Could "Strength" be Defined (Even) More Clearly?

[VNV]

...when you do a pullup, where is the resistance? Is it external? ...

(Not sure if this will help, but will share anyway.)

This reminds me of "sprung" vs. "unsprung" mass in a vehicle.

In the case of lifting, the sprung mass is acted on by the muscle. The unsprung mass would be all muscle involved in producing the force. Sometimes the sprung mass is mostly/all external (deadlift), other times is it mostly internal (chins).

[Bergstedt]

I guess my quarrel enters when I wonder what "more force" means. "More" in terms of what? It's easy enough to say you've gotten stronger when your 1RM goes up..but like I've mentioned, what about when someone's ability to produce tonnage goes up but not one's 1RM?

If you can do 100 pull ups in a 10 minute bout, we say that being able to do 101 isn't going to help you get much better at anything. And I agree. But we also say (or at least I was under this impression) that you haven't gotten any stronger. But if you're now able to produce more tonnage overall, and by definition produce more force overall, then how have you not gotten stronger?

I have had similar discussions with friends at the gym, and I have (at least for myself and in the spirit of "strength being the most general of adaptations") concluded that strength, as in "producing force against an external resistance", is a viable predictor of a person's potential to do many sub-maximal reps. A larger off-set from the person's 1RM means a bigger rep-potential, meaning that a strong person is going to have a bigger potential for doing more reps at a weight that is more sub-maximal to him/her than someone who has to work at a % closer to his/her 1RM.

However, this does not mean that the person with the bigger 1RM will actually be able to perform more reps than someone with a smaller 1RM, since there is a skill component to "repping out" that requires training (to e.g. increase the relevant energy system's capacity) and practice (e.g. technique/movement economy).

Also, IMHO, the inverse is not true; i.e. the ability to do more reps than someone does not necessarily mean the ability to produce more force against an external resistance than this other person, unless the only aspect that is different between the two people is strength, and is not, e.g., technique, prior training on "repping out" or (genetic) ability to perform aerobic work (which follows from my conclusion in my first paragraph).

In other words, my line of thinking would probably play out something like this, if two people weighing 200 lbs was going to have a contest of who can perform the most chin-ups in one all-out set;

--- A has only performed sets of 1-5 reps with weighted chin-ups and has a 1RM of 350 lbs (bw +150 lbs), whereas B only performs @10 sets of body weight chin-ups with a PR of 20 reps but no clue of 1RM (and e1RM is probably very dodgy in this rep range) - B would probably win, due to lots of specific training and practice,

--- both A and B has only performed sets of 1-5 reps with weighted chin-ups, and A has a 1RM of 350 lbs (bw +150 lbs) and B has a 1RM of 250 lbs (bw +50 lbs) - A would probably win, due to being stronger.