As the title says. Why does hypertrophy (growing muscle tissue in size) does not correlate with the strength of the individuals training for strength (as in heavy weight lifting, without growing muscle tissue)?
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There is a relationship between a muscle’s cross sectional area and it’s peak power output. However, Let’s say a person’s muscle size stays fixed. They can still grow much stronger. This type of training strengthens and improves the connection from the motor centers of the brain to the muscles. The net result is that a highly trained person can activate a greater number of muscle fibers, resulting in a larger force production than someone with the same muscle mass that is not a well neurologically adapted. In essence, above normal strength is the ability to, at will, use all the muscle you have to a maximal degree.
When you work out hard and fast (short period of time) you are tearing the crap out of your muscle fibers. As your body heals those fibers (in recovery) it also makes more (assuming you feed it enough protein and stuff) because it is anticipating a heavier load and wants to bulk up. This is body building. When you do longer, lower weight or impact exercises, you tear fewer fibers, but still stress them all enough that as they are repaired, individual fibers are made stronger/more efficient. This is strength or endurance training.
So basically strength comes from stressing the body without tearing your muscles and bulk comes from repeatedly over tearing your muscle fibers. The SIZE of your muscles will increase, but each individual fiber will be newer/weaker and overall an equivalent sized “body builder” will be significantly weaker than a strength trainer or “Strongman”
I’ll give it a ELI5 shot,
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
Certain training schemes add more people to the rope, and others train them to pull together
In addition to the other other answers you’ve gotten, there are anatomical differences that affect power output independent from muscle size. People with longer limbs are at a disadvantage in lifts like squats and bench presses, tendon lengths and how they attach to the bone will affect strength, etc.
I would say that you’re forgetting about ligaments. Those are the ones who is responsible for overall strength
Larger cells can hold more fuel, so they can do moderate or small bursts of energy more times. You make them larger by doing that specifically – hypertrophy training.
Any sized cell can be trained to use more fuel in a single action. Training to get better at a large blast of energy won’t necessarily make the cells need to grow, though – strength training.
Bodybuilders train for hypertrophy because it grants size, powerlifters and olympic lifters usually focus on strength.
A larger cell trained for size also has more potential for a greater outburst of strength, but you have to train specifically to do that. Many powerlifters train for some size for that reason.
Your skeleton, tendons, and ligaments that hold your muscles in place also have to be trained to handle those short extreme bursts of strength, so even if you have the muscle to potentiall deadlift 500+ lbs, you may not have the framework in place to do it. Bodybuilders usually injure themselves trying to lift abnormally heavy because their muscles have developed faster than their connective bits.
Just to correct the terminology here – muscle size *does* correlate with strength, in that all else being equal larger muscle size equals more strength. What you really are asking is what things other than muscle size affect strength.
It DOES correlate with strength. Cross sectional muscle area is one of the biggest variables for strength.
But let’s talk about what else matters. First is anatomy – length of bones, where tendons attach, etc. a guy with say T. rex arms and good tendon insertions and a barrel chest will bench a lot more than some lanky dude.
Next is neural proficiency. Muscles are flexed by nerves. Nerves can fire harder or less hard, and in a better or less good pattern. This is both genetic and trainable.
Next is muscle fiber type – some people have more endurance-focused fibers, some are more power focused. This is somewhat trainable and somewhat genetic.
Next is muscle composition. There can be SMALL differences in muscle composition between the fibers (the part that pulls) and the fluid surrounding them that contains say nutrients, called sarcoplasm. The latter does help strength but less than bigger fibers, so there can be a bit of quality difference between the two.
So muscle size IS a huge factor, but so is anatomy, nervous system, fiber type and cross-sectional composition.
Edit: this answer is too technical for ELI5, but I’m leaving it intact for anyone who cares to read it.
TL;DR: hypertrophy prioritizes making an exercise inefficient in order to cause more stimulus to the target muscle. Strength prioritizes making an exercise efficient in order to maximize the amount of load that can be lifted.
Muscle size DOES increase strength, but not by as big of a margin as other factors. The two main principles in play are sarcoplasmic vs myofibrillar adaptations. Hypertrophy prioritizes both, but strength only prioritizes myofibrillar adaptations.
Sarcoplasmic fluid increases muscle volume, but not necessarily strength. Strength is dependent on the quantity of myofibrils within each myocyte (the makeup of a muscle fiber), and your body’s ability to recruit those units. Which means the more myofibrils each muscle fiber contains (stronger contractions), and the more practiced you are at recruiting them (motor skill and nervous system adaptations), the stronger you’ll become.
Hypertrophy is achieved by increasing the volume of work, which can be done with a dozen different tactics. Hypertrophy also doesn’t care about motor recruitment beyond being able to go close to failure without technique breakdown. Which means a variety of exercises throughout the week can stimulate the muscle in multiple different ways.
Maximal strength can ONLY be achieved by increasing load. If you’re not adding weight over time, your maximal strength will not increase. This means that whatever movement you want to get stronger at needs to be practiced consistently with minimal variations throughout the week. This maximizes nervous system and motor skill adaptations.
When it comes to myofibril quantity within each myocyte of a muscle fiber, it will increase size by a little and strength by a lot. But each muscle fiber can only contain so many myocytes, and each myocyte can only contain so many myofibrils. At some point, you’ll plateau and need to increase muscle size to make space for more myocytes to form.
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