Why you get stronger when you lift weights
Muscle Growth Is Very Strongly Correlated with Strength Gains after Lower Body Resistance Training: New Insight from Within-Participant Associations
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Muscle growth explained over 85% of strength gains, not neural adaptations.
For decades, fitness culture has emphasized ‘neural adaptations’ as the reason beginners get stronger fast—this study shows that even in beginners, muscle growth dominates after just 15 weeks.
Practical Takeaways
Focus on progressive overload and compound lifts to maximize muscle growth—don’t waste time on ‘neural tricks’ like visualization or slow eccentrics alone.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Muscle growth explained over 85% of strength gains, not neural adaptations.
For decades, fitness culture has emphasized ‘neural adaptations’ as the reason beginners get stronger fast—this study shows that even in beginners, muscle growth dominates after just 15 weeks.
Practical Takeaways
Focus on progressive overload and compound lifts to maximize muscle growth—don’t waste time on ‘neural tricks’ like visualization or slow eccentrics alone.
Publication
Journal
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
Year
2025
Authors
E. Marques, T. G. Balshaw, M. Funnell, Emmet J. McDermott, S. Maeo, Lewis J. James, Jonathan P Folland
Related Content
Claims (10)
When guys who've never lifted weights before start training, using super detailed muscle scans and taking strength readings twice helps scientists measure changes more accurately—so they can tell for sure if bigger muscles mean stronger muscles.
When scientists look at how one person changes over time—like how their muscles grow and get stronger together—they find a super strong link. But when they compare different people to each other, that link looks much weaker.
When guys who never lifted weights before started doing leg workouts for 15 weeks, their thigh muscles got 12.7% bigger—and super-precise MRI scans proved it, showing this tech is great for tracking muscle growth.
When guys who’ve never lifted weights before start training, their muscles get stronger partly because their brain gets better at telling the muscles to fire harder — but most of the strength gain still comes from the muscles actually getting bigger.
When guys who’ve never lifted weights before train their legs for 15 weeks, the more their muscles grow, the stronger they get—so muscle growth is mostly why they get stronger.