Strength Gains vs. Size Gains

Nothing like seeing someone with 12-inch-upper-arms bench over 300lbs or someone at a bodyweight of 160lbs squat nearly 800 pounds. I've seen many small guys out lift huge bodybuilders.

It really is a perplexing subject. Maybe some people gain muscle easier than gaining strength, and others gain strength much easier than muscle. I would say genetics, hormones, and the type of training have the most impact.

What type of training leads to gaining strength and what type to size gains? I wonder which one I'm doing. I'm just lifting dumbbells. And doing planks.

1-6 reps is considered strength

8-12 is for muscle growth …

I have no idea what seven will do …

my numbers on this may be slightly off...

Doing 7 reps of any exercise is sort of like dividing by zero.

Strength gains come from neuromuscular adaptation. An untrained person new to lifting will see phenomenal strength gains, as your CNS (central nervous system) generally doesn't use all available muscle for day to day activity. Using 100% contractile force of every muscle fiber in your biceps to lift a can of soda up for a drink would most likely end up with you smacking yourself in the face, painfully.

When you start lifting, your CNS goes to work at first just doing what it does, using the same amount of muscle it always does. As you lift a heavy weight (relatively) you struggle, and your CNS realizes that the normal won't work. So on your rest day, your CNS quickly goes to work, adding new nerve endings (innervating) to muscle that doesn't get used much to increase efficiency, allowing more fibers to be recruited at once, which makes that heavy weight from Monday feel lighter on Wednesday, with no new muscle added. Your body also takes the opportunity to increase muscle glycogen storage in the muscles that were being worked. More glycogen means more strength and endurance.



This process continues until all available fibers are recruited. Once that point is reached, the only way to get stronger is through hypertrophy, or muscle growth, which is a very slow process compared to CNS adaptation.

This is why people that start lifting will see their maxes skyrocket in the first year or so, but then struggle to add 5 pounds to their max after a couple years.