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Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.

I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.

My conundrum is that I have some mutants easily able to lift 6 tons (and more - as in lift above their head and carry around), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record for bench-pressing is around 320kg¹ and the holder is already humongous.²

Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?

What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:

• Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).


• The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.


• If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.

<sub>1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.

2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.</sub>

Addendum: Of course, lifting capacity does not equal strength. But it is hard to exactly describe the physical raw power of someone. Lifting is used here as a common denominator for everyone to just show the order of magnitude involved.

Yes, there is likely a way, though I will admit I'm not sure how much of the desired about 20x difference it will get you. By the time you get into those mass ranges, the strength of the bones, tendons and attachments will likely be as important as, if not more so than, the muscles themselves. Also, as Spoki0 pointed out, technique matters.

That said...

Give them more fast-twitch muscle fibers, and less slow-twitch ones.

See for example How chimps outmuscle humans.

Slow-twitch muscle fiber (myosin heavy chain I) are better for endurance tasks, while fast-twitch muscle fiber (myosin heavy chain II; in the case of chimpanzees, specifically type IIa and IId) come at a higher energy cost and are better for speed and short-term force. As stated in the linked article,

The researchers found that whereas human muscle contains, on average, about 70% slow-twitch fibers and 30% fast-twitch fibers, chimpanzee muscle is about 33% slow-twitch fibers and 66% fast-twitch fibers.

By running simulations, it was found that this difference of slow-twitch vs fast-twitch fibers resulted in an overall muscle which was 1.34 to 1.35 times as powerful, depending on the exact metric. The researchers performing the study concluded that

These results suggest that the larger fraction of MHC II fibers and the longer muscle fiber lengths characteristic of chimpanzee skeletal muscle will increase their dynamic force and power-producing capabilities overall.

and that

Although our simulations do not reproduce the earlier experimental designs in detail, the close approximation of our results to the 1.5 times average suggests that muscle mechanics—MHC isoform content, in particular—accounts for much, but not necessarily all, of the measured chimpanzee–human performance differential. Muscle “static strength,” defined as maximum isometric force-producing capabilities (P_o), is not significantly different between these two species and therefore does not contribute to their performance differential[.]

Therefore, it stands to reason that by tweaking the muscle fiber composition to favor type II, and by increasing the length of individual muscle fibers, you can increase muscle power without a corresponding increase of muscle volume, but at the cost of muscle endurance.

Strength and muscles

Strength does not inherently correlate with muscle size.

Increasing your neural activation, that is, simply utilizing more of the muscle fibers, can greatly increase your strength without the fibers being significantly larger. Certain people train specifically for this, ex. sprinters, as the increased mass would slow them down again.

That's not gonna get you to lifting 6 tons by itself, but could be a starting point. Very efficient neural activation.

Not all muscle fibers are equal.

Different fibers are specialized at different things. Think heart vs. pecs. While it is very specialized, the estimated bite force for a human is around 135kg. The related muscle is much smaller than other muscles typically associated with those numbers.

While I don't know of any existing muscle fibers in nature that would scale up to 6 tons of lifting in a human, that could be something to explore.

Bones and tendons

As mentioned in another answer, there is more to lifting than simply your muscle. Bones and tendons might not be able to cope with the forces. You wouldn't want your guy grip something hard, and have the tendons to his fingers snap from the force, leaving him unable to grip for the future.

Therefore your chap would need some solid upgrades to his bones and tendons, to prevent the muscles from destroying them with the forces exerted.

Lifting and muscle strength

Lifting strength does not inherently correlate with muscle strength.

Many who do weightlifting notice that if they get proper form, they can lift more. Typically this would be because they are better balanced or activate supporting muscles that help during the lift. It is also safer and better for your body.

That's more of a heads up that even if your guy is super strong, he wouldn't inherently be able to lift super heavy. He might be limited by form, or even hurt himself due to the lack of it.

He'd still beat everyone at bench press though...

There have been good answers about fast twitch fibers and better neural activation. Both of those are good but the reason we have slower muscles and why our bodies only activate as few muscle fibers at a time as we do is that both of those are very energy intensive.

So, aside from better bones and tendons, the mutant needs to get oxygen and more (or better) nutrients to the muscles. This can be as simple as better blood flow to the muscles to as complex as completely redesigning the chemical energy system used by the muscles.

First you would need to define what is "lift". Because I would say that Eddie Hall 500kg is current record.

And with that segue - Eddie in talk with Brian Shaw (another strongman) talked about mental blockade of lifting heavy. That humans can lift even more (anecdotal sample of mother lifting car to save baby) but the brain is preventing them to do that to save from destroying their body (which is very easy as mentioned, both Shawn and Hall, have snapped their biceps. They have literally torn their muscles from bone it was attached to).

When lifting heavy, strongman often sniff ammonia to override part of that blockade.

Eddie Hall talked about sessions with psychologist to overcome that issue. Also how he lifted that 500 kilograms by "being somewhere else". So mental work is more important than physical one.

What would be the biggest enemy of "no more volume" is the bone density. Pulling would relay on muscles and tendons but pushing would also require bones (in first, you use rope, in second a piston). That's the reason why strongmen pull trucks and not push them. The bone might not be able to withstand the force that 6 tons would act upon them.

Today I read about a carbon fiber which can lift 12'600 times of its weight.

A mutant could grow a few such fibers or similar inside their muscles. Note that they also would need stronger bones, this means perhaps a different type of carbon fiber inside the hydroxylapatite structure of the bones.