It always bugs me when someone says that there is no relationship between size and strength. It’s bugged me since I took up weight training 36 years ago. They said it back then and they’re still saying it. In this article, I’m going to lay this myth to rest and explain the true relationship between size and strength. In the process, I will explain why it is absolutely critical that you skinny bastards incorporate bodybuilding training methods into your routines if you aren’t gaining muscle mass by powerlifting. First, here’s a little background.
I took up weight training after getting my ass kicked. A bully from another neighborhood beat the crap out of me, and it was a major turning point in my life. If you’ve ever had your face punched while the back of your head was against a wall or the pavement, you know it’s like two punches for the price of one. The first impact is against your face. The second comes from the back of your head hitting the street. I made up my mind that that wasn’t going to happen again and began a lifelong quest to get bigger and stronger. To say I was motivated is an understatement.
I started working out in my basement and reading the bodybuilding magazines that were available in the early 1970s. When I turned 18, I joined the first bodybuilding gym on Long Island called Futureman. We used every intensity technique known to man, and I was chronically overtrained.
After several years of bodybuilding, I weighed 207 lbs at a height of just over six feet, and my walking around weight was around 183–185 lbs. So we’re talking about a gain of roughly 20–23 lbs of muscle mass on a medium weight bone structure.
The strength and size gains stopped when I reached 207 lbs. After several years of overtraining and zero gains, I decided to try powerlifting and started reading Powerlifting USA, which was then in its early days. My goals were simple—increase my strength and gain more muscle mass.
I put together a powerlifting routine and stuck with that over a period of around five years. This routine was made up of low rep narrow stance back squats, front squats, partial squats, deadlifts, stiff-leg deadlifts, partial deadlifts, weighted chins, pull-downs, bench presses, close grip bench presses, weighted dips, partial benches, barbell rows, barbell curls, push-downs, lying triceps extensions, and wrist curls. All of the dinky little bodybuilding exercises were cut out to conserve energy/recovery ability for the big lifts. I didn’t take any drugs of any kind, and I used few supplements. I figured that with the combination of basic exercises, heavy weights, and fewer sets I would start gaining size and weight again. I really wanted to get to 225 lbs.
After just a couple years on this routine, my strength went up quite a bit. These were my best raw lifts:
- Bench press, 355 X 5, 400 X 1
- Dips, 155 X 5
- Chins, 100 X 5
- Rows, 275 X 5
- Deadlift, 500 X 5
- Stiff leg deadlift, 440 X 5
- Squat, 440 X 5
- Wrist curls, 185 X 5
However, here’s the kicker. My weight didn’t increase at all! It stayed exactly the same. Then my lifts hit a plateau. I continued on this routine and started to pull muscles. I hurt my quads, lower back, traps, and elbows. Eventually, the weights started to drop, and I never returned to this program. I went back to a version of my old bodybuilding routine using moderate weights. My strength dropped, but my weight stayed exactly the same.
My experience left me confused. I couldn’t make sense of what happened and why I failed to get any bigger. It was hard for me to believe that I had reached the limits of my “genetic potential” at 207 lbs, especially because my legs were pretty skinny. I knew my experience wasn’t unique because I had a training partner who matched me lift for lift and made identical strength gains. He also failed to gain a pound. He started the program at 217 lbs and ended at 217 lbs.
Over time, I realized that what happened to me and my training partner actually answered many questions I had about the relationship between muscular size/muscle mass and strength. More importantly, I realized why I failed to gain weight and what I could have done to keep the gains coming. Skinny bastards, listen up…
I have listed a series of “lessons” or principles that I learned from my experience that apply to bodybuilding and powerlifting/strength training. Some of them appear to contradict one another at first glance. However, they are all truisms nonetheless. If you keep them in mind, they will help you to design a program that will enable you to achieve the results you’re looking for.
Here it goes…
Lesson #1
Intense bodybuilding training with sub-maximal poundage can increase size and strength but will not generally develop maximal strength. Obvious, right? This is where we start, and it’s important that we all agree that it is possible for some people to develop significant muscle mass without handling (or being able to handle) “heavy”/maximal poundage. This principle is beyond dispute. Bodybuilders can develop muscle mass using training methods and exercises that no strength athlete would ever consider using. Some examples include high rep sets, pre-exhaustion, forced reps, negative reps, negative accentuated reps, training to failure, drop sets, giant sets, supersets, and training with little or no rest between sets. All of these methods increase the “intensity” of the exercises and produce muscle mass gains even though many of them actually reduce the amount of weight that can be used.
Former Mr. A., Steve Michalik, has said many times that exercise poundage is irrelevant, and he can induce muscle mass gains with any poundage. All that matters is the intensity of the exercise. Many people use this as a jumping off point to make the argument that there is no relationship between size and strength. This argument represents sloppy thinking. Let’s keep going.
Lesson #2
By using powerlifting training methods, it is possible to dramatically increase the strength of muscle mass that was developed through bodybuilding with light/moderate weights. Read that again. This means that a person who develops muscle mass through bodybuilding with moderate poundage can turn to powerlifting and gain significant strength in existing muscle mass.
Many people have major problems with what I just wrote. They think that if a person develops their body using light weights in a bodybuilding routine, the weights they are using reflect their actual powerlifting potential. This is flat wrong. A bodybuilder’s large muscles may possess a lot of power potential that is untapped because of the way he/she trains. A big bodybuilder can change over to powerlifting and dramatically increase the maximal strength of his/her “existing” muscle mass using powerlifting techniques. This has been shown over and over again.
Does this mean that all bodybuilders with heavy muscle mass can be strong by powerlifting standards if they train like powerlifters? Bad question. What it means is this. If we took a group of big bodybuilders and dropped them at the Westside Barbell Club and Louie Simmons trained them, they would probably all experience dramatic increases in their maximal strength. Some would be as strong as Elite powerlifters and some wouldn’t. However, their individual maximal strength limits would increase.
The practical ramification of what I just wrote is this. A person can use bodybuilding with sub-maximal weights to increase their muscle mass and then use powerlifting methods to increase the maximal strength of that mass. Do you agree with that statement?
Lesson # 3
Some people who switch over to powerlifting from bodybuilding do not get bigger even though they are getting stronger. What happens to these people is that they tap into the maximal strength “potential” of the mass they developed through their bodybuilding training. This idea bothers people. They think that if I was one size when I was benching 275 lbs for reps while using a ton of bodybuilding exercises, I will be much bigger when I switch to powerlifting and bench 350 lbs for reps. Not necessarily! You may not be any bigger even though the poundage you are using is heavier. The muscle mass you developed is increasing in strength up to its full potential and may not increase in size.
This is hard for people to believe, but it is absolutely true. Bodybuilding training that produces muscle mass gains actually retards maximal strength development. Switch a person who has trained on a bodybuilding system to a powerlifting system and they can increase maximal strength without gaining additional mass.
Lesson # 4
The amount of muscle mass you carry imposes a “ceiling” on your maximal strength. To continually increase maximal strength, most people must increase their muscle mass. What does this mean? I gained 23 lbs through bodybuilding. I turned to powerlifting and experienced significant strength gains but no muscle mass gains. Then the strength gains stopped.
In my opinion, I tapped out the strength potential of that 23-lb muscle mass gain when I switched over to powerlifting, and I was about as strong as that muscle mass would allow. Looking back, I do not think I could have gained much more strength without gaining more muscle mass. Why is this?
First, I am not a naturally strong person. Some people are born with superhuman strength. I have trained with some of them, and I am not one of those people. So for me, my strength increases come from muscle mass increases. And my 23-lb mass gain was not that great for a guy who is over six feet tall.
Take a look at the training logs of some of the guys who write for EliteFTS.com. I’m going to pick on Matt K for a minute. Matt’s extraordinary training lifts are listed in his training log. They are unbelievable, and they blow my training lifts away. However, consider Matt’s stats for a moment. Ask yourself, “How tall is Matt? How big is his frame? What is his untrained walking around weight?” His present weight is around a lean 250 lbs. Matt possesses far more muscle mass than I did, and every pound of Matt’s muscle mass increases his strength potential.
Consider bodybuilding great Franco Colombu. Here was a guy who was around five feet, five inches, possibly shorter. His walking around weight? Maybe 130 lbs? Born with superhuman strength, he stepped onto the stage at the Felt Forum in New York City on a night that he was competing for Mr. Olympia and deadlifted over 700 lbs for reps! I was there to see it. He gained up to 175–180 lbs in competition form. That’s a muscle mass gain of 45–50 lbs on a small frame. That’s a lot of muscle mass on a small guy with way above average strength potential.
My starting strength? Average. My muscle mass gain? 23 lbs at a height of over six feet tall. How much total weight would I have to gain in order to make muscle mass gains that were proportionate to Matt or Franco? 70 lbs? More? How strong would I be if I could achieve those gains? Do you think it would be possible for me to deadlift 700 lbs if I gained another 40–50 lbs of muscle mass? Maybe.
Stay tuned for part two!