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The Big Switch: Strength Training to Muscle Mass Training

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long.

Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan

Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM
Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM
Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM
Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM
Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM
Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM

At the end of the 6 weeks and assuming I was able to do all the exercises as planned I would increase the weight a little and restart. That should still allow me to gain strength while increasing size.

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  1. SS GuyJune 9, 2010 at 11:22 AM

    Chandan, I wish you luck with this new turn to your routine! I am curious to know how you came about this routine... did you devise it yourself? FYI: Although I never tried it myself because I had trouble gaining strength then, Anthony Ellis recommends alternating between Heavy-Weight-Few-Reps-Slow-Lifting (10 weeks) and Light-Weight-many-reps-fast-lifting (2 weeks) - he recommends a 10x10 system saying the lower weight (and more reps and sets) helps in improving blood flow to the muscles. I was just thinking maybe you were headed in that direction. Please share your thoughts.

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  2. Re-yndJune 9, 2010 at 6:52 PM

    So I am not sure about the blood flow to muscles (which seems plausible), but I tried to reason in my next post. Give it a read and let me know your thoughts. I have been pretty busy lately so could not update my blogs regularly with what I am reading and how I am planning things.

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