Why Some People Are So Strong But Have Little Muscle?

not to be a dick, but you’re pretty fat are you not? How lean is he?

First off, nice passive aggressive put down.
Secondly, I am overweight but not obese.
Thirdly, I was referring specifically to his calves, which are the size of my arms (granted, my arms aren’t small).
Fourth, this guy isn’t lean but he isn’t fat. Id say he is average.
Fifth, I have big legs in general for my height, I always have even when I didn’t lift.

it wasn’t a put down, and my aggression is never passive. I was trying to point out that if you’re carrying a lot of fat then your legs are probably less muscular than you think. Everyone has less muscle than they think they do when they diet down, myself included

Calves are really an interesting body part due to how much they are affected by insertion point. Some guys just plain aren’t going to develop large looking calves no matter what they do because they come in too high.

One of the best things I ever did to improve calf size was rupture my ACL, because all the blood in my knee flowed down into my calf and it got HUGE.

CALVES???

Mindblown

I know, right? WTF are calves?

Lol, don’t drop a fly into Aero’s soup…there is no one on these forums, not one single poster, with a bigger disconnect between their actual accomplishments and their opinion of themselves, nor anyone more capable of taking everything personally.

Aero: Yogi’s (perfectly reasonable) point was that at an “overweight but not obese” 257 pounds, your legs are probably a lot less muscular than you think, and that someone who deadlifts 700 pounds having smaller legs than you is not necessarily surprising, because your “big legs” are probably carrying less muscle than the 700-pound deadlifter’s legs. The added fluffy girth in your legs is somewhat irrelevant to your deadlift strength vs. his.

Hilariously and predictably, you managed to take a completely reasonable, non-insulting remark that was completely pertinent to the issue (where Yogi even KNEW that you’d take it the wrong way, lol, and tried to warn you as such) and get all defensive about being “overweight not obese” - lolz.

CALVES!

Still mindblown

Your opinion must have been formed by all the times you’ve met me, right? All those hours we spent hanging out and getting to know eachother. Oh wait, that never happened, because you are full of shit! Im sure youll make up some bullshit about how you can read my character based on some random posts you’ve found I made. Good luck with that, I think it’s you who needs a reality check.

You people take this place way too seriously.

Flies off handle, ends post with…

lolz.

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Im just angry because you stopped hanging out with me. Now I have is this roll of bubble wrap I got from Home Depot and some old DVDs. My Friday nights wont be the same again.

I find the direction this thread has gone very easy to masturbate to. Keep up the fine work, gents.

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As others have been saying, it is all about the style of workout. When I first got into weights it was a football players power workout for the skilled positions. I worked out at the school and at a Golds gym. After 4 years of it, I was not half as big as the big boys at Golds. Nor did I have their stamina. But I was stronger than all but one of them over all (top 1% maybe). Stronger than everyone in squats and dead lift. Compared to my fellow ball players I was only top 20%. Your body does what you train it to do. Then there is genetics, but I think it is mostly the type of workout.

When of the best dead difters I ever knew was tall and almost skinny. That isn’t the norm but some guys are freaks.

Yes I have met such individuals as well. And the reason they do not look developed is a combination of leverages plus lower back/hip dominance. You also see this with good low bar squatters. Less developed good benchers are rare though.

I am questioning his logic because he wrote this:

and then proceeded to use himself vs his friend, who are both natties, as an example.

But I was not prepared for this:

CALVES???

Obviously, he was referring to the man’s body parts in proper anatomical terms to refer to the segment of the lower extremity immediately distal to the thigh which includes the group of muscles commonly referred to as “calves” by uneducated peons. Because we, at T-Nation, believe in using proper anatomical terms to reduce ambiguity and sneer in our superiority at other, lesser bodybuilding sites that attempt to appeal to the masses by presenting their material as oversimplified pablum.

So, uh, circle-jerk, anyone?

Forgetting that a squat done with proper form you are pretty close to flat footed. Not using the calves for more than stabilizing

I don’t think anyone else mentioned this yet but all the guys in the first post look very lean. Most gym regulars who are fairly strong are not necessarily that lean so they appear bigger. If they dieted down they may look more like guys in the first post. This may just apply to the first pic, but he might have shorter arms than the rest so that would at least explain the bench.

I think Omar has a 550 squat but he suffers from no calves syndrome. As he trains in long shorts, he looks very tiny when standing next to other lifters.

But anyway, there’s a lot of factors besides just muscle size but all these guys are carrying muscle - not like they’re skinny fat.

Having read through this thread, I am off to work on my calves so I can get my dead lift up over 700.

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