Functional Fitness vs Bodybuilding: Which Should You Train For?

Each day, most of us live our lives prioritizing other people's needs and happiness while pushing our own well-being to the back burner. It's time to change things around. When you start prioritizing your own well-being, the well-being, happiness, and quality of life of those around you often improves as well.

Do You Want to Be a Bodybuilder?

No?

Then don't train or eat like one. It's really that simple.

But there's a bigger misunderstanding hiding behind this question, and it keeps a lot of people, especially women, out of the weight room entirely.

"I Don't Want to Get Bulky"

One of the most common negative self-negotiations I see women make with themselves is, "I don't know if strength training is for me. I don't want to get bulky."

That's like saying, "I'm worried about becoming a race car driver every time I get in my minivan."

You have to try to get bulky. Bodybuilders do it by training for hours a week, for years, and intentionally eating a ton of food to build copious amounts of muscle. It doesn't happen by accident on three sessions a week.

Here's the part people don't expect: you will build muscle, and that's a good thing. A 2020 meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found women build muscle at about the same rate as men relative to where they start, and gain upper-body strength even faster. That muscle doesn't make you bulky. It makes you strong, and it protects you for the next 40 years.

I went deeper on this, and on why it matters so much after menopause, in strength training for women over 40.

Why We Still Need to Borrow From Bodybuilding

With that being said, there are things about training like a bodybuilder that we should take into account when training for our life and function.

Every decade after 30, you lose muscle. A review in Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care puts it at roughly 3 to 8 percent per decade, and the decline speeds up after 60.

That's a major decline in your ability to live a full life. Especially if your retirement plan is to spend it as a skin sack of adipose tissue and fragile bones.

Your bones follow the same rule as your muscles: use them or lose them. In the LIFTMOR trial in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, postmenopausal women with low bone mass lifted heavy twice a week, for just 30 minutes, for eight months. Their spine bone density went up 2.9 percent. The group doing a low-intensity home program lost 1.2 percent. Every measure of physical function improved too.

So taking aspects of bodybuilding isn't a bad thing. We literally need to build muscle in our bodies. Here's what's worth borrowing:

• Progressive overload. Gradually lifting more, or doing more, over time. Your body only adapts when you give it a reason to.
• Enough hard sets per muscle. A 2021 review in Sports Medicine on time-efficient training puts the floor at about 4 hard sets per muscle group per week.
• Real effort. Working close to failure with good form. That's where the muscle-building stimulus is.

What You Don't Need to Borrow

What I don't think you need to do is spend 8 to 10 or more hours per week in the gym lifting weights.

The LIFTMOR women got real results in an hour a week. Most of our clients train two to three times a week for an hour, and that's plenty to build muscle, protect their bones, and feel great. I explained why I recommend full hours instead of 30-minute sessions in are 30 minute workouts enough to build muscle.

You also don't need the extreme diets, the bulking and cutting cycles, or a program built around isolating every muscle for the mirror.

Functional Fitness vs Bodybuilding at a Glance

	Bodybuilding	Functional fitness (training for life)
Main goal	Maximum muscle size and stage appearance	Strength, pain-free movement, independence, feeling good
Time in the gym	Often 8–10+ hours a week	2–3 focused hours a week
Diet	Deliberate bulking and cutting phases	Normal eating that supports your goals
Exercise focus	Isolating individual muscles	Movements you use in life: squat, hinge, push, pull, carry
Builds muscle?	Yes, as much as possible	Yes, enough to stay strong for decades
Borrows from the other?	Rarely	Yes: progressive overload, hard sets, real effort

Train for YOUR Goal

The biggest thing is training for your goal.

Most of our clients are training for the goal of living and feeling good. They want to be strong so they can play with their kids and grandkids. Maybe they want to look better in the mirror, or stop being in pain. Those are great goals.

The training for those goals uses elements of bodybuilding. But we aren't trying to be bodybuilders.

If you want to see what that looks like when you're starting late, I laid out the plan in how to build muscle after 50.

The Bottom Line

Don't train like a bodybuilder unless you want to be one. You won't accidentally become one either.

But don't skip the muscle. You're losing 3 to 8 percent of it every decade after 30, and muscle and bone are what keep you strong, independent, and out of pain. Borrow what works from bodybuilding, leave the rest, and train for your life.

If you're in Allison Park, the North Hills, or anywhere around Pittsburgh and you want help learning what training for life looks like, give us a call.

Always remember: the more willing you are to make changes to prioritize your well-being, the better you will be at taking care of those around you. YOUR well-being is important, and it is time to start prioritizing it, FOR LIFE.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to train smarter?

Train for your life, not a stage. Give us a call and see what functional strength training looks like at Full Circle Function & Fitness in Allison Park.

FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION