I am new on the forum and recently got a little serious about lifting. I am a sprinter on my high school team so my legs are fairly strong, however I want to build up my upper body strength. I have been hitting the gym with my friends every day after school for about a month now, and am very pleased. I am a very lean person, so my friend think I am “jacked”, when in actuality I am not. I read online that there was a difference in muscle type, whereas someone will get really really big from lifting, while someone else may not be as big, but will be able to do just as well as the other really really big guy. This looks to be a great forum and I can’t wait for some replies.
I’m fairly sure the phenomenon you’re referring to is smaller people being just as strong as some bigger people? That’s basically a textbook topic there - type “relative strength” into the search engine (articles, not forum) and you’ll have a good start.
The basic idea isn’t that the muscles are 'different" persay, just that they’re more efficient at a given task due to adaptations to training and certain biomechanical factors.
Also, just because I know it will come up, the bigger guys are usually pretty darn strong themselves.
-Dan
Well, there are fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles, which is a whole other topic, and might not be that important after all.
Otherwise, you are thinking of neural strength vs. hypertrophy. Read this
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1241594
As well as all these articles!
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