out, the author there believes that something that 95% of people would look better if they just stopped direct leg training and did steady state cardio instead. While not everyone wants to squat 400lbs I find that some arbitrary statement like that quite spurious. Not what I'd call useful info from a site marketing itself as being about "fitness"

The author doesn't like muscular legs. Obviously people look 'worse' with muscular legs. They look too 'bulky' and less 'toned' and 'fit.' Duh.

Hahah I lol'd.

I'm not sure what your issue with that is, the OP asked for training for strength with minimal increase in mass. While the two are not mutually exclusive, most people define strength in terms of 1 rep max. To increase this you need to lift heavy weights as possible, in general with lower rep and longer rest times then typify hypertrophy training.

So for strength training, you would train your body to lift as heavy as you can, with muscle endurance being less of a factor. So it follows that a scheme where one lifts close to their max, takes a significant rest period (circa 2 mins usually) to allow a lot of recovery and do it again is probably the best choice. The goal, again, being and increase in 1 rep max

For hypertrophy training, muscle endurance is more the goal. So one does more reps, shorter rest periods (60 sec) and attempts to fatigue the muscle with higher volume and shorter rests. The goal here is muscle endurance, doing the most weight across all sets while maintaining the original rep range.

While I would not advocate doing just one type of workout for long periods of time. And I tend to cycle through these types myself, I think this is a pretty tried and true formula. Though I'm sure there are many programs out there, most athletic performance ones I've seen and used tend to cycle through these types of rest/rep schemes every few weeks.

suppose i am just an anomaly as i go ultra heavy with almost no rest between sets

After I tore my labrum and completed my rehab this was the program I used. I still use a variation of it: http://www.geocities.com/elitemadcow...odized_5x5.htm

you should read the wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_hypertrophy