Comment by machomaster

It is unreasonable to talk about newbies. They grow from anything. I mean, you put newbies on the stationary bike and their pullups increase (real study!).

So we should talk about at least intermed. trainees.

And in those, the correlation does not go both ways. Getting more muscles does increase the strength, but getting stronger does not necessarily increase muscle (technique, neurological adaptations, etc).

Simply speaking, guys with big pecs and triceps are going to be strong in bench (even if they don't train it), but strong benchers (especially if they mostly train in 1-3 reps range, outside of hypertrophy 5-30) don't necessarily have big pecs/triceps.

So yeah, the parent was correct in asking what the previous parent mean by having great gains. Because getting stronger does not necessarily mean that your muscles also grew substantionally. Also, if you gained weight also doesn't mean the muscle gain. Due to leverages, the bench and squat results increase even if all you gained was pure fat.