Low BMI, high abdominal fat, slow progression. Where to go from here?

Hi,

Thank you again for all the time and resources you put into this community.
I’m a 27 year old male, 179cm and at the moment weigh just above 70kg.
Despite my height I have a narrow frame and lots of abdominal fat with a waist around 34.5’.
Below is an overview of my training/nutritional background through the years and some questions.

Training/Nutritional Background

until 2015:
lightly active life, ocassional cardio sports (tennis/soccer/running), eating home cooked food most of the time (thank you mom)

2015-2018:
eating tons of junk (fast food, sweets, processed stuff like frozen pizza) during college and yoyo dieting/light cardio for 2-3 months at a time to keep it in check.
Gained weight but nothing extreme (top was ~75kg, lowest ~67kg), overall got stuck with a lot of abdominal fat during this period despite keeping weight more or less in check.

2018-2020:
I started working and stress/lack of time to cook led to overeating takeaway while being completely sedentary, gained a lot of weight to 83 kg and almost 37’ waist in early 2020

2020-2021:
Started the at home template in summer 2020 for around 6-8 months (not very effective due to being stuck with 2x10 kg dumbbells).
With the help of the template and carefully measuring calories I went down to ~67 kg and 33’ waist in early 2021.

2021-2022:
took break from all exercising, still ate moderately maintaining weight between 67-69 kg and waist around 33’-34’

nov 2022-present:
november 2022 I started barbell training for the first time with the beginner template for ~8 weeks (repeating week4 4 times), then took a 3 week break due to a really bad flu.
Afterwards I felt really weak and re-started with the first phase instead of moving to the 2nd in the template, re-doing week 4 for another 8 weeks, the final 5 weeks being more or less a plateau.
After these 16 weeks I had the below results and some modest muscle development:

Bench e1RM: 100lbs → 150lbs
Squat e1RM: 100lbs → 150lbs
DL e1RM: 140lbs → 230 lbs

After doing the beginner template for so long I took the mostly emotional decision to move to the Hypertrophy I template which I’ve been doing for the past 7 weeks. I have seen some more muscle development, but with numbers plateauing to values similar to those above. Starting at ~68kg in january and eating around/slighly above maintenance, I am now ~70 kg with a waist size of 34.5’.

Actual Questions

1. Do I cut, maintain or bulk considering my waist size?

I would like to be bigger and stronger ™​, but I feel like I’m progressing very very slowly towards either of those goals, so I would like to bulk, but at the same time my health is the top priority and my understanding is I am quite close to the cutoff point waist-size wise.
2. Have I made a mistake moving on to Hypertrophy I so early? Should I return to beginner template phase 2 instead?

3. Is my progress normal? I feel really weak based on my numbers.

I feel like I should be stronger after almost 6 months of lifting, but my numbers are not that far off my numbers 3 months ago and this is taking a toll mentally. I believe genetics play a role into this: narrow frame, small wrists, long hands, as well as having never trained or done any strength adjacent sports until now. I am just wondering if I should treat it more as “I am failing at programming” or “this is a a normal progression for someone with my history/genetics and I need to give it time”.

Sorry for the wall of text, I am at a bit of an impasse.

Thank you!

t4runner,

  1. I would not bulk and I see no reason to cut unless you want to. Bulking won’t make you appreciably stronger faster if the programming is not appropriate. I’d pick maintenance unless you want to do something else.

  2. Sounds like you did pretty well with the phase I of the beginner template. Given that strength is your goal and you don’t have a super long training history, I would prefer you move onto phase II of the beginner template.

  3. Adding ~ 200lbs to your total in 8 weeks is pretty good, for sure. I would not expect the hypertrophy template to do a ton for strength or size when applied to someone who hasn’t been training for very long. Also would be really hard to compare e1RMs from it (the hypertrophy template) to lower rep efforts.

I do not think you have bad genetics at all, as I can’t tell anything from this short period of time you’ve spent training. For reference, you bench more than I did 6 months into lifting. The results you want are likely to take longer than you predict (e.g. years), but I think you are also likely to get much further than you ever thought possible.

The biggest pieces of advice I can give you for the rest of the year:

  1. You should only be running 1-2 programs until 2024. Small tweaks to whatever you end up running would be fine, but you should not be changing programs very often.
  2. Do the conditioning
  3. Don’t make drastic swings with your BW. Be consistent with following a high quality, health-promoting diet rich in lean protein, fruit, veg, whole grains, and legumes.
  4. Get some form checks on the big lifts for peace of mind. We offer this service, but you may feel more comfortable with other coaching services available to you. That’s fine too.
  5. Delete TikTok
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Thank you Jordan, this is all great advice, will continue on a maintenance diet and return to/stick with the beginner template for the near future.

I remember you said you you SBD’d 500/350/550 in your first year. So did you go on to add another 200+ lb to your bench in the following 6 months, or was the 350 after your first year of dedicated powerlifting?​

Yep, my bench went up by over 200lbs in right around 6 months when I started actually training (kind of). Took me another decade or so to add another 100lbs.

SheeshHh!! Could you share what you used to do before and after this proper training? Unless that’s proprietary :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I can promise you it wasn’t very well thought out. That said, my training history is pretty well documented in my old log on Starting Strength (almost a decade worth of training log there-though it may have been deleted) and my instagram if you’re curious.