Chapter 2: Strength Training Versus Body Building

Strength Training Versus Body Building

When someone says the word ‘strength training’ to you, do you instantly think of some large muscle bound individual who spends all their time in the gym?

Many people do tend to get confused between strength training and bodybuilding, so it’s important that you come to recognize the differences between the two activities.

While both do involve performing a resistance training (most commonly weight lifting) workout routine, there are some classic differences between how each of these activities is done.

Here are the main differences to know.

Physique Focus

The very first big difference between bodybuilding and regular strength training is the fact that with body building, there is a very large amount of focus purely on how the body looks, more so than just how strong it is.

With bodybuilding, there are certain physique proportions that you have to try and maintain, thus you don’t want some areas developing more than others.

With regular strength training, while there definitely is some focus on how you look (if you want there to be), it’s not nearly as intense and the overall goal tends to be to simply get stronger and more capable of performing the exercises.

So strength training is generally purely focused around performance and improvement while bodybuilding places a much higher focus level on how the body is actually looking.  At times, you may not even train a certain muscle group if it’s currently too large to help ‘bring it down’ and in better balance with the rest of the body.

Such a practice would rarely be used in a regular strength training program unless the muscular strength imbalance was so great that you were risking injury.

Exercise Selection

The next big difference between strength training and bodybuilding is the type of exercise selection that you use.

With strength training, a very high amount of focus will be placed on compound movements (as you’ll see in a coming chapter), as these are the exercises that tend to produce the greatest amount of results overall.

They are the ones that are going to get you feeling stronger faster and making sure that you are making continual progress with your workout routine.

With body building, you will also most definitely focus on compound movements as well, but you may also utilize isolated training to a much larger extent as well.

Isolated training is going to pinpoint just a single muscle group, so it can be used to bring out more overall muscle definition and work muscle groups that just aren’t responding as well, again to achieve a certain aesthetical look.

Isolation movements are added to a strength training workout as well, but typically only make up a very small portion of the workout program.

With bodybuilding, they may make up a much more significant component.

Additionally, some bodybuilders will split their body up into just one or two muscle groups per workout session, getting into the gym five days a week as part of their training regime, while those who are just doing a regular strength training program typically work the entire body in each session, or break it down into the upper body paired with the lower body.

Diet Components

The next big difference to know between a regular strength training workout program and body building workout program is the dietary component involved with bodybuilding.

It’s definitely important that you eat right if you’re strength training and if you are trying to improve your body composition (lose fat or add more lean muscle mass), there are definitely some specific dietary things that you need to be doing in order to see results, but that said, you don’t have to get too specific with your nutrition.

With bodybuilding, your diet is going to account for about 80% of the results you see and everything must be constantly monitored.

Those who choose to get involved with bodybuilding need to be prepared for it to be a 24 hour endeavor because you are never really ‘done’.  You constantly must be planning your food intake, cooking specific meals, adjusting your food based on how your body is looking, and so on.

It’s a much more involved process that does require a much greater time commitment.  Most people simply don’t have the time (or the desire) to go through with something like this, hence it keeps them away from the bodybuilding field altogether.

Especially when bodybuilders get close to a fitness contents or show, the dieting down process can be incredibly intense and involve really depleting the body of key nutrients leaving them feeling tired and weak.

While not all those who choose to participate in bodybuilding will go on to do these types of shows, those who do are definitely going to have to be ready to push through what will be some of the hardest days of their life.

Muscle Mass Development

Finally, the last fundamental difference between bodybuilding and strength training tends to generally be just how much muscle mass in build with each type of activity.

Those who are involved with bodybuilding typically do put on far more lean muscle mass than those who are strength training, however this isn’t a rule and will depend on the individual.

But, you do tend to see the biggest, most muscular people in the body building field.

So there you can see the most notable differences between these two activities.  Strength training, for 90% of the population and almost 100% of the busy executives reading this will be the wiser route to go.

Now let’s move forward and talk a little more about the anatomy of the body and what you need to know there so that you can put together a workout program that is going to best work to help you develop your entire body.