This always comes up, OP you say your setup is good but how good is it? If it's a stock factory guitar there is likely no way it's actually set up well for barre chords.
A little bit of an adjustment makes a huge difference in barre chords. A couple things:
- Lowering the nut slots as talked about in many threads here and out on frets.com and other luthier websites makes a HUGE difference. Change it from the 0.025-0.020 or 0.020-0.015 clearances that Martin or Taylor would say are great to 0.005 or so all the way across at the first fret. All of a sudden that first position barre for an F chord doesn't take any physical effort at all. I'm not even sure why they want the bass strings higher as everytime you see this discussed people seem to claim higher gauge strings vibrate with a lower amplitude and are less likely to buzz with the same strumming forces.
- Set the relief carefully, this is instantly reversible so there is no harm setting the relief low and seeing if it has an effect. My guitars are perfectly happy all the way down to 0.001-0.002 relief or so. Basically the tiniest visible gap. And that makes the barring around the 5th-7th fret super easy with much better tone.
Tommy Emmanuel was mentioned earlier, it's easy to see him playing lightning fast barre chords (amazingly!) in a lot of his songs, and IIRC he has said in interviews he gets his setup done like I mentioned above and also just sets up super low in general.
For super high barres up the fretboard... not sure. They get way harder to do as the frets are closer. The saddle could come into play but the above two items should really make everything easier. They're not necessarily that common.
If the setup is good it just doesn't take that much effort to do the barre unless your hands are wildly off in position. They probably aren't if you have been playing a few years.
One you've got the physical effort reduced you will quickly relax and start to do some of the other things that have been mentioned in the thread in terms of actually applying the barre pressure just to the necessary strings as opposed to all the way across. But as long as the setup is fighting you it won't get there.
I think the thing here is no matter how strong you are if the setup isn't working you just apply more and more force and it won't work and just exhausts your hand no matter how strong you are.
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