My diet was 1g of protein per lbs. of bodyweight with 2,500 calories during all of my prior training time when I gave 4 excellent programs each a 2-month-long effort. My endurance improved alot and I gained some muscle mass which each of the programs, but I still made very little to no progress in strength on each of them.
Also, I still don’t get why just eating more will not likely help.
I actually wondered about this; how did you determine strength growth within a 2 month span. By chance, were you maxing out after 2 months on every program and comparing old numbers with new ones?
This seems like it might be relevant:
As for this…
It probably will “help” in the sense that you may continue to gain weight and strength, but at some point “just eat more” becomes a recipe for gaining additional fat. This entire thread started because you expressed some (justified) concern the prospect of getting overly fat if you merely continued to follow Starting Strength with more and more food, which is why JFG said…
…and then Punisher said…
…and yet here we are a few days later, with you still somehow believing that the answer lies in carrying on with the Starting Strength workouts and just adding more food because you already gave four other well-respected and proven programs a solid 2 months and none of them actually got you stronger until you did Starting Strength.
Do you think that the improved endurance, and increased muscle mass you gained doing other programs set you up for the strength gains from Starting Strength?
Because you might try one of those other programs for a couple more months. Build up some muscle. Improve your endurance. Do some jumps to get more explosive. Develop the stuff that Starting Strength doesn’t develop.
Understand that even if your max weight for three sets of five doesn’t specifically improve, the new muscles and endurance are good.
Then, go back to S.S., with improved lats, hamstrings and tris. With more endurance and more muscles, you’ll be ready to get bigger numbers.
It’s important to understand the relationship of strength and weight gain. If you’re simply underweight, gaining weight is necessary if your goal is to get stronger. I’m 6’1, 175 and need to see at least 200 pounds on the scale before I can think about anything else. Another 10-20 pounds after that might be needed.
How old are you?
Sure, but I want to qualify this a little bit.
Even if gaining weight is necessary for OP to keep gaining strength, there’s a difference between “gaining more quality mass at a sensible pace” and “shoveling more food down my gullet to gain weight, damn the torpedoes.” Let’s remember that the OP’s original question was about how much more mass gain he could / should reasonably expect in the next couple of months, clearly motivated by an underlying fear of getting a little too soft.
As some of the fine authors on this site have written, you can’t force-feed your way to extra muscle gain just by “adding more food” - and yet here is OP asking why he can’t just keep doing Starting Strength with more food. Perhaps he can do so and continue gaining strength - but if he’s also worried about his waistline (and the tone of the initial post suggests that he is), then “more food” alone may not be the answer here. A little more food + a change to a next-level training program may be more in line.
Agreed completely.
You guys should stop thinking in extremes and stop advising people to do the same. If you want to be successful in this sport, you need to develop the ability to self evaluate and listen to your body. Don’t blindly do something utterly ludicrous like GOMAD(which only makes sense if a skinny athlete needs to make weight for a sport in a short amount of time) in situations like this
This does not mean count macros with surgical precision and only gain 1/4lb of bodyweight a week(fuck I can smell this coming).
It’s difficult to put on the amount of weight OP is talking about. 40-50 pounds in 6 months would take a serious calorie surplus, probably doubleing the amount of calories he was getting before. So many factors get in the way of that much weight gain as well.
My suggestion: If OP feels he’s getting chubby (probably isn’t), try leaner sources (lean meat, 1 or 2% milk, cut fattier condiments like cheese, peanut butter, sauces and add more fruit/veggies). At 165, another 30 pounds is in the cards. If you’re skinny, the fat can be good for your joints as well as preventing your muscles from eating at themselves.
I’m going to paraphrase something that Chris Colucci once wrote awhile back: this is a great example of someone typing stuff just to bang away at the keyboard and feel like they’ve contributed something useful That’s a bunch of useless gobbledygook right there. Trying “leaner sources” is only relevant if OP is eating more than an appropriate amount of fat, and I have no idea what “the fat can be good for your joints” is supposed to mean…are you conflating the difference between dietary fat and body fat?
*Edited to add: it’s not like all of my posts are full of pearls of wisdom, either. I’ve certainly contributed my share of useless blerg in the past. But come on, dude. That post has nothing useful in it, just confusing bullshit.
How so?
If he’s trying to gain weight but doesn’t want to add excess fat, it would only make sense to try get those calories with better quality. So instead of whole milk, 2 or 1% would still get the calories/protein of whole milk, but the fat would be way down.
The point I was trying to make was that fat isn’t necessarily bad when you weigh 165 pounds.
And by the way, your post claiming everything I said as “useless gobbledygook” is actually much more useless than mine, so…
Your statements do not make any logical sense.
What makes 2% milk a better quality source of nutrients compared to whole milk?
This.
italy, you seem to be equating additional dietary fat with body fat gain. I am entirely in favor of consumption of quality fats; excess body fat gain, not so much. Furthermore, if one is gaining too much body fat, it’s really quite a poor and overly simplistic solution to merely cut out dietary fat and expect that to solve the problem.
The other thing worth addressing: just because “another 30 pounds is in the cards” does not mean the OP has to gain all of that in the next three months (which, if you read the first post, you would see is the question he is asking) to make continued strength gains. I am not at all advocating that the OP stop trying to gain weight. However, I am suggesting that if he has stalled on Starting Strength to the extent that he describes, it seems unlikely that merely forging ahead on Starting Strength but adding more food with the intent of gaining 30 pounds in the next three months will serve his goals well in the long run. He would be better served striving for more weight on the bar with a better program and continuing to add weight at a reasonable pace.