I’m 34 years old, 5’4” and 144 lbs. My waist measures 32” and I’d say I’m roughly 16-17% bf. I’ve ran the sslp, the bridge, and now doing the hypertrophy template. My progress at this point is pretty inconsistent and I’m sure putting on weight would help, but I don’t think I’m underweight for my height. Considering my current measurements would it be unreasonable to put on 10-20 lbs slowly? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Tony,
Thanks for the post and hope you’re doing well.
I am wondering if you are male or female? I presume male based on our readership, but can never be too careful…
In any event, I’d be curious to know what exactly your progress has been and how we’re tracking it. Additionally, gaining weight slowly may help, but I don’t think you’re massively underweight either. Starting with 10lbs or so and see how you feel/perform and reassess would be reasonable.
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Lol… Sorry, I’m male. As far as my progress goes my best recorded lifts are bench 225x1, squat 345x3, dL 405x1, ohp 125x4. Ended my NLP with bench 185x5, squat 280x5, dl 315x5 at a bw of 165. So I’ve been able to lose some body fat and gain strength. I’m not too happy with my bf right now so I’ve thought about losing a little more before putting on weight. I’m currently using the rpe scale and trying to add a little weight to the bar each week (2.5-5lb). Thanks for the reply.
You’re not happy with 16-17% body fat? Why? I don’t think that is the best idea for strength improvement, but if you want to be leaner you can do that for sure. I think that if you have to work to be leaner than you’d normally be then training outcomes are more compromised than we’d otherwise like.
Would you be able to elaborate on this please Jordan? Do you not recommend slow bulk/cut phases?
Elaborate on what in particular? Sorry, just trying to figure out what you’re asking other than slow bulk/cut phases, which I generally like.
Thanks for answering the part of the question that made sense. I was intrigued by “I think that if you have to work to be leaner than you’d normally be then training outcomes are more compromised than we’d otherwise like”, because there’s a few concepts here that I don’t think have been fleshed out in any of the podcasts or videos (i.e. having to “work” to be learner than you’d “normally be”).
The reason I asked about bulk/cut cycles was because the context is a post where someone is 16-17% bodyfat, which seems within a couple of percentage points of an upper limit people with typical goals on this forum might want to stop bulking at. I was interested in what the above quotes meant in this context.
I think there are set points where people hang out at individual body fats (probably in a certain range amongst all humans) and if someone tries to significantly go lower than that, then the steps needed to be taken to do that tend to compromise training outcomes like strength and hypertrophy.
this is gold. And something that I don’t think is stressed or even mentioned frequently enough when discussing body composition and strength.
I like that I am seeing trends in the conversation turn more towards emphasis on waist circumference, strength combined with hypertrophy and training outcomes over the long term. This shit takes time; years not months with consistency and discipline towards training.