The biggest misconception about strength training
I want to get STRONG but I do not want to get BIG/BULKY/HUGE/JACKED/PLUMP.
All of these people are subject to a common misconception. In order to deter you from the thinking that has been surely drilled into you from an early age, I will show one of the strongest women in the world, holding the world title in her weight class for a number of years:
JACKED! RIGHT!? Her name is Naomi Kutin, and is the subject of a wonderful documentary.
This little woman was capable of squatting over twice her body weight (you may want to pause to consider what that would mean for you. And yet, she is built, not like a tank, but more like a bike. How is this possible?
Because of the fundamental nature of strength training. You are making muscles, through stress and recompositon, more efficient, no NECESSARILY bigger.
When people worry about getting big they probably see either mass monster bodybuilders or world’s strongest men competitors in their mind’s eye:
But there are fundamental differences between what the people above did, and what you will do when strength training.
These men probably have around equal AMOUNTS OF MUSCLE.
Both of these men had to eat ENORMOUS SUMS of food to get the size and quantity of the muscles that they have today. Strongman diets are in excess of 10,000 calories a day!
The difference between the two is while Ben Pollack, on the left had to go into a calorie deficit to keep the fat off after having put it on growing his muscles, Eddie Hall, the man on the right, had to continue to eat in order to lift more (more about this in a moment.)
Let’s take a pause to talk about some SCIENCE.
When you, me, and those beasts up there lift weight, we are entering into a catabolic state, which means that we are breaking down, “shredding” our muscles by stressing them. Now, let me ask you, if you were to say, rip a pair of your favorite jeans, what would you do to fix them? Probably put some sort of patch on them, and that is exactly what EATING does.
After lifting your muscles are primed to get ‘patched’ up (often called the anabolicwindow, which last between 24–48 hours for most people) this is when they are ready to take the stuff you eat and use it to build muscle in order to get better at lifting that stressful weight.
Now, if you DO NOT eat enough to properly satiate those muscles, you will have grouchy muscles, but will also NOT have as big muscles because you are not giving them the stuff they need to properly grow. You will however, be helping to train them to get stronger, and some gains will be made in that way.
END OF SCIENCE
HOWEVER, you will not get as strong as you could and, you will plateau at a point in how much weight you can lift.
This is what separates the three wonderful specimens we have discussed today. In order for Naomi to lift even more weight, she is going to have to EAT MORE, A LOT MORE, and in that way she will have increased the size of her muscles, those larger muscles will allow her to lift more weight, let’s say she keep eating more and more, she will be gaining FAT AND MUSCLE, and will eventually need to go into a calorie deficit if she wants to lower her body fat percentage and look like Big Ben over there.
But what separates Ben Pollack from Eddie Hall is that in order for Eddie to be the strongest man in the world that he is, he needed MORE WEIGHT, not just more muscle but more weight in general, just like the law of acceleration, in this case accelerating weights, you need MASS to increase to get a large number, and that is what Eddie does by eating so damn much, he eats to increase his mass, and thus the amount he can lift.
What does all this mean for you?
You can get plenty strong without being plenty big.
