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Do you believe me? (96 total votes)
DEEPER EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES:
What makes muscles BIGGER is something called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
That's primarily fluid expanding the size of muscles. Most female bodybuilders train mostly with medium weight and 12-15 reps. Some do strength training at higher weights and reps, but it's the moderate stuff that causes the most visible growth.
Where real explosive strength comes from is myofibrillar hypertrophy. That's built using heavy weights and lower reps and it creates denser, harder muscle that doesn't look nearly as impressive, especially if you're not ripped (being ripped has fuck all to do with strength too, it's just low bodyfat and good muscle tone)
Google myofibrillar hypertrophy and read up on it if you're a nerd like me who takes a real interest in the science behind this.
Yes, you read that right.
Muscle size and muscle strength aren't directly proportional. A person who looks "normal" or lean can be MUCH stronger than someone who appears bigger and more muscular.
I'm sure that I am as surprised as the rest of the readership to discover that the winner of the annual Arnold Classic is not also the winner of the World's Strongest Man competition. Who knew!
I had always assumed that the reason Vladislava Galagan was never on the podium at the Olympic Weightlifting medal ceremony was because her busy schedule didn't permit it. But now you tell me that it's because she's an aesthetic bodybuilder and not a professional strength athlete.
Remarkable stuff and a revelation to us all, I'm sure.
Yes and no. When a person begins lifting all strength gains are almost entirely neural adaptations. When the neural adaptations have reached a limit muscle fiber size and number increases. Yes you can train for strength and not gain huge muscle mass but look at the worlds strongmen and women competitors. They're all huge people. They have to be because neural adaptation only goes so far.
I'm sure that I am as surprised as the rest of the readership to discover that the winner of the annual Arnold Classic is not also the winner of the World's Strongest Man competition. Who knew!
I had always assumed that the reason Vladislava Galagan was never on the podium at the Olympic Weightlifting medal ceremony was because her busy schedule didn't permit it. But now you tell me that it's because she's an aesthetic bodybuilder and not a professional strength athlete.
Remarkable stuff and a revelation to us all, I'm sure.
lmao...
Congrats, you're learning that powerlifting and bodybuilding training are two different disciplines with different physical outcomes.
Yes you can train for strength and not gain huge muscle mass but look at the worlds strongmen and women competitors. They're all huge people.
Mass moves mass. Being lean enough for a bodybuilding competition is a weakness when it comes to overall strength. Strongmen competitors and other strength record holders are generally overweight with big bellies.
Yeah, I believe you, but my “muscle fan” side doesn't want to believe. :)) It's just so nice to keep some harmless fantasies about bigger muscles = bigger strength sometimes. Because huge ripped muscles just can make that impression of extra power and it could be nice to get carried away by these feelings.
But even if I keep my feet on ground... strongest people, like powerlifters and strong(wo)men are big and brutally strong, but they’re definitely not attractive to me. Fitness athletes and bodybuilders aren’t as strong, but they’re very attractive and they’re still stronger—sometimes by a lot—than average people. So ripped bodybuilder with impressive strength (even if it’s not as great strength as my imagination and fantasies would want it) is still top winnner for me.
Btw, this really isn't big discovery. It's kind of like being surprised that Usain Bolt didn't win marathon. But hey, don't worry - outside this BB/FBB fans community, there's still huge percentage of people who would believe that bigger muscles means greater strength.
I never actually post on this site but there's a lot of misinfo here that I think is worth clearing up.
1.) Sarcoplasmic vs. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is an unproven hypothesis. There is no solid scientific literature that backs up its existence in totality, and what little research there is would imply an extremely small amount of "size gain" (the equivalent of on average no more than 4-5 pounds of water and fuel weight, which will look extremely different depending on where that sarcoplasma is stored). Additionally, sarcoplasma, being a form of cytoplasma, is directly proportional to the amount of contractile tissue that exists in a limb in the first place. You can't have more sarcoplasma than your muscle fibers would allow you to store, and the more muscle fibers you have, the more sarcoplasma you hold regardless of how full each cell is.
2.) Strength is definitionally a result of an increase of contractile tissue, which contains both sarcoplasm and myofibrils. The more cords there are pulling on something, the more force is exerted. The body creates strength through increasing the amount of cords pulling on something, which means adding more muscle fibers, which means growing bigger muscles. The strongest people in the world are not small. Eddie Hall at his peak size was 6'2" and over 400 pounds, and all you need to do is look at him to realize that he's carrying an absolutely insane amount of muscle mass. Even your image of your own example, Olivia Reeves, conveniently leaves out her main competitive muscles; she has absolutely gigantic legs, far larger than those of the majority of IFBB competitors. 5'6" and 155lbs is not small at all.
3.) Strength sports are technique sports. Take a look at this lift from Olivia, graciously provided in slow-motion. You'll see that the vast majority of her upwards drive comes from her legs and her back, which also happen to be her most developed muscles due to the demands of the sport. All of the impressive portions of the lift come from momentary explosiveness primarily driven by her glutes and quads (reminder: her largest muscles) coupled with back and core stabilization (you'll notice her waist certainly does not possess the thinness of your average physique or bodybuilding competitor). This is a clear demonstration of how weightlifting technique is primarily employed over raw physical strength. Her arms are not involved in an upward shoulder press; that's all leg-driven momentum. If you put her in a strict bar curl or OHP competition with someone possessing greater upper body muscle mass, she will in all likelihood lose that competition in the same way that someone with less lower body mass than her and, importantly, no training in olympic weightlifting, would not be able to clean and jerk as much as she does. It's the same way that bigger people can lose to smaller people in armwrestling; those without an understanding of armwrestling's rules of leverage are going to scrub out to someone with less muscle mass who's capable of putting on enough leverage to force the larger arm down.
(It's worth noting that this opens up a fresh question, which is how we're determining "strength" in the first place; Olympic weightlifting performance? The amount of weight moved on an isolation machine? Total barbell reps with X weight? A strongman competition? All of these bias different kinds and levels of muscle functionality and lifting technique. It's like asking who the better athlete is between Cristiano Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, and Tom Brady. The only similarity between those sports is the presence of a ball just like the only similarity between bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman, etc, is the presence of heavy objects.)
The fact of the matter is that (some, not all) weightlifters and bodybuilders have had pissing contests over this since both fields became properly codified. Bodybuilders are mad because weightlifters have impressive strength feats. Weightlifters are mad because bodybuilders look good on stage. Both continually attempt to invalidate the other's sport. These pissing contests have long since spread to the internet and been shoddily reinforced with pseudoscience. Since its advent, Crossfit has also gotten in on this action. As the "next big thing," Hydrox will enter this arena soon, too.
There are other, far more proven reasons why bodybuilders aren't doing weightlifter/powerlifter numbers. Here are a few of them:
A.) They starve and dehydrate themselves for half the year. If you're ripped, you're low on water and essential nutrients, both macro and micro. If you're low on macro and micronutrients, you're tired. Try lifting when you're brainfogged, hungry, and gassed out. You're not putting out shit for reps. Anyone who lifts weight seriously knows that if you go in for a set when you're starving and tired your strength can decline as much as 50%.
B.) They don't practice competitive weightlifting techniques. We've talked about this previously so I won't reiterate it here. Put a 7'5" guy who's never played basketball before up against a 5'7" guy who plays it every day and I guarantee you the taller guy is getting dogwalked regardless of the height advantage.
C.) Bodybuilders train for aesthetics and do not train the muscles necessary for strength sports as heavily as competitive weightlifters do. As mentioned beforehand, specific weightlifts require the strengthening of specific muscles, some of which actually cost points in bodybuilding. A thick core does not score well. Overly dominant legs (outside of the smaller female divisions) do not score well. Look at the visual difference between Derek Lunsford and Derek Poundstone, or Andrea Shaw and Becca Swanson. The "fridge look" that's common in strength sports due to the necessary development of a thick core for bracing against extremely heavy weight would never place well at a bodybuilding competition, a field where people purposefully atrophy their midsections with waist trainers for a better V-taper.
D.) Angles, photo-editing, and perspective trickery is the third leg of the bodybuilding stool. Derek Poundstone is 6'1". Derek Lunsford is 5'6". If you look at their photos, Lunsford looks bigger (and not even drastically so). You just have to remember that Poundstone has half a foot on him and is almost as filled out. Think about that, then ask yourself whether you're sure Lunsford is the more muscular person in terms of total volume.
E.) Genetics and epigenetics extend to overall strength and muscle structure. Some people, even at the same amount of total muscle, will be stronger than others due to both natural advantages and their surrounding environment. Even if some people have "denser" muscles than others, the idea that density can be influenced by things like rep ranges is at present wholly unproven. The facts as they are presently widely understood is that force and tension close to failure makes you bigger and thus stronger regardless of whether you get there via high or low volume training.
Overall, none of this actually matters because every person relevant to this discussion is in the top 0.1% of humanity and thus barely subject to statistical analysis as-is. In order to have any sort of direct strength comparison you'd have to get a bunch of Olympia competitors and a bunch of top weightlifters in the same room and have them do specific movements with equal levels of competence. This will never happen, so until we have more solid data regarding muscular biomechanics all of this is nonsense.
Also, Ronnie Coleman's powerlifting numbers called while I was writing this and told me to say hello.
Yes, you read that right.
Muscle size and muscle strength aren't directly proportional. A person who looks "normal" or lean can be MUCH stronger than someone who appears bigger and more muscular.
You can have bigger muscles and a lot of strength, but making muscles bigger isn't what creates real strength. Lifting heavy weights is.
Still not convinced? Check out Olivia Reeves.
No bulging muscles. She's not ripped. She's around 5'6" and a 155 lbs.
Olivia is stronger than most of the women on this site.
In fact, Olivia is stronger than more than 99.99% of the adult men in the world.
Don't believe me. Ask Google, ChatGPT, whatever you like. It's a fact.