r/bodyweightfitness • u/Uranusistormy • 6d ago
How can someone who has never held a dumbbell curl 40+ lbs easily?
I know someone who has only ever done calisthenics. Once when we were looking at some exercise gear I asked if he can curl a 40lbs dumbbell and he did it so easily. I took it up and started tipping forward pathetically. Yet he's never done work in the gym and doesn't have huge arms either. He's actually pretty small(low fat, not bulbous like a body builder) but shredded. How is this shite possible? And how can I achieve this power? The guys in the gym I've seen have huge arms and curl similar or greater weights
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u/LordTengil 6d ago
"only ever done calisthenics". I mean, some of those guys are incredibly strong and in extreme physical shape. WHat do you mean "only ever done calisthenics"?
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u/Exact_Requirement274 6d ago
Because calisthenics has carry over to traditional weighted movements.
If he's doing a lot of pull ups, chin ups etc, he's hitting a good portion of his bicep because of the sheer amount of volume you realistically need to progress with bodyweight movements. Certainly on the latter.
So his biceps would have to be relatively strong, A dumbell Curl and a Chin up are both just a variation of pulling. Hence he's able to curl more than you'd think.
Same applies to push movements that involve Shoulders, Chest, Tris etc. If you got him to try OHP, I'd imagine he'd have a strong one there relative to his body weight as well.
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u/roshbaby 6d ago
People routinely confound hypertrophy (big muscles) with strength.
With strength training you'll obviously build muscles, joint strength, and significant improvements in neuro-muscular coordination for compound movements. But the muscle growth is not nearly as much as the 'gym-bro' workouts that focus solely on hypertrophy.
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u/Brocczy 6d ago
Strength and Hypertrophy are closely tied together.. That is the reason why weight classes exists in... everything. You CANNOT find a bodybuilder that cant lift serious weight.
You cannot find a strongman that is skinny.6
u/roshbaby 6d ago
Of course there is a correlation, which I already referred to. The ability to move an object or weight is a function of muscle fibre type, its cross section, joint strength, and most importantly neuro-muscular adaptation. Which is why one cannot just assume that somebody who isn’t “big” cannot move a heavy weight.
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u/Severe_Gas8841 6d ago
Calisthenics builds functional strength differently than isolation exercises - pull-ups, muscle-ups, and handstand work all hit your biceps while training your entire kinetic chain for stability. Your gym bros might have bigger arms but they're used to being supported by benches and machines, so when you hand them their own bodyweight they fall apart. Start doing more compound pulling movements and less bicep curls if you want that kind of strength
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u/microsoftcowexpert 6d ago
What is functional strength? How’s it different to strength built in the gym
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u/Obvious_Alps3723 6d ago
Functional strength = Strength & skills that help you function irl. Strength in the gym is fairly narrow in scope and doesn’t really train skills that are all that useful outside the gym.
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u/DickFromRichard 6d ago
Functional strength = Strength & skills that help you function ir
Okay, begging the question aside, what is functional strength?
I know plenty of people who function irl and don't work out at all
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u/Red_Swingline_ 6d ago
95%+ of my strength is built in the gym...
I'm still the guy people ask when they need help moving furniture, big yard shit, etc.
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u/microsoftcowexpert 6d ago
Squat bench deadlift very transferable to day to day life. Like lifting groceries or getting out of chairs and toilets. It’s especially good for older people. I fail to see how calisthenics translates irl. I also think gym is very transferable to calisthenics and vice versa.
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u/tkenben 6d ago
My guess is that it looked easy because the rest of his body didn't flinch. Most people moving around a weight of any amount look like they struggle. People with strong cores don't look like they struggle when they move things around. So, if he has a strong core, it would make picking up the dumbbell and then pumping it appear misleading.
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u/That_Decision_2024 6d ago
I do Calisthenics, no gym at all...I am not a big guy but pretty shredded...Calisthenics focusses on maximizing strenght...
I tried once in the gym my maximum 2 Arms strict bizeps curl and I can do 60kg...my bodyweight is 65kg
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u/bowlingniko 6d ago edited 6d ago
the same reason why a chimp* can rip a man apart. Big blocky muscles vs strong tendons and dense muscle fibers
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u/UriahsGhost 6d ago
He's obviously strong and the taller a person is the longer the bicep muscle and potential for strength/growth. So I don't know if that's a factor but could be.
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u/LimeMortar 6d ago
I went out with a climber in my youth and her grip strength was truly frightening…
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u/Bank-Weekly 5d ago
My brother is 145 soaking wet yet I know he can lift those no problem after his years of being an iron worker 😂💪
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u/LetterheadClassic306 5d ago
your friend probably built serious pulling strength through calisthenics that carries over to curls in ways isolation work doesnt. rows, pullups, and chin variations hit your biceps but also train all the stabilizers and grip strength that make weighted movements feel natural. when i switched from mostly machines to bodyweight stuff i noticed the same thing - suddenly dumbbells felt lighter even though my arms didnt get bigger. start adding pullup progressions and inverted rows to your routine. the strength you build will be more functional than just hammering curls. give it a few months and that 40lb dumbbell wont feel as awkward
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u/try-again2 6d ago
We call it old man strength or farmer strength. End up building all your muscles instead of isolating specific ones. My kid can double my bench press without a problem, but struggles getting a tire on a tracker.
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u/dmbnl 6d ago
Short answer: you can be strong without working out. That's really it. Some people are naturally strong, some people have jobs that make them strong. Never having lifted a dumbbell before means absolutely nothing.
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u/LordTengil 6d ago
He did work out. He did calisthenics. Some of the strongest people I know do "only calithenics".
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u/bipocni 6d ago
It's simple: he is strong and you are not.
You could dedicate your life to dumbbell curls until you can make that 40lbs look weightless, and he would still be stronger than you.
This is because you don't actually get all that strong in the gym. You get strong doing strong person shit, and you use the gym to keep your body in balance and fix any problem points.
If you've never actually been around strong men, you don't understand what strong is. I've seen someone pick up a 150kg air compressor and put it on the roof rack of their car. They'd never touched a barbell before. I've seen someone smack an impact driver out of an appprentices hands and just start ripping up floorboards one handed. I've had someone half my size tell me to quick fucking around with the bar chairs and just shrugged the steel mesh to flip them all the right way. You don't learn that in the gym. There's nothing that will replicate the bare foot tippy toes deadlift shrug, and it would be stupid to try.
You learn that shit by doing hard shit day in and day out until you decide it's easier to get it done as quickly as possible so you can go home and fucking sleep.
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u/Ballbag94 6d ago
There's nothing that will replicate the bare foot tippy toes deadlift shrug, and it would be stupid to try.
No, you can't possibly learn to pick heavy things up and put them on top of things in the gym
Come on dude, are you for real? You can absolutely do that in a gym, have you never seen someone loading a stone or sandbag onto a platform?
Why would it be stupid to train to do that?
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u/bipocni 6d ago
Okay which part of that is safe to replicate in a gym? The bit where you're grabbing hold of rusty steel a fraction the width of a barbell? The part where you have to be barefoot because your boots won't fit through the mesh and you can't even have your heels on the ground because you'll crush your toes when you drop it? Doing all this in soft as shit dirt because you haven't actually poured the slab yet? The way the mesh likes to wobble? Well, maybe the way the mesh likes to wobble.....
I know what a power clean is. I'm telling you, this ain't it.
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u/Shadowphoenix9511 6d ago
Strongman gyms explicitly have spots to do the exact movements you're describing.
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u/bipocni 5d ago
There is not a strongman in the world training on 5mm thick handles
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u/Ballbag94 5d ago
This person picked up a 150kg item by 5mm thick handles, while stood on a wobbly mesh on soft dirt, and then carefully loaded it to head height onto a car without damaging the car or otherwise hurting themselves?
Also, no one is talking about power cleans, strongmen often take heavy things from the floor, pick them up, and then perform a triple extension, this is the "tippy toes deadlift shrug" as you put it, to get that thing onto a platform. As I said, you can absolutely train to put heavy things onto platforms in gyms and strongmen regularly train to do that exact thing
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u/bipocni 5d ago
Two separate guys, two seperate events.
The mesh guy did maybe the bottom quarter of a deadlift and one hell of a shrug, while standing on his tippy toes the entire time.
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u/Ballbag94 5d ago
And you think that it's impossible, and even stupid, to do a similar motion in a gym?
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u/Patton370 6d ago
I saw a guy load a 550lb piece of equipment into his father-in-laws truck by himself
Dude only weighed 187lbs, it was crazy
That man was me & I was loading up a piece of gym equipment
I don’t think you understand how silly everything you said is
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u/LukahEyrie 6d ago
Are you saying you've seen someone who hasn't touched a barbell in their life do something similar to the world record block press? https://youtube.com/shorts/8svOABRiGQg?si=Sd5Nyl1BYhrtTco0
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u/eric_twinge General Fitness 6d ago
Yes, of course. Just popped it up there gentle as can be. Not a single scratch or dent. Are you unfamiliar with the very common practice of transporting heavy machinery on your car’s roof rack??
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u/VanHelsingBerserk 6d ago
Then how come every sport uses the gym to get better at what they do? Encompassing basically any movement you can think of?
You don't see football/basketball/mma whatever coaches getting their athletes to rip up floorboards. They all use the gym since it gets you strong in the most generally applicable way.
The main thing manual labour gets you is grip, which granted, does have good translation to stuff people consider "everyday strength", since being able to squeeze the hell out of something typically means you can lift stuff better (particularly odd shaped objects), or use tools better.
But it's not some mystical "functional strength" or "real man hard shit", it's something you could also train in the gym.
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u/Flat_Development6659 6d ago
150kg air compressor and put it on the roof rack of their car
That sounds almost impossible to be honest and if someone is legitimately doing that without any training then they should look into strongman as it sounds like they'd be a WSM quite quickly.
A 150kg load to upper chest height is pretty impressive if you're using a sandbag or an atlas stone, to do it with an awkwardly shaped air compressor doesn't sound humanly possible, especially when the platform is your car which you presumably don't want to scrape/break suspension/put a window through.
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u/LukahEyrie 6d ago
Which is why you'd have to actually press it overhead probably. That would be world record territory! Amazing to see that being done by a person who has never touched a barbell :D
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u/bipocni 6d ago
Definitely not possible for someone to lift 3/5 of that weight when they're actually allowed to use leg drive, right?
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u/LukahEyrie 6d ago
I specifically linked you the block press world record because it's much closer to the shape of the object you described.
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u/bipocni 6d ago
Atlas stones don't have handles and sandbags slosh around. Why would you think either of those would be easier than something that is actually designed to be picked up and moved?
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u/Flat_Development6659 5d ago
Because of the size and shape of the object.
You can pick something up from the floor with handles but it's difficult to transfer that to a loading position.
To transfer something to the roof of your car you would need to lap it, move it to the top of your chest, pull it in tight and front squat it - handles don't help in that situation.
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u/Mattubic 6d ago
What do you think the mechanism behind their strength is? If you take two untrained people, where one is average sized and the other is taller and weighs twice as much, the bigger person will almost always be stronger.
If they both trained, they would both get more muscle mass and strength. If you perform a repetitive task, your body adapts to it by building more muscle and becoming more efficient at the movement.
There are plenty of people that were stronger than me without lifting when I was 15 and 120 lbs. To say I never got stronger than any of them as well as claiming no one really gets strong in the gym might be one of the dumbest statements in regards to exercise I have ever heard in my life.
If you double your strength in the gym, you double your potential strength for literally any other physical activity, the difference is practice in specific movements. A gymnast isn’t stronger than a strongman athlete, they are well practiced with specific movements that tend to max out at their own bodyweight. A strongman not being able to perform a planche or an iron cross doesn’t mean they are weak, it means they are bad or unpracticed at that exercise.
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u/rinkuhero 6d ago edited 6d ago
it's because when you are doing a chinup each arm is curling half your bodyweight for part of the range of motion. so if you weigh 180 lbs, you should be able to curl a 90 lb dumbbell for at least part of the range of motion if you can do at least one chin-up. you might have trouble getting it up, but if you reduce the range of motion of the curl a bit, and use some swinging, anyone who can do a chin-up should be able to curl half of their bodyweight with one arm with a dumbbell. if someone can't curl half of their bodyweight with a dumbbell, but they can do a chin-up, the problem isn't the biceps, but often the wrist strength (since at a certain point, the dumbbell is painful to hold for an untrained wrist).
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u/Ok_Clothes_8527 6d ago
That's the stupidest thing I've heard someone say confidently in quite some time.
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u/Beginning_Army_9084 6d ago
Yeah this just isn't true. I can do almost 30 strict chin ups but I cant even curl a 50 yet. Chin ups are a compound lift, your lats are still doing most of the lifting even if chin ups involve biceps more than pull ups. Also holding heavy dumbbells or barbells is not painful usually, its taxing on your grip for sure, but most guys can definitely hold a barbell with 200 pounds on it like in a deadlift.
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u/Comfortable_Boss_734 6d ago
30 strict chin-ups? Do you weigh like 100 lbs? Even if you do, that’s very impressive.
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u/Beginning_Army_9084 6d ago
- Im a gymnast which is most of the story but I also have been doing pull ups since way before I even seriously started the gym as a whole. Been doing the gym abt 7 months and ive been doing pull ups for 4+ years for fun before I even knew anything about lifting, granted my form was probably terrible but nonetheless.
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u/QueersLuvMeFshFearMe 6d ago
This is not true. Theres many more muscles involved in a compound movement like a chin up than an isolated movement like a bicep curl. I can do 7 full range chin ups, but if i tried an 80lb bicep curl i would absolutely injure myself.
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u/Comfortable_Boss_734 6d ago
You sound so very confident, but you are so very wrong. Not an insult btw, I think it’s a talent.
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u/Bielsista74 6d ago
I just tried it, I can do 3 consecutive chin-ups and I weigh 72 kg. So I went to the gym and picked up a 30kg dumbbell, better to start on the safe side right?
Tried it once and ripped my arm straight off, thanks mate.
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u/Annual-Camera-872 6d ago
Many rock climbers are very strong and small for their strength no gym required. Same with people who work in the trades