I am 5ft7/8 and 93kg is the highest I want to realistically go at the moment.
That’s not a bad weight for your height, but remember that the idea is to gain weight over the course of years, not gain 30lbs by July.
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Basically I’m around the 93 cut off now, so I’m really just tighting the diet, maintaining . Probably a bit of recomp as well. I’m heading into a 6 week peek in a week, so I want to just keep everything steady for now.
The good thing is I tend to shred fast.
First, keep in mind we’re talking about powerlifting, so all this is with the caveat of getting OP to the most competitive body composition for his frame. It’s absolutely fine if he or anyone else want’s to pursue multiple goals (like staying lighter and lean while pushing PL numbers as high as they can) but every bit of advice I’ll ever give will be assuming you plan on having a long career in powerlifting, are looking for ways to play the long game, and want set yourself up for the most success.
Pretty much all the science (I mean, actual peer reviewed science) on insulin sensitivity looks at the effect of obese (like, 30%+ BF), sedentary people either losing weight or starting an exercise program. OP is BARELY in the overweight category (by BMI, obviously not a great scale for individuals but probably okay for an average sounding guy) and considering he has weight training experience (exercise alone has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity in obese adults WITHOUT any weight loss), I highly doubt insulin sensitivity is something of a concern. Sure, there might be some improvement dropping BF from 20 to 15%, but at 18 years old it would be like walking down the street and stepping over a 100 dollar bill to pick up a nickle. Also, keep in mind the only places you find anyone talking about insulin sensitivity in non-obese people are the same places that happen to have “insulin support supplements” for sale (… too close to home?).
Like @chris_ottawa said, just take a bit of time off every couple months and cruise at maintenance calories and, if you actually train with enough volume and intensity and keep your protein intake high, you’re body composition will be fine.
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Tasty Nate. How many weight classes do you think most of the top IPF guys jumped through before they finally settled at their chosen, competitive weight class?
Always been curious about this.
That’s a great question, fortunately we have an awesome database of records to turn to for some insight…
Let’s look at the 220-231 lb weight class since that’s the class I would say most average height guys should be in.
Bryce Lewis
Competed in his early 20s as a sub-200 lb lifter, ranging from 180-200 lb. Mid 400s Wilks, nothing special. Mid 20s he starts gaining weight, and now at 32 years old he’s 230 lbs and putting up ~530 Wilks.
Eli Burks
Early 20s competed at 198, again 400-450 Wilks range. After 25 bulked up to 230 and now at 31 years old is at 530ish Wilks.
Bryce Krawczyk
First recorded meet at 24, weighed 181 and made a sub-400 Wilks. 4 years later he weighed in at 227 and made a 500 Wilks.
These are just some cherry picked examples but as you can see it’s not unusual for guys to jump up two weight classes throughout their early to mid 20s. I’m pretty sure I’ve read Bryce Lewis somewhere saying that it was his acceptance of letting go of staying lean (he used to do some legitimate bodybuilding) and focus on performance that allowed him to get to where he is now.
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Even Yury Belkin went from 198 at 20 years old to 3 years later being around 225 and adding 100 points to his Wilks.
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You want to increase calories when training volume is high, otherwise you are likely to just gain fat.
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Another guy to look at in this case is Dennis Cornelius. I don’t know his whole lifting history, but he started competing in the IPF at 120kg, winning championships and setting squat records. He was carrying quite a bit of fat too, he had to cut a lot of weight to make the 120kg class and at one point did a couple of USPA meets in the 308lbs class. Just recently he lost a whole bunch of weight and is now walking around at 120kg, he unofficially broke his old IPF squat record a few weeks ago.
The point here is that if he hadn’t bulked up and allowed himself to get fat then he wouldn’t be where he is now. He could have gone from a fat 120kg to a lean 105kg but his lifts would have gone down too much for him to be competitive at that weight.
I’m curious. Did the Wilks increase because they gained weight OR because they gained years of training experience? What does the data look like on guys at the same height who did not move up weight classes?
I would guess that both are factors for sure. It is absolutely possible to continue to get stronger while maintaining the same “sub-optimal” height-to-weight, it’s just going to be a slower process and I would bet that in 5 years, your relative strength will end up being less competitive than if you had gained the weight.
There are definitely some guys at the top that are out of the norm… Haack and Woolam come to mind… being able to stay more “physique competitor” looking while being at the top, but they are the outliers. If you want to progress, look at the guys at the top, look at what they are doing and have done to get there, find the commonalities between them all, then apply what is most appropriate for yourself. If you don’t want to us AASs, pay more attention to the guys who haven’t used than the ones on everything. If you’re a chubby white with shit genetics, don’t try to mimic what Larry Wheels does. If 90% of the guys in your weight class and the one above look more like refrigerators than Doritos… you’ll probably need to try to look more like a refrigerator than a Dorito.
Who do you know of that has made major progress without ever getting bigger? There are guys who stay in the same weight class but maybe start off at the bottom of it and a few years later are cutting 20+lbs to make weight.
The exception would be someone who is carrying too much fat, if you can gradually lean out and fill out your weight class with muscle then that would work. The only person I can think of who got far with that is Mike Tuchscherer, he said he was around 275 and fat at a young age, maybe 18 or 20, and if you look at his videos from a few years back when he was at his peak he was quite lean. Not only that, but the IPF changed up weight classes and he moved down to 120kg (obviously cutting weight for weigh ins, but not 20lbs because 2 hours) and he did well for a while.
The untested guys are something else. Look at Kevin Oak’s Instagram page, he was training for the US open but had some shoulder issues and dropped out, he was at 250 or more and now a couple weeks later he says he weighs 230. I don’t really follow him closely, but from what I have seen it looks like for every meet prep he gains a ton of weight but is still fairly lean and then drops back down after.
As for the leaner drug tested lifters, assuming they are clean , and assuming that you know their name, they are mostly genetic outliers. Just being able to get that strong without drugs is something, staying lean at the same time is something else.
Perhaps looking at the people at the top of this sport gives you a skewed view of things, you need to follow the example of fairly average people who made a lot of progress. One thing that all the successful PL coaches agree on is that you need a certain amount of mass to maximize your strength potential, if you can do that while staying lean that’s a bonus but remember that nobody cares how you look in a speedo.