Believe it or not, the overly muscular type is not necessarily the best competitive weight lifter. It's a whole different animal. Over developed muscles (and hence low body fat) comes from lots of reps of lighter weight while training for competitive lifting generally is done with 3 sets of 3 with the object being your last set of three is done at your max. The story is when you can do 3 reps of your max it's time to attempt a higher max. Even just 1/4 # at the higher weights. The one I like is Vasily Alexeev, the first man to put 500 lbs over his head. At one point in his carreer he was lifting 504 lbs but could not lift 504 1/4 lbs. So one day his coach put the extra 1/4 lb on the bar without telling him and he made the lift.
Don't quite agree with that really. The big chaps don't worry about their bodyfat because they don't have weight limits. The guys that lift in weight classes are usually are very lean. There are methods that successfully build more hypertrophy than strength, but muscular looking guys are usually very strong. There's a video out there of Ronnie Coleman deadlifting 800 for a double, putting his max probably in the mid 8s, which would be pretty competitive anywhere.
Generally though, getting stronger and eating somewhat excess calories means getting bigger. Most athletes put on a lot of muscle mass, and that's usually from pretty sport specific training. Most NFL players, rugby players etc spend way more time working on strength and power over hypertrophy work and yet get sizeable.
There are other advantages to being a bit fat in pure strength sports, a belly reduces the range of motion for a bench and helps the squat. Not so much the deadlift though.
Anyway, Hossein was a beast. I'm working on front squatting half that, but at a significantly ligher bodyweight.
