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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 5567399" data-attributes="member: 59506">You're right, and I was wrong. I did some reading about this and learned some interesting things. Muscle Strength is ultimately determined by two things, the mass of the muscle and how well the muscle works (everyone pulling together...or not). Going back to the original question that initiated this part of the thread: Why do we link Strength to Muscle Mass? I guess it's just an assumption based on what people observe. Work out, muscles get bigger, you can lift more weight, therefore more muscle equals more strength - which is true, it's just not the whole story. We don't "see" the new neurons and the increase in efficiency of muscles. I was also wrong about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles earlier. Slow twitch is more about endurance than strength. A sprinter would have a higher concentration/ratio of fast twitch muscles, just like a powerlifter. Which means that a sprinters speed is also strongly linked to Strength (not just Dexterity). Can a person get stronger without adding more muscle mass? If they are not using the full potential of the muscle mass they already have - Yes. If they are already using their muscles at maximum efficiency - No. Can a person get stronger by adding more muscle mass? If the muscles are also gaining the requisite neuron connections and learning to work efficiently - Yes. If they aren't also developing efficiency in the muscle - No. I guess that's why bodybuilders can get so big, without necessarily having the same strength as a powerlifter (who may or may not be as big). They do more exercises geared toward making the muscle bigger, and less exercises meant to improve muscle efficiency. (Although they do improve muscle effieciency a bit also.) It boils down to (for the most part) Bodybuilders are concerned with shaping muscles, Powerlifters are concerned with increasing the strength of muscles. I went over some statistics of powerlifters and bodybuilders, and found something rather interesting. Arnold Schwarzenegger during his Mr. Olympia days, was 6' 2" and about 235 lbs. (during competition - up to 260 during training). Looking at his reported maximum lifts - he was only about an 18 or 19 Strength in D&D terms (probably about an 18 during competition, as he likely wouldn't have been at his strongest then, just his biggest and most defined - lowest body fat percentage). Le Maosheng when he set the Clean & Jerk World Record at the 62 kg. weight category, was 5' 4" and 136 lbs. - which equates to about a 21 Strength in D&D. We can probably assume they had body fat percntages fairly close to eachother (pictures below), or if anything Arnie had a lower percentage (cutting down to extremely low body fat in order to show muscle definition). That gives Arnie a BMI of about 30 at competition time (up to 33 during training), and Maosheng a BMI of about 23. Now I know that BMI is controversial and not necessarily very scientific, and I personally believe BMI has significant shortcomings, but that's still a very significant difference. Arnie more than likely had more muscle mass at the time he won Mr. Olympia, than Maosheng had when he broke the world record - yet Maosheng is significantly stronger than Arnie. Although we don't have exercise for exercise numbers, I'd bet that Maosheng could probably outlift Arnie in just about any exercise.  <img src="http://blog.extremebodybuildingtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-Bodybuilding-Photos.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> <a href="http://www.ironmind.com/ironmind/export/sites/default/ironmind/leathens_lg.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.ironmind.com/ironmind/export/sites/default/ironmind/leathens_th.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></a>6' 2", 235 lbs. - 18 Strength_________5' 4", 136 lbs. - 21 Strength Maybe it's just hardwired into us: Size means Strength. Apparently that's not necessarily true.  I know that the conversaton has gone a bit afield of the OP, so in an effort to bring it back (though it may be just about talked out), I updated that pdf I posted earlier with some of the interesting things I found (like above), including some pictures of female powerlifters and equivelent D&D Strengths. I also learned about and included stats on Mariusz Pudzianowski. That dude is just scary.</blockquote>

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