Why is Gohan the only one to get weaker without training?

[dragon ball truth]

This is an in-universe question, no?

My Marvel No-Prize answer is that he's the only one to become so cosmically powerful without continuing heavy training. It's not as though he reverts to non-superhuman strength. By all accounts, he's still one of the most powerful beings in the universe -- just less so. Goten and Trunks never trained heavily; what we see them at is more or less their natural strength.

Add to that the instability of a rage-inspired transformation like Super Saiyan 2, and the mystical nature of his unlocked potential under the Old Kaioshin, and I can see some plausible justifications for his power being harder to access after years of slacking off.

Chances are he'd pick it all back up if he buckled down on training like Goku and Vegeta, but he has other interests; c'est la vie.

This is a very wrong statement, lots of people overestimate them from their high starting point via parents with power levels in excess of 12 million, also trunks trained with vegeta in 300 or 500 times gravity and bulma confirmed vegeta was training trunks to become stronger than gohan; goten on the other hand was being trained by chichi.

Goten and trunks seem to be all of sudden heavily overrated by people that overlook the real stars that contributed to their power that probably has a low ceiling but a high starting point to that ceiling.

[dragon ball truth]

If you train until reaching your utmost limits, and then somehow surpass those limits through sheer determination (which is what happens all the time in Dragon Ball) your power becomes unstable and must be rigorously maintained in order to remain beyond limits. This is what happened with Gohan. Characters like Goten, Trunks, and Freeza never even reached anywhere close to their limits, let alone surpassing them, so their strength is more easily retained and does not require maintenance.

This is all headcanon.

Another misunderstood old kai quote, oh well; Goten and Trunks, you have no idea what their limits are; all you know is that they had a high starting point which it's easily suggested that that came from the fact that goku and vegeta were at easily >12mil when having goten and trunks and ssj themselves also, goku was more than likely ultra ssj when he had goten since thats the only time goku could have had trunks after the time chamber before the cell games, so that's just another rabid gohan hategate to bring up to try to dismiss the character which fails miserably.

Frieza and his supposed latent power is and always will be ridiculous crap, he died 2 times and came back with the same power level; yet training rose his power somehow; and it took 2 deaths to figure out this power loop hole he had, is he an idiot? Frieza was so strong, that he was so scared of the race of people who could never reach his power because time they reached his 12mil cap, he could throw a punch and that would raise his powerlevel by about 12million again, oh wait; frieza threw a lot of punches and his power remained at 12million max... just get over it, frieza and his bs power increase is just another crap plot to try to further try and under-mind and discredit the exclusive traits gohan had, just like cabba and just like hit to try and remove his character when all 3 characters are crap, hit lived for millions of years and only up til goku did any kind of activity that increased his capabilities that he had already developed? my question for hit and frieza is how did they ever get all of their abilities without training or even know how to fight? Crap storytelling

Cabba from what i can gather i would say his parents were definitely stronger than goku and chichi so moot point in his overage in respect to gohan potential, there is none.

[nickzambuto]

If you train until reaching your utmost limits, and then somehow surpass those limits through sheer determination (which is what happens all the time in Dragon Ball) your power becomes unstable and must be rigorously maintained in order to remain beyond limits. This is what happened with Gohan. Characters like Goten, Trunks, and Freeza never even reached anywhere close to their limits, let alone surpassing them, so their strength is more easily retained and does not require maintenance.

This is all headcanon.

Another misunderstood old kai quote, oh well;

Okay. In your entire two paragraph post you never actually explained why this is a misunderstood quote... Elder Kai's exact line was "With my psychic powers, I can take the hidden power which anyone has, no matter how amazing a master they may be, and draw it wa~~ay, wa~~ay out above their limits." Seems pretty straightforward to me. In fact, he goes on to explicitly clarify the fact that he brings dormant above its limits.

Goku: “Wh-what?...Ain’t that the kind of ability you hear about fairly often?”
Elder Kaioshin: “Wh-what are you talking about…?! Above their limits! Above! There de~~efinitely isn’t anyone else that incredible!"

So I don't see how the quote can possibly be misunderstood. It's explicit.

And as for Goten and Trunks, I think it's fairly safe to assume that their "limits" are a bit higher than what they were born with... Although you're right, that was technically never stated. For all we know, they have absolutely zero dormant power left, and training would do absolutely nothing for them... That seems pretty unlikely, but yeah, it was never outright stated so fair enough I guess.
Goku wasn't an Ultra SSJ when he conceived Goten... He was a Fourth Grade/Mastered, or Full-Power SSJ. Ultra is the useless buff form that Trunks used.
And... Goku didn't have Trunks... what

The shpeel about Freeza is completely off-topic and nonsensical. I'm really trying, but I'm having a lot of difficulty translating your point or what you're actually saying. All I can say is... Freeza's max power wasn't 12 million. It was actually 10 times that...

If you're going to name yourself "dragon ball truth" and then come into a thread preaching about how everyone is wrong and act as if you're about to educate all of us with your vastly superior knowledge, then at least don't use dub terms or get basic facts like Freeza's battle power and Trunks' father wrong.

You're the kind of pretentious fan that people are talking about in the "Sad that some fans have not seen the original Dragon Ball" thread.

[Cipher]

This is a very wrong statement, lots of people overestimate them from their high starting point via parents with power levels in excess of 12 million, also trunks trained with vegeta in 300 or 500 times gravity and bulma confirmed vegeta was training trunks to become stronger than gohan; goten on the other hand was being trained by chichi.

Goten and trunks seem to be all of sudden heavily overrated by people that overlook the real stars that contributed to their power that probably has a low ceiling but a high starting point to that ceiling.

It's not that they don't lift a finger. They just don't go through full-time hell the way Goku, Vegeta and Gohan do at earlier points in the series.

I don't think Chi-Chi was taking Goten to the Room of Spirit and Time or leaving him in the desert for a year, though I could be wrong.

[dragon ball truth]

If you train until reaching your utmost limits, and then somehow surpass those limits through sheer determination (which is what happens all the time in Dragon Ball) your power becomes unstable and must be rigorously maintained in order to remain beyond limits. This is what happened with Gohan. Characters like Goten, Trunks, and Freeza never even reached anywhere close to their limits, let alone surpassing them, so their strength is more easily retained and does not require maintenance.

This is all headcanon.

Another misunderstood old kai quote, oh well;

Okay. In your entire two paragraph post you never actually explained why this is a misunderstood quote... Elder Kai's exact line was "With my psychic powers, I can take the hidden power which anyone has, no matter how amazing a master they may be, and draw it wa~~ay, wa~~ay out above their limits." Seems pretty straightforward to me. In fact, he goes on to explicitly clarify the fact that he brings dormant above its limits.

Goku: “Wh-what?...Ain’t that the kind of ability you hear about fairly often?”
Elder Kaioshin: “Wh-what are you talking about…?! Above their limits! Above! There de~~efinitely isn’t anyone else that incredible!"

So I don't see how the quote can possibly be misunderstood. It's explicit.

And as for Goten and Trunks, I think it's fairly safe to assume that their "limits" are a bit higher than what they were born with... Although you're right, that was technically never stated. For all we know, they have absolutely zero dormant power left, and training would do absolutely nothing for them... That seems pretty unlikely, but yeah, it was never outright stated so fair enough I guess.
Goku wasn't an Ultra SSJ when he conceived Goten... He was a Fourth Grade/Mastered, or Full-Power SSJ. Ultra is the useless buff form that Trunks used.
And... Goku didn't have Trunks... what

The shpeel about Freeza is completely off-topic and nonsensical. I'm really trying, but I'm having a lot of difficulty translating your point or what you're actually saying. All I can say is... Freeza's max power wasn't 12 million. It was actually 10 times that...

If you're going to name yourself "dragon ball truth" and then come into a thread preaching about how everyone is wrong and act as if you're about to educate all of us with your vastly superior knowledge, then at least don't use dub terms or get basic facts like Freeza's battle power and Trunks' father wrong.

You're the kind of pretentious fan that people are talking about in the "Sad that some fans have not seen the original Dragon Ball" thread.

I know that the old kai was capable of doing something all of a sudden that guru wasnt, but yeah if the old kai was truly taking gohans true limits out as far as hidden dormant power then many of the statements said wouldnt have been said; i know you're trying to 'school' me and you tried but thats great nothing ever says anything about any dormant power ever more like for that time, first look at that sentence structure; you have to see if he was referring also to the power or the person in which the power he was talking about which incase could be a fact,

Heres your quote: "With my psychic powers, I can take the hidden power which anyone has, no matter how amazing a master they may be, and draw it wa~~ay, wa~~ay out above their limits."

The word power is singlular, yet he uses the word their; so the question is is power an it or a he or a she? i would say that the word power is an it and the term their is referring to gohan as in gohans limits that he obviously had up til the point of that unleashing, the sleeping power he drew out WAS what always took gohan beyond his standard limits ever since he was a little boy 710 to 1400 or more with raditz and ssj gohan to ssj2 gohan and that was always emotionally related not drawn out by anyone including guru infact after gohan had his power released by guru his highest power was released by emotions not any power releasing.

Sure, goten and trunks may have more potential to go; but to say that they are more specialer than gohan and his latent power that came from weak seed compared to goten and trunks's strong seed is crazy.

Well Freeza's last scouter power level was 12 million and gokus was 15 million, then Freeza's power with the cyborg attachments was 12.5 million and gokus after namek on earth was 17.5 million, and trunks's was 17 million.

Educating anyone isnt my idea, but trying to strip people of their feats and such is just something i have to weigh in on in my own way.

[dragon ball truth]

This is a very wrong statement, lots of people overestimate them from their high starting point via parents with power levels in excess of 12 million, also trunks trained with vegeta in 300 or 500 times gravity and bulma confirmed vegeta was training trunks to become stronger than gohan; goten on the other hand was being trained by chichi.

Goten and trunks seem to be all of sudden heavily overrated by people that overlook the real stars that contributed to their power that probably has a low ceiling but a high starting point to that ceiling.

It's not that they don't lift a finger. They just don't go through full-time hell the way Goku, Vegeta and Gohan do at earlier points in the series.

I don't think Chi-Chi was taking Goten to the Room of Spirit and Time or leaving him in the desert for a year, though I could be wrong.

Well all we do know is that goten and trunks came from strong seed and gohan compared to goku, vegeta, trunks and goten had the weakest seed to come from and still was the strongest non fused in the series; also goten did go to the room of spirit time with a nearly equal sparring partner and got much stronger, yet in the goku and friends special needed fusion to beat a frieza equivalent fighter and coaching; gohan in his life has only had about 5 years of actual training, the time chamber less than a year, the post radditz fight training a year, prior to the android series 3 years and the training outside the time chamber was no doubt interrupted by chichi and her studies she put on gohan which goten never had she actually trained goten.

[Barunks]

He's not alone, Piccolo went from being as strong as an Ascended Saiyan at his peak to only being able to handle a U6 Freeza clone because he was already beaten up by SS Goku. Damn Piccolo, step up your game!