Hi, sorry I was just scrolling by to see how the whole thread turned out
I apologize to be so blunt, but there simply isn’t truth to what you’re saying. It gets repeated a lot, but it’s a totally debunked myth, this idea that there’s “functional muscles” vs “show muscles” that aren’t really strong
There is some nuance to it, in that the expression of strength has a large skill and neurological factor. Like in a typical training block, someone only training for size simply wouldn’t be practicing doubles and singles, so they wouldn’t be at their best on a random day if you tested them on something they weren’t practicing
But the best bodybuilders (who train maximally for visuals) end up within like 5% of the strength of the best powerlifters (who train maximally for efficiency). There are plenty of people who compete in both and do decent in both. In fact, powerlifters do hypertrophy blocks as well, and switch to mainly practicing heavy lifts only as competition gets closer
We’re not talking about the very top 1% best people though. The chances of anybody here ever becoming a professional bodybuilder or weightlifter is very small. If you go to a real gym or actually meet people, you’ll see there’s a huge variety of builds and results.
You say it’s a myth, but if you just Google “is there such a thing as dense muscle”, there’s many articles explaining the phenomenon. Only one Reddit article pops up claiming it’s a myth, and personally I don’t put much stock in Reddit for fact based arguments.
if you just Google “is there such a thing as dense muscle”, there’s many articles explaining the phenomenon.
Like I said, it gets repeated a lot. Googling “is myth real” and ending up with one of thousands of similar fluff blogposts from over the years that say “yes! Myth is real! Check out our exclusive training program to better deal with myth!” Is totally expected. It’s all just fluff designed to sell programs based on that “key piece of information you’re missing”
We’re not talking about the very top 1% best people though
These are the people who bring what you’re saying to the utmost extreme, and their strength is ultimately similar. It’s relevant. The differences in strength are even smaller the younger your training age is.
If you go to a real gym or actually meet people, you’ll see there’s a huge variety of builds and results.
I go to several gyms. I’m at a gym every day. I am a trainer. Aside from my own clients, I also see all the regulars, how they train, and how their bodies change
Additionally, I am literally holding the textbook from my certification program in my hand right at this moment, which actually has a small section addressing this exact myth directly. It begins with, “contrary to what many believe…”
I apologize for not providing this textbook as a citation. I reference it a lot in public facing posts associated with my business and I feel that, in context, doing so now has the potential to be identifying. I prefer to keep a resolute line between my professional service and my posts here on lemmy, so that I cannot be accused of self enrichment via advertising.
Thus, everything I say on the topic comes simply from the hope that it may help people better themselves in one small way or another. In this case, it’s very common for people to avoid effective training methods that would work very well for them because they were mislead by someone making a huge fuss between “strength” and “size” and insisting they must train a certain way to heavily bias one or the other. The academic consensus is that you really don’t need to worry about that at all
Ok well I’m going to continue trusting my eyes and lived experience over an internet stranger who has a forbidden tome of knowledge.
I also think there was a miscommunication here. I’m not saying that hypertrophy doesn’t result in strength gains. All I’m saying is, that it’s possible to end up with “dense muscle”, or “skinny strong”, which might be an undesirable / desirable outcome for some people depending on what they actually want. I was pointing out the difference for people who haven’t started any strength training at all yet, so they can make informed decisions about their research and routines. Either choice is a good one, it’s entirely personal preference.
Yes as I said, my apologies for the lack of citation. But the book is far from forbidden, it’s a standard academic work written by leading exercise science researchers. Their work is universally cited, which is why I encourage you to look towards academic sources rather than advertisements
I also think there was a miscommunication here. I’m not saying that hypertrophy doesn’t result in strength gains
To be clear, what you said was:
you can get very puffed up muscle that isn’t super strong
Which is a debunked myth. So you’re walking that back now which is good.
People can definitely add significant strength without significant size, up to a point, for individualized training blocks. But if you train, even only for strength, your muscles will get larger. In your lived experience, do you have any example of someone who brought their strict press from 35lbs to 185lbs without increasing the size of their shoulders? Have you seen someone with small legs squat 455?
I’m not walking it back. Initially I simplified it so that the average person could understand it, then you came in guns blazing and turned it into a scientific debate, making it seem like muscle density doesn’t exist at all as a concept. I didn’t want to make it complicated for people just starting out, all beginners care about is results, they don’t really need to know the science. You usually end up learning as you go anyway.
The fact is that muscle density, muscle size, and functional strength are all variables. Both muscle density and muscle size increase strength, which I think was our misunderstanding.
You can have large size with low density, which is still way stronger than doing no exercise at all, of course. That’s what I was referring to before with my puffed up comment. Not useless muscles, just less muscle per muscle. Still muscle, still healthy and helpful.
You can also have low size with high density. This is the “skinny strong” I was referring to.
But best of all you can have high size with high density. The effects multiply on each other. I imagine this is the one you’re helping people create.
Of course, if you exercise, you will gain size, but depending on how you do it, you may gain more density than size per unit of time in the gym. You’ll always get a bit of both though. It’s a ratio thing.
To answer your anecdotal question, I do know someone who just cannot put on bulk for some reason. I suspect it’s either an undiagnosed medical disease, or very unlucky genetics. Anyway, they work out a lot, and are much stronger than me or many people I know, despite being “wiry” and smaller. Their arms are like corded steel. They continuously get better results every month, though I think they might be hitting some sort of upper limit in how much muscle that can be physically crammed per square centimetre of body tissue.
Right on, yeah I think we’re pretty much on the same page now.
I apologize for coming in hot. My main issue really is just with the popular myth that the ratio you’re referring to is very extreme and necessitates totally different styles of training. It’s often used to mislead women in particular, who are baited into purchasing expensive yet ineffective programs that “won’t make them bulky”. But as we continue speaking I can see that you’re not advocating for that
Well, in context, the other dude who you began your comment by supporting had been in the thread arguing that people shouldn’t lift weights at all. And then I felt your initial simplified phrasing of what you were saying kind of rolled into that. But I’m glad we were able to progress the discussion amicably
Here you go, even studies showing that size and strength are closely correlated.
Or even more studies, with deeper analysis and actually slightly favorable for your point, though the weak correlation is just limited to untrained individuals. The more advanced person gets the stronger the correlation gets.
Ok… those studies are saying that muscle growth is correlated with strength gains. Yes, I agree with you on this. Those articles do not disprove the existence of dense muscle. Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not saying that size increase doesn’t lead to strength gains, that would be silly.
All I’m saying is, that it’s possible to end up with “dense muscle”, or “skinny strong”, which might be an undesirable / desirable outcome for some people depending on what they actually want. I was pointing out the difference for people who haven’t started any strength training at all yet, so they can make informed decisions about their research and routines. Either choice is a good one, it’s entirely personal preference.
Fair, probably misunderstanding then, because usually people referring to both terms usually do ignore strength and size correlation.
Though that’s just overly complicating it for beginners.
Just the most basic resistance training is more than enough to build size, strength and density all at the same time.
Skinny strong is just someone who has maxmimized their strength potential or has some leverage advantage due to genetics.
Yeah sure someone can train to become skinny strong by doing strength focused training(low rep range), but that caps out at some point as we can see from powerlifters who alternate training blocks between strength and hypertohy training.
Hi, sorry I was just scrolling by to see how the whole thread turned out
I apologize to be so blunt, but there simply isn’t truth to what you’re saying. It gets repeated a lot, but it’s a totally debunked myth, this idea that there’s “functional muscles” vs “show muscles” that aren’t really strong
There is some nuance to it, in that the expression of strength has a large skill and neurological factor. Like in a typical training block, someone only training for size simply wouldn’t be practicing doubles and singles, so they wouldn’t be at their best on a random day if you tested them on something they weren’t practicing
But the best bodybuilders (who train maximally for visuals) end up within like 5% of the strength of the best powerlifters (who train maximally for efficiency). There are plenty of people who compete in both and do decent in both. In fact, powerlifters do hypertrophy blocks as well, and switch to mainly practicing heavy lifts only as competition gets closer
We’re not talking about the very top 1% best people though. The chances of anybody here ever becoming a professional bodybuilder or weightlifter is very small. If you go to a real gym or actually meet people, you’ll see there’s a huge variety of builds and results.
You say it’s a myth, but if you just Google “is there such a thing as dense muscle”, there’s many articles explaining the phenomenon. Only one Reddit article pops up claiming it’s a myth, and personally I don’t put much stock in Reddit for fact based arguments.
Here’s one: https://www.setforset.com/blogs/news/dense-muscle-vs-big-soft-muscle-training
Like I said, it gets repeated a lot. Googling “is myth real” and ending up with one of thousands of similar fluff blogposts from over the years that say “yes! Myth is real! Check out our exclusive training program to better deal with myth!” Is totally expected. It’s all just fluff designed to sell programs based on that “key piece of information you’re missing”
These are the people who bring what you’re saying to the utmost extreme, and their strength is ultimately similar. It’s relevant. The differences in strength are even smaller the younger your training age is.
I go to several gyms. I’m at a gym every day. I am a trainer. Aside from my own clients, I also see all the regulars, how they train, and how their bodies change
Additionally, I am literally holding the textbook from my certification program in my hand right at this moment, which actually has a small section addressing this exact myth directly. It begins with, “contrary to what many believe…”
I apologize for not providing this textbook as a citation. I reference it a lot in public facing posts associated with my business and I feel that, in context, doing so now has the potential to be identifying. I prefer to keep a resolute line between my professional service and my posts here on lemmy, so that I cannot be accused of self enrichment via advertising.
Thus, everything I say on the topic comes simply from the hope that it may help people better themselves in one small way or another. In this case, it’s very common for people to avoid effective training methods that would work very well for them because they were mislead by someone making a huge fuss between “strength” and “size” and insisting they must train a certain way to heavily bias one or the other. The academic consensus is that you really don’t need to worry about that at all
Ok well I’m going to continue trusting my eyes and lived experience over an internet stranger who has a forbidden tome of knowledge.
I also think there was a miscommunication here. I’m not saying that hypertrophy doesn’t result in strength gains. All I’m saying is, that it’s possible to end up with “dense muscle”, or “skinny strong”, which might be an undesirable / desirable outcome for some people depending on what they actually want. I was pointing out the difference for people who haven’t started any strength training at all yet, so they can make informed decisions about their research and routines. Either choice is a good one, it’s entirely personal preference.
Yes as I said, my apologies for the lack of citation. But the book is far from forbidden, it’s a standard academic work written by leading exercise science researchers. Their work is universally cited, which is why I encourage you to look towards academic sources rather than advertisements
To be clear, what you said was:
Which is a debunked myth. So you’re walking that back now which is good.
People can definitely add significant strength without significant size, up to a point, for individualized training blocks. But if you train, even only for strength, your muscles will get larger. In your lived experience, do you have any example of someone who brought their strict press from 35lbs to 185lbs without increasing the size of their shoulders? Have you seen someone with small legs squat 455?
I’m not walking it back. Initially I simplified it so that the average person could understand it, then you came in guns blazing and turned it into a scientific debate, making it seem like muscle density doesn’t exist at all as a concept. I didn’t want to make it complicated for people just starting out, all beginners care about is results, they don’t really need to know the science. You usually end up learning as you go anyway.
The fact is that muscle density, muscle size, and functional strength are all variables. Both muscle density and muscle size increase strength, which I think was our misunderstanding.
Of course, if you exercise, you will gain size, but depending on how you do it, you may gain more density than size per unit of time in the gym. You’ll always get a bit of both though. It’s a ratio thing.
To answer your anecdotal question, I do know someone who just cannot put on bulk for some reason. I suspect it’s either an undiagnosed medical disease, or very unlucky genetics. Anyway, they work out a lot, and are much stronger than me or many people I know, despite being “wiry” and smaller. Their arms are like corded steel. They continuously get better results every month, though I think they might be hitting some sort of upper limit in how much muscle that can be physically crammed per square centimetre of body tissue.
Right on, yeah I think we’re pretty much on the same page now.
I apologize for coming in hot. My main issue really is just with the popular myth that the ratio you’re referring to is very extreme and necessitates totally different styles of training. It’s often used to mislead women in particular, who are baited into purchasing expensive yet ineffective programs that “won’t make them bulky”. But as we continue speaking I can see that you’re not advocating for that
No worries, sometimes when you come in guns blazing you accidentally shoot an ally 🙂
Well, in context, the other dude who you began your comment by supporting had been in the thread arguing that people shouldn’t lift weights at all. And then I felt your initial simplified phrasing of what you were saying kind of rolled into that. But I’m glad we were able to progress the discussion amicably
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40680785/
Here you go, even studies showing that size and strength are closely correlated.
Or even more studies, with deeper analysis and actually slightly favorable for your point, though the weak correlation is just limited to untrained individuals. The more advanced person gets the stronger the correlation gets.
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/correlation-strength-hypertrophy/
Ok… those studies are saying that muscle growth is correlated with strength gains. Yes, I agree with you on this. Those articles do not disprove the existence of dense muscle. Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not saying that size increase doesn’t lead to strength gains, that would be silly.
All I’m saying is, that it’s possible to end up with “dense muscle”, or “skinny strong”, which might be an undesirable / desirable outcome for some people depending on what they actually want. I was pointing out the difference for people who haven’t started any strength training at all yet, so they can make informed decisions about their research and routines. Either choice is a good one, it’s entirely personal preference.
Fair, probably misunderstanding then, because usually people referring to both terms usually do ignore strength and size correlation.
Though that’s just overly complicating it for beginners. Just the most basic resistance training is more than enough to build size, strength and density all at the same time.
Skinny strong is just someone who has maxmimized their strength potential or has some leverage advantage due to genetics. Yeah sure someone can train to become skinny strong by doing strength focused training(low rep range), but that caps out at some point as we can see from powerlifters who alternate training blocks between strength and hypertohy training.