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Certainly there is a correlation between muscle mass and strength, but there is more to the story. Two reasons why muscle mass and strength may not be completely congruous are: Muscle fiber density Muscle utilization Density: Your muscles are composed of four different types of fibers (slow-twitch, and three forms of fast-twitch). These fibers have ...

Many lifters, particularly novices, need to focus at least some of their attention on hypertrophy and mass gain in order to have a sufficient muscle mass to make strong. I'm not sure if it's appropriate for intermediates and beyond. I'm also not sure if this would call for a sarcoplasmic hypertrophy phase (in which I imagine one would focus on 10-12 rep ...

Myofibrillar and Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy do not lend themselves to being a black and white "it's either one or the other" result. Depending on your initial muscle mass levels, you may put on mass which will be sustained simply because it's muscle you should have had to begin with. In that case, putting on mass would not mean it's sarcoplasmic. Nor does ...

For powerlifting, record lifts are 3 or more times bodyweight, and the lifts don't really require lifting the body. An extra 50lbs of body fat will not affect the result of deadlift or bench pressing, at all. In fact, more body weight will actually help you dead lift more whether you are stronger or not. If you look at olympic lifters, they are leaner than ...

If you're going to drop the weights, the only weights that touch should be bumpers, and you should be on an Olympic lifting platform of some kind. Bumper plates of different weights have a consistent diameter, to maximize surface area. Additional iron plates can be used if they are of a smaller diameter. Make sure you're using a quality bar. Ivanko, a ...

A bigger muscle does not necessarily mean a stronger muscle. There are two concepts centered around hypertropy. Training for hypertrophy(sarcoplasmic), and the hypertrophy that naturally happens when you lift. Sarcoplasmic and Myofibrillar hypertrophy are not mutually exclusive. When you train for power you will have a little Sacroplasmic and when you train ...

An Olympic barbell is 20kg for men's competitions both according to the IWF and IPF standards. That's what the manufacturers build towards. The other standard sizes would be 15kg for women's competition and 10kg for junior's competitions. Beyond that, standard plate sizes from 2.5k and up are: 50, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 2.5 From 2.5k and below, there ...

With that schedule, I would suggest doing hard workouts over the weekend and using the week for recovery. Relax, eat well, and sleep well (admittedly also hard when traveling on business). If you do feel like you want to work on strength during the week, you could look at bodyweight strength exercise routines, such as the one recommended in The Naked ...

Low reps with high weights don't add mass because the duration of the exercise is kept short. As a result it is an anaerobic exercise that utilizes the ATP-CP energy system and never enters the glycolytic energy system. The breakdown of ATP-CP creates the energy and Oxygen isn't used. If one rests long enough for this system to recharge (about 3-5 ...

There's a couple of things going on here, and they are both cultural and practical. In order to build muscle you need three things: protein + calories, lifting heavy things, rest You can't build muscle without gaining weight. I can attest to this since I have gained 11 lb of muscle and lost .6 lb of fat in the process. Muscle is more dense than fat. BF% ...

A muscle cell is comprised of - fibers known as myofibrils - cytoplasm, known as sarcoplasm. It is the contraction of the myofibrils which generates the force a muscle produces. Therefore the more myofibrils you have, the stronger you will be. Sarcoplasm is a liquid (mostly water) which can provide nutrients to the myofibrils. One can "bulk up" by ...

I'm assuming because you're talking about not being zoned-in, this question isn't about you not being physically able to do the work (due to inadequate recovery, for example), but just that you don't feel like it. There are two answers. Easy If you decide to accept that you're not zoned-in, just take it light that day. Do your warm-up sets and just do as ...

Bigger plates have a bigger diameter, which brings the handle of the barbell higher up, this might be advantageous when doing deadlifts or other lifts where you lift the bar from the ground. You don't have to stack as many big plates for the same total weight as if you were using smaller plates. This leads to the distribution of the weight being closer to ...

There are Olympic coaches having their athletes do hip thrusts, so you can do hip thrusts with your bed and chair. When you can do a lot of them, start on single leg hip thrusts. Single leg squats are a good idea, and you can use a chair to help you stabilize or take weight off until you can work up. Deep jump squats with dumbbells on shoulders can help ...

Actually, excess fat in the abdominal region can force the lifter to bend over more at the start of the deadlift, which decreases the amount of weight that can be lifted. Observe the world record Squats and Deadlifts and you will notice n the lower weight classes, the record deadlift exceeds the record squat, while in the higher weight classes, the Squat ...

I was just reading an article on this last night in PowerLifter magazine. On avg., every 10 lbs of new weight adds at min. 4lbs of muscle (for those who do not train at all). So, just adding weight adds strength. The article also listed the lifts from the most to least technical - Bench Pressing being the least 'technical' and dead lifting the most with ...