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)?
In: 460
Muscle is like a cup that can be filled with different amounts of liquid. Strength is the amount of liquid thats in the cup. This means that you can have muscles (cups) that are smaller then others but filled with more strength (liquid) so they are stronger.
How you workout determines how much strength or muscle you will gain. Generally speaking more reps and time under tension = bigger muscle. Smaller rep size and higher intensity means more strength gains.
Don’t forget tendon strength as well which many ppl neglect but doesn’t add any size to muscles
Adding this because I didn’t see anyone else mention in.
There are two basic types of muscle fibers. One is short and fat, the other is long and thin.
The thin ones build up while doing anaerobic exercise.
If you have an overabundance of the thin muscle fibers you can be very, very strong without the same muscle thickness.
You see this in rock climbers in particular, who are extremely strong for their weight and muscle thickness, particularly in the arms.
Two words – motor recruitment.
Muscle fibres tend to twitch in a synchronized fashion when presented with a challenge – ie. a heavy load or resistance.
Motor recruitment allows the muscles to be used more efficiently and effectively.
It’s why some small people can lift big weights whilst some big people can’t.
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.
one factor is neuromuscular efficiency. You can have big muscles but lack the neural connections to activate them effectively. Have you even been unable to do an exercise or lift a certain weight but then after trying for a couple of days you can? You didn’t suddenly grow enough muscle to do the exercise. muscle takes time to build. Your brain just rewired to recruit your existing muscle more effectively.
Athletes typically have very good neuromuscular efficiency. they can fire a large percentage of their muscles cells at the same time.
It does correlate in trained individuals.
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/size-vs-strength/
Muscle size correlates with strength to a major degree, but some neuromuscular efficiancy is needed.
It does. If nothing else changes except muscles getting bigger, that person will get stronger. But there are many other factors that contribute to strength, like size and proportion, nerve density and activation etc… Some of these can be trained (like nerve activation) and this can mean a smaller person may be much stronger than a larger person.
When you lift something heavy, you don’t use all the fibres in the muscle. If you keep repeating the lift, say, kn a “set,” you start recruiting more fibres as others tire out.
In strength training, you can train your mind muscle connection to recruit more fibres earlier.
So strength training is usually higher weight, less repetitions focusing on using more fibres earlier, which increases strength. whereas hypertrophy training is usually more reps focusing on doing as much fibre damage as possible to encourage growth.
Obviously, both will increase size and strength, but one is more targeted on size. The other is fibre density and recruitment.
Latest Answers