i’ve watched a ty video comparing Mariusz Pudzianowski and Kyriakos Grizzly, and it was said that even tho Grizzly had way more pure muscle mass, his powerlifting scores were lower. How is it possible that with more muscle mass he didn’t lift more?
In: Biology
Strength is a product of the nervous system. It’s a learned skill through “practicing” picking up heavy things. You can get stronger and not gain muscle mass but gaining that mass will increase your ceiling of maximal strength to a degree. The mass doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. You will gradually increase strength by building muscle but to truly unlock the potential of your new found muscle is done through the nervous system learning how to recruit all those new fibers.
its easy physics bro, force = mass x acceleration, so if people have a lot of mass and their muscle fiber dont accelerate much then its not going to have much strenght on the other hand if you dont have a lot of mass but your fibers fire up fast then their going to accelerate and create more force.
theres a difference between power training and strength training. strength training can lead to maximization of absolute strength, but power lifting involves higher velocity repetitions and a markedly increased level of coordination between alpha motor neurons controlling the movement. dynamic power athletes train with different rep ranges and % of their repition maximum than strength athletes. muscle adaptations as a result of this type of training are different than the muscle adaptations that you’d get from a purely strength-centered program. power lifts are also much different than what you might see a strength athlete performing. some of the common exercises would be hang clean, clean and jerk, and power clean
source: exercise scientist, let me know if you want less of an ELI5 and a more detailed explanation
People are forgetting about all the other soft tissues not just muscle. If you don’t have the properly trained ligaments and tendons (as well as all of the soft tissues coordinating), you don’t have functional strength.
Food for thought: A planck is the smallest measurable distance – you as a human are more relevant in size to the observable universe than you are to 1 planck.
Volume is not the same as mass. Bigger muscles don’t help if they’re less dense. Tissue density is the better metric, assuming all else is the same.
You need to watch this guys videos for great examples of strength versus size. He humbles a lot of big guys.
[https://www.youtube.com/@vladimirfitness](https://www.youtube.com/@vladimirfitness)
For maximum hypertrophy you’ll be somewhere in the 6-30 rep range. You’ll work the muscle 3-5x a week.
For strength you’ll generally be in the 1-6 range and you’ll need more time for recovery.
If you just take the amount of muscle mass as a parameter, it probably has a pretty weak correlation with powerlifting total. There are many, many reasons for this:
1. that smaller person has specially trained the muscles needed for those particular lifts more whereas the larger mass of the bigger person is not optimally where powerlifting strength is generated from
2. that smaller person has a biomechanical advantage on those lifts due to body structure or muscle insertions (i.e. even if a person with longer arms has more muscle strength in their triceps, shoulders and pecs, he’she might still have a weaker bench 1 rep max due to having to raise the bar a much longer distance compared to a lifter with short arms)
3. that smaller person has larger relative amount of fast-twitch fibers compared to the bigger person (mostly genetically determined)
4. that smaller person can recruit a larger amount of working muscle fibers due to training style and genetics
5. that smaller person has better powerlifting technique
6. that smaller person has primarily trained for strength whereas the bigger person has trained for mass
etc. etc. etc.
I train in a fashion that promotes muscle tissue growth over strength… obviously putting on muscle makes me stronger but I’m significantly bigger than my friends who trian more for strength… and they blow my strength out of the water
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