Thread: Strength = Size?

Not necessarily, you could be strengthening connective tissue that had previously been hindering you. Or you could be seeing neural adaptation which will give strength gains without a huge amount of size gains.

What you eat plays biggest part in you big you get.

There is a relationship between heavier weights and hypertrophy, but it also depends on a lot of other factors aswell. The most important being your diet.

I have seen huge guys who are weak and I have seen little guys who are strong. I think certain variables can contribute to it, but if you are lifting heavier weights you should get bigger, but its not always the case. Powerlifters for example are wanting to maintain a certain weight to stick with a certain weight class, but they want to get stronger as well. Gives ya something to think about.

Size does matter

That's what she said.

lifting for size and lifting for strength are two different things though. For strength u want to do heavy ass weight for less reps (6 max?) with more rest between sets (3-5 minutes) and for size u want to do hypertrophy which is a little less heavy weight at higher reps (8-12) with minimum rest between sets (60-90 seconds). Then when you have ur lifting down EATING the right things is the other half in ur quest to get big

There is not a direct correlation. Strength gains could be neural (You are able to active a higher percentage of muscle fibers in a given muscle, they fire faster, better movement efficiency, etc.) or they could be morphological (Myofibrillar hypretrophy). It's really impossible to quantify how much of the strength you gained is from one category or the other.

However, neural gains tend to have a positive effect on hypertrophy. That is, if you can lift more weight, then you should be able to perform more work at a given intensity, which should have a positive effect on hypertrophy.

I think I recently read an article from either Arnold Schwarzennega or Dennis Wolf saying something similar about nueral loading by muscular endurance with high reps at a lower weight and how it sets you up for a less repped heavier load next workout.. but we kind of knew that already...as nice as it is to hear them re-iterate.

If you look at those world's strong man competitions it's never the biggest man in there who wins..

I know myself when I've been in full - training mode previously, while i never really wanted to get bigg, for martial arts purposes , strength was still important.. so pound for pound I found that by doing high volume sets of lotts of reps of lighter weights and excluding or trading off mainly complex carbs for other things, that I was probably alot stronger than i should've been and alott stronger than alot of ppl bigger than me.


There's strength.. as in maxal strength where low reps heavy weight will mean you can pick up the biggest rock once or twice or 3 or 6 x and if you eat big carbs will grow in size.. and there's strenngth in meaning that you have a base strength that you can milk and maintain for hrs and hrs.. you get thaat by training the lighter weights for many many more reps and theyy will work for you that way on high orr low complex carb intake...

If you can get hold of an article on muscle fibres ( and google should help you out) you 'll understand that to train bOth of those, it's nearly impossible to get maaximum returns off both fibres simulataneously without comprimising the return on one or both because those two fibres just don't dominate together well on a share shine stage..

I hope that wasn't too complicated for you and helps you decide which way you want to go...or understand more of what you can expect from your body and performance with what you're currently doing and how you might makes changes to what end.

Blooming tianshi lotus.

Originally Posted by Blooming Lotus

If you look at those world's strong man competitions it's never the biggest man in there who wins..

With the exception of 2006.

Phil Pfister - Wikipedia

I can't see where it says he was the biggest man out there, but if that's true, and I have no reason to doubt you here, then holy sweet jesus huh!!

the biggest man out there is Dominic Filou (sp?) of Canada. he tips the scales at a little over four bills I believe.

Originally Posted by P-funk

the biggest man out there is Dominic Filou (sp?) of Canada. he tips the scales at a little over four bills I believe.

Yeah, they are in the same ballpark. I've seen him listed between 6'4" 380 to 400 plus.

Phil is still a mammoth of a man at 6'6", 350lbs.

yea, they are all big dudes!

The smaller guys (aside from Pudz) are from the US....Kevin Knee (the lightest ever) and even marunde is smaller (tipping the scales at around 310-320) compared to some of the other guys.