Why You Can Keep All Your Muscle but Still Lose Strength on a Cut — with Khash Farzam

And-

So why do you think this outcome?

I think part of it could be leverages.

It certainly could be leverages.

If you have more body fat, you're potentially getting better leverages, especially during a bench press.

I think in certain movements it benefits you more than others.

For example, I think in the deadlifts and any of the dynamic movements might be le- little bit less beneficial.

I think in the bench press it's probably the peak of the benefit that we see fr- from body fat mass.

I think a lot of it could be leverage driven, a lot of it could be a reduction in the, the range of motion as well.

Obviously, if you have, you know, if, if in any way you're reducing the range of motion-

Yeah

... through greater truncal thickness, and, uh, I think per- perhaps, uh, non-muscle tissue could also be helping with how effectively force is being transferred into the bar as well.

Obviously, I mean, the muscle's doing the actual work, but I think, uh, there's force production I think is a little bit more complicated than that.

If it was just as simple as, you know, bigger muscle is more strength, then I think, [laughs] you know, the, we wouldn't see people in lighter weight classes being, being stronger obviously.

But, uh, I think the distribution of the body mass, leverage is...

Stability I think could be another one too.

I think stability, I think if you're carrying a bit more weight, you're naturally gonna be more stable when you lift the bar up.

Likewise, when you're doing a squat, if you are carrying more weights, you're gonna f- be a little bit more stable, which, and my general understanding is that the more, in layman's terms so to speak, the more stable you are, the less the body has to hold itself back and the more it can continue to output that strength and power into the move.

If someone is unstable, the, an extreme example, if you're s- standing on one leg, you're very unstable, you're not very strong, right? You're not, your one leg squat is never gonna be strong.

If you're doing a one arm dumbbell, you know, bench press, that's gon- not gonna be good because, [laughs] you know, you're gonna be tipping over the place.

And if you're bigger person on the bench press, however that may be, wherever that size comes from, I think is a bit more stable.

And now a lot of that is a little bit more along the margins, for example.

Obviously, the difference between a one arm bench press, one leg squat, and a full squat, I think those differences are much more dramatic.

But if you're looking at peak performance, heavy lifting, 10, 20 pounds off the edges, marginal changes in performance, I think these factors can start to compound.

Lastly, I think being in a ca- caloric deficit itself and having lost weight, you know, I mentioned that energy levels go down.