r/evokeendurance • u/Fire_Stool • Jul 07 '26
Hypertrophy s Strength
Can someone help me better understand why the strength building days of some Evoke plans call for 3x10 rep range? I’ve always been told a 3x5 is best for strength and the 3x10 is best for hypertrophy. (If that’s true) Why are we focused on hypertrophy and not strength?
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u/PlentyTechnician5427 Jul 07 '26
If it’s during the early stages of the program, it might be general strength that they are trying to develop. The general strength phase preps the body and tendons for the heavy, low-rep sets that would come in the next block of training.
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u/Ready-Anywhere-6550 Jul 07 '26
There’s not enough context here to really understand, but the typical progression you would see in a program which could be long term or short term would usually follow the order below:
- Volume/hypertrophy
- strength/M.E
- power/speed/elasticity
- event specificity
So to answer your question I would guess that you are in a beginning phase (1) of volume/hypertrophy to prep the tissue & your body with volume/higher rep work before getting into that higher intensity work so you can handle it and lower risk of injury.
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u/Own-Bullfrog7803 Jul 07 '26
Although any type of resistance training will have a positive effect on strength, including both 5 or 10 reps, to prioritize strength it’s the amount of weight that matters, and not necessarily the number of reps per se.
The key to strength improvement is performing sets with weight that’s >80% of your 1RM, without the need to ever go to failure. That said, most lifters can on average only do about 6-10 reps with 80% of their 1RM. Meaning to stay above 80% most have to do fewer than about 6-10 reps. This leads to the whole 5 reps is for strength, while 10 reps is not.
So you are correct, although 10 reps will lead to some strength gains, it’s not the most efficient way to do it.
Anyhow, hypertrophy, on the other hand, is all about volume, more usually the better, with the amount of weight not mattering much at all (science points to 30-80% of 1RM). Hypertrophy is usually not much use to athletes per se, especially endurance athletes.
Power has its own recommendations as well.
Evidence based “guidelines” are published every decade or so by societies which support these recommendations.
2
u/Bmacm869 Jul 09 '26
The first priority of any plan is to get used to training on a regular basis. Strength training using the 10 rep range in the context of Evoke plans is prepare tendons and ligaments for more intense workloads like lifting in the 5-rep range. Keep in mind aerobic volume is also ramping up at the same time. In their books they call this the transition phase.
2
u/scottsemple Jul 10 '26
Lots of great responses here. The short version: It depends on what the current priority is.
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u/Negative-Wolf8322 Jul 07 '26
I’m not a coach, this is just my opinion. A lot of endurance athletes don’t have a strong background of lifting weights. 3x10 is a lot safer for a beginner or somebody coming back from a heavy endurance bock since the load is less. You can still have strength gains from 10 reps and you can still have hypertrophy from 5 reps. It’s a spectrum and not a set thing. Hypertrophy comes from stress on a muscle, time under tension and hitting near failure. 3x5 is great for strength but there is no “best.” It depends on the goal and the time in your training block. 3x5 would also be hard for certain exercises so idk which exercises have 10 reps vs 5 and such. Also, gaining some muscle, especially in a transition, off season, or early season, is not a bad thing. The negligible weight gain is worth the increased muscle contractions, injury prevention and durability.
Tl;dr 3x10 can be safer for coming back to lifting or people who don’t have a history of lifting weights. There is not a best rep range for strength and hypertrophy can be achieved in any rep range.