09-19-2018, 05:47 AM
Thanks, Altamir. I appreciate your insight on this. I’ll try to be more clear in what I’m getting at. You know, this is something that I have thought about from reading some old posts at Intense Muscle and this really great article by a guy named Kelly Baggett that I found on the Iron Addicts board recently. I think Dante may have agreed with a lot of this as well:
14. Neural Strength Gains vs Structural Strength Gains
Strength can be gained from increases in neural efficiency or it can be gained from increases in the size of your muscles. What mainly determines what you gain is how much food you eat. The main difference between whether you just gain “relative” strength (strength per pound of bodyweight), or whether you gain large amounts of muscle with strength, contrary to popular belief, is not time under tension, repetition range or any training variable, it is simply the amount of food you eat in the process of getting stronger and the amount of scale weight you gain. To illustrate, over a very long period of time, a lifter trying to stay in a lower weight class might be able to take their bench from 200 to 400 pounds whilst eating like a bird and only gain maybe 15 or 20 pounds of bodyweight. In contrast, a bodybuilder or a lifter not trying to keep his bodyweight down could train EXACTLY like the weight class guy yet gain 50, 60, or 70 pounds of muscle and take their bench from the same 200 to 400 pounds much quicker. A bodybuilder should ideally strive to get the biggest muscle mass increases per unit of strength gain possible.
14. Neural Strength Gains vs Structural Strength Gains
Strength can be gained from increases in neural efficiency or it can be gained from increases in the size of your muscles. What mainly determines what you gain is how much food you eat. The main difference between whether you just gain “relative” strength (strength per pound of bodyweight), or whether you gain large amounts of muscle with strength, contrary to popular belief, is not time under tension, repetition range or any training variable, it is simply the amount of food you eat in the process of getting stronger and the amount of scale weight you gain. To illustrate, over a very long period of time, a lifter trying to stay in a lower weight class might be able to take their bench from 200 to 400 pounds whilst eating like a bird and only gain maybe 15 or 20 pounds of bodyweight. In contrast, a bodybuilder or a lifter not trying to keep his bodyweight down could train EXACTLY like the weight class guy yet gain 50, 60, or 70 pounds of muscle and take their bench from the same 200 to 400 pounds much quicker. A bodybuilder should ideally strive to get the biggest muscle mass increases per unit of strength gain possible.