Eli5: Lifting more weight without building more muscle

838 viewsBiologyOther

Bit of a weird question. How is it that that people gain strength without getting relatively bigger or more muscle.

Imagine I can bench 100kg or 225lb for a 1 rep max. Now imagine I train hard and now can lift the same weight for 3 reps.
Its unlikely your muscles have gotten three times bigger.

What has actually changed in the body to enable this?

In: Biology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Moving from one rep at a given weight to 3 reps at a given weight is not tripling your strength. That’s a pretty minor increase in strength. The actual weight is much more significant. Going from say a 75 lb bench to a 225 lb bench is more like tripling your strength (it is literally 3x the weight but “strength” as a concept is a little more nuanced). And you would find that you did indeed build substantially more muscle doing that.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.