A good portion of the strength related to any specific lift is CNS adaptation up until a certain point (and most new lifters won't hit that threshold for quite some time), so strength on a lift you've been doing regularly isn't necessarily a good indicator. Building muscle will of course increase your strength too, but I've doubled my squat since getting back into lifting while certainly not doubling the muscle mass of the respective muscles.

Fair enough. I didn’t mean a 1:1 correlation in 50% on a Dexa means 50% more strength, just would expect my lifting ability to go down if I lost muscle mass (or if it were water weight to begin with). Neither have decreased much if at all during breaks, so I’m fairly convinced it’s “real” so to speak.

Looking through my weightlifting app my best tracked exercise (leg press) increased about 250% from start with a 60% (roughly, speaking from memory) increase in lean muscle mass as measured by a DEXA scan. If I remember when back from dog walks tonight I’ll update that with a real number off the actual data.

I was a total newb at lifting though, so those early gains came quite quickly.

I am curious as this is a concern I have for long term health.