the most bullshit lifting myth ever: linear xBW gains

[Arch0wl]

some people think Kirill Sarychev's bench press is not as impressive because he "weighs nearly 400lb"

alternatively, some people think bench pressing 400-450+lb is possible for lots of people naturally if you just get to a heavy enough bodyweight (I have seen this argument play out on Incontrol's bench press video)

this is glib horseshit, for several key reasons, and people who say it usually know it's horseshit too and have the audacity to believe their own garbage. but it's wrong for at least the following reasons:

(1) the body has a finite amount of muscle mass it can gain even with steroids and insulin because both of these methods are limited by what genetic polymorphisms you express for receptor activity and growth hormone splicing

(2) muscle mass does not increase proportionally with weight gain, rather strength increases proportional to neuromotor-adapted muscle mass so an inventory of maxed out lifters will show a linear relationship with weight and strength, this does not mean as you get heavier you will bench more by any means

(3) the actual rate of muscle gain is not constant and slows considerably after two or three years of training; in other words there is a yearly cap on how much protein synthesis can occur regardless of how much goddamn weight you gain

(4) if this held even remotely true, guys could break the bench press world record by just bulking up to 500lb. that is obviously not how this works. there's a clear point of diminishing returns on more bodyweight and the heaviest person in the the bench press hall of fame is a little over 400lb, and that's an outlier. most are ~300-350lb. if this actually had the effect people said it did, you could continue to 500lb and make more progress, not stop at the 300-350 range like most there.

(5) this doesn't fucking pass a sniff test at all, countless people who weigh this much have attempted to bench this much and failed and IF this were true you'd see so many fat fucks benching 450lb and in a nation where just about every fourth person is obese this is not a tall order, yet clearly this does not happen and percentile rankings of bench press in football players show as much

[justaguy]

bump because its a good post