This article is focused on growth in muscle _size_ over growth in muscle _strength_. The two are related, but it's pretty well-established that you can bias your training towards one or the other. You can see the difference between experienced powerlifters and bodybuilders. PLs move heavier weights than BBs, but the latter generally have more muscle mass. I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding and its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.
It was a revelation for me that I could go in and do 5x5 Stronglift or similar and get it done in 40m 3x a week instead of adding on ever more volume, and I think that time saving is extremely helpful in terms of maintaining compliance with an exercise schedule.
Incidentally, it also helped my muscle size significantly, likely exactly because it was far easier to stay motivated and consistent.
In my experience the carry-over between different rep ranges etc. is significant enough that unless you're aiming to be a competitive lifter or bodybuilder, what matters most is what you can motivate yourself to do consistently. When I was younger that was 5x5, or later 3x5 or 5-3-1 or similar where I could keep adding weight as often as possible. Now I'm doing higher rep ranges because I know what I've been able to lift and I'm not likely to exceed it again (I'm 47; I probably could if I cared enough, I didn't lift that much, barely into competitive levels, but I don't want to spend enough time in the gym to make that happen) and maintaining my health is motivation enough.
I've experienced a very similar effect. The health ROI on your time investment with strength-focused training is pretty incredible. If you could bottle it up and sell it, you'd be rich!
There are significant caveats to the term "strength" though.
Powerlifters use every possible technique to reduce effort (e.g. reducing range of motion) in order to lift heavier weights. Obviously this is a good idea for them since the amount of weight lifted is what wins them competitions. But this is a very specific form of strength which isn't generally applicable.
> I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding
I think it's the opposite actually, due to the above reason (training for general strength is better for most people than optimizing 3 lifts). If you find a way to reduce bench press range of motion and this gives you an extra 5 kg on the bar, this doesn't make you any healthier.
> its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.
You could train large muscle groups as a novice bodybuilder as well. The main difference is that you don't only focus on increasing the weight lifted, but also on putting as much stress on the muscle as possible at a slightly higher rep count (somewhere between 5 and 15 is typical). Doing sets of 5-15 isn't significantly more time consuming than sets of 1-5, since in both cases most of the time is taken up by resting between sets.
Agreed. However: powerlifting style training has more risk of injury. Pushing the limits of what your body can handle in the 1—6 rep range is riskier than pushing the limits of what your body can handle in the 6—10 rep range. With that said, I much prefer powerlifting style training.
