AS AN EDITOR at a men’s magazine, I’ve written pretty much every reiteration of How to Get as Big as Possible. And no shame to anyone who’s looking to bulk up (I’ve been doing the same for a good 5 years), but watching streetlifting, the fledgling fitness competition that adds weight to calisthenic movements, was a heathy reminder that you don’t need to get massive to do some really awesome physical shit.

In April, I attended and reported on USA Streetlifting’s National Championship, an event that took place in Maryland. As I arrived to the gym, I situated myself into the crowd of about 100 people, 21 of whom were standing behind a table securing weight belts and chalking up their hands. And the energy definitely had me expecting classically jacked competitors. At one point, a voice bellowed through a speaker, like Joe Buck calling A-Rod to the plate: “And up to the bar, William Santiago!”.

Except an unassuming guy, no heavier than 170 pounds, stepped up next to the announcer. (William Santiago, if you’re scoring at home.) Santiago strapped 50 pounds to his belt, popped up to a pullup bar. He proceeded to do a muscle up (one of the world’s toughest feats of bodyweight fitness), with an extra 50 pounds hanging off his body. It was shocking to me—and everyone else in the audience.

A few more hours passed of me watching dudes pack hundreds of pounds onto weight belts, and dominate movements like muscleups, pullups, dips, and squats. And the entire experience changed the way I think about strength. When you think about the strongest people in the world, you probably picture what I do: People with Johnny Bravo-level builds.

But that’s not what I saw at the streetlifting championships. If some of the events champions walked past you, you just might mistake them for high schoolers. But then you’d watch them secure plates three times their size to weight belts and cruise through triceps dips. You’d expect this strength from prime-era Arnold—not somebody who’s 175 pounds soaking wet.

But your eyes are deceiving you, because muscular size is not the only determining factor of strength. Sure, if you have larger muscles, you can produce more force, which should help you lift heavier things. But how well you can apply that force is dependent on a number of characteristics—neuron efficiency, the length of your bones, tendon movability, muscle fiber types, and more. Many of those factors adapt with proper training, and can drastically improve your strength.

Don’t get me wrong. Big guys can thrive in streetlifting, too—and that’s what’s so nice about this sport. There are few fitness events where all body types can thrive: Swimmers are almost always tall and lean, wrestlers have to be stocky, and powerlifters have to be as jacked as possible (with short limbs, too).

But in streetlifting, everything is relative. Yes, big muscles can help, but so too does the general size of your body, as well as how you use it and can “problem-solve” on tough reps. Strike the right balance, and you too can perform muscleups and pullups with dozens of pounds strapped to your body—so long as you’re willing to put in the work to get there.

The entire experience has led me to adjust the way I look at my own training. My goal in the gym is to build muscle—mostly for aesthetic reasons, if we’re being honest. To do that, I lift three times a week with an emphasis on compound movements accompanied by a handful of accessory moves to cover my bases and move in different patterns. I enjoy my program, but streetlifting made me realize I’d been living in 3-to-4-sets-of-8-to-10-rep hell.

Since my dive into the world of streetlifting, I’ve shifted the focus of my training from ‘what can my body look like’ to ‘what can I do with my body’. When I pick up a new weight, I focus more on the challenge it presents than hitting the holy 8 reps. I’ve started sacrificing reps for something that is really going to put my ability to the test (safely, I should add—thanks to reliable spotters). Maybe I only get 3 to 4 reps, but I’m building strength with those reps—and recent research shows muscle growth stimulus even at low rep ranges when taken to failure. I’ve been continuously impressed with what my body can do since adopting this approach, which has ultimately led to me to appreciate the way it looks more, too. And yes, I still want hypertrophy (and maybe I always will), but it’s been just as satisfying to see myself hit PRs I never thought I had in me.