Watch
Listen
“I have to write to discover what I am doing.”
Flannery O’Connor
I run most days and listen to health podcasts. A few weeks ago I heard something I had to rewind: strength and muscle are correlated but they are different things.
Until then I thought bigger muscle just meant more strength.
Muscle is the capacity to produce force.
Strength is how much of that force your nervous system can fire at once.
You can grow a lot of muscle and still only use part of it. A lifter can also get much stronger while the muscle barely changes size.
For the first few weeks of lifting, most of the strength gain comes from your nervous system learning to fire what you already have. After three to five weeks, more of the gain comes from the muscle getting bigger.
Dickie Bush tells a story about two fishermen who had never cast a line.
The first fisherman went straight to the marina.
He bought a boat and specced a carbon-fiber rod.
He read books on casting, baiting and reeling.
He watched the fishing channel each night for months.
When he finally felt ready, he took it out.
Six hours later he had not had a single nibble.
The second grabbed a shitty rod, sliced up a hot dog and went to the lake on day one.
For a week he caught nothing.
On the eighth day he got his first nibble.
He moved spots and changed bait.
By the time the first fisherman showed up, the second had already been iterating on the water for weeks.
The first fisherman spent months gathering gear while the lake was being learned by someone else.
Make progress first. Then you can optimize later. They are different things and that is worth knowing.
Early on it barely matters which lever you pull. A beginner improves on almost any work.
Muscle and strength both climb inside the first couple of months.
The mistake is arguing about which one to train before you have trained either.
💪
What could you start before you know the best way?
