Strength training and cross-sectional area of muscles.

As my friend Dr. R. J. Maughan pointed out in his recent paper in the Journal (Maughan, Watson and Weir, 1984) any discussion of the effect of training on the relationship between the strength and the cross-sectional area of a muscle should take into account the effect of changing the angle of pennation of the muscle fibres. In his discussion Dr. Maughan refers to his finding that, in untrained subjects, an inverse relationship exists between the strength/cross-sectional area ratio and the cross-sectional area of the quadriceps (r = -0.55). This apparent relationship is, however, an artefact. Significant inverse correlation will always be found between A/B and B.