eli5: Why do people who are actually strong look different than bodybuilders who train all week?
In: Biology
Let’s use the analogy of two houses being built beside each other.
The first house has all the main structures going up at once, the concrete foundation is setting and the builders are putting up walls. It all comes together well and they’re already painting the outside of the house.
Next door is slower. They’ve waited for the concrete slab to set and even done a thicker layer. They’ve put up scaffolding and reinforced where they’re going to put the walls up. They’ve only put up 3 of the walls whilst next door is already painting.
The next morning the builders turn up after a major storm overnight that battered both houses. The house that was being painted has crumbled to rubble. The house next door has had the 3 walls fall down but the scaffolding is still up.
The shoulder is a good example of this – most big bodybuilders can name the larger superficial muscles (delts, lats, traps, tris, bis). These get torn and reheal by the less reps heavier weight style of training and makes the outside of the house look bigger. Ask the strongmen to name the rotator cuff structures and they will likely be able to tell you, because their more reps less than max weight style is concerned with the structural integrity and scaffolding of the house.
Big trees fall hard. Hard trees don’t fall.
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