Every week our team at Okanagan Peak Performance Inc looks to help hundreds of people achieve their health and fitness goals. And getting stronger is at the top of the list of identified goals. An athlete wants to get stronger to increase his force production and be more powerful. With baseball for example, this translates to throwing harder and better hitting performnance. With the business professional having more strength allows for more distance off the tee box when they take clients out for a round of golf. And the new mom wants strength to be able to carry car seats, diaper bags, groceries, strollers as well as a new born. For all of these people more strength helps improve posture. It helps us protect us from injury. It helps us look better in the mirror after a shower or at the beach on the vacation. And this does wonders for our confidence. So whether we want to describe our strength goal as getting 'toned', 'jacked', 'swole' or simply to get stronger it is a goal shared by a number of people. But if you've been at the strength game for any period of time you know that it isn't easy to just put on 5 pounds of muscle. Consider for a second that a pound is 16 ounces. And picture what an eight ounce steak looks like. [caption id="attachment_5444" align="aligncenter" width="300"] An 8 ounce steak. You would need 10 of these for 5 lbs. To add 5 lbs of lean body mass, imagine 10 x 8 ounce steaks. Add this much protein to your arms, legs, chest and back and you have an idea of how much muscle protein we're talking about. As well, we should probably include one obvious condition. You can't increase your belt size as you add lean...

There can always be a number of ways to achieve a result. As the expression goes, many roads lead to Rome. But the more specific we can be with our goal the more specific we can be with the prescription.With resistance training the question can often be one of should I do lighter weights and more reps or heavier weights and fewer reps? And typically the average person will be led to believe that lifting heavy weights makes you big and bulky and so they select lighter weights in order to tone and not get big.[caption id="attachment_5301" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Often times people will select light weights with the goal to tighten and tone while looking to avoid increased mass.But this isn't the best approach. If we think about the group that trains to put on the most size i.e. bodybuilders, they will typically train with higher volume (i.e. reps x sets) to stimulate a hypertrophy (i.e. growth) response.Additionally, the people that train most intensely e.g. sprinters, will have some of the leanest physiques out there.So there appears to be some confusion as to what we should do to get leaner and or stronger.A study by Mangine et al. 2015 looked at the effect of volume and intensity when it comes to developing size or strength. The study included 29 resistance-trained men and ran for 8 weeks.The participants were divided into two groups. One group followed a high intensity protocol by performing exercises in the 3-5 rep range or approximately 90% of their 1 rep max (RM). Three minutes of rest was allowed between sets.The other group followed a high volume protocol with exercises performed in the 10-12 rep range or approximately 70% of their 1 RM. One minute of rest was allowed between sets.Here's what they found.The high intensity group made larger...