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How come people can lift weights but not their wn body weight?

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Reply 60
Certain muscles can be underdeveloped which make it difficult. Before i became serious at the gym i had developed some strength but I had neglected key compound exercises like pull ups, bent over rows etc.
Atm i can bench 70kg x 5
squat 120kg x 5
dead lift 100kg x 5 (Dont really do this ex much)

I'm not strong yet but i'm definitely not weak however despite this i struggle to do 2 pull ups lol. I weigh about 80kg around 15% body fat. My lats are undeveloped and I really don't know why its so hard for me to do pull ups, I can manage press ups though. When you weigh 80kg+ working with your bodyweight becomes rather difficult
Why would you expect to be able to pull your bodyweight easily when you can barely bench it?? Thats not an asymmetry thats just being a beginner
Original post by Requiem12
Certain muscles can be underdeveloped which make it difficult. Before i became serious at the gym i had developed some strength but I had neglected key compound exercises like pull ups, bent over rows etc.
Atm i can bench 70kg x 5
squat 120kg x 5
dead lift 100kg x 5 (Dont really do this ex much)

I'm not strong yet but i'm definitely not weak however despite this i struggle to do 2 pull ups lol. I weigh about 80kg around 15% body fat. My lats are undeveloped and I really don't know why its so hard for me to do pull ups, I can manage press ups though. When you weigh 80kg+ working with your bodyweight becomes rather difficult


Not really. You're just a beginner. 80-90kg isn't that much. There are guys on here who way more than you and can do lots of pullups. Just keep at it. Consistency and progressive overload will bring results. Don't let yourself make these excuses.

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Reply 63
Original post by silent ninja
Not really. You're just a beginner. 80-90kg isn't that much. There are guys on here who way more than you and can do lots of pullups. Just keep at it. Consistency and progressive overload will bring results. Don't let yourself make these excuses.

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Its kind of hard to get better at pull ups when you cant do any in the first place ;(
Original post by civilstudent
How come you get strong lads/men lifting big weights but they cant lift there own body weight ie cant do pull ups? Im female and can do pull ups so can lift my own body weight yet I don't think I could lift heavy weights/barbells.


1. Strength is specific to movement patterns, e.g. being a good Deadlifter and Rower means you probably have a good lat development but it doesn't necessarily carry over as much as one would think to a movement like pullups (assuming you never perform the movement).

2. Strength doesn't scale linearly to bodyweight, it's proportional to your bodyweight to the power of ~0.63. This and the fact that there is obviously some kind of arbitrary constant involved i.e. if you plot world record holders BW against their lifts and extrapolate you wouldn't find that a 0kg lifter would lift 0kg even though such a concept is ridiculous yet it shows that a heavy lifter doing for example a 2*BW squat is more impressive than his lighter counterpart doing the same feat.
(edited 10 years ago)

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