ExRx.net

Actually you can get stronger with just neural adaptations up to a certain point, and then more size is required. There is muscle, and how you recruit it. So you can have a goal to get strong without regard for weight class, or you can have a goal to get stronger in your current weight class.

that's all fair enough and pretty much what I was saying. Neural adaptions are one thing, but a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle.

The whole size vs strength comparison just irks me. Like you can only be strong if you train in the 3 - 5 rep range. If someone adds 20k to their 10RM haven't that gotten stronger? I reckon any big strong guy you asked if he trained for size or strength would just shrug and say he "trains."

but I'm going off on a pretty serious tangent here so I'll stop.

Why does my knowledge have to come from the net? How do you know that I'm not a kinesiology researcher? How do you know I'm not a professional sprinter? Sorry to hurt your feelings, but not everyone is looking to move up in weight. I'm looking to pack as much strength as I can into my 180ilbs frame. I could care less about squatting 1000ilbs.

haha! You COULD have a kinesiology PHD, but judging from your posts I doubt it very much. And you're definitely not a professional sprinter or you'd be doing more than one leg exercise a session.

<3

that's a heart to show I'm all about the love

LOL, you can't tell what I do by my post. I guess you will never know.

Train for strength, mass follows. Train for mass successfully, you'll gain strength. You can emphasize one or the other, but you can't have just one or the other.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Ironman, you are my hero!

you left out the part of eating sufficient calories
that is, if you want to get bigger. That is not OPs goal

:Beatingdeadhorse:

How do you get neural adaptation without muscle growth? The stimulus that triggers neural adaptation stimulates growth. Is there some form of exercise that only produces neural adaptation in isolation?

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Lower volume doesn't cause much hypertrophy, except in beginners. Usually people do a variety of training though. So some phases give you more size than others. Strength programs are usually designed to give you both, because neural adaptation will only get you so far. At a certain point you can't get stronger without more size. You want to be at that point to compete in a strength sport in your weight class. Then off season you can go up a weight class and work on getting as strong as you can in that one. 5X5 type programs have just enough volume to give you some hypertrophy too. You can emphasize one over the other too. If I do a lot of higher rep stuff, I don't get much stronger. Genetics are a factor too. There is a lot of crossover, you can certainly get a mix of both. Most programs aim to do that too.

Another example, try not doing a particular exercise for a while. You'll notice that while you don't lose size because you are doing something else, you lose strength from it. I can lose some strength just going to the gym tiered.

Now beginners and even some intermediates are another story. You pretty much gain size and strength no matter what.

You also get better at what you do. You might find a strong bodybuilder, and that guy can squat a particular weight for 10 reps, and then a power lifter who has a much higher squat, can't hit 10 reps on that same weight. So you might have a power lifter that can squat 1000, and then someone like Ronnie Coleman who has done 800 for 2. Ronnie Coleman might get 10 reps at 675, and the power lifter can't do it, yet Coleman still can't squat 1000.

You can add to lifts with power training too. OL guys do that a lot. You generate a lot of force and speed on your lifts. That can give you some strength as well, but no size.

That ended up a little disjointed, but I think you get the idea.

my thoughts exactly

Look at the physique of Olympic lifters. They've got the best legs and traps in the business, yet they "train for strength". Where'd all the mass come from? I bet they're all secretly repping out on the leg press

The variety of training techniques required to do Olympic weight lifting.


Strength/mass is a "usually" kind of thing, not an "always" kind of thing. Hopefully that makes more sense.

not to drag this out further than it needs to be, but when you say the "variety" of techniques, you mean the squat, front squat and Olympic lifts? Not exactly a huge variety. John Broz's Olympic team just do that day in day out and they're some big dudes, but then of course there's the fact that elite Olympic lifters have genetics that would crush a regular mortal. Anyone ever seen that guy Ivan Stoitsov? Guy's got the best quads I've ever seen.

Anyway I stand by my initial point that trying to distinguish between strength/size is pointless, and when talking about newbs, counter productive. I say just lift weights and be awesome.

I get stronger without gaining mass. Let me be an example. But eventually after I grow out of this rookieness I will need more mass, and most likely will gain more mass when eating properly. I will at some point hit that wall that I need more weight, but that will not come easily.

So, if I got this right, I'm learning to recruit more and more muscle cells/fibers, thus creating more force. And maybe the motoneuron is sending better/clearer path singals or something similar neural. Now, hyperthrophy has always been a bit of a strange and unsolved thing for me. Is it the muscle fibers that get bigger, or are new muscle fibers created when the muscle gets bigger? I've heard alot of opinions that body cannot produce new muscle cells at this age, but then again I've heard that the information is old and there are some possible evidence that your muscle actually gets creates more muscle cells.

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yah, beginners get stronger quickly through their nervous system getting more efficient. Technique improvements play a big part too. Once your nervous system is firing on all cylinders, and your technique gets consistent, that's when you need to start adding mass.

As for fibers getting bigger or growing more, I believe it's a bit of both but I've been wrong before. There's also different kinds of hypertrophy - sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar - just to further confuse the issue.

Generally speaking, if you're struggling to add mass then you ain't eating enough.