how to gain no muscle, yet lift virtually any occasional chair

File this under enjoyable math: I know that a lot of people come to lifting weights with a kind of mortal fear of ganing muscle. They don’t want to be bulky; they don’t want to gain weight; they don’t want to gain muscle. To me, this is like saying “I don’t want to pee in the ocean, because I might drown the fish.” But never mind that for now.

Readers of LIFTOFF know that even the most un-seasoned lifter, the plainest-of-chicken-breast of lifters, can gain strength steadily and predictably in their early days (for six months to a year), if they eat, if they rest. This looks like: show up to work out, squat zero pounds. Next session, squat five pounds. Next session, squat ten pounds. Then fifteen. Then twenty. And on and on.

LIFTOFF readers also know that bodies gain actual, material muscle very slowly. No one gains physical muscle faster than un-seasoned lifters, but the rate is still slow: about a pound a month, for women. That means with six months of all-out, textbook-perfect effort, a newbie lifter would gain six pounds of muscle.

Except: For very new lifters, their bodies aren’t yet primed to really build muscle tissue, per se. They are too akimbo, physically. Most of the training that looks like strength in the very early days is actually their bodies learning basic coordination: When this muscle fires, this one needs to chime in, and then that one follows.