Hey guys, this is my first post. I randomly discovered ya’ll about a month ago by accident but have been listening to pretty much everything you’ve put out since. Thank you for all the time and effort you guys put into this and for making so much of it free.
I was listening to a podcast where you talked about gaining weight and classified being underweight as <190-200 for a 5’7"-5’10" guy. I’m 5’9" and am sitting at about 170. This is up from 163ish about 2 months ago. I’m outside of the novice phase and never ran the LP while a novice as I didn’t know about it, but have been lifting for about 10 years. You talked about the father away from being a novice you are, the more hypertrophy is a major determinant of strength. I’ve seen this myself as I’ve basically been stuck for about 9 years lifting the same weights. Attempts at pushing up my weight usually just ended in getting fat. Having gained about 7 pounds here now on the LP (decided to just give it a go) and then the bridge, my waist has gone from 32->33.75". Is that what you would deem an acceptable trade off for a post novice? What would be a fair rate of gain? What I’ve found usually applies to novices and then is more general for post novice…I’m guessing because it’s much more gray? Should I aim for like 1-2lbs a month? I hate being fat and want to stay healthy for my kids, so I appreciate yalls approach over gaining indiscriminately. Last question…how much does frame size play into your expected end weight? I have about a 6.5 inch wrist and a 9 inch ankle. My frame size is definitely on the smaller side just from eyeballing other people out and about. Would this change the end weight I should be shooting for? Is that why I’ve always gotten fat before? I assume surely I can get above 170 and still be ~15%, but maybe that’s not true and something I’ll just have to accept?
Sorry for rambling a bit. Any thoughts yall and anyone else have would be greatly appreciated. I love the dialogue that goes on here and have learned a great deal from it.
For your question, I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with 1.75" waist gain when gaining 7lbs, but that’s not necessarily good either. In short, I just don’t know. For reference, I went from ~180 > 200 and my waist went from 30>33 (roughly).
In any event, I don’t know how LP is going for you and I don’t have any reliable predictions of weight gain potential given your wrist and ankle measurements. I don’t think subjective reports of frame size do us much good here.
Basically, it sounds like you’ve been lifting weights without goal-directed programming for 10 years and are now doing LP, which is introducing you to the lifts for the first time (in a regular, progressive overload manner). You’re not terribly underweight, so you don’t need to gain a bunch of weight right now. That said, if you want to gain weight slowly over time and then move on to appropriate programming after LP is over…that’d be a good recommendation.
Thanks for your thoughts! I finished the LP and am on week 5 of the bridge now.
I guess my remaining question is what type of weight gain do you look for in a post novice? I guess the answer is probably nuanced as you would say…everyone will be different? Most of my waist increase came over a 2 week period where I put on 3 pounds. So if I aim for like .5lb a week, I guess that’s more in line with reality maybe?
It depends on the person entirely. I think that a large waist increase in 2 weeks that occurred with a 3lb weight gain indicates that during those 2 weeks your diet was a little less well controlled, which makes interpreting it difficult.