You Will Always Look As Strong As You Are Unless You Take Steroids
Last Update On December 2, 2011
I've read quite a few popular books written by famous authors such as Mark Rippetoe, Bill Starr, Pavel Tsatsouline...etc and all of them were saying that in order to “look as strong as you are” you should lift heavy weights. While this obviously makes sense I would like to make one important addition:
There is not a single man on the planet who can get big and not be as strong as he looks unless he did some kind of drug abuse.
What do you have to do in order to gain muscle mass ?
First you have to stress your body in a way you've never done before in order to stimulate some kind of adaptation. Since were are talking about weightlifting here the adaptation is muscular growth. As you can guess your body will adapt to your training and at some point you should increase the intensity in order to promote more growth. In other words you should lift more and more weight if you want to convince your body to build some tissue. That can't be done by training with light weights. Here I should make one very important note - a weight that is light for me may be heavy for you and vice versa. So if somebody laughs at you for struggling with 135 pounds on the bench press fuck him. You are still doing your best. That's what is important and that's how you progress.
"Ok. Bro. But Pavel Tsatouline wrote in his book Power To The People that you can end up with fake muscles if you lift light weights. He called it sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. U MAD?"
First, you will never get big if you lift weights that are light for you unless you start abusing some kind of drugs. It's physically impossible. If today you can bench press 125 pounds for 10 reps and after six months you can still bench press 125 pounds for 10 reps you will look exactly the same. There won't be any kind of hypertrophy - not even sarcoplasmic which by the way is a complete misunderstanding and marketing trick used by many “strong” authors to bash bodybuilders and promote their “real” muscle programs.
According to Tsatsouline sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is growth of your muscles blood vessels instead of the fibres. First any kind of hypertrophy would be impossible without an increase in blood vessels size and improvement of muscle nerve endings. They are part of the system and bigger muscles need bigger vessels. It's quite simple actually. Also many of the gurus out there are coming with similar theories just to reinforce their position and sell more products. It ain't true. Hypertrophy is a result of increase in muscle units and blood vessels as well. You can't have one without the other.
"Bro. You suck. I was told by many people that if you do sick amount of volume with light weights for the pump you will end up big but weak. U mad NOW?"
Look, if you do pumping work for tons of reps with light weights you will end up small and weak instead of just weak. You ain't gonna grow from doing 50 curls with 5 pounds. Doesn't matter who you are. It's impossible unless you are on drugs and even then it will be harder than you would like. Your body will never get big unless there is a reason and resources for it. Never. Nobody gets big from tons of volume with light weight. It's a complete myth.
In order for your muscle to grow there first be muscle damage so that the body has something to repair. You can't damage your muscle with super light weight because the intensity is sooooo low that the adaptation requirements are closer to cardio than strength. If you were able to build a big set of biceps with 10 pounds curls you would be able to build tree trunk legs from walking alone. As you know this is not the case.
Ok. Bro. But I can deadlift 200 pounds more than one guy in my gym who has 50 pounds more muscle than me? U mad?
I've been in the same situation as you. There were a lot of guys in my gym that were lifting weights I warm-up with and still they were bigger than me. I used to wonder how they are so bigger than me, look so muscular and yet suck at lifting. The answer in most cases was - drugs.
I remember one big guy in my gym who used to make fun of me when I first started training. He had some big arms and legs but the way he was training them was beyond stupid for my. He was struggling with 60 pounds on the barbell curl and was doing quarter squats with 225 for 10 x 10 sets. At the beginning that was a lot of weight for me too so I expected to get quite big when I reach that level. After a year of training I was able to do a lot more weight on both - barbell curls and squats. To be honest I've never done squats for 10x10 but since I was able to full squat around 300 pounds at this point 225 quarter squat for 10x10 looked stupid to me. The same goes for barbell curls with 60 pounds. However as you can probably guess I wasn't nearly as big as the guy. Actually if you saw me on the street you wouldn't even think that I know where the local gym is. I was still small.
Somewhere at this point I heard the same guy saying that he used to have 20-inches arms somewhere during his training career. Since 20-inches arms are 100% impossible unless you spend a lot of time in McDonald's or take your “supplements” I knew this guy took something in order to get that big. Later on it turned out to be true.
Of course sometimes there are genetically strong people that will lift a lot of weight compared to some big guys but those athletes are large minority. So if someone is twice your size and lifts as much as you he did not get to that point naturally. Not a chance. He also didn't get to that size from doing lots of volume with pussy weights either because that kind of training is cardio and cardio does not build much muscle at all. If you look at sprinters they will be a lot bigger than the marathon runners. That's because they train with greater intensity while the marathon runners need more endurance related qualities in order to win their sport.
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