Maintaining ST

[VonKatzen]

GURPS has optional rules for maintaining skills, but what about Strength? Extreme levels of Strength are simply not possible without an immense diet, solid sleeping, and constant resistance training of the sort that is not possible without specifically designed equipment and what amounts of a part-time job of lifting and eating. Realistically this should cut into the time available for training other skills (this is why one rarely sees powerlifter karate masters).

This is one of the most unrealistic features of many fictional heroes. While being very strong can be attributed to genetics and an active lifestyle, reaching the upper levels of human strength requires exhausting gymnasium work, exhausting 'see food' diets, and is usually accompanied by cocktails of performance enhancing drugs. Yet I have found no rules for 'maintaining ST', which is realistically just as hard (in terms of time investment and focus) as maintaining skills at chess. Of all the physical attributes a high ST is the hardest to justify without a nonstop diet-and-excercise routine. World class powerlifters, linebackers and bodybuilders are notorious for losing dozens of pounds of muscle mass and gaining large levels of fat in the off season and this is while they're still working out 5 days a week.

This is part of the reason that history gives us very few examples of people with powerlifter levels of ST. While many historical people were quite large, and strong, they simply did not have access to the food, equipment, money and steroids required to reach the upper levels. I seriously doubt whether even professional athletes in the ancient world could touch the sheer lifting power of today's top-competitors, and not for want of trying. Someone who possessed this level of strength from sheer genetic overbuild may be imaginable, but pretty much justifies an Unusual Background. And even such a person would have to lose strength and mass if he didn't eat constantly.

Genetics and activity can justify maintaining a higher-than-average ST while adventuring or practicing other skills (especially physical skills), but (in a realistic campaign) people with a 15-19 Lifting ST should absolutely have to spend as much time on their lifting routines as they do practicing karate and computer hacking, if not more.

It also takes a long time to build mass - even with careful training, diet and drugs one can only gradually increase strength. Top level lifters and builders are in their late 30s-40s, and this isn't because they were all drinking and playing Yahtzee in their 20s. Unfit people increase their physical strength rapidly, and rapidly plateau. Fit people increase their strength very slowly, by fighting catabolic forces in their body and adding tiny amounts of mass over time. This is why steroids are so effective - they counteract catabolic forces in the body. But even though many (maybe most) lifters and builders use steroids at least some of the time it still takes years - or decades - to achieve their levels of strength. Increasing ST at higher levels is even more demanding than at lower levels, and is an even larger time/resource sink.

The same may be true of DX or IQ, but these are much harder to quantify than ST. We have a plethora of real-world data on physical strength and mass gains, and though the exact routines of the world-class lifters, builders and super-heavyweight fighters vary in detail they are very similar in overall shape: lift, eat, sleep almost every single day for twenty years. Then - and only then - you may be able to compete with Ronnie Coleman. Note that these guys obviously have genetic advantages already - frame, size, muscle building efficiency - and that's why they're at the top. You need all these advantages combined with drugs to reach the top levels of human strength. A person who only has natural ability or drugs is going to be at a much lower level. A person who doesn't constantly excercise won't even be in the running, even with drugs and genetics behind him.

This all flies out the window at TL9+ when people start having muscles implanted and get their genomes spliced with lions. But for TL0-8 it's very sanguine.