This is a bit of a hijack, sorry but not sorry as this thread has already attracted the attention of the people that I’d @, (@isdatnutty, @The_Mighty_Stu, @flipcollar). The only person missing is @T3hPwnisher.
I’ve made the same mistakes as a lot of the people that have been posting here on the board lately and even though I can read their threads and identify the error in their ways, and mine, I still feel a bit lost - specifically I’m trying to come to terms with how much to invest in either quality. Is a 50/50-dedication to either quality be more meaningful at this point than say, 70/30?
To be explicit,
- Was fat,
- lost a lot of weight (and some muscle in the process),
- Got stupid lean.
- Tried to get even leaner, because I couldn’t see all of my abs (I now presume this has to do with loose skin and won’t ever happen until I fill out my frame).
- And now fret to a counter-productive amount about calories and carbs.
The problem with just being lean but not really having a lot of mass is that once you stop being lean then you end up in okay-but-average-land. My lifts are what some would call weak as piss if looking at poundages, but in relation to my body-weight are just shy of some landmarks,
- ~2x BW DL on a good day (just shy)
- 1x BW Bench
- ~1.5 BW Squat on a good day (again, just shy of that and more-so than on the DL)
I’m 186 cm (that’s 6"1’), and ~73 kilos (160lbs) on waking. I suppose, at that height, I should weight at least 86 kilos before allowing myself anything akin to a deficit. Tend to undereat now if not tracking, resulting in the occasional binge-fest now and again. I’m intending to live life for a couple of more decades, and in the short-term I’d really like to learn how to eat without having to be too anal about it so I can expend less energy on what is now essentially a minor eating-disorder. Right now, planned caloric surplus feels too similar to the habits of planned under-eating (deficit).
I can get away with squatting twice a week without aggravating my hip-flexor (the result of weak abs). Usually, if I go just above parallel (5cm) I’ll usually be fine.
If I care more about how I look than how strong I am, but still wanting to be stronger than I am today, what approach would you adopt? Specifically, I’m curious as to if it’s appropriate to combine trying to progress with strength and mass simultaneously, i.e.
- Train main lift for strength (3-5, 4-6) reps,
- Train supplemental stuff in functional hypertrophy/size-range (6-8, 8-12) reps,
- Not overdo assistance too much.
or if a trainee is better served by interlacing strength-oriented blocks with hypertrophy-blocks? Or am I just continuing with the issue of fretting over minutiae here, and should get my head out of my ass and apply @Lonnie123’s words of wisdom:
I’ve read most of your replies to these threads lately, so I have a guess as to what you’ll reply with (if you end up replying), but it feels meaningful for me to engage with you all directly.
On TRT (Nebido) because of primary hypogonadism, but recently started so I have yet to stabilize hormonally. This, combined with my previous fatassed-ness, makes aggressive calorie surpluses slosh right back into my old fat cells (lower abdominals / love-handles).
For reference, this is me the other day,
and me at my leanest,
Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.