Nitpick that doesn’t bear upon the main thrust of the article:
2021: Here’s a random weightlifter I found coming in at over 400kg, I don’t have his DEXA but let’s say somewhere between 300 and 350kgs of muscle.
More plausibly Josh Silvas weighs 220-ish kg, not 400 kg, and there’s no way he has anywhere near 300+ kg of muscle. To contextualize, the heaviest WSM winners ever weighed around 200-210 kg (Hafthor, Brian); Brian in particular had a lean body mass of 156 kg back when he weighed 200 kg peaking for competition (‘peaking’ implies unsustainability), which is the highest DEXA figure I’ve ever found in years of following strength-related statistics.
I saw that too and I don’t think it’s a nitpick. All of that was raised in support of the idea that human limits are much greater than we think, so having a couple of examples that are off by a factor of two is not a small difference. In addition to the wild claims about a human with 350 kg of muscle mass, I know the world record for unequipped deadlift is just shy of 1,100 pounds/500kg. “Lifting a car” can’t mean picking it off the ground entirely no matter how small it is; my Miata weighs about 2,400 pounds and other than something like a Lotus Elise it’s right at the lowest weight available. I’m willing to buy “picking up the back of a tiny car while leaving the front wheels on the ground, but again that’s not what you implied.
I have no idea about whether you raised your IQ with your method, but the exaggeration of facts I do know makes me suspicious.
See my correction, agree with both points, I don’t think it changes the example, I did a quick google and I’m not into weightlifting/strongman stuff, so I didn’t realize my misinformation was an order of magnitude off.
I still think it’s essentially fair to say these dudes are “buffer” than historical dudes and seem to owe that to advances in training and (primarily) PEDs
Nitpick that doesn’t bear upon the main thrust of the article:
More plausibly Josh Silvas weighs 220-ish kg, not 400 kg, and there’s no way he has anywhere near 300+ kg of muscle. To contextualize, the heaviest WSM winners ever weighed around 200-210 kg (Hafthor, Brian); Brian in particular had a lean body mass of 156 kg back when he weighed 200 kg peaking for competition (‘peaking’ implies unsustainability), which is the highest DEXA figure I’ve ever found in years of following strength-related statistics.
I saw that too and I don’t think it’s a nitpick. All of that was raised in support of the idea that human limits are much greater than we think, so having a couple of examples that are off by a factor of two is not a small difference. In addition to the wild claims about a human with 350 kg of muscle mass, I know the world record for unequipped deadlift is just shy of 1,100 pounds/500kg. “Lifting a car” can’t mean picking it off the ground entirely no matter how small it is; my Miata weighs about 2,400 pounds and other than something like a Lotus Elise it’s right at the lowest weight available. I’m willing to buy “picking up the back of a tiny car while leaving the front wheels on the ground, but again that’s not what you implied.
I have no idea about whether you raised your IQ with your method, but the exaggeration of facts I do know makes me suspicious.
See my correction, agree with both points, I don’t think it changes the example, I did a quick google and I’m not into weightlifting/strongman stuff, so I didn’t realize my misinformation was an order of magnitude off.
I still think it’s essentially fair to say these dudes are “buffer” than historical dudes and seem to owe that to advances in training and (primarily) PEDs