strength vs mass

taso42_DELETED

I weight train vigorously 3 times per week. And I'm in a calorie deficit. It's doubtful that I have put on any muscle mass while in this deficit. My muscles are more defined, but that's due to fat loss. Realistically, I probably sacrificed some muscle. However, every so often, I am able to increase the amount of weight that I lift. I am getting stronger. How does this work? Is it due to the muscles becoming more efficient? When I start eating at a calorie surplus, and building muscle mass, will my strength increase faster than it is now? Is there even any correlation between mass and strength, or are they totally independent things?

corsayre8

So disappointed no body is responding. I'm in the same situation, and would love too know how this works.

anubis609

I, too, would like to know.

CommittohealthCHANGED

Sh$$ nobody has the answer cause I feel the same.way

mishelnkiki

that makes three this way... def bump this for later!

xraychick77

you can gain strength without gaining mass..it is of course limited. but if you arent at a severe calorie deficit you can gain strength, but wont gain muscle. if you lift very heavy at small reps this is more condusive to strength training. its neurological. you are putting a big load on your muscles and forcing them to adapt. to gain muscle you need to eat a calorie surplus. when you lift you tear your muscles and they need to heal..they do this by taking those calories,carbs and proteins. it rebuilds them bigger. newbs can do this easier and even at a calorie deficit, but its just newb gains. and goes away after a few months. like newb weight loss..you lose a lot real fast in the beginning. same for building muscles..the stronger and bigger you get the harder it is to gain.

taso42_DELETED

Did a little googling and here is what I got so far...

"when a strength program is accompanied by endurance training or other significant energy production and corresponding caloric output, the athlete will often possess highly defined muscles, with reduced mass but increased muscular strength."
http://www.faqs.org/sports-science/Mo-Pl/Muscle-Mass-and-Strength.html

This article goes completely against the article above and claims that mass and strength are completely intertwined.
http://www.muscle-building.com/muscle_size_vs_strength.html

This one is basically a how-to on how to build strength without building mass. But they are saying to eat at maintanence or above and to limit cardio (which most of us are doing the opposite of!
http://www.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_250/261_building-strength-without-bulk.html

There was another one that mentioned muscle and nervous system efficiency, which is what my intuition says is what's going on, but I unfortunately misplaced that link.

mrsanne

this is "borrowed" (aka ripped directly ) from a body builder site and the person sounded pretty knowledgeable and cited some credible sounding studies:

" Strength is not neccesarily a function of muscle mass - it's also a trainable skill. It's only about 2/3 correlated with muscle size since it also depends on neurological efficiency and motor unit recruitment, plus neuromuscular coordination and other neurological factors. So you can become significantly stronger without increasing muscle mass as your body learns to produce more force with the muscle you already have. "

taso42_DELETED

Ah, mrsanne, that's from the link that I lost earlier!

Here's the full thread:
http://caloriecount.about.com/muscle-even-creating-calorie-deficit-ft97416

kristarablue

Bump.....Just for Taso and Phil

UpToAnyCool

ba-bump!

ChrisSchiffer

Strength isn't just one concept. One type of strength is measured by your one repetition maximum weight. The old "how much do you bench" question. If you train for this type of strength, say a 45 minute workout 3-4 times per week focused on heavy weights a low repetitions, you can get surprisingly strong with minimal muscle growth. You wind up training your brain how to use your muscles more than simply growing them, particularly if you are in a caloric deficit. Muscle mass is more a function of strength over time not one rep max. Take a look at "volume" based workouts for mass, but as you recognize, you can't gain much mass and diet at the same time. There are some cycling low carb diets that report that you can gain muscle and cut fat at the same time, but I worry about the safety of these kinds of more radical diets, as well as my own ability to realistically stick to them.

TrainingWithTonya

The first strength gains you get (like within the first month) are from neural adaptations to the exercise. For several months after that, the body starts recruiting more muscle fiber motor units. To help make that make more sense, think of a muscle as having 100 muscle fibers in 10 motor units, so each motor until is innervating 10 muscle fibers. (These are made up numbers and not real, but it makes it where you can visualize it better.) When you first start lifting, maybe one of those motor units is activated so you are lifting the weight with 10 muscle fibers. The neural adaptations are when the nervous system starts realizing that the weight requires more muscle fibers so you may start using 2 motor units. Your strength doubles because you are using 20 muscle fibers instead of 10. The more you train, the more your nervous system starts pulling in more motor units so that you are using more and more muscle fibers. At the same time, your body is starting to store more muscle glycogen in those muscle fibers that are being used. So, the 10, 20, 50, whatever muscle fibers you are using appear to be growing because of the increase in glycogen (and water that the glycogen is stored in) being in the muscle. This does read as lean tissue in your body composition analysis because the current technology doesn't differentiate actual muscle fiber growth and glycogen storage, which is why many people believe they've "gained muscle" after a couple of months.) After you get close to your max on fiber recruitment and glycogen storage, then your body starts increasing the actual muscle fibers in individual size and number. But actual muscle growth doesn't happen until the other adaptations happen.

tross0924

Well personally, I and at least one bodybuilding website (scoobysworkshop.com) disagree that you can't put on muscle while in a calorie deficit. You just can't be in a huge calorie deficit.

Lately I've been reading Arnold's New Encycolopedia of Body Building. In it he talks about how you're much stronger than what you can lift, but you brain limits how much you can lift to protect yourself. For example I heard of an experiment where they passed current through cadaver muscles to see how strong they were. When they passed a current through he jaw muscles he bit force generated was enough to crack every tooth in the mouth. So essentially the raw strength is there, but the will is lacking.

Part of weight training is reprograming your brain to let your muscles work harder. If you've done this then that could explain some of the strength gains, and also why athletes who have also are stringer than they should be for their size, and even why for the average guy who hasn't size is directly proportional to strength.

FatUncleRob

Well, I don't have a scientific answer for you, but I do know that some of the strongest guys I ever worked with were wiry little dudes not big body builder types.

My opinion is that if you notice you're getting stronger, you're doing it right. You don't necessarily want to build up a whole lot of mass.