Post: #226

The thing with me is I'm just not naturally "skinny" in the slightest. I've always been heavy-set (descended from Irish potato farmers). I was probably obese until I hit puberty, then lost quite a bit of fat and started gaining muscle without even lifting. I don't work my legs much, but still have huge calves.

Because of this, the thing I have to watch out for most is fat, I've always gained muscle easily but unfortunately fat too.

Post: #227

(11-14-2015 04:40 PM)Rush87 Wrote:  

(11-14-2015 02:32 PM)RexImperator Wrote:  I do think the thread was derailed slightly because some thought I was saying "don't bother working out" or something like that. That couldn't be further from what I was saying.

Also, maybe muscles have some effect, but it takes a long time to get to that place where they do. It would be nice if we could quantify where that is (achieve such and such LBM per inch height, at such and such bodyfat levels, etc., or a certain total in the big three at some bodyweight, and then you are then in the "girls come up to me and squeeze my muscles" zone.)

From personal experience I started getting that 'girls squeezing biceps' at a lean 175lb. In reality, if your body fat is lean, 170+ is actually fairly big.

As a for instance:

This is Olympic Sprinter Asafa Powell. He is 6'3 and 180lb. Not bad.

I'm sure he is not 180 @6'3 I'm 6'4 when I was 202 I never trained was skinny as fuck low bf ~13%

Post: #228

(11-15-2015 08:17 AM)rikardo_82 Wrote:  I'm sure he is not 180 @6'3 I'm 6'4 when I was 202 I never trained was skinny as fuck low bf ~13%

Chances are your 13% wasn't an accurate measurement I.E Dexa scan.

Powell has dozens of recorded height and weight measurements throughout his career ranging from 180lb-185lb.

The only other factor is weight distribution. I know a lot of white guys who carry a decent amount of weight in their calves and forearms. Adds quite a lot of mass but takes away from the area's that give the 'illusion' of size.

My guess though is that you would have been far higher than 13%. Most people guess more than 5% lower than they actually are.

Post: #229

Quote:Have you ever been 12% bodyfat or less before?

Probably not, unless I think back to my high school years or younger, when I would have had "ribs", not "abs".

Post: #230

(11-15-2015 10:04 AM)Rush87 Wrote:  

(11-15-2015 08:17 AM)rikardo_82 Wrote:  I'm sure he is not 180 @6'3 I'm 6'4 when I was 202 I never trained was skinny as fuck low bf ~13%

Chances are your 13% wasn't an accurate measurement I.E Dexa scan.

Powell has dozens of recorded height and weight measurements throughout his career ranging from 180lb-185lb.

The only other factor is weight distribution. I know a lot of white guys who carry a decent amount of weight in their calves and forearms. Adds quite a lot of mass but takes away from the area's that give the 'illusion' of size.

My guess though is that you would have been far higher than 13%. Most people guess more than 5% lower than they actually are.

As a for instance I'm at 15% measure with a dexa scan in this pic.

I think as well this shows how subjective a bf measurement is. In your picture, you look like in better lighting you could easily look about as lean as Powell in that photo (hard to tell from the less than conventional bodybuilding pose though ). You look very good for 15%bf.

Not everyone will look as lean at 15% as Rush does. There was a photo going round a while back of some guy's doctoral thesis where he dexa scanned a bunch of dudes, and there were guys who looked better at 20%bf than others did at 10%, with similar levels of muscle mass. We don't all carry it equally, and ultimately a % is just a number - if it told you you were 10%, but you looked like 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag, the number alone wouldn't be much good to you.

Post: #231

I always find the chronic underestimation of bf% quite funny. So many people both online and in real life will doggedly assure you they're single digit bodyfat. My experience is very very few non professional athletes/bodybuilders are actually sub 10%.

People look at me in horror when I tell them I maintain at around 15%. I find thats low enough that I dont look fat at all, but I can maintain a normal lifestyle - eating out in restaurants regularly, drinking at weekends etc. Just need to do a 6-8 week cut before a beach holiday to get down to visible abs. Though this does presuppose you've a decent amount of muscle I guess, 15% bf on a skinny dude wouldn't look quite so good. And if you live in a beach city your calculations may also vary somewhat.

RexImperator if you're 6ft 1 220lb you've already got quite a decent amount of size. If you're 20% bodyfat though you're probably just slightly too fat - to a point where you look fat, rather than fit. If you did an 8 week aggressive cut and got down to sub 15% I think you'd start to get a lot more positive female attention.

Post: #232

Rush87 - +1 from me for posting a pic.

You are in great shape which pretty much is ALL I am saying.

Does any girl really care about your body fat % or how much you weigh, if you step to her looking that.!

Also talking about professional athletes is a waste of time. They don't go to school or day or sit behind a desk all day.

Post: #233

Rex, to be honest, bro, your problem is body fat percentage. I would suggest get down to 13% and revisit the attention you get from lizards. This is also dependent on the clothes you wear of course. In order to do this, continue to lift heavy but eat clean.

Brandon suggested eating a lot of leafy green vegetables and continue to eat protein (clean meat/fish/legumes). Only have carbs directly after an aggressive training session.

Maybe throw in some daily Apple Cider vinegar intake to help with the fat burning.

I too need to cut down as well since the lizardly attention I'm getting is not the same as it was.

Post: #234

Nice work Rush.

How tall are you? I saw you were about 217lbs, but didn't see your height.

Post: #235

(11-15-2015 04:51 PM)RioNomad Wrote:  Nice work Rush.

How tall are you? I saw you were about 217lbs, but didn't see your height.

184cm.

Post: #236

(11-15-2015 10:04 AM)Rush87 Wrote:  

(11-15-2015 08:17 AM)rikardo_82 Wrote:  I'm sure he is not 180 @6'3 I'm 6'4 when I was 202 I never trained was skinny as fuck low bf ~13%

Chances are your 13% wasn't an accurate measurement I.E Dexa scan.

Powell has dozens of recorded height and weight measurements throughout his career ranging from 180lb-185lb.

The only other factor is weight distribution. I know a lot of white guys who carry a decent amount of weight in their calves and forearms. Adds quite a lot of mass but takes away from the area's that give the 'illusion' of size.

My guess though is that you would have been far higher than 13%. Most people guess more than 5% lower than they actually are.

As a for instance I'm at 15% measure with a dexa scan in this pic.

Looking great!

I'd like to point out however that DEXA scans measure intra-abdominal fat, not just subcutaneous fat, subtract about 4-5% depending on how you're built to get your subcutaneous fat percentage.

I'd guess your subcutaneous fat percentage to be about 10%.

Post: #237

DEXA scans also count brain as fat, which it is, but for our purpose here it isn't.

Rush87's example there is why I said bigger guys can have higher BF% and still look good. A smaller bloke at 15% will still look fine (and it is super easy to achieve) but not as impressive.

Post: #238

Delete

Post: #239

Asafa Powell is 194llbs, a big difference from 180llbs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafa_Powell

Post: #240

(11-15-2015 09:07 PM)StrikeBack Wrote:  DEXA scans also count brain as fat, which it is, but for our purpose here it isn't.

That doesn't really matter. The adult brain is only 3lbs.

Post: #241

For me it does, 3lb of fat is a very significant percentage of my total body fat.

Most people underestimate how different you would look (as in, way better) if you lose 3-4lb of pure fat, and not just weight, which is often mostly water. My DEXA scan doctor has a model of 5lb of fat on his desk. It is gigantic!

Post: #242

(11-18-2015 06:37 PM)StrikeBack Wrote:  For me it does, 3lb of fat is a very significant percentage of my total body fat.

Most people underestimate how different you would look (as in, way better) if you lose 3-4lb of pure fat, and not just weight, which is often mostly water. My DEXA scan doctor has a model of 5lb of fat on his desk. It is gigantic!

Yuup here is a comparison

Post: #243

(11-15-2015 08:12 AM)Unkown_Killa Wrote:  The thing with me is I'm just not naturally "skinny" in the slightest. I've always been heavy-set (descended from Irish potato farmers). I was probably obese until I hit puberty, then lost quite a bit of fat and started gaining muscle without even lifting. I don't work my legs much, but still have huge calves.

Because of this, the thing I have to watch out for most is fat, I've always gained muscle easily but unfortunately fat too.

My friend, if this is true, you are extremely lucky!

And you don't know how lucky you are!!

Heavy set / stocky Anglo-Saxon / anglo-celtic individuals with naturally big calves are genetically blessed for muscle gain, of all the other anglos out there. You guys can get big, quickly, if you find muscle relatively easy to put on and your calves are bigger than most. Calves are one of the tell-tale signs, apparently. It's your body telling you to pump iron!

As a general rule, I suggest you do lots of heavy squats, always work in the 12-15 rep range and do a shed load of interval training and box jumps. Guys like you tend to have dodgy joints, especially the knees, so if the box jumps hurt push a weighted sled. Keep complex carbs down to 50g a day and avoid sugar altogether while you aim to get BF down to 14%. The 50g a day target is really tough. It was too tough for me. If you train really hard with squat, bench and deadlift, while eating very clean - you'll look great in 6 months.

I should also add at this point that this forum is full of Muscle and Fitness magazine - type nonsense about form and training to failure etc... and I suggest you adhere to none of it.

Do not concentrate on perfect form. Your muscles don't know what perfect form is. Good form is satisfactory. It doesn't have to be perfect. All you need to do is get enough tension in the muscle you're trying to work, otherwise you're bringing in other muscles to assist and placing unnecessary strain on joints.

You do not need to train to failure on every set. In 10 months of training my arms went from 15.5" to 19.25" without going super hard all the time. I killed 60% of my sets, and on every other set I stopped when it started to hurt. And my form was no where near perfect.

In fact, who knows what good form is? People in this forum talk about things like form, as they do on hundreds of sites, but what they think is good form is literally ridiculed by professional strength coaches like Charles Poliquin. If the top ten form junkies in this thread performed five different exercises in front of the people who train the world's best athletes, they would be given anywhere from a C- to an F and then be told that 30-50% of the exercises they are doing are a waste of time anyway. How many here do Hex bar or proper Romanian deadlifts? How many here do the Garhammer raise? How many here split squat over a normal squat? Normal squatting is no where near as good for T release.

It is also completely and utterly patronising to tell the conscientious gym-goer that they need to train more and with better form and eat more protein and push until failure and take a range of supplements and blah blah blah. From my experience, and it is vast, the average guy in the gym works hard, especially in Australia where muscularity is strived for religiously- and these guys deserve to get big because of the effort. But it's genetics that stops them. That's the main reason. The secondary reason is exercise choice. Very rarely is it through lack of trying. I'm massive compared to the average bloke but I deserve it no more than the average gym-goer. It's nothing but blue-ass luck, i.e. genetics.

The stupidest thing you will hear a gym-goer say is "fuck genetics". When people dismiss genetics, they have no idea what they're talking about. Of course you can go from fat-skinny to looking much better with weak genetics, so gym training is for everyone, but if you want to look really massive the best thing you have on your side is who your parents are.

Best o luck to ya...

Queue in the trolls...

Post: #244

(11-21-2015 05:54 AM)pamplonabull Wrote:  I should also add at this point that this forum is full of Muscle and Fitness magazine - type nonsense about form and training to failure etc... and I suggest you adhere to none of it.

Post: #245

Quote:From my experience, and it is vast, the average guy in the gym works hard

And the average gym guy makes good gains too right? The disinformation seems to be strong.

Post: #246

(11-21-2015 05:54 AM)pamplonabull Wrote:  You do not need to train to failure on every set. In 10 months of training my arms went from 15.5" to 19.25" without going super hard all the time. I killed 60% of my sets, and on every other set I stopped when it started to hurt. And my form was no where near perfect.

I've been in the gym a long time and have trained with some very gifted athletes and I've never seen someone grow from 15 inch arms to 19 inch arms in a year. Either you used a large amount of gear or you built some fatceps.

Post: #247

I bet the (now banned) pamplonabull is one of those perma bulking types who looks like absolute shit.

Post: #248

(11-21-2015 10:16 AM)britchard Wrote:  I bet the (now banned) pamplonabull is one of those perma bulking types who looks like absolute shit.

I was thinking of starting a thread on perma-bulking.

Post: #249

I was all excited when I was scrolling up and saw that bit about if you have big calves then you can naturally add on size until I saw who posted it. Now I am bummed. Probably no truth in it. Where is a man crying gif when you need one.

Post: #250

Me too, because I have big calves.

Adding four inches to your biceps in ten months is indeed ridiculous without steroids, though. Adding two would be impressive. Get on those 20 inchers!

I would be satisfied with 17-18.