The Relationship Between Size and Strength, Part 2
By
John Carlson
Lesson #5
The strongest lifter in any given weight class is not necessarily the lifter
with the most muscle mass because lifting maximal weights involves more factors
than just muscle mass.
The ability to demonstrate maximal strength is a function of many factors,
including muscle mass and something we refer to as “leverages.” The truth is
that no one understands why an elite group of people such as Franco Colombu are
so incredibly strong in comparison to the average person or what the source of
their great strength is. To explain this dramatic difference in strength, we say
that these people were born with “good leverages.” Read that again because it’s
true. Some old timers out there may recall stories about the Russians wanting to
study Paul Anderson and take tissue samples from him to figure out what made the
guy so strong.
The victory podium at a major powerlifting contest always has a variety of
body types. Some are slender and some are massive. This disparity confuses
people. Some people look at the disparity in body types and say things like,
“This proves that muscle size has no relationship to strength.” The reality is
more subtle.
Some people are capable of lifting amazing poundage because of their
incredible “leverages.” Other lifters lack this advantage but have bodies that
are able to develop amazing amounts of muscle mass. This mass coupled with their
natural leverages allows them to lift comparable poundage.
The person who wins in a strength contest may or may not have huge muscle
mass. For example, Mike MacDonald is a person who did not develop huge muscle
mass when he bench pressed gigantic weights. There are other guys like him and
they are unusual people. Some of these guys win contests and don’t look very
big.
Back in the day, Dave Shaw (to name just one example) developed enormous
muscle mass in conjunction with his development of maximal strength. His body
type was radically different than Mike McDonald’s, but both men were amazingly
strong. This type of lifter wins contests, too.
Developing and increasing strength—for the majority of males past
puberty—requires an increase in muscle mass (i.e. the development of “bigger”
muscles). A small group of men are capable of developing strength with small
increases in their muscle mass because their bodies are more “efficient” at
lifting heavy weights. This group may not develop as much mass through their
weight training. However, both groups need to increase their muscle mass to
increase their maximal strength.
The bottom line is that to increase maximal strength the vast majority of men
must increase their muscle mass. More muscle mass means a greater potential for
the development of maximal strength. Whether or not a person develops unusually
“big” muscles is a function of their own unique genetics.
Lesson #6
Not everyone makes muscle mass gains with powerlifting training. Some people
must train with higher reps to stimulate muscle mass gains.
This is a hard truth, but EliteFTS has the guts to admit this and offer
advice on how to get around this problem by using a hypertrophy routine as a
form of “foundation” training. This is the idea behind Joe DeFranco’s, “Westside
for Skinny Bastards” routine. The idea is that you can increase your muscle mass
and prepare your body for powerlifting by lifting sub-maximal weights in a
quasi-bodybuilding routine with higher reps. Then you switch over to
powerlifting and develop the strength potential of that muscle mass.
If you love powerlifting but are not gaining muscle mass through your
powerlifting routine and your strength is stagnant, you may have to do some
bodybuilding for a time to gain enough mass to make meaningful strength gains.
It sounds bizarre, but it’s true, as noted above. Basically, your mass places a
ceiling on your power, and you don’t have enough mass. Gain more mass, and you
generally raise the ceiling.
Why do some people fail to gain mass on a powerlifting routine? The classic
answer is that the reps are too low. Higher reps are needed to gain muscle mass.
Yet some people develop a lot of mass on powerlifting routines. No one really
knows why. Accept reality and adjust according to your body type.
Lesson #7
In order to gain more muscle mass through bodybuilding, you may need to
increase your strength by powerlifting.
Now, this is where the apparent contradictions set in. How can we reconcile
lesson six with lesson seven? If powerlifting does not increase mass in some
people, how can we use it to gain mass? Lessons six and seven contradict one
another, right? Weight training in general is full of false, apparent
contradictions, and no one ever bothers to explain them. Lessons six and seven
don’t contradict one another.
Back in the golden age of bodybuilding, bodybuilders trained heavy in the
winter months, put on weight, and supposedly gained more muscle mass. In the
warmer months when the contests approached, the guys trained lighter with
bodybuilding routines, reduced their body fat levels, and entered contests
heavier than they were the year before. That was the theory. This method of
training and eating fell out of favor. Bulking up in the winter time made you
fat, but it didn’t add mass. Does that mean that this method was a flop?
Take a look at how I trained and consider my failure to gain the muscle mass
that I wanted through powerlifting. I originally gained muscle mass using
moderate weights in an intense bodybuilding routine, and I later increased my
strength when I switched to powerlifting. My muscle mass did not increase, but
my strength levels did. If you were giving me advice today about gaining muscle
mass, what would you tell me to do?
I would do two things differently. I would eat leaner, more nutritious foods,
and I would take the increased strength that I gained from my powerlifting and
apply it to a bodybuilding routine, making sure that my bodybuilding poundage
was heavier than what I used before I started powerlifting. I might very well
have started gaining muscle mass again.
For example, by powerlifting, I was able to increase my bench press quite a
bit over what I was able to do when I did bodybuilding. What if I had gone back
to bodybuilding and started doing sets of eight with 300 lbs? What if I had
dropped the weights in every exercise and increased the reps? Would I have
gained more mass? I never tried this.
When you look at my experience in this light, the old bulking up method from
the golden age makes sense. Take some time off from bodybuilding to power lift.
Then take the strength increases from powerlifting in the off-season and apply
them to your bodybuilding routine. By cycling in and out of a powerlifting
routine, old time bodybuilders applied their strength increases to their
bodybuilding exercises and kept their size/muscle mass gains going up. The idea
that “bulking up” increased muscle size was wrong. However, the underlying
concept of gaining strength in the off-season to help one’s bodybuilding
training actually made sense.
In hindsight, the mistake I made was to give up. But I really had no other
choice because I started to hurt myself. I desperately needed to gain more mass,
but I didn’t know it. I should have taken those strength increases and switched
back to a heavier bodybuilding routine for a time. That would have given my body
a break from the “heavy” weights (the weights were “heavy” in relation to the
skimpy mass that I was carrying) and allowed me to gain more muscle mass. If I
then went back to powerlifting, I might not have pulled those muscles, and I
could have made more strength gains.
Some guys say the following on this very website—“I started pulling muscles
when I reached certain weights. So that was the limit of my genetic potential.”
Maybe. It may be more accurate to say that you reached the strength limits of
your existing level of muscle mass. Maybe you needed to increase your muscle
mass, and you would’ve been able to lift heavier weights and avoid the muscle
pulls.
Adjust your routine according to your particular circumstances. If you’re a
bodybuilder and your gains are stagnant, consider doing some powerlifting. You
may not gain more mass, but that’s okay. Give yourself time to gain enough
strength to increase your bodybuilding poundage in a meaningful way, and you may
increase your muscle mass when you return to bodybuilding.
So in conclusion, how do we make sense of these principles and apply them in
the real world? First, assess how your body responds to powerlifting.
Powerlifting workouts are often abbreviated. If you are gaining muscle mass as
your strength increases, that’s good. However, if you’re not, you may need to
switch to a bodybuilding program of some kind to increase your muscle mass. The
same thing applies if you’re significantly underweight for your height. You may
find that powerlifting does not do enough to stimulate needed muscle mass gains.
Try DeFranco’s, “Westside for Skinny Bastards” routine and monitor your
muscle mass gains. Look for meaningful gains in lean muscle mass, taking into
account your height and weight. Then switch back to a powerlifting program, and
your strength should go up.
Be aware that you may not gain any muscle mass when you power lift even
though your body is gaining strength. Ideally, your body will respond to the
powerlifting training, and you will experience a muscle mass increase as your
strength goes up. However, it may not. If you don’t gain mass and you hit a
strength plateau that continues for an extended period, you may need to take
those strength gains and apply them to a hypertrophy program to start gaining
mass again.
I hope this is helpful. Call me Professor C.
John Carlson, or Professor C, has been lifting weights and powerlifting
for over 30 years. He has a life-long interest in the science of exercise and
the relationships among the many conflicting methods used to produce gains in
size and strength.
Professor C is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University School of Law
and practices in the areas of commercial litigation and bankruptcy litigation.
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training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
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industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
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