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Old 08-18-2015, 07:08 AM
NewYorkKAB NewYorkKAB is offline
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It is because there are 2 ways you can get stronger. One is Building more muscle to do a lift and the other is your CNS (Central Nervous System) being more efficient at turning on the whole muscle instead of just a portion of it and coordinating the muscles together for the movement.Normally a person only turns on about 30% of the muscle regardless of how much you feel like your straining.But when you train in very low rep ranges (1-3 Reps/Very long rest/as explosively as possible) your body doesn't have the necessary stress that breaks down the muscle to make it grow so instead of the muscle growing your body just starts turning on more of the dormant muscle that was off before.So even though a muscle could be 6 pounds only about 2 of those pounds are being activated for a lift.But with powerlifting your learning how to activate the other 4 pounds at will.This also can happen in life and death situations! That's why you hear about normal people lifting big weight in those situations.The adrenaline turns off some of the limiters your body has set on its muscles for the emergency at hand. Also they're 3 different types of muscle fiber (Slow Twitch/Endurance type and 2 types of fast twitch:one that acts as a middle ground between Endurance and power and the other being for pure power but has very low endurance).When your training more for strength (5-8 Reps/Longer Rest/Explosively) your muscles will grow more of the pure power type muscle.Between the Powerful Fast twitch muscle fibers and the CNS turning on more of that muscle and coordinating it/them better you have a smaller guy lifting larger weights then the larger bodybuilder. Ex: For a slow twitch fiber to lift 100 pounds it would have to be larger then a fast twitch type. Bodybuilders have more slow twitch and fast twitch type 1 fibers so they have to be bigger to lift the same weights even if their CNS was to activate all the muscle Properly., also they use more variety in their training so they CNS has less time to master the more basic strength lifts.A Powerlifter will spend more time training between the 1-3,3-5 and 5-8 rep ranges that build more strength then the bodybuilder would use and use fewer exercise (Legs) Ex: Back Squat,Front Squat and Split Squat mostly to master them. While a bodybuilder would use as many exercises as it takes to stimulate the most growth (Legs) Ex: Back Squat,Front Squat,Split Squat,Lunges,Step Ups,Leg Presses,Leg Extensions,Sissy Squats,Hack Squats and use a large variety of rep ranges but usually staying between 8-15 Reps! This means more muscle growth but less time to let the CNS master any of the lifts to the point of pure strength development but bigger muscles.
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