Luckily for me,the stuff I want to eat generally suits my goals
No matter what, you need to get your priorities straight. What you are doing makes no sense at all if the goal is to compete in powerlifting, and if you want to compete in some sort of endurance sport then all the heavy lifting isn’t necessary either. You can only handle so much physical stress, pushing past the limit will make bad things happen. If you want to do crossfit then look into that, but again it has to be intelligently planned, not just all out on everything all the time with minimal food or you won’t get anywhere.
As for all this talk about being lean, have a look at some lightweight female powerlifters. Can you find any that aren’t lean?
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Right here is your answer Anna. Seriously any two of these can be done simultaneously programmed right. Chasing all 3 will just soon your wheels and get your frustrated. Pick two. Ideally pick one, but I suspect for you, like me, staying lean is non negotiable, so pick being awesome at conditioning or getting better at squats. You can do some of the other, to a maintenance level, but not both for progress.
I’m not actually trying to get better at conditioning, so could I be overestimating how much I need to maintain?
To net it out, and I’ve had to learn this the hard way, you cannot serve two masters - strength and conditioning/leanness.
Whenever I stall, or lose strength, it’s because I am trying to be lean through conditioning or restricted calories.
Whenever I stall trying to get lean, it’s because I restrict calories (counterintuitive) or overtrain.
In my limited experience, I need to chase either strength or leanness - I have a hard time doing both.
At my best, aesthetically, I weighed 196 at about 14% bodyfat. At my worst, I weighed 174 at 11%.
I do feel best about 185 and 15-16%, but that is pretty lean for me at 6’1".
I think, emphasis on think, you would benefit from eating in a slight caloric surplus (maybe 250kCal per day surplus), lifting heavy, and cutting back on conditioning. Stick to LISS for two or three days a week, and don’t go crazy - like a half hour on a treadmill at an incline, heart rate at 75% of max.
I think you would slowly add muscle and strength. Remember, the scale doesn’t measure leanness, so don’t be afraid of gaining weight.
There are many people here that are adiphobes - myself and @EyeDentist, among others. Most of us were fat at one time and are afraid of getting fat again. And the scale is our only measure of fat, so we are afraid of calories, and weight gain.
Whereas, as I mentioned above, I’m much better at 193 or so than I am at 174. But my brain just reads the weight and doesn’t pay attention to my composition or aesthetic.
There are TDEE calculators online, so you can get pretty close to what your daily requirements are. I’d be happy to do that for you, but it’s easy enough for a very smart person like you. If you want to get stronger, you have to eat in a surplus.
Period.
For a woman, a healthy athlete is 14-20% body fat. I doubt you are above twelve percent.
Again, just my take. I’m an English teacher so I don’t know shit.
Love your log!
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Will that really be enough?
I’m currently doing 10-15min after my strength stuff except for my dedicated lifting only day and 20-30min worth on non- lifting days (the rest of the hour is accessories/technique). I used to be able to do a lot more, but can’t seem to mentally get into it these days.
Sometimes I just go all out (ie 500 burpees), just to show myself I can.
You ever consider using Brian Alsruhe’s programs? You start the workout with conditioning, then work up to a max, then assistance work, then finish with conditioning. Should check all the boxes, and hopefully using squat variations will get you out of your head over your squat maxes.
Brian posted here as @Alpha His logs are still a great read.
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Thanks! Isn’t he big on Youtube? What’s his log called?
No, but maybe after I finish another cycle of GZCL. I’m only on my first 3 week cycle and don’t want to program hop
Yeah, he has a big YouTube presence now. He posted here for a long time first.
That is one of 5 logs.
That guy’s incredible- idk how he got through all that shit. Throwing up 50x/day? I’m down if my stomach is a bit upset. I would have given up a LONG time ago
Okay… I think I’m going to commit to 1600 every day day. I’ve been doing 1600 alternating w/ 1400 (sometimes less) on the other days for the past 3 weeks (even though I was supposed to be “reverse dieting” and adding calories)
of course “1600” probably isn’t actually 1600, but I basically eat the same things so “1600” will likely be more or less consistent regardless if its actually 1600
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I realized something: my squats on btm were done on Sundays at 9am and the squats these past weeks were done at 6:30am
I’ve heard that switching training times can affect strength @T3hPwnisher @Pinkylifting @chris_ottawa is this true or is it just another excuse ppl use to slack off?
Hard to say, probably varies person to person depending on whether you are a morning person or not.
I wouldn’t back myself to squat at 6:30 am what I do at 6:30 pm.
Could be a factor though.
I feel like you may be overthinking it though. Your numbers aren’t wildly different tbh and performance, or the ability to display strength, can vary a lot of training cycles irrespective of whether you have the same underlying strength.
As a side note, I didn’t get great squat results from GZCL. While on maintenance calories my most reliable squat progress has come from either daily maxing (if you have the time) or Sheiko programs which are my absolute go-to.
I think you need to do some soul searching on what your goals actually are. If it really is squat gains, then I’d back off some of the conditioning volume and squat.
TP’s Alshruh reccomendation is a good idea and would let you keep a good blend, but I think you’d really need to up your calories.
If you’re anything like me (pretty sure you are) it will be tough psychologically in the short term. Either you’ll eat more and get the work done and performance will increase but you might have some, short term, negative body comp changes. Or you won’t eat enough and will feel like you’re regressing.
Does that mean literally every day?
My main goal is a 300+deadlift by May. The squats are just the most frustrating
I have different PRs based off training at different times of day. I don’t anticipate the same performance on different times of day.
This is why I don’t use hard set percentages for sets and reps: I just focus on max exertion during that training session.
Yes. My best squat progress in the short term came from Nuckols bulgarian programming for powerlifting. Low daily volume but high daily intensity. Every day (6 times a week) go in and work up to a single squat and bench ‘daily max’ (not an absolute true max, something 90% + though). Then deadlift once a week. Interesting program that I always run immediately before a competition.
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I’ve checked out sheilko and it looks solid, except I can’t think of how I’d fit in conditioning on it
Haha. That’s the point. You’re not supposed to be able to. If you want to focus on your lifts, you’ll have to dial it back to a minimum maintenance level, a lot less than now, and this will maximise your lifts.
How much would that be in your opinion? I currently do 17-20k steps a day so walking probably won’t cut it
Look, you have a limit to what you can recover from, a limit to what you can expend energy on. Even more so when your calories are restricted.
How you divide that energy will determine which adaptations are stimulated and when some of those adaptations run counter to each other you are going to limit how far you can take each area respectively.
As far as conditioning goes, it depends what elements of conditioning you measure yourself by, what your aims are for conditioning and really why you keep it in your program. If its VO2 max, then no steps wont cut it. If its keeping up your daily energy expenditure so you dont have to lower your calories then yea, steps will absolutely cut it.
But if you are training both and neither is improving then its probably worth pulling one back to focus on the other. Not an expert on conditioning by any means but I feel that, as a rule, its easier to recover conditioning back to a current level than it is to build new strength and muscle.
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