SF system is focused on how to make someone strong. So if there is an increase in muscle mass this is a "pleasant" side effect. I put "pleasant" in quotes because in some cases increasing muscle mass and bodyweight is not the desired effect. Think about athletes that compete in weight classes: they want to be the strongest in their weight class rather than end up in a higher weight class. Or think about members of special units, martial artists and so on... they don't want to become heavier. So for someone hypertrophy is a good thing, for others it is something to avoid.
And I believe that one of the reasons why the system became so popular among that type of people is not only because it has revealed to be so effective in its semplicity, but also because it answered to the question:"can I become immensly strong while staying supple and without becoming heavy and look like a powerlifter or a bodybuilder?".
Until lets say a decade ago in the western strength training culture (talking about my country, but I believe there's not much difference in the US) it seemed that there was no chance of increasing strength without affecting the size of the muscles. Well, Russians (at least one Russian guy) knew better!
When I first got in touch with the system I thought I was pretty strong... then I was amazed when I had a chance to meet people that were half of my size and much stronger than I was.
So, to the questions:
"are there SF bodybuilders around?"
"are there members of the SF community that are also interested in building muscle mass?"
"is the system suitable also for hypertrophy rather than only strength?"
The answer is yes. It is a matter of adjusting the parameters, with a special attention to the volume.
The Russian Bear program out of
Power to the People! comes to my mind right now, but lately Pavel has sent out several experimental programs, many of which aim also to hypertrophy.
The kind of hypertrophy promoted by those programs is myofibrillar hypertrophy rather than the mostly mithocondrial and sarcoplasmatic hypertrophy promoted by many bodybuilding programs out there. Also white and intermediate muscle fibers are much more involved. Furthermore the system is based on fundamental movements, rather than isolation exercises. All this adds a cherry to the cake: not only one can make his muscles grow, but he will also become stronger. In this case “stronger” is the pleasant side effect and “pleasant” doesn’t need quotes
I personally know and trained quite a few Italian competitive natural bodybuilders with SF principles and with kettlebells, barbells and bodyweight exercises with great results (also my wife trained in this manner for her last two bodybuilding competitions).
So why is the system not (yet) so popular among bodybuilders? Well… take a look at commercial gyms. Do you see kettlebells there? Very uncommon. And if there are some their use is often reserved only for clients under the guide of a personal trainer. It is hard to find a power rack and if there is one, the plates you find are mostly those octagonal ones who make very hard to do deadlifts. Good pullups bars are also hard to find, while almost any gym has those "easy traction" machines. Also in many gyms they wouldn't allow one to train barefoot. On the other side in kettlebell equipped gyms you can also find power racks, barbells and pullup bars, but there's no bodybuilding equipment there.
Actually one doesn’t need bodybuilding equipment to train for hypertrophy or even for a bodybuilding event once he has at his disposal kettlebells, barbells and pullup bars and he knows how to do it. It’s just a matter of spreading the knowledge among bodybuilders. It is a hard job, as most bodybuilders fear that they are going to loose muscle mass if they give up their curls. But we can prove them the opposite.
This is one of the reasons why I haven’t been doing any sort of curls in the last 5 years… ;-)
