Aww, you shy? Just get your friend to pass a note to his friend telling him you like him
1 Like
Well that could be my only option left ,I’ve tried a cheeky smile thrown suggestively across the gym ,I’ve tried wearing my tightest yoga pants and doing squats right in front of him ,I’ve even thrown a dramatic fainting escopade right in front of him but nothing , I’m starting to feel so unwanted .
Chris asked you something earlier that you didn’t answer, so I’ll ask you the same thing.
How much do you think I weigh in this picture, and what would you say my bodyfat is? I’m 5’10, for reference.
Sorry for not answering I haven’t read every comment I am at work I haven’t avoided it on purpose. At a guess I would say 190lbs 10 percent bf. Could be way off but here to lear .
Eh, you’re not far off. 10 percent is within a point or so, and I’m actually 205 there.
1 Like
Pretty impressive seeing as you weren’t holding a shoe.
3 Likes
Do you think the big weak guy could be lifting heavy at one place then hitting another place on different days for active recovery/pump type stuff? Some people actually do hit different gyms for different purposes. Some places have nice machines, others are purely PL-dungeons, etc.
Just speculating though.
His work capacity was horrible more than anything else. And while he wasn’t overly weak or anything, I don’t remember him being particularly strong at anything either. Grant it he was doing a bunch of things he didn’t normally do. He was a piece of crap either way.
Oddly enough I looked back at the “i hate professor x” thread a few days ago (it popped up in my little notification thing) and I kinda got a bit nostalgic.
Or you saw him during a deload week. Or he trains twice a day and the OP only sees active recovery workouts in the afternoon. Or he could be getting over an injury. Or the op always gets there toward the end of the big guy’s session and misses all the heavy lifting. What you happen to see in the gym is never the whole picture. I’ve had people do exactly this to me.
The specifics of this example are weird for multiple reasons, but it’s undoubtedly true that size does not equal strength, and strength does not equal size. They are related, but less correlated than a lot of “gurus” would have you believe.
I spent years assuming this was not the case – that if you just get stronger on the big lifts, you’ll get bigger. Or that if a guy is “big”, he’ll be strong. Nope! Genetic variation is a huge factor in all physique and performance metrics. Skeletal size, nervous system efficiency, propensity to build muscle/ store fat (overall and within specific bodyparts), even variation of shape of the muscle bellies… all of this will affect physique.
I train at a small commercial gym with a bunch of regulars, and while I’m one of the more advanced and strongest lifters, I’m nowhere the biggest. Even a relatively casual lifter with a semi-big frame and a few months of training is going to look bigger than me… even if he can’t bench press his bodyweight.
So, per the thread title… yes there are big weak guys, they aren’t rare at all. (Though anyone over 200 lbs who isn’t fat not being able to get 15 reps with 15 kg DBs seems like a stretch…)
Let’s just get all the annoying shit out the way so this can die:
I’m smaller but I can lift more than the big guys at my gym
Squat and your arms will grow
All you need are the big compound lifts
Guys on steroids can build 6k of muscle without working out
High reps only cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy
Cardio kills gains
My bodyfat is X%
Direct ab work is useless
And so on…
1 Like
Superman is on roids. He loses his gainz when green stuff is thrown at him.
Dude, define “big” and “weak”. What is “big”? Fat? Fluffy(lol)? Just above average muscle mass? Wide framed? 225lbs shredded?
What is weak? Failure to lift more in a few selected lifts for 1 rep than “strong” people who specifically base their training on this?
2 Likes
Don’t waste your time, these discussions just descend into madness.
I love the whole “I’m stronger than the big guys” thing. It’s just hilarious, like you see these big dudes in the gym and they’re huge but you never see them benching more than like 3 plates, and they never squat or deadlift. Every gym’s got them, and obviously the young dudes who weigh like 180 and are squatting and deadlifting regularly see these guys and think “well gosh, gee, he’s not all that strong. I bet I can outlift him.”
Fine. If you’re so much stronger than these big dudes then get £1000 out the bank or ask your parents for it or whatever, and go challenge him to a test of strength. Walk up to the big “weak” guy and be like “bitch! Let’s see what’s up.” Set a date like 8 weeks in the future so the big guy has time to prepare.
You’ll get your ass smoked. These big dudes whom you see not using a huge amount of weight may not be lifting much weight now, but you can bet your ass they fucking did to get that size in the first place!
I see it all the time with lifters who are a little older and carry a shitload of size. It all becomes about keeping joints healthy and longevity so you’re not doing shit like sets of 3 on deadlift or squatting max weight. These dudes all have fucking blown out disks in their back, fucked up knees, etc. The last thing they’re thinking about doing is lifting enough to impress some chump at the gym.
It’s laughable to assume that if a guy is BIG and lean, he got that way by accident or from sitting on his ass taking steroids and half-assing his workouts like “hur hur this shit is easy.”
The big dudes are strong. Just go about your day and leave them alone.
1 Like
I really don’t consider my point controversial at all, but I guess I"ll try to clarify it.
When I say “big”, I mean it in general, casual terms – a random person on the street would consider them big. Significantly bigger than average. I don’t mean bodybuilder big, I don’t mean big and lean necessarily, I just mean a big, relatively impressive physique to the average person. Which is what matters, when it comes to physique – how the average public views you.
There are dozens of guys like this at my gym. I see them every day. I know them. They aren’t necessarily highly “developed” in their physiques overall, by bodybuilding standards, but they will always look bigger than me in a t-shirt. Most of them aren’t super serious lifters, they lift a few days a week, they look decent , they ask me questions about lifting, we chat, whatever. Almost zero of these guys are “strong”, by any definition a T-nation forum poster would come up with.
And I’m not talking about guys who can bench 3 plates and don’t even bother deadlifting or squatting. Obviously. (Since when is a 3 plate bench weak?)
I’ll give a couple examples, but there are so many guys like this it seems silly to debate seriously.
One guy is a natural bodybuilder in his 40s who I’m friends with. He’s probably around 215 right now, down from around 230 at his offseason heaviest, planning to compete at 195lbs (he may not be exactly shredded at this weight, though). He trains seriously (more than most of the “big” guys I’m talking about) – he lifts 6 days a week, he squats and deadlifts, he talks about competing at a powerlifting event perhaps in the Fall, but he’s a masters lifter. He has a bit of a gut, but is carrying much more muscle than me, with arms like twice the size of mine. I weight 178 right now, to be shredded I’d have to be around 165 or less… and I’m stronger than him on every lift, including bench press. (Bench is my worst lift… best set in the last year was 265x3). I squat and deadlift his max for reps. I can do twice as many pullups. And I’m far from a freak, in terms of strength – there are plenty of guys on this forum stronger than me, I’ve just trained consistently.
Another example, from yesterday. A guy I see around the gym all the time, but don’t really talk to – he’s about my height/size, a slightly wider frame, maybe 185lbs, but he has huge arms. He just looks a lot more muscular than me, mostly due to the arms, also shoulder width, though perhaps his back and chest development isn’t really that impressive. Usually he’s around the DB rack, I’ve never seen him squat or deadlift, but yesterday he was on the bench press. He maxed at 185x6, then did two back-offs at 155lbs… last set 155x6. Is this strong or weak? You tell me.
These are just two examples… there are plenty more I could come up with, real guys in my gym, even weaker, but relatively “big.”
To clarify, are you adding weight to your pull-ups to equal his bodyweight, or is he using some sort of assistance machine to equal your bodyweight? Otherwise, comparing bodyweight movements becomes somewhat muddy if you’re trying to directly compare strength.
Love this list. One of those things that took me a while to learn; ability to move more weight does not necessarily indicate “stronger”. In many cases, it’s simply “better”.
1 Like
it must suck so hard for you to be so awesome and be surrounded by such mediocrity.
I bet these dudes are all posting on forums about this super awesome guy who weighs nothing but is just so super strong.
I love you. Marry me and have my children. With your herculean strength and my sexy aesthetics they’d be kings among insects.
Please tell me you love me. We’ll do 5x5 together in paradise forever.
Interesting that my post gets you so hot and bothered. Are you insecure about something?
The point is not that I’m super strong – that’s exactly wrong. It’s that strength is not a requirement to be “big,” and that training for size alone will not make you strong. Conversely, training for strength alone will not necessarily make you big.
I also didn’t make any value judgment about strength making one better or these guys being “mediocre.” Most of them don’t really care to be much stronger – they train for appearance and to get exercise. If they really wanted to be strong, they’d train differently. E.g., they’d do more than front squat 135 lbs for their leg training like you, Yogi.
na not hot and bothered, I just think you’re one of the boring, 5x5 answers everything type dudes. I’ve thought you sucked ever since I saw you tell a noob he needed to do 5x5 to get strong so he could maximise hypertrophy. Yawn. You all look alike to me.
And yes, strength is a requirement to get big. It’s called progressive overload.
And if you really want to talk numbers, ok, well my front squat’ll be up at 180k by the end of the year and I can still bench 3 plates for fun if so inclined, but usually I’m using 40k dumbells for presses, 100k for reps on the front squats and 16k dumbbells for curls.
Gasp! I must be a big weak guy! Oh no, I hope no one starts a thread about me!
Look at all these massive pussies
