Originally Posted by
Iride01
I find your question intriguing. I really don't have anything useful to add.
I never got into the resistance training or other gym work, though I wish I could find some way to get some of that desire. I think it will help keep my bones as strong as they can be. And keep my joints in overall good shape... unless it only work favorites.
The last 15 years of my working life was quite a bit of manual labor and a lot of heavy lifting. I noticed my muscles were much stronger but no more massive than before or now. I might have looked a little trimmer.
But for my main gist for being here. One of the guys I worked with went to the gym and bulked up quite a bit. Looked impressive and formidable when he came up to me or any other. However he could not lift any better than I could when I was in my best shape there at that job.
So I've been wondering if the excess protein and other stuff a lot of gym rats thrive on is just bulking them up with visceral fat. Which is actually a bad thing.
I've never looked into any studies or stuff that would give factual information about that. So do you or any other have anything knowledge-wise toward that?
Nothing factual, really. Top bodybuilders are insanely strong. There are however 2 types of strength determinants: muscle cross section area and fiber recruitment. What you had when you got strong was better fiber recruitment. All those top climbers, cycle and rock, have fabulous fiber recruitment. Muscles are really smart and only do what they're forced to do. DNA, evolution, etc. That's the reason that one must do exercises at levels which induce muscles to use every available fiber. When newbies go to the gym, they get amazing increases in the weights they can use, very quickly, long before there's a prayer of size increase, solely because of fiber activation.
I don't know anything about it, but I suppose it might be possible to get big without the work by using steroids. There are many studies on the web about these effects, but they're not interesting enough to me to read and comment on them.