ST, Arnold and Commando

[Tinman]

So I was wondering what ST Arnold had when he was in his movie prime (or in the film Commando).
Here's a pic of him from Commando.
https://imagesyoulike.com/images/100...x24/285215.jpg

Thanks.

[Dalillama]

Probably 13-4 plus a high Lifting skill

[DanHoward]

Bodybuilders aim for a specific cosmetic appearance. Truly strong men don't look like Arnold did. ST 13-14 seems reasonable.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Probably 13-4 plus a high Lifting skill

Probably _not_ a high Lifting Skill.

The generic system-mechanical reason "why?' is that Lifting skills less than 16 (either HT or Will-based) have little or no reliable effect.

the specific to bodybuilders answer is that they don't lift heavy weights. They go for _lots_ of reps with moderate weights. This builds muscle mass but not bone density. Bodybuilders can actually be in danger in some strongman contest events.

Some bodybuilders do end up pretty strong anyway. I'd have rated Ferrigno higher than Shwarzenegger.

Another system note is that some bodybuilder "strength" might be Arm ST rather than Lifting ST or regular ST. Bodybuilders do end up with massively developed arms.

[Donny Brook]

It seems like he can tote around 100lbs of guns and ammo at Light Encumbrance, so effective lifting ST14 minimum.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

It seems like he can tote around 100lbs of guns and ammo at Light Encumbrance, so effective lifting ST14 minimum.

"Light Encumbrance" is between BL and 2xBL; to be at Light Encumbrance when carrying 100 lb of stuff you'd need BL of at least 50, calling for effective Lifting ST 16 (BL 51.2). Of course, Arnold wasn't actually toting around that much stuff, so could arguably get away with lower ST than that.

And yeah, it seems weird for the poster child of Strong to have such modest ST, but as others have noted, bodybuilders go more for a specific aesthetic than actual raw strength (although make no mistake, they are still rather strong people; note ST 14 puts a character right around twice as strong as the average person).

[Sam Baughn]

According to some random internet sites which I found on a quick search, Arnie could bench-press 500 lbs! That would have been a world record in the 50s, about 70% of the world record in the 80s, and still over 60% of the world record now. Other internet sites tell me that an average guy can bench about 180 lbs. which seems quite high to me (first time I tried bench pressing, I could barely handle 110 lbs.). That suggests Arnie's chest is about 2.8 times as strong as a typical man's.
In the 1968 German powerlifting championships, his maximum deadlift was 683 lbs. That's about two-thirds of the current world record again, so it seems like his strength was consistent and not just in his massive pecs.
This strongly suggests that his effective lifting ST was around 16-17 under standard GURPS rules. That is possible with a lower base ST; he obviously lifted a lot, so we can assume a very good Lifting skill, which would increase his lifts by 20-40% depending on how skilled he was. That implies (Lifting) ST of around 15. Based purely on body mass, he should have around ST and HP 13. My best guess at his stats would be ST 14, HP 13, Special Exercises (Lifting ST 1), Lifting ST 1, and Lifting-16.
Note that this implies the strongest men in the world are only about ST 16. The ST 17-20 range should be reserved for unrealistic fictional characters, such as most of the ones portrayed by Arnold!

[Varyon]

A thought occurred to me (it's something that's been in the back of my mind pretty much ever since I did my Battlesuit Design system - the most recent page of my neglected blog, but this thread crystalized the concept) that while GURPS uses total body mass to determine ST, arguably what really matters is total skeletal muscle mass (which needs a certain amount of skeletal mass to support it). For my system, I worked out (from some online research) that a GURPS-standard, 150 lb ST 10 human has around 45 lb of skeletal muscle (30% body weight) and 22.5 lb of skeleton (15% body weight), for a total of 67.5 lb (leaving 82.5 lb for everything else), which we'll just call muscle weight (it's specifically skeletal muscle, as well as the skeletal scaffold that muscle works with, but that's good enough shorthand). Using that to determine ST, and still using cube root, we see that GURPS ST scales as 2.5*(cube root of muscle mass). Sam Baughn notes Arnold's weight in his prime implied somewhere around ST 13, implying somewhere around 275 lb. If we subtract out the 82.5 lb "everything else" value above, we wind up with around 192.5 lb of muscle mass, or ST 14.5. Prime Arnold's everything else almost certainly weighed more than an average person's (he was of above-average height, he would have had a higher surface area than a typical person of that height, and I presume a higher blood volume, larger heart and lungs, and perhaps larger stomach - to be able to eat enough to build his musculature), but considering he also likely had close to 0% body fat and that the other size increases were small compared to the size boost to muscle mass, I'd be comfortable just calling that ST 14. Which isn't a big boost compared to the ST 13 calculated using RAW GURPS, admittedly, but at least you don't have to get to quite as ridiculous weights for still-higher ST's (ST 16 would normally call for 512 lb; under this suggestion, you'd need only ~260 lb of muscle mass, for a total of around 360 lb for someone who isn't quite "competition lean").

Then again, that 150 lb human should have ST 10.6 by GURPS RAW (125 lb corresponds to ST 10 using the 2x(cube root of weight) guideline); scaling based on that (so divide actual weight by 1.2 before taking the cube root), a 275 lb man would only have ST 12.2 or so, and ST 14 is a marked boost from that.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

), a 275 lb man would only have ST 12.2 or so, and ST 14 is a marked boost from that.

This appears to be a careful mathematical system for coming up with wrong answers. A 275 lb mesomorph with a body fat number under the Overweight limits or so should be "obviously strong" and thus by definition more than ST 12.

Remember that Attributes of 8-12 are not obvious from casual inspection and only significant experience with them would let you assess a person's Attribute scores in the 8-12 range.

It looks to me that bad data is getting into the calcs from the assumptions made about weight->HP from the formulas in the back of Campaigns. Considering the mismatches between Human and animal ST/HP and the excessive fragility of large vehicles a different formula might be in order.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This appears to be a careful mathematical system for coming up with wrong answers.

Plotting the average of the Average column on the Build Table gives a linear relationship between human ST and weight, and extrapolating it would put 275 lb right around ST 18 - although now that I look it up, it looks like Arnold's weight when not "competition lean" was around 260 lb, which is closer to ST 17; when "competition lean" he was around 235 lb, which would be right between ST 15 and ST 16, but would arguably call for him to use the Skinny column; I'd just say he stays at ST 17. Again, that's if using the Build Table (and extrapolating out further than the authors intended). That also only looked at weight; Arnold would have been rather short for ST 17, at only 74" (which is the minimum for ST 14; average for ST 17, extrapolating from the table, would be 86.7", or just under 7'3").

Really, the weight-to-ST rules in GURPS are only usable as rough guidelines. Very rough guidelines, particularly for humans...