Are extreme body-builders as strong as strongmen?

[VaguelySensible]

They appear to lift massive weights and have massive muscles, so why aren't they strongmen? Do they ever compete in strongmen competitions, and, if so, how do they compare in strength?

Bodybuilding focuses on muscle growth for aesthetics rather than strength training. So bodybuilders can lift relatively heavy weights, but the aim is to do so in such a way as to maximise visual muscle - typically, this means bodybuilders lift lower weights for more reps whereas strength trainers aim for increasingly heavier weights for fewer reps but concentrating on form. Bodybuilders are comparatively weak, particularly since they’re aiming to make their muscle tone look good rather than be well developed for strength.

Stronger muscles are bigger than weaker ones. Is this not always true then?

I came on to say essentially what Comtesse said!

No, theres different types of muscle fibres that do different things, and training for strength or power or endurance are all slightly different, and won't have the same effect on muscle size.

It’s the way you train your muscles. You can develop visible muscles through many kinds of activity - runners, cyclists, dancers etc all do repetitive low-intensity training and will all be aesthetically muscular - but they aren’t building those muscles for strength so they won’t have the same lifting capacity as a strength trainer who lifts progressively heavier weights with the sole goal of increasing their weightlifting ability.

Body mass helps hugely in strongman. They also need to eat insane amounts of calories in order to build muscle. In order to not risk undereating most overeat and develop the typical strongman physique of massive arms and legs with a huge belly. Strongmen don’t do a huge amount of cutting unless they feel their weight will make them uncompetitive.

Bodybuilders want to show their muscle definition so they will aim to have as low a body fat percentage as possible during competitions, strongmen typically increase their weight leading up to a competition.

Terry Hollands, a British strongman has been competing in bodybuilding recently but had to drop a lot of body weight to do so.

Bodybuilding training typically involves techniques which cause muscle hypertrophy via growth in in muscle fibres primarily, but there is also some growth in non contractile tissue that could possibly be interpreted as scarring or just increases in connective tissue.

So broadly speaking strong men are the stronger in terms of strength relative to muscle volume, or relative to fat-free body mass