Stronger Than Bodybuilders
Wimps might have the last laugh on gym-obsessed hunks – gram-for-gram, bodybuilders’ muscles are weaker than those of people who never touch weights, research has shown.
Scientists found that bodybuilders had extraordinarily large muscle fibres capable of generating forces far greater than normal for an average human.
Yet tests showed that a gram of their muscle was less powerful than the same amount of tissue from someone who did not weight train.
Lead scientist Professor Hans Degens, from Manchester Metropolitan University, said: ”Most of us are impressed by the enormous muscle bulk of bodybuilders and think that these people must be extremely strong, like the ‘Incredible Hulk’.
”The surprising thing, however, was that a gram of muscle from bodybuilders produced less force than that from non-bodybuilders, and it thus seems that the ‘muscle quality’ is less in bodybuilders.
”It appears that excessive muscle growth may have detrimental effects on the quality of the muscle, and one may well be better off with normal-sized muscles than with metabolically expensive large muscles.”
Bodybuilders are only strong because they have so much muscle mass – enough to compensate for the weakness of each gram, the research suggests.
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