Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Until we have some serious transhumanist body modifications available to the general public, swordsmen, martial-artists, and baseball batters will have to stick to the kind of morphological refinement available to us. To whit - exercise, with or without hormones etc., and regardless of if those chemical aids are from natural mutations or medical help.

Exercise at a specialized task from an early age deforms the skeleton as well as builds muscle-mass. The skeleton of Sir John de Strickley[1] was unearthed at Stirling castle, and is a fantastic case study of what knightly training actually did to your body.
His right shoulder-blade is warped and rippled to an extent you just don't see in modern people, and his arm bones are ridged and flanged; he worked so hard with his right arm that his body deformed the bone to produce more muscle attachment points. His left side is less drastic, but still well developed - his shield arm took impact in different ways from his sword and lance arm.
This man was visibly deformed to become a specialist at the job of wielding weapons in combat to murder other people; he was lop-sided.
He also had classical knightly injuries, like a healed blade wound to the forehead that scarred the bone but didn't penetrate the braincase, bashed front teeth (typical of both a punch to the face, and a shield to the face), lower back injury (from bouncing around in the saddle for hours and hours) and an infected crushed ankle (typical from having a horse roll on you).

Sir John de Strickley, and other knights like him, clearly felt strength was important.

[1] Probably John de Strickley - they don't have an inscription over his burial or clearly identifying artifacts; he was definitely a knight from the south of England. Incidentally, he probably died of an arrow wound or the subsequent infection - they found the barbed head of the war arrow still lodged in his rib bones.

Oh I agree activity can have some quite astounding effects on the body. There are the oft quoted examples of english archers and viking rowers as well.

It's how we then jump to expressing that in GURPS terms that can be an issue.

As I said earlier I tend to go with bonuses narrow in scope to go with the narrow focus, rather then board bonuses that have a much wider application.