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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Disclaimer: bad analogy
Think of a car engine; muscle size is the number of pistons. The more pistons the more maximum strength can be achieved.
However (for this analogy) most cars only use half their pistons. So an increase in engine size does increase strength but it will still be half it maximum.
Strength training increases the number of pistons used but is still limit by the maximum number of pistons present.
So an engine with 12 pistons using half would be as strong as an engine with 6 pistons using all of them.
Stepping away from the analogy. Strength training trains your nervous system to innervate more muscle fibres when you want to move that muscle. Muscle fibres are digital or binary in their action; they pull at 0% or 100%, the difference in force from say lifting a pencil vs your cat is the number of these muscle fibres in the muscle recruited to perform the action. Hypertrophy training increases the cross sectional area of the muscle fibres which increases what 100% is.
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