That guy who is weak as shit but is one of the most muscular dudes you've ever seen at the gym

>that guy who is weak as shit but is one of the most muscular dudes you've ever seen at the gym

how is this possible? it's been ingrained into my mind that strength is 100% required for muscle gains, is it really?

He trains for hypertrophy. SS is a meme.

No, you're wrong and dumb. High volume gives you mass gains.
He's also probably stronger than you think he is based on how you see him training, if he's training high volume. You just see him training with 50-60% of his maxes.

Aesthetics =/= Strength

roids my friend. He basically do whatever and is massive. it is called roids.

Probably working out couple of times a day and you only see him once

You can do 30 rep sets and still be in hypertrophy range.

So if you bench 225 for 10 reps, you can lower the weight to a weight you can do 30 reps, say 155 and you'll get the same exact results.


Don't believe me? Look up some recent studies. This has been proven on at the very least SEASONED lifters who have 1+ year experience lifting already. There was no difference in muscle gain from 10 rep sets, 20 rep sets, or 30 rep sets, with proper adjustments made to working off 1RM%.

Do not ever make any assumptions about how weak or strong another guy at the gym is. There are so many factors to consider regarding what weight to pick for any given exercise.
You don't know what kind of tension he's actually creating in his muscles i.e. how hard he squeezes.
Maybe you don't think about his rest periods, how fatigued he is, his lifting tempo, exercise execution (technique tweaks etc.).
Maybe he's having a light day scheduled.
Maybe he's not taking his sets anywhere near the point of failure on purpose.

And also, oh man, if you knew how many times some dyel or newbie fat "bro" did something completely ridiculous with a weight that was way too heavy for them, and then looked in my direction with a slick grin, in all honesty thinking to themselves that they were actually stronger than me. And all I can do is shake my head at their ignorance.

As far as the necessity of strength gains go, it's true that over time you must strive to increase the poundages you lift. Progressive Overload is an underlying principle that cannot be violated, but there are many ways of achieving it. But over time, you MUST become stronger. Although please note that becoming stronger and increasing your maximal strength aren't always the same thing.

strength gains are cns over anything else, you could be a complete twig and dl 4 plate

I use to be fairly strong, but I got lazy and stopped caring. Now my lifts are nothing impressive, but I still maintain my size that gained when I was far stronger.

I use to rep 4 plates for 4-6. Now I never go higher than 2 plates and just do sets of 15. Legs still manage to be the same size.

On incline bench, I use to press 120kg for reps. I RARELY even go over 80kg now,but I do much higher reps, chest is still the same size as it was back then when i pressed much heavier.

Deadlifts? I haven't even done conventional deadlifts in a long time, I just do low weight stiff-legs and my hammies/glutes are still the same size as back when I conventional deadlifted hundreds more pounds.

Neurological adaptations are a major factor but it's not everything. I don't know exactly what you mean when you say complete twig, but most people do need a bit of mass to pull 4 plates.

He is using much less than his max for working sets, we obviously he isnt gonna be benching 3 plates

Share the sauces user

>what is supercompensation

I remember going from being able to do 20 to 100 push ups, didn't do jack shit for my bench numbers.

>How is this possible
because strength is not just a function of the size of the muscle. There are two factors: muscle cross-section area and motor neuron recruitment.

The guy with big muscles trains the cross section of his muscles primarily, as well as improving the size of them by inducing sarcoplasmic hypertrophy as well as myofibril. He does 20 rep sets and grows the muscle fibers and swells the muscle with glycogen and other fluids.

The guy in the corner squatting 220kg@77kg has been training his muscles for myofibrillar hypertrophy to an extent, but the majority of his strength comes from the fact that he has a really good CNS integration and can activate all the fibres in his muscle.

Guy one has a muscle cross section of, say, 100 but only uses 20% (motor neuron recruitment) whereas guy two has a muscle cross section of 80 but uses 75%.

does that make sense? you should be doing all kinds of training, lrn2program

When i was a DYEL my bench went from 115 to 140 just by doing push ups for a couple months.
Not the best progress or the most efficient but still.

Noon here
Is the difference in training low vs high reps?

Nah I'm 150 lbs and ottermode, I probably lift more than most of the guys on here

to an extent - you'll find that there are loads of variables in play but generally hypertrophy work is higher reps, less rest, lower weight, more focus on the eccentric part of the lift.

The way that we program this stuff, though, the major difference between bodybuilders/guys who focus on hypertrophy is that generally they'll do more exercises in general and more isolation exercises.

For example, if you're just training for general strength as an intermediate your workouts might look like:

Squat 1x5@80% + 4x5 @ 72.5%
Bench 1x5@80% + 4x8@70%
Deadlift 1x5@80% + 3x3@60%+Bands

but if you're focussing on hypertrophy your day is probably more like:

Squat 5x10
lunge 5x10
split squat 4x8 (each)
barbell step up 4x8 (each)
leg press

so what you see is they dedicate more time to each group and the overall rep ranges are higher, but the important thing is the decreased weight and the increased volume focus.

Tl;Dr - yes

Good stuff man thanks alot

this desu senpai

That guy could probably bench twice what you can, if he wanted.

Nice info ty alot

I'm that guy
Hypertrophy > Strength

That's me

Yeah bruh, I remember at my first gym there was this guy who was huge, biggest guy in the gym (uni gym), he was in his last year for physiotherapist, I was just starting training and a few months in I was able to 5x5 3pl8 DL easily, then one day he comes to me and tells me "man how do you even manage to lift all that weight? I tried and couldn't even lift 100kg!"

I was baffled

This. You also dont know if someone is coming back from an injury, etc.

Im just picturing OP being triggered by seeing a jacked guy lift light weights one time and extrapolating all this useless information. Shut the fuck up and lift faggots.

fuck this pic reminds me of the fucking skype call during zimmerman's trial

Report frogposters.

And you didn't realize he was joking because you are an autist.

nah man he wasn't joking, he couldn't DL or squat half what I was repping in my first year, tho he out-benched me easily, I saw him training everyday

you sure it wasn't your bench that improved your bench?

there are no huge guys who can't deadlift 100kg, unless by "huge" you mean "morbidly obese"

>lunges for hypertrophy

cmon

>Benching 122 kg 3x2 on ID going for 123 this week
>VD just doing 100 4x4 and then was doing 60 4x4 for some speed work
>DYel comes in puts on 70 kg looks back at me like he just showed me.
probably what happened to you too OP.

He could've been just being nice had a guy tell me you're gonna outbench me really easy when I just hit 105 1x 5 meanwhile he put on 130kg and did that for 3x5.