Three months of 5x5 strength work vs. 3 months of hypertrophy volume: which actually changed my body more?

Honestly, I ran a 5x5 program for 12 weeks last year and my bench went from 135 to 185, but my legs barely grew. Then I switched to a high volume leg program for the next 12 weeks-squats, lunges, extensions-and my quads got way bigger but my bench barely moved. It got me thinking: do you guys see better overall progress focusing on strength numbers or chasing muscle size? I'm curious what actually worked for your body long term.

2 comments

2 Comments

leep3310d ago

Ran 5x5 for a while and my squat went way up but my shirts got tighter in the arms. Turns out I was just eating everything in sight and blaming the program. Probably gained 10 pounds of actual growth and 5 pounds of pizza. My wife said I looked the same but my belt told a different story. So honestly, figure out if you want to lift heavy things or look good in a t-shirt first.

jamiew839d agoMost Upvoted

The whole "bulking" culture is just an excuse to eat like crap and call it gains. @leep33 hit on something real though, most people can't tell the difference between "feeding the muscle" and just feeding their face. It's the same pattern with everything in life, we convince ourselves we're doing one thing when we're really just doing the easy thing.