how can muscles be big but not strong, like body builders vs rock climbers?
In: Biology
Strength is specific. If you ask that rock climber to bench press, then he won’t be as good as someone who consistently practices the bench press (all other variables being equal).
Just to clarify, they are strong. There’s a strong correlation between muscle size and strength. Bodybuilders are very strong.
There’s relative and absolute strength, how strong you are relative to your body weight, and how strong you are period. Strongmen are massive because they have to lift the most weight possible, climbers are strong relative to their body weight, but they still get smoked by bigger people if we’re talking how much is being lifted.
Smaller people have more strength/bodyweight ratio, in powerlifting/weightlifting, you can find people lifting 3 to 4 times their bodyweight on certain lifts. That never happens for heavyweights, they lift a lot more but it might be like twice their bodyweight.
Neuromuscular adaptations: It’s not enough to have muscle fibers. You need to coordinate them to be strong. Practicing exercising heavy will increase your brains ability to coordinate muscle fibers and exert more force.
Lack of supporting muscle strength: All of your big muscles have many smaller muscles that provide balance and support when lifting. If you haven’t practiced those smaller muscles (by for example lifting only with fixed machines and no free weights) those muscles won’t be able to provide the necessary support to lift heavy.
Muscle fiber balance: Muscles consist of three types of muscle fibers. Type 1 (slow-twitch oxidative) are slow-twitch high endurance but low strength muscle fibers. Type 2a (fast-twitch oxidative) are fast twitch intermediate muscles with a balance between strength and endurance. Type 2b (fast-twitch glycolytic) are fast-twitch high strength musculature with low endurance. Training and genetics will influence your mix of these muscle fibers in different bodyparts. High-weight exercises will typically stimulate the growth of 2B muscle fibers, while high rep-low weight will typically promote Type 1.
I copied this from a previous post where I replied to a similar question,
Strength is like a tug of war, just having more people on the rope doesn’t help if they’re not all pulling together. Fewer people pulling on the rope in sync, will beat more people who are pulling out of sync.
Big muscles don’t necessarily mean every muscle fibre is pulling, small muscle that recruit more muscle fibres to pull are much stronger than big muscles that don’t
Edit: formatting
1. You are confusing pure strength with strength to weight ratio. Body builders are pretty strong and definitely stronger than most climbers, but the extra muscles in their legs are just extra weight that lowers their strength to weight ratio on a climbing wall
2. Body builders are usually smaller than you would expect compared to strong men. They cut calories to get the ripped appearance, but that has a cost in terms of muscle growth. Strongmen almost always have a bit of a gut because they are focused on maximizing muscle growth at all cost. Strongmen are also ridiculously large human beings. The average strongman you see on TV is much larger than almost all body builders you see
3. Strongmen and body builders train slightly differently that results in slightly different structures in the muscle itself. Resulting in the body builder being slightly weaker relative to the size of a given muscle than a strongman
One thing is bodybuilders only increase muscle cell size (sarcoplasmic) where as strength athletes create new muscle cells (myofibrillar)
https://seriouslystrongtraining.com/what-is-sarcoplasmic-myofibrillar-muscle-hypertrophy/#:~:text=Sarcoplasmic%20hypertrophy%20is%20the%20increase,fiber%20which%20increases%20its%20size.
Fast-twitch (Type II) fibers: These fibers contract quickly and are used for rapid, powerful movements. They fatigue more quickly than slow-twitch fibers and rely primarily on anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen) for energy production.
Slow-twitch (Type I) fibers: These fibers contract more slowly and are resistant to fatigue. They are well-suited for endurance activities such as long-distance running or cycling. Slow-twitch fibers rely primarily on aerobic metabolism (with oxygen) for energy production, which allows them to sustain activity for extended periods.
As others have said, body builders are usually pretty insanely strong still compared to the average guy. No one, and I mean no one, will be able to go into a gym untrained and bench 200kg.
They still train really hard, even if it is adapted for aesthetics, another thing to consider is that bodybuilders often stop trying to grow specific muscles once they hit the right size with it, there is a golden ratio in body building where your biceps, chest and forearms are all just perfect, not many hit it but it happens.
Yet another thing to consider is that yeah, some of the greatest hand strength compared to body mass absolutely comes from rock climbers, but you know what? If I trained my ability to hold onto something constantly I’d have insane grip strength as well.
I actually watched a video recently of this one rock climber guy who went to a grip strength competition. In two of the events he came second and the rest he placed sort of at the bottom of the highest third. The ones he came second in were unsurprisingly (to me anyway) the awkward grip events, the thomas-inch dumbell, which is an extremely wide handled dumbell you pick up, and then an event where you have to pick up and hold all manner of heavy, odd shaped rocks.
He also held 150kg in each hand in a farmers carry for something crazy like 45 seconds, the heavier guys actually mostly beat him there, but that’s because they already work with those kinds of weight and he doesn’t.
Think of a bunch of sticks that a random kid just stacked together to make a small bridge. Although it may look like a bridge and it has a lot more sticks on it that definitely won’t hold as much weight compared to a bridge built by an engineer using fewer bubtje same sticks.
The difference is how they are strategically arranged to optimize their strength.
That is how muscles work in a way too. A rock climber may have fewer muscles but those are strategically located and strengthened to help him do what he does.
Length vs. thickness is also a thing. Stretch often and ritualistically and your body will naturally be able to pull more from the various fibers of the muscular system to push or pull more
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