lean supple muscle or short tight muscle?

[panupong81]

here is kind of a silly question... I've heard of these terms a lot describing muscle (lean and supple vs short and tight). Is there really such a thing, really? I am obviously not as strong as many of you as I am new to strength training. However my muscles remain soft most of the time but become hard and enlarge while I work out or flex. As I build muscles, will I start to develop the tighter muscles that some people talk about? I try to stretch as much as possible after a workout and during the day as I need a blend of strength and flexibility. Any insight would be appreciated, thanks

[doit]

Take a look at this picture from Pavel's book Power to the people:
http://www.dump.no/view/files/74ca489b2114/myofibriliar_vs_sarcoplasmic.jpg

Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy comes mostly from high rep training, this is the kind of growth were bodybuilders get much of the muscular size from.
Myofibriliar hypertrophy is achieved from training with very heavy weights.

Since you are pretty new to strength training, you will not remain tight for very long yet. But in time, I guess you will

A Quote taken from the book:

Strength = tension = tone. It is that simple. Provided you gain strength learning
to generate tension, rather than by building muscle, generally the stronger you are,
the harder you will be! Strength and tone training is the same thing.

Hope it helped.