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I have two fitness goals at the moment, in priority order:
For the recent past, I've been focusing on this by adopting a more "bulking" strategy, wherein, I'd use larger weight for my exercises, and try to push my muscles to hit higher and higher weight limits. I'd usually do this by doing 2 to 3 of sets of 12 to 15 reps for each muscle, trying to push myself to muscle failure. So basically, more weight, less reps.
However, for achieving my stated goals, how does the above bulking strategy compare to a "toning" strategy, where I'd essentially be doing less weight, for more reps, and more time. With this sort of strategy, I may be doing up to 5 minutes of reps at a time, but with 1/2 to 1/3 of the weight as I'd be doing for bulking.
Which strategy is better to help me achieve my goal? Or should I do a mix, in which case, what percentage of time should be spent on each?
I thought the general consensus was that while building strength is best done by lifting heavier things, hypertrophy (ie bulking) is best served by lighter weights for more reps. The powerlifter lifts less but heavier, the more vain bodybuilder lifts more but lighter?
I guess one my my questions is, if I'm looking to primarily gain muscle for the purpose of increasing my base metabolism, so I can lose weight, what's best? Hypertrophy or strength or something else?
The general consensus I'm familiar with on this is, this isn't worth it. It's been a while since I looked into it, but IIRC, if you replace 1 lbs of fat with 1 lbs of muscle in your body - no easy feat - this adds like 30-50 extra Calories to your daily energy usage. That's only like 1-2K extra Calories per month, which is only about half a pound of fat loss, or about 6 pounds a year. Not bad, but in the scale of a year, 6 pounds is basically just noise, and you're going to get much better returns on effort through cardio and diet.
But, of course, every bit does count, and it's not as if building muscle is bad for you or your weight loss. For that, I believe you want to increase mass, since for increasing BMR, the mass is what matters most (the types of fibers likely matter as well, but for BMR, it will be minimal, since the energy required to twitch those muscles isn't factored in). Which likely means less focus on strength (weight) and more on hypertrophy (e.g. reps to failure).
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I think the consensus is something like 1-5 reps for strength. 6-10 for hypertrophy. I'm not sure what more than 10 gets you and it might be considered fuckarounditis.
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