Strength without additional muscle is a big thing for athletes

One my boys approached me the other day regarding conditioning planning for sport.  His coach had requested that he not gain weight and the impression I had was that this was considered an unusual request.  In the regular gym community, I only ever received that request from women but among sports people it’s entirely around the other way.  There are few sports in which extra mass, even via additional muscle, is an advantage.  Athletes need more strength but not more weight.

Why is more muscle a disadvantage?  The answer is that the extra weight slows the body down.  Let’s use an example.  An athlete weighing 100kg who adds an additional 5kg of lean muscle (now weighs 105kg) must improve speed or mechanical efficiency by 5% to offset the extra weight or he will slow down.  It’s a better strategy to make the body stronger without adding the weight.  A stronger body at the same weight is automatically more powerful: more grunt per kg.

I should add at this point that strength and muscle mass are not the same thing (it surprises me that common knowledge hasn’t caught up with this yet).  Strength is a function of muscle and the nervous system – the brain and the nerves that control muscle activity.  All tasks are skills where the brain is concerned, and by improving the organisation of existing muscle potential we raise task skill and strength.  In fact, most of what is often conceived of as muscle-induced strength gain is skill-induced improvement.  A bench press that advances from 50 to 100kg – double the weight – can’t easily be explained as the result of a 50% increase in muscle mass!

So what are the basic considerations for minimising muscle mass gain and maximising strength improvements?  The first thing to say is that we are searching for the sweet spot between high loads, needed to drive strength improvements, and those variables that stimulate and facilitate muscle hypertrophy.  The precise position of the sweet spot is found over time by making small variations in the basic formula.  The basic variables are: variation, volume, frequency, and large movements versus single joint or isolation motions.  Minimising the effect on muscle growth is more or less the same as controlling the likelihood of growth taking place:

·        Lots of variation of large movements to avoid overworking specific muscles

·        An emphasis on movement skill development and the postural/ joint function foundation to drive up biomechanical efficiency

·        Lower training volume and frequency, but maintenance of high intensity to drive strength gains

The critical variable is training frequency.  The sweet spot is found when frequency enables strength development and controls muscle gain.