How many more pounds of fat loss to be stage ready lean? I’m 5’9” and 169 lbs in these photos.
Which division and Federation?
Obviously you know you’re holding in your legs.
WNBF. I’m not sure which division/s yet, never competed before. Which would you say I’m best suited for? Yes, much more fat in my lower body. I keep losing weight, but it looks like all the fat is pulled from my upper body.
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Upper body is pretty close but I think you need to lose 8+lbs to get your legs/glutes dug out. You have almost 0 separation in the quads and your hams and glutes have a ways to go. Are you flexing them?
Do you have a show targeted? Getting to the BF levels you would compete at is not going to be comfortable. Prob wouldn’t do it just for fun.
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Offhand, and this isn’t knowing absolutely nothing about you or how your body responds, I’d say to shoot for 8-10 lbs, but don’t rush or don’t anything stupid that might essentially shoot yourself in your foot.
Keep in mind, though, that numbers mean absolutely nothing in terms of body composition. You may aim for 10, have your body stall out on the scale at e8 for several weeks and yet your skin will continue to thin until contest day.
S
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You have made vast improvement in the last 6, or so, months. That is a huge plus.
Now for the bad aspect, as I see it. You don’t look like you are making close to the same progress in you lower body. It is lagging far behind your upper body. IMO, you need to prioritize leg development. And I mean moving a lot of weight full range of motion.
Without improving your lower body in both mass and definition, maybe Men’s Physique is the competitive route you should pursue at this stage of your physique if you want to be competitive.
Your back is showing fairly nice definition. It is close to stage ready. Everything else, upper body, needs some more work. Try dropping about 5lbs without losing any strength on a designated upper body compound movement. Then repost pics. Then we can reassess your physique.
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Totally agree here. I think what it would take to get his lower body in shape would hurt his upper body. Men’s physique might be the ticket here unless he wants to make big leg improvements.
Almost everybody has a body part that is the last to get defined. Obviously, your back is not last. It is the first.
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I’m the opposite. Legs are always peeled. Back is the last thing to get lean.
I remember lurking in a few competitors’ logs that always held fat in their legs.
They did high rep leg press every leg day to get the fluid to flush out of the fat in their lower body. Honestly my understanding of physiology says this shouldn’t work, but it did - at least for them.
OP if you dont want to switch divisions, this might be a good way to go. However, I do believe that even peeled, your legs are going to look underdeveloped to your upper body.
I’m jealous of how peeled your upper body is tbh. Doing good work, brother.
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My initial thought is that a person 5’9” should not have much trouble gaining leg size. But with closer inspection of your side triceps pose, you appear to have long legs for not being over 6’0” tall.
You might need to approach thigh development as a taller bodybuilder would do. My first suggestion is to do very heavy full range of motion leg presses where minimum reps are 10 reps. (Thighs need to descend past the sides of your torso)
Next is to find a squat movement where you can squat efficiently. You might need a wider stance than you would think. One benefit would be better development of your inner thighs (which are greatly lacking.)
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Yes the show is 5-6 weeks out. I wanted to do as many divisions as I can, but probably better to focus on one. I agree that men’s physique would probably work best with my lack of legs. We’ll see how much I can improve in the next 6 weeks. Those photos are 2 weeks old, these are from today. Down to 166.5 in these.
You’re right, I definitely have long legs and a short torso. I think I just haven’t put the time into my legs yet. I only trained upper body when I was a teen-20s, but never more than a month or so and never took it seriously. Just started training legs a few years ago for the first time in my life. I’ll post more photos in a couple weeks when I lose a couple more pounds. I might just do men’s physique like you mentioned, but we’ll see what happens with a few more pounds off. Is 6 weeks enough time?
Thanks bro! My back is definitely the most peeled. The disparity between the back of my upper body and back of my lower body is messing with me though. Over the past 6 months all my lifts for legs have gone up much more than my upper body lift numbers. Just need to put in more work on my legs I guess.
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Thanks so much! I put in a lot of work, but more so on my legs. I told you I was going to work on my hams. Leg curls, RDLs, good mornings, all went up significantly more than my upper body lifts. Yet, my upper body grew more?!! Should I just do all lower body and throw an upper in there once a week?
I can lose 8-10 pounds in 6 weeks, but I don’t know if that is too fast when I’m already pretty lean. The weight was just flying off last month, but now its getting pretty hard.
Don’t mess with what’s working. Your upper body has made good progress. Why risk stopping progress.
Here is a concept that I hold to: Never slow development in one area to allow another body part to catch up. Just add more muscle everywhere.
One strategy that I took was to start competing in Powerlifting. I spent two years competing in Powerlifting. In doing so, I built a solid foundation throughout my physique. The big plus is that competitive Powerlifting is fun. Everyone cheers you on to make a new PR. The culture of competitive Powerlifting is much friendlier than the culture of competitive Bodybuilding.
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Most definitely…
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IMO that’s the perfect amount of time…. And “pretty lean” isn’t the same as contest lean. Now, I’m not your coach, and you don’t need to take my advice, but I myself had plenty of gym-experts who had never competed themselves telling me I was stage ready when I was still 20 lbs above my eventual stage weight for my first contest. In hindsight I’m glad I didn’t listen to them and held myself to a stricter standard.
S
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