I've been both of these guys. In unrelated news, I fucking hate Subway™

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[–] 43 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Visible muscles vs usable muscles

or something, idk

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I don't understand where the muscle mass goes or what it does I guess. I can typically curl the same weight or sometimes more than someone with biceps twice my size. What is all that mass doing?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    fast-twitch muscle vs slow-twitch muscle. they train fast twitch because aestetics and you trained slow because of usability.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah I worked an extremely labor intensive job from my teens into my early twentys. I wouldn't have anything left in the tank for the gym after those 10-14 hour days.

    Is slow vs fast twitch just a way to describe muscle density?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    I don't think it describes density, though someone more informed than I might illuminate us. Any given (skeletal) muscle group (e.g. quadriceps, biceps, pectorals, etc) consists of both slow and fast twitch muscle fibers. Different muscle groups have different proportions of slow vs fast twitch, depending on the purpose of that group. For example, the average person's quads are have a roughly even distribution of slow vs fast twitch, but the muscles which we use to blink are almost entirely fast twitch.

    There's a pretty good comparison table on Wikipedia if you're still curious, but once I see the ATP cycle coming up in a given article, I know I've reached the limits of my amateur understanding. Here, there be dragons.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    A huge component of strength is mind-muscle connection. Large muscles give you the capacity for strength but don't inherently make you stronger than someone with smaller muscles who does a lot of strength training. This is where a lot of the initial gains come from when starting to strength train.

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