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Notes -
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?
There is not really any such thing as a 'toning' strategy. Though many people appreciate the toned look, which is to say, lithe and lean with only a bit of muscle, the fact is that a build like that is pretty easy to get without weights. To that end, doing easy sets where you come nowhere near failure would be quite effective because you wouldn't be stimulating any muscle growth.
There is an argument for doing sets with more reps. Anything from 5-30 reps is effective for stimulating muscle growth, and there is some evidence that on the higher end of that range, it's better for hypertrophy, while on the lower end of that range, it's better for strength, but the difference seems pretty small. However, this is assuming the same intensity - in other words, going to or close to failure. Though the exact mechanisms for muscle gain are not totally understood, one thing is clear - mechanical tension on the muscle itself is very important. If normally, you lifted 80kg on a particular lift for a set of ten, it's likely going to be very hard to stimulate growth going down to 40kg or 30kg. To take a real world example, it's not people who do a lot of steps that end up with big calves, it's people who have high bodyweight.
At the same time, a lot of people who are naturally muscular from heavy manual labor aren’t lifting ‘to failure’ when they’re stacking crates or moving machinery, they’re just doing a ‘lot of reps’.
I don't know how true that is. I myself am a laborer, and I work alongside other laborers - they tend to be physically fit, but only to the extent that the job selects for physically active young men. We have slender twinks and dad bods, and the guys with great physiques all go to the gym on top of whatever we do at work. It's not that manual labour doesn't do anything - even jogging and stretching have been shown to work as muscle stimulus in people who are totally untrained, so any level of physical activity is better than nothing. But if you carry 10kg boxes around for work, your body will adapt, and eventually you will find it no longer works as stimulus even when you do it for forty hours a week. Endurance runners do not end up with big legs, sprint cyclists do, because they're pumping their legs hard to create a lot of force to accelerate quickly - thus, placing a lot of tension on their quads.
But, even supposing this was true, it's still totally impractical. Maybe a workout regimen that replicated this situation could work - but it would take forty hours a week!
yup...you cannot reliably predict how strong someone is or isn't by appearance except for very obvious cases
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Or at another limit, endurance runners do literally thousands of reps of swinging their arms per workout but I would still expect someone who does 100 chin-ups a week to have a bigger upper body.
Manual laborers do tend to have good general physical preparedness and work capacity, so I would expect someone who does manual labor to be able to make better gains if they do resistance train. Only because they can handle more tonnage (sets x reps x weight / week) and more effective volume (hard sets / week). I wouldn't expect that much more on a volume equated basis beyond the selection effect mentioned by @Mewis.
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