Stronger Without Bulk?
That is what a subscriber asked me how to achieve.
Now personally I’m all about putting on muscle and dropping body fat to look my best. Plus more muscle means you weigh more so you can manhandle an opponent (or opponents). But today I’m answering the question of how to get stronger without adding bulk.
Here is a summary of the tips in the video for how to get stronger without getting bulky.
1) Correct Exercise Selection
Certain exercises are suited for building muscle, endurance, or strength… while some are just good at making you tired and wasting your time. We will focus on exercises for full-body strength and power.
We want exercises to check each of these 4 boxes:
Now obviously your exercise selection must take into account what you have access to: dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, or just your own bodyweight.
Machines have their place, especially for building muscle, but the inherent stability of most machines means you don’t get to fight against a free weight (such as a kettlebell). A real human opponent will try to move you around so you want a small degree of instability without going too far. If you stand on a wobbly unstable surface now you are so focused on stability that you actually can’t get strong since your prime mover muscles get inhibited. For the money I think kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, and bodyweight (while standing on stable ground) are the best tools to use to get strong and powerful.
Upper Body Press
While there are many great upper body presses, if you are more concerned with strength than size then I would probably prioritize an overhead press. You are standing on your feet stabilizing under a heavy load. This is how you would typically use your body in most real-world situations. For the money I think a kettlebell military press would be my favorite.
Here are a few suggestions:
Upper Body Pull
The king of upper body pulls is the good old fashioned pull-up.
Here are a few suggestions:
Squat
Now when I say “squat” don’t get hung up on a traditional barbell squat. Single leg squats like Bulgarian Split Squats or the ATG Split Squat are fantastic as well.
Here are a few suggestions:
Big Pull from the Floor
This will train your posterior chain muscles which are great for picking people up, throwing them around, and are very helpful in ground fighting as well.
I prefer to focus on a power exercise rather than a pure strength exercise. So ballistic exercises like a double kettlebell swing or a dead power clean with 2 kettlebells is dynamite for that. There is nothing wrong with choosing a good old fashioned barbell deadlift or better yet use a hex or trap bar for your deadlift if you have access to one.
Here are a few suggestions:
2) Program Structure
While much could be said and there are many ways to arrange a program structure, we want to focus on 3 main points:
Rep Range
The ideal rep range for strength is 3-7. Any higher than that and you are more likely to build muscle and are training further from true strength training. Any lower and you are more likely to get burned out or injured.
1-rep max training or testing is foolish and unnecessary unless you are a competitive strength athlete.
Training Volume
Volume is defined as the total number of work (or hard) sets that you perform over the course of a week. Your warm-up sets do not count.
So if you do a military press 2 days per week, for 2 warm-up sets, and 2 work sets each day that comes to 4 sets per week for the muscles of your upper body that push.
Science tells us that if you want to put on as much muscle as possible then you want to up your volume to 10 – 20 sets per week per muscle. If you want to minimize muscle then stay below that range.
In fact researchers have shown that strength requires far less volume. In some cases 1 set per week will suffice.
So keep your set volume between 1 – 6 sets per week for each muscle (or movement in our case).
Reps In Reserve (RIR)
Reps in reserve (or RIR) simply quantifies how many reps more that you could have done if you pushed all out.
For instance:
Going to failure would be you trying to get a rep but literally fail. That is pushing harder than 0 RIR where you know that if you attempt one more rep you will fail.
Makes sense, right?
Ideally for strength training you want to stay at 2 – 3 RIR most of the time. I won’t go into detail but the research demonstrates this as do most of the strongest people in the world.
Quick note on ballistic exercises like kettlebell swings or snatches. Exercises that have a backswing follow different loading principles. The rep ranges should probably be between 10 – 20. The RIR model doesn’t work quite as well. It is more like, once you feel like it is getting easier then move up in weight.
3) Track Progress
If you don’t track it you probably won’t improve.
All of my clients who make progress keep a training journal. I use a simple cheap spiral notebook.
Write down your exercises, weight used, and the number of reps you got for each set.
Then in your next training session you can see what you did last time and try to beat it.
Ideally try to go up 1 rep on each work set every training session. Once you hit the top of your rep range (3-7 reps) increase the weight and drop the reps back down to 3.
Typically it is wise to make the smallest possible increases in weight.
This is called the double progression model and it will take you far in your strength for a good long time.
4) Lean Diet
When it comes to staying lean vs. being bulky diet is HUGE.
Let’s keep it simple… if you are bulky eat less. If you are skinny and want to be bulky eat more. If you like how you are then keep eating the same.
But more specifically the “bulky” look mostly comes from having too much body fat. You want to start eating leaner so that you lose body fat until you look the level of lean that you desire.
While there are many diets out there here is what I recommend:
Focus on protein. Try to get 0.8 grams of protein per pound of ideal bodyweight.
Bodyweight x 0.8 = grams of protein per day / number of meals = grams of protein you need to get in each meal.
I weight 210 lbs and like to eat 3 meals per day so here is my math. 210 x 0.8 = 168 / 3 = 56 grams of protein per meal.
After that consume mostly fruits, vegetables, and some carbs in the form of potatoes, rice, pasta, etc. But be careful with sauces and added calories from toppings.
Get most of your flavor from calorie-free sources like salt, spices, herbs, and non-caloric toppings. A potato is a great source of low calorie carbohydrates and nutrients. A baked potato loaded with cheese, sour cream, and bacon tastes amazing but has a lot of calories.
Sample Program
Ok here is a sample program that you can modify based upon the training equipment that you have access to and exercises that you prefer.
Frequency = 2 days per week nonconsecutive. Ex. Mondays and Thursdays.
2 Warm-up Sets followed by 2 Work Sets of each exercise:
Take about 2 minutes of rest between work sets.
This is a quick minimalist training session that will build strength and power and minimize putting on muscle.
Remember like anything in life, strength takes years to build. You will make some quick progress in your first 6 – 12 month and then it slows down. But if you stick to it you will be rewarded by being the strongest person you know… unless you hang around with some beasts.
Until next time,
Brian
