Functional Fitness vs Bodybuilding: A Volume Based Analysis

Right now there are literally 58 million people asking which is better, functional or bodybuilding? Normally I’d tell you that the two are very different, but after doing this analysis, they may not be as different as you might think. Keep reading to see the scientific break down between the two different types of training. I think you’ll be just as surprised as I was.

I want to get this out there first off. I am in no way hating on bodybuilding. I started my lifting career reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Bodybuilding Encyclopedia (Amazon Affiliate Link), and I still think that it is a great read for any gym rat.

In fact, I’m always happy when a pretty good bodybuilder walks into my gym as they will almost always have a good strength base, and good anaerobic development, at least in short durations.

But……I do think traditional bodybuilding needs to change, and much of that community hasn’t really kept up with the times. I still see tons of single body part split programs that are straight out of the 80’s. Needless to say there are better methods, which science and experience have shown.

The Bodybuilding Programs

The goal of this article to analyze a traditional body part split program that most bodybuilders have done, to see how it compares to my 8 Week Functional Bodybuilding Hybrid Program.

We will be using this 5 day split program from Muscle and Strength. I chose this because it’s free and it is very well constructed from a traditional perspective. If you want a decent program and only wanted to body build, this would work well. But if you’re reading this you want a little more than just hypertrophy, am I right?

Both programs intend to primarily increase muscular size, but the Hybrid program intends to do so while maintaining your anaerobic fitness.

What Makes a Good Hypertrophy Program?

This is a key question. We will not be able to analyze either program if we don’t first have some understanding of what we are after, and what factors will help us achieve our goals.

Building muscle mass, otherwise known as hypertrophy, is primarily driven by three mechanisms:

1. Mechanical Tension
2. Metabolic Stress
3. Muscle Damage

Traditional bodybuilding does very well at 1 and 3, but due to longer rest periods there is less metabolic stress than a normal program.

Most programs will be very good at 2 and 3 with less mechanical tension due to lighter weights being used for more movements. Again these are broad generalizations, but in my experience, they are fairly accurate.

These three factors are key, but more importantly it is crucial to understand what kind of training will most favorably trigger them, and ultimately yield more muscle growth. That key factor is high volume training.

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The Importance of Volume

Volume is one of the key components to any physical adaptation in the gym. You need it to get stronger, you need it to work on your energy systems, and it must be carefully monitored to make sure you aren’t doing too much nor too little.

Most studies indicate that there is indeed an optimal volume to build muscle. This study in particular indicates higher volumes of training are associated with higher levels of muscle growth.

The participants in this study were put into a low, medium, and high volume group. Low was 5 sets per muscle group, medium 5-10 sets, and high greater than 10. The groups gained 5.4%, 6.6%, and 9.8% more muscle mass compared to their baseline, respectively. Obviously this trend doesn’t mean that we could do 100 sets and look like Ronnie Coleman, but you get the idea.

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Training Frequency

There are also better and worse methods to training with the appropriate volume. There is a finite limit to what your body can recover from. This research study investigated the ideal training frequency to deliver the best muscle gains.

They found solid evidence that two times a week caused almost twice the muscle gain compared to only once per week. This; however doesn’t mean that you can do double the work and still recover, but it does mean that you can probably do more volume than if you only hit the muscle group once per week!

If you can do 10 sets per muscle group once per week, then you might be able to do 15 sets total, twice per week and still recover well.

Now that we know that overall training volume is key, and training frequency should be at least twice per week, lets compare our traditional plan from Muscle and Strength to the Hybrid plan.

Program Analysis

For both programs I used my self as a virtual guinea pig, sounds sexy right? I promise I’m not a furry! I used my weights and the volume specified in the program to calculate which programs had more overall work, and I further broke that volume down by muscle group.

Here is the overall program volume, measured in foot lbs of work, for one week of the traditional Muscle and Strength (M&S) program and from the 3rd week of my hybrid program.

Of note when a rep range was specified such as x movement with 8-12 reps, I always used the highest value in my calculations.

You can see that the bodybuilding hybrid program for functional athletes has over double the volume. Interestingly enough my hybrid program is only 4 days per week where as the M&S program is 5 days per week.

The more astute observers will be saying that most of that volume is from the more monostructural portions of the program, things like assault bike and running.

They are right that a large chunk comes from those types of movements, but even if we only compare pure weight lifting elements we still see some interesting comparisons.

Ah ha, suck it nerds! The hybrid program still has higher volume when the WOD volume is taken away. This is because I tend to favor compound movements over isolation movements as most scientific literature indicates higher levels of muscle building with them.

I’m sure some of you skeptical Steve’s are probably wondering how much volume per muscle group does each program deliver? Well I’m glad you asked.

Again we see higher volumes with the hybrid program and lower volumes with the M&S program. This is also true if we look at them day by day.

Of note on day five we only see the blue column, the M&S program, because my hybrid program is only 4 days per week. We still see that each day is much lower volume compared to the hybrid program.

Now let’s look at the actual movements in each workout.

Here is the Muscle and Strength Example

You can see that this does cover all the bases. There are heavy moves, high volume moves, and different planes of motion. Here is the hybrid program, week 3.

Note this is the full week but again we have more compound movements, and a WOD each day. I can tell you from experience that this program will generally take 60-80 minutes in the gym depending on how much time you take to get moving.

Discussion

It’s pretty clear from the analysis that the hybrid program has higher overall volume, and higher weight lifting volume. This will most likely lead to better overall increases in muscle mass, especially since we have high intensity work from the WODs which will lead to more metabolic stress, one of our keys for muscle growth.

The Muscle and Strength program is still good. I can promise you that if you half assed my program and killed theirs you would get better results from their program, as effort and consistency count. They count a lot.

I would also like to say that there are certainly more modern bodybuilding programs out there that look similar to my hybrid program. They will hit each muscle group multiple times per week and generally have higher frequencies, but those unfortunately seem to be in the minority.

Functional Fitness or bodybuilding doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you pick a goal and find a solid plan to accomplish it. In this case I just happen to think my plan is a little better!

If you have any questions or comments put them below, where I can get to them the quickest.

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