Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.

I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.

My conundrum is that I have some mutant easily able to lift 6 tons (and more - as in lift above their head and carry around), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record for bench-pressing is around 320kg¹ and the holder is already humongous.²

Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?

What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:

• Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).
• The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.
• If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.

_{1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.
2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.}

Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.

I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.

My conundrum is that I have some mutants easily able to lift 6 tons (and more - as in lift above their head and carry around), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record for bench-pressing is around 320kg¹ and the holder is already humongous.²

Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?

What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:

• Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).
• The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.
• If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.

_{1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.
2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.}

Addendum: Of course, lifting capacity does not equal strength. But it is hard to exactly describe the physical raw power of someone. Lifting is used here as a common denominator for everyone to just show the order of magnitude involved.

Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.

I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.

My conundrum is that I have some mutant easily able to lift 6 tons (and more), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record is around 320kg¹ and the holder is already humongous.²

Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?

What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:

• Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).
• The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.
• If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.

_{1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.
2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.}

Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.

I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.

My conundrum is that I have some mutant easily able to lift 6 tons (and more - as in lift above their head and carry around), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record for bench-pressing is around 320kg¹ and the holder is already humongous.²

Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?

What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:

• Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).
• The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.
• If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.

_{1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.
2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.}