@Bamboo Training Your body weight is relevant to your pound-for-pound strength, and your height (specifically the lengths of your limbs) affects the leverage you have when lifting.
@Bamboo Training WSM competitors are tall because you need a tall frame to build up to such huge lean body masses. Like, you can't be 5 feet tall and 400 pounds lean; it's just not anatomically feasible. Also, some of the events are designed such that height gives an advantage. For example, being tall makes it easier to lift the Atlas stones high enough to reach the pedestals. Even in basic powerlifting, long arms are an advantage in the deadlift because you don't have to bend down as far to reach the weight. But those long arms then work against you when you go to bench press, so an athlete who is very good at one is typically not so good in the other. But yes, short arms do give a leverage advantage in pressing and pulling movements. For the sake of simplicity, imagine a bicep curl. Now imagine that instead of holding the weight at your hand, you can hold it at the middle of your forearm. Wouldn't you expect your maximum curl to be higher that way? To make it more extreme, you could even move the weight very close to your elbow. Then you'd barely have to move the weight to rotate your elbow 90 degrees. You can set up a rig to try this if you're still skeptical. Also, consider the lifting records for the various weight classes. The higher weight classes consistently have less pound-for-pound strength than the lower classes. If they're all top level athletes, why would that be? It's Galileo's square-cube law in action.
@Bamboo Training First of all, I don't get why you're so angry. I'm just explaining my point to the best of my ability. Anyway... Here's another way to look at it. The amount of torque a muscle can exert on a joint is proportionate to its cross-sectional area. Greater cross-sectional area = more and/or bigger muscle fibers. (Things like muscle fiber type, tendon insertion placement, and CNS / muscle fiber recruitment are also factors.) Making those muscle fibers longer doesn't increase how hard they can pull, yet it adds muscle and bone weight, and it turns the limbs into longer lever arms. That's why, when you look at competitive powerlifters across weight classes, they tend to have proportionately stout physiques and thick limbs, and none of them are long and gangly like Yao Ming. I'll also mention that the leverage difference is subtle. Like, someone who is 6'5" is only 10% taller than someone who is 5'10". So if you took a 5'10" guy and stretched him out to 6'5" while leaving his thickness the same, he would be 10% heavier and 10% weaker. The difference is small enough that if you had two randomers at the gym, the taller, thinner guy can easily be stronger due to other factors. However, the anatomical leverage really becomes important at the elite level, where the ideal body types for the sport dominate. It's like in basketball where height is an advantage. A short guy can get good and beat taller guys at his local court, but in the NBA, even the "short" players are tall compared to the general population. The article below explains similar ideas about anatomical leverage, and perhaps that author does a better job than I can. Interestingly, it even includes a dwarf as one of the example powerlifters. www.t-nation.com/training/4-genetic-factors-that-determine-your-success
@Bamboo Training Strongmen are tall because they have to have big frames to build up enough muscle to compete. There are taller outliers in lower weight classes because there are are many factors in powerlifting other than height. I also found a list of 25 NBA players who were well under 6 feet, and one of them was only 5'3". Does that mean that height isn't important in basketball? herosports.com/nba/shortest-nba-players-muggsy-bogues-earl-boykins-keith-jennings-spud-webb-aiai Instead of cherry picking a few counterexamples, look at the overall trends. In the record charts for all three powerlifts in all weight classes, there is a consistent trend that as the weight class goes up, the pound-for-pound strength goes down. It's physics; the heavier powerlifters tend to be taller and have less leverage. www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/strong-strength-standards-raw-natural-lifters I found another video that talks about powerlifting leverage in great detail, with diagrams for extra clarity. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2aY2gOsfgAY.html
It's sad when people try to down someones achievement and say its less than what it clearly is. To say these are 25s they don't realise they are basically insulting themselves and saying they don't have much experience in a gym. You clearly haven't worked with dumbbells much if you think they are 25s.
