STRONGER? DID YOU MEAN BIGGER?

Time for one of my rare academic type posts, but my slumming on forums has resulted in me having a dialogue with what was effectively my past self and it forced me to flesh out some ideas that I wanted to capture here.  For many of you, this will be rudimentary, but hopefully a fresh take on an old concept.

Since this blog’s creation, it’s been about “getting bigger and stronger”, and I felt like that was the simplest way to convey my goals, but upon further reflection, what I’ve written is redundant.  Bigger IS stronger.  And not simply in the sense that weight moves weight and the absolute weightclasses have the strongest competitors, but that, when one’s goal is to get stronger, this is a statement that one’s goal is to become bigger.  Why?  Because, all things being equal, a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle.  This is something we all know…yet somehow, there is still confusion regarding this topic.

Some of you nerds can't even tell just by looking at this photo that the Half-orc gets +2 to strength while the halfling is -2...

What is the issue?  As I’ve written about in the past, people employ incorrect heuristics in the discussion of training, and it leads toward incorrect conclusions.  You tell a trainee “to make a muscle stronger, you must make it bigger”, and they instinctively counter with “then how come powerlifters are stronger than bodybuilders?”  This question may seem genuine from the asker, but in truth, this is arguing in bad faith.  Why?  It presupposes that bodybuilding is the training of muscular size while powerlifting is the training of muscular strength.

These are SPORTS (I know, some folks are going to be upset that I called bodybuilding a sport, but stick with me), NOT training methods.  Size is important to the sport of bodybuilding, but it is not the SOLE factor.  Strength is important in the pursuit of powerlifting, but it is not the SOLE factor.  And it’s the inclusion of these confounding variables that makes the comparison of the sports as training modalities and proofs of concept non-viable.

Plus, good luck explaining this

What do I mean by the above?  That it’s ineffective to say something like “if making muscles bigger makes them stronger, then how come powerlifters don’t train like bodybuilder?”  Because the training of a bodybuilder is about training to be better at bodybuilding, NOT simply to make all muscle as big as possible.  If it were truly the latter, Markus Rhul and Greg Kovacs would have been the longest running Olympia champions the world has ever seen.  Instead, bodybuilding will always be about the ILLUSION of size moreso than just size itself, and this means emphasizing certain physical qualities and deemphasizing others to create a more striking appearance.  Why else are so many people upset about the current bloated stomachs seen in the mass monster arena?  If bodybuilding were TRULY the sport of maximizing size, wouldn’t the individual with the biggest abdomen be the winner, not the loser?

And the same to be said about powerlifters (and, by extension, strength athletes in general).  If being strong was truly the only thing that mattered in strongman, O. D. Wilson never would have lost to Jon Pal Sigmarson.  Mark Henry would have been the greatest everything forever.  Mariusz Pudzianowski would have been a ZERO time winner of WSM.  There’s more TO these things that JUST strength, and again, that is why the training will vary.  As funny as it sounds, a strongman or powerlifter who focuses ONLY on getting their muscles strong will lose to a competitor who is better at being a strongman or powerlifter.

Not strong enough for WSM?  Are you serious?

Acknowledging this, we understand that we cannot analyze the training of these athletes as the established standards of training for size vs training for strength.  Where to start?  Analyze the off season methods, where weaknesses are brought up.  What is the solution FOR these athletes across the spectrum?  Volume and specificity.  The weak muscle is singled out, targeted, and hammered.  Why?  To make it GROW!  And why?  BECAUSE SIZE IS STRENGTH.  Written in all caps because it’s stronger, BECAUSE WE GET THAT.  Humanity totally gets this on an instinctive level, primarily because nature has conveyed this reality to us consistently through our history, but it’s only recently that the internet has tried to convince us otherwise. 

Look at Westside Barbell’s approach to conjugate.  80% of the workload is repetition effort.  Why?  Because when you make muscles bigger, you make them stronger.  Max Effort is about learning how to strain, Dynamic Effort is about learning how to be fast, and RE is about getting strong (by getting big).  Basic Western Periodization?  You have an accumulation block at the beginning, so you can get stronger by making the muscle bigger, and then you start intensifying so that you can get better at moving heavier weights for low reps.  The leader phases in 5/3/1 are higher volume to get you bigger and make you stronger in time for the anchors.  This pattern persists CONSTANTLY in the world of getting stronger: you have to make the muscle BIGGER.  That’s the “secret”! 

Ever stop and notice how the HULK gets bigger when he gets stronger?

You want some bro-science?  How about we understand that increases the muscular cross sectional area is what generates more strength potential?  Because more cross sectional area=more available fibers=greater ability to pull from said fibers.  Yes, it’s true that size doesn’t immediately result in improved ABILITY to move a heavier weight, but it certainly improves the potential to do so.  A realization process is required in order to benefit from this improved size, but this isn’t a new concept in the world in the slightest.  If I have a 10 gallon gas tank, then buy a 20 gallon tank but only fill it with 10 gallons, this doesn’t negate the fact that I have a bigger gas tank: it just means I’m not maximizing its potential. But at the same time, if I have a 10 gallon tank, attempt to fill it up with 12 gallons, and then spill 2 of them, I didn’t somehow make my 10 gallon tank a 12 gallon tank.  …that metaphor got weird on me, but I think you still get it.  Peaking strength isn’t building it, and building strength doesn’t necessarily peak it, but if your goal is to GET stronger, you want to get bigger, not peak strength.

The big takeaway here is that the folks getting wrapped around the axle about “training for size vs training for strength” need to take a BIG stepback and realize that these are the same things.  The processes that make muscles bigger will necessarily make the same muscles stronger, because you’ve increased that muscle’s potential for strength.  To be stronger in a specific movement requires specialization of training, and that is where vectoring toward something like powerlifting or strongman can come into play.  But if you legit just want to get muscles to be stronger, you need to focus on making them bigger.  And, as a bonus, you may actually look like you lift, which is always cool.