Ok I know what you’re all thinking, this is a over abused subject blah blah blah. I think my question might differ from others however.
Ok in all the pictures we have seen David Boston has a massive upper body and skinny legs.
My question to you all is this, if Poliquin is so big on just making muscles bigger why are Bostons legs so thin?
I mean he uses the same rep ranges, training methods, etc… with the lower and upper body, yet his upper body is massive.
I only ask this because Boston seemed to squeeze a huge amount of strength out of those skinny legs(2.5xbodyweight in snatch grip deadlift off podium), and had good force application(obviously shown from the 4.1 40 he ran at nearly 260).
So here is what I am thinking, why couldnt he get the strength without the size in the upper body like in the lower body?
Would this not have been better(enabled to be faster) and also make his training applicable for sprinter(strength without size).
But then again the question would be posed of if too much time would be spent in the weight room and would take away from the track with his methods…hmmm
As well a question dealing with westside.
10 They said max effort movements are a test of weak points and assistance work is used to strengthen the weak points(ie hamstrings, glutes, low back, w/e).
So could a sprinter exclusively use the assistance measures to train the p-chain? ie. I think he hammers the p-chain with good mornings for 3 weeks, then RDL’s, then Glute Ham Raises, etc…just continually hammering it with different things in the 6 rep range.
What are the thoughts on this as a means of strength training?
I from pictures they don’t look that big but no ones measured them so we can’t say for sure. I’ve only seen his legs around the knee joint due to long shorts. Its possible they get much bigger around the hip.
Also I believe he was doing 2 upper body days and 1 lower body day in a training cycle.
Plus some people just develop better in certain areas. Maybe David like most guys i know enjoyed training upperbody more than his lower body.
2.5xBW on the SGD!!! What’s that 650@ 260!! I thought my puny 405 SGD was pretty good but I was sadly mistaken(although 500 is the future goal).
By the way people, is anyone else out there doing the Snatch Grip Deadlift? For me at 44 years old, I like to do these for the great ham and quad work, without the shoulder distress of squatting. I follow these up with a Romanian dead for the same rep scheme and my posterial chain is fully hammered when done. Try these with chains for accomodating resistance.
I would like to know if anyone else is doing these. Thanks.
I do SGDs off a podium (a block about 6 inches high) - but not frequently enough to put up any good numbers - I pulled a 495 2 summers ago, but recently I haven’t done anything over 315.
numba56 - find me another wide receiver with legs (or the complete package for that matter) like Boston. Other than the high calves his legs look fine to me. Anyone that can generate that kind of power doesn’t really need to worry about how big is legs are.
i wasnt saying he needed bigger legs, i was asking how he got the strength into his legs that he did without them being relatively big compared to the upper body.
I just think he’s just geneticly inclined to be like that
Look at that 94kg Weightlifter called Dobrev who won the gold medal. He has skinny legs and big biceps. His upper body dwarfs the rest of the 94kg class, and he’s 5’11" as well so he’s not that short
When you look at their training which is mostly a lot of squatting and pulling you have to wonder
I haven’t been here for a while, but when I saw another David Boston thread, suprise, suprise, Numba56.
How did he get the strength into his relatively small legs???.. He has a well developed CNS to fire the muscles used in the SGDL, I’ve heard it many times here, develop the CNS and not the muscular system. Also I’m not going to gloat, but I’m a couple of kilo’s away from doing the SGDL at 2.5x my own bodyweight (149lbs, 6’0).<<< This is with putting in well over 200 miles of endurance cycling per week (U know, the sport that turns your fast twitch into slow twitch, never slowed me down in terms of strength gains, just a very exaggerated leg frequency, less body fat and better skin, lol). Didn’t think it was much of a big deal. Compared to powerlifters I’m still a weeklin. My aim was always 3x my own bodyweight, and then I wouldn’t be happy with that. Saying that, lifting 4x my bodyweight ain’t gonna give me a 4.2 40.
Not meaning to belittle your SGDL, but 2.5x body weight is much more impressive at 260lb than 149lb. Smaller guys tend to have better strength to weight ratios than bigger guys. To make comparisons between people with widely differing weights you should use some type of alternative body weight adjustment such as the Sinclair formula (for Olympic weightlifting) or the Siff formulas found in Supertraining (for Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting). Making this adjustment you will find that a 149lb guy would have to lift much more than 2.5x body weight to be equivalent to a 260lb guy lifting 2.5x body weight.
Depends on your opinion. When I see a 260lb+ powerlifter/athlete lift any amount of weight upto 4x his bodyweight, I would be like, ‘so what, look at the size of that guy’. If I was that size I would come close to having that sort of strength too’. Then again, when I see a skinny guy w/ absolute no mass on his body & no mass on his legs lift the world, I would be like, jesus, that is impressive. Huge powerlifters don’t impress me.
Lammar Gant was pretty impressive considering his 123lb-132lb bodyweight and one of the first men to dead 5x his own bodyweight.
Apart from genetics, this is one of the top qualties of a world class sprinter.
???.. Its all the same too me. David Boston can lift a weight the equivalent to 2.5x his own bodyweight. In a few weeks I will have the same equivalent.
Its just like me saying, Ohhh well, in fact David Boston would have to lift more than 2.5x bodyweight to be the equivalent to a 149lb guy lifting 2.5x bodyweight because Boston has more ALOT more muscle and ALOT more muscle fibers to call upon to perform the lift than the 149lb guy. I will leave the bill$hit formula’s.
Strength does not vary with weight linearly. That is an increase in weight of 1lb does not mean that you will lift 1lb more. A crude way to envisage this is to consider that strength is not proportional to a mass of a muscle but rather its cross sectional area. Using this fact within a dimensional analysis then suggests that strength varies as mass to the two thirds power. This in turn suggests that lighter people would have better strength to weight ratios. This observation is borne out in experimental data.
When we look at strength to weight ratios we are trying to compare the relative strengths of people independent of mass. If you only divide by mass you do not get a number that is independent of mass as strength does not vary linearly with mass. These formulas are to allow us to truly compare strength performances independent of weight. This is not as big an issue if we are comparing people of similar weights (although it is still pertinent).
Consequently, a 260lb person who can lift 2.5x body weight is relatively stronger than a 149lb person who can lift 2.5x body weight. The two lifts are not equivalent.
Heavyweights who lift huge amounts are aided by their large weights. However, it is important to remember that they are hugely strong in their own right. Using the appropriate formulas is the only way to see relatively which individuals are the strongest.
Of course there are many more factors in strength which also impact on the situation.
