Hi
I’ve started gym weightlifting about 1 year ago, with a workout 3 times a week routine. I’ve gained 7kg’s of muscles. Now my BF it’s 8% (measured by a professional).
I saw some gym people to have built a very thicker phisique than me: their shoulders, chest and back are really thick and wide.
So I thought: Do I have the requirements to do it?
I do not like a very low BF phisique, but something around 12 to 15% with a high BMI it’s what I really love.
I love machines, Nautilus preferably. They are a good tool. But T3 is helping you out. All of our frames are different, and you look naturally plum straight between you hips and arm pits. T3 is giving you advice, start using the barbell, dips, pull over, weighted chins. I am not going to give you a program or tell you what workout you should do. You can research that. Good luck to you!
Thanks you! THe first one seems to be what I would like to achieve, “strenght”!. But it’s on 4 days right? Would it be possible to do a schedule for 3 days?
The second one seems to be more focused towards aestethics?
If so, which one does fir better to my body, given the images I’ve posted?
I saw the first pic. It looks far from 8% body fat.
You need a foundation to get thicker and wider (and thicker is the most important.) My suggestion is concentrate on powerlifting for about two years. Enter at least three powerlifting meets if you can. Those lifts will build the major muscle groups.
You will get stronger. And then you can put that strength to work to get thicker. “Easier” should be dropped from your vocabulary. The only thing that should be “easier” is falling to sleep.
It’s okay! Is that possible to also building strenght? How would you connect the different muscle groups over the 3 days?
Which muscles “Day1”, and then “Day2” and “Day3”?
Did he (or she) scratch their head when they got 8%? Did they retest to check that it wasn’t a fluke reading?
Just let it be said that a percent body fat “number” means absolutely nothing, especially if it doesn’t translate to what you see in the mirror.
On this forum, most would say that you saying that you don’t like the look of a well defined physique. For most it is difficult to maintain 8% body fat for extended periods of time. And some cannot achieve that low of a body fat at all.
I don’t know what your % body fat looks like. But it is only a number. I had competed in bodybuilding over three decades. I tried to get my % body fat as low as I could get it. I have no idea the specific number, only the “ball park.” The judges don’t know my % body fat, and wouldn’t care if they did know. It’s all about how good I looked compared to the competition.
When John Parrillo came onto the bodybuilding scene, he offered a skin fold test for calculating % body fat. You ask: How precise is the skin fold test? I don’t know, and I don’t care. All that is important is its expense and its repeatability. My wife became very proficient doing the skin fold test. She knew to test the exact same locations and got the same results three times before recording them. All that I used that % body fat calipers was to see if I was measuring fewer mm of skin fold. Close to the contest I began monitoring mostly my upper back, as it was the location with the greatest mm that the calipers measured.
I will say that I competed with a skin fold calculated % body fat in the mid 5%s. Was I at between 5 and 6% on contest day? I don’t know. All that mattered was what the judges saw.
So, yes, I did use mm of skin fold to determine if I was making progress week to week. Whether I was making progress or not was all that mattered. I used the feedback system to determine to drop more carbohydrates, or not. I balanced the scale and % body fat test with a strength metric. If I am losing strength along with pounds and % body fat, I would adjust the carbohydrates up a little. I wanted to slowly lose measured weight and % body fat, while maintaining as much strength as possible. Because I had competed in close 90, or so, contests I knew my body’s reaction very well.