# What's the difference between strong muscles and big muscles? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 6, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183 "2013-09-06T16:14:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183/21 "2013-09-07T20:51:58Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Will you accept a statement that there is curently no evidence that hyperplasia (new cells) occurs in human muscles and that the current standard teaching is that all we can do is hypertrophy what we got … and some of us come more type 1 and some more type 2? Absolutely. All I remembered was it used to be accepted that hyperplasia occurred in humans but I really haven’t kept up on the latest since it really wasn’t something I worried about when i lift. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183/22 "2013-09-07T20:53:03Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I have been doing push-ups for over a half of a year now. I do 60-70 every day. I have also been doing other upperbody exercises, as well as pushing my manual lawn mower every week. > > My arms are big now (to my eye). But they don’t seem very cut or firm. Just big. I guess I was hoping for more sinew. They kind of startle me when I look in the mirror. I’m thinking of discontinuing my exercises. > > I do have mild hypotonia. I’m wondering if maybe my muscles compensate for lack of tone by bulking up. > > Anyone know if this is can happen, or am I just grasping at straws? It depends on what you are looking for. Muscle tone is a state where a few of the muscle fibers are contracted when the body part is at rest. This increases with exercise. But you cannot spot reduce fat. So you aren’t going to reduce fat in your arms by doing a lot of pushups, as opposed to exercising any other body part. Push ups are not only a triceps exercise (the muscle on the back of your upper arm) but a chest and shoulder exercise as well. The close you bring your hands together, the more the triceps are worked. You might want to add a biceps exercise, to increase the size of the biceps muscle. Arm curls with soup cans or a bag of books works fine. Increasing the size of your biceps will sort of stretch the skin on your upper arms so the muscles are more apparent. You cannot change the shape of a muscle. You can make it bigger, but you cannot change the attachment locations or how the fibers are arranged. 60 push ups a day is pretty impressive, especially for a female. How intensely you are working the target muscles depends on how many you do in a row, how strictly you do them, are you resting your knees on the ground, etc. You could also try dips, especially [bench dips](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dip_(exercise)). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183/23 "2013-09-08T02:54:50Z")
**Shodan** , **monstro** is somewhat unlikely to have too much fat - last I heard her BMI was under 19. Agreed that what she is thinking as arm defintion would be served well by including some biceps work. Hard body movie stars aside though most people, especially women, don’t have too sinewy of a look at rest. **monstro** a bit of muscle mass, hard body or not, is good for your health. Don’t stop. And yes if you are low tone at rest you are even more unlikely than most to look sinewy at rest. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183/24 "2013-09-12T17:24:42Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Will you accept a statement that there is curently no evidence that hyperplasia (new cells) occurs in human muscles and that the current standard teaching is that all we can do is hypertrophy what we got … and some of us come more type 1 and some more type 2? So, is the current theory that the number of muscle cells is fixed _in utero_, or at some point later in life? Could an active four year-old, for example, increase his/her muscle cells? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2013, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183/25 "2013-09-12T21:45:53Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > So, is the current theory that the number of muscle cells is fixed _in utero_, or at some point later in life? Could an active four year-old, for example, increase his/her muscle cells? My understanding is that the current belief is as expressed in [this bit](http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5144197_process-skeletal-muscle-growth.html): > [@](#): > > Skeletal muscle cells, called muscle fibers, develop within the womb. Small cells called myoblasts fuse together to form muscle fibers. Since each muscle fiber is made by the fusion of a hundred or more myoblasts, each skeletal muscle fiber has a hundred or more nuclei. Once this fusion is complete, skeletal muscle fibers lose the ability to undergo mitosis (cell division). This means that the number of skeletal muscle fibers each person has is set before birth. > > Because skeletal muscles cannot grow by adding more muscle fibers, they grow by making changes to the fibers that are already present in the muscle. Skeletal muscles grow through hypertrophy, which is the enlargement of muscle fibers. I would be unsurprised to hear at some future point that such is actually an overstatement and that some new cell growth does occur (just like we’ve learned that the old view of no new neurons was not 100% accurate) … **rp** pointed out some research in animal models that demonstrates that such is at least possible … but significant amounts? Highly improbable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-difference-between-strong-muscles-and-big-muscles/668183.md?page=1)