r/BeAmazed • u/Super_Steve117 • Feb 25 '25

Miscellaneous / Others Strength of a manual worker vs bodybuilders

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u/StableWeak Feb 25 '25

Big muscles are still strong muscles. You're just not gonna have a lot of general strength and beat someone whose developed a lot of strength and technique at a particular task.

Also compare a bodybuilder to a powerlifter.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 25 '25

I am a bodybuilder and I have a lot of general strength, everything is easier than before bodybuilding.

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u/CykaMuffin Feb 25 '25

Right, but your grip strength will likely not be as good as that of a similar sized construction worker - unless you've been doing grip training as well.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 25 '25

Similar sized construction worker to bodybuilder does not exist unless they use steroids or also workout and yes, training your forearms directly is a must as a bodybuilder because it directly impacts literally 90% of lifts you do. Find me a dude who can do reverse wrist curls on cables with full stack on commercial gym cables (which is 110lbs) per arm, and I will find you someone who has high chance of being as strong as construction worker while putting in microscopic fraction of effort to achieve it.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 26 '25

Type out your comment, I briefly saw it, LMAO. It does not matter if you can match it, what matters is that it takes a bodybuilder around 3 minutes max per session to train forearms fully. Assuming you have 3x frequency per week, it ends up being like 7.2 hours per year. So you break your back, get riddled with injuries, sit in cold and hot weather just to barely (if at all) beat someone who spent less than a workday working on that muscle.

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u/CykaMuffin Feb 26 '25

I mistook it for a reply to another comment I made.

I was just stating my observation that people doing manual labour often have similar grip strength to people doing bodybuilding without specifically focusing on forearms (which few do).

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

Yeah, no doubt you’d have more general strength than you used to, and much more than the average person. Compared to someone who does strongman for example, I’d imagine you agree you’d have less “general strength” because your rep scheme and exercise selection emphasis is hypertrophy.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 25 '25

Yes, but saying that my muscle is "show muscle" and that I am "weak" is not insulting me or my intelligence, its insulting to the person saying that stuff. Like, my country is much less obese on average than America and even here its rare to see a muscular guy. Every time I do though, you always know he is strong just by looking at them, does not matter if some other guy is stronger at some particular task.

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

I get the sensitivity toward the “show muscle” trope, it’s massively misleading (body builders are very strong). It’s also true to point out that strength specialists will be smaller and stronger than you, on average. Hope you see the nuance - it’s not an insult at all.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 25 '25

Strength specialist are by default not small or smaller. What does that even mean? What is a "strength specialist"? Bodybuilder squatting 405lbs x 10 is a strength specialist.

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

Programming your workouts for strength is different than programming for hypertrophy, because it optimizes different outcomes. You will select isolation exercises and emphasize the areas you want to bring up as a body builder, whereas a powerlifter focuses on the main compound lifts and beneficial accessories, in lower rep ranges (again, generalizing).

You with get both bigger and stronger in either case, but you will increase size more as a hypertrophy focused lifter, and you will increase strength more as a strength focused lifter.

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

Speaking personally, having trained for powerlifting, coached by competitive powerlifters, no - training squats in the range of 10 reps is not a strength focus.

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u/SituacijaJeSledeca Feb 25 '25

My guy, squat is compound lift. Bench press and deadlifts, all compound lift. I regularly do them and their variations. You cant get truly big without these types of exercises. All bodybuilders do these movements. Also, consensus is that the best rep range is in 5-10 zone which is where I and thousands of others grow the best.

Also 1 to 3 rep strength is genuinely the most overrated thing in the world when it comes to test of strength, mainly because of leverages and body fat. Most powerlifters I know are genuinely over 30% bodyfat and have decent leverages for BSD. 1 rep does not mean anything.

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

There’s so much to unpack here that I won’t bother to do it all this deep in a comment thread, but the low hanging fruit is the “best rep range” claim. This is oversimplified; the optimal range depends on your goals and the body part you are training. The data supports everything from 5-25 reps grows muscle at similar rates when taken similarly close to failure.

Many people would disagree with your opinion about the validity of low/single rep strength. Once again, it depends on your goals. I wish you good luck pursuing yours.

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u/One_Telephone_5798 Feb 25 '25

Actually strongmen tend to have less general strength. Strong men practice very specific things, like a strong man who wants to be the strongest in squats trains squats. Bodybuilders train with a lot more variety because they're trying to build all the muscles in their body.

There are exceptions to this obviously like Halfthor Bjornsson but people like him are genetic anomolies.

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u/NotTheVacuum Feb 25 '25

Maybe we mean different things, but the strongman competitions I’ve seen include many different and varied events that require a lot of different expressions of strength, including awkward lifts of heavy objects, throwing, static holds, and timed carries.

I want to make it abundantly clear that we’re talking about relatively small differences and optimizations; anyone who does any kind of consistent strength training will gain both size and strength, and the benefit of just about everything in life being easier.

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u/One_Telephone_5798 Feb 25 '25

The laborer doesn't have general strength either. He has strength for lifting heavy things. That isn't going to be strength in everything, just like a bodybuilder that's really strong in specific lifts isn't strong in everything.

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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Feb 25 '25

Optimization equation that comes from cross-sectional area vs. volume vs. density.

There comes a trade-off in the mass of the muscle versus the power. Square-cube law.

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u/bythog Feb 25 '25

There are some bodybuilders who prioritize only hypertrophy so they are large but not as strong as you'd think; they are still strong--stronger than average--but they don't prioritize strength. Jay Cutler types. He can move some weight for sure but a guy considerably smaller than he was could move the same weight...just not nearly as many times.

Then you got the bodybuilders who want both strength and size like Ronnie Coleman or Chris Bumstead. They're both huge but also really fucking strong (or was in Ronnie's case).

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u/StableWeak Feb 25 '25

Jay Cutler could also bench 500+ lbs. He just almost never benched or even benched heavy out of fear of injury.

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u/Fish_Mongreler Feb 25 '25

You have no idea what you're talking about. Jay Cutler regularly benches over 500. How many "considerably smaller" guys are moving that weight? Not many

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u/bythog Feb 25 '25

I didn't say he wasn't strong, lol. He's famous for training light compared to most of his contemporaries. And most non-strongman guys who can bench 500 are smaller than Jay.

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u/Background_Dot_8738 Feb 25 '25

Plenty of guys in the sub 200lb powerlifting community would like a word.

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u/Fish_Mongreler Feb 25 '25

Plenty? There's like a handful in the world of sub 200lb men that can bench more than Cutlers (arguable) max of like 575. What are you on about?