Eli5: Can your muscles become stronger if you’re working them without adding more muscle mass, while eating at a deficit or maintenance?
In: 8
Yes, to a certain degree. Strength is a combination of three things:
a) the technique you’re using to leverage the force produced
b) muscle mass available to generate said force
c) how good your central nervous system (CNS) is at using the fullest potential of your muscles
If you become stronger without becoming bigger then it’s a combination of A and C but most likely C. Like all other motor skills you need to repeat them over and over to become better at them. If you go from a mostly sedentary lifestyle to an active one you’ll start seeing insane gains early on because your body is quickly adapting to a healthy baseline of strength and size, but once you’ve hit that stage and want to progress in e.g weightlifting then gaining muscle mass and working on your technique is the most straightforward approach.
How you train also plays a role which is why bodybuilders tend to go for hypertrophy (high amount of repetitions at lower weights) while powerlifters tend to go for fewer repetitions are very high weights – the muscles adapt differently, which is why you can see bodybuilders that are huge but relatively weak for their size and pudgy, skinnyfat guys who deadlift 500lbs.
Yes. You often see it with athletes who has to stay in a weight class, like wrestling and powerlifting.
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