Current Bodybuilding Training Thread 2.0

How did you feel on it?

Well towards the end there were some rough times but overall I do very well on keto/low carb style diets. Maybe I had some of the bad effects at the beginning but I’ve been on one so long I’ve forgotten.

I seem to get fatter on a higher carb diet but in truth I’ve never REALLY run a long term, calorie matched comparison on myself… but any time I add in carbs I get soft within weeks/months where’s adding in fats ad lib doesn’t quite seem to have that effect on me.

Were you a naturally skinny guy before you got into bodybuilding?

Not sure if this was directed at anyone in particular, or just an at-large question…I’ll pick the latter. I was a naturally skinny guy before bodybuilding. When I was 20 years old, touring in a rock band, I stood 5’10" and weighed between 110-115 pounds.

Oh I was specifically asking @Lonnie123

I was, yeah. As luck would have it I actually have pictures from around that time.

I started out around 150ish, maybe 155:

And since we lost our profiles and photos, here was me at my contest for those who have never seen them.

I think I weighed in ~160 believe it or not on show day, so there is very little change in scale weight from those 2 pics (that was fun, dieting back to my pre training scale weight… not a mind fuck at all).

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How tall are you again?

5’9" I think (need 20 characters to post)

Crazy when you only think in terms of scale weight. Lonnie at 150 lbs vs 160 lbs years later… A completely different physique!

I started lifting weighing 150 as well, and it wasn’t even all muscle -lol. Thinking how I was 170 at my first show, and felt tiny, but sooooo different from how I looked at the start.

S

Awesome transformation my friend! I asked because I was a naturally skinny guy as well…I was 5’11 150 coming out of high school. Leaving college as a student athlete I was 180. I got on stage at 195. But, It seems us naturally skinny guys are much more insulin/carb sensitive.

I noticed when my carbs dropped below the 200 mark and I had a little more fats in me, the weight seemed to fall off of me (in a good way). I hate it, but I think I saw my best progress at right about 99-130g/day.

I haven’t tried full keto but I suspect I would do well on it just like yourself.

So many amazing transformations in here!

It seems often times a lot of successful BBers started out naturally skinny when they started lifting, at least based on what we hear during interviews with the big names and on the forums. Does anyone think there’s correlation between naturally skinny body type ability to put on muscle vs. naturally slower metabolism folks who are fatter?

Anyone here start out fat and outta shape? Just my experience, I was never exercising, got up to 205lbs at 5’4", not pretty. Eventually leaned out to 135, then started slowly gaining.

Its an interesting question. I think perhaps naturally skinny guys have more of an initial draw and motivation to get bigger and stronger, whereas a guy who sits around 190-210 normally and is kinda strong anyway might not feel motivated to hit the gym 5 days a week.

Naturally skinny guys might also have the potential for a more traditional BBer look with their small joints, narrow waist, etc… Big, thick guys can obviously be huge, but someone like Brian Shaw might not ever get that comic book style musculature associated with high level BBers.

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Interesting discussion, and sort of hits home. I was up to 220 when I started this time, about three years ago, and was always a fat kid, so I have trouble getting enough calories, partly because I’m pretty active, but also because I’m scared to death of getting fat again. And while I’m not actually bodybuilding, the food thing carries over to strength training, at least for me.

I’m pretty sure I stalled out on SS because I had no tolerance for going above 16% body fat and couldn’t handle getting over two hundred again (I was up to 196). I’ve dieted back down to 190, and 14%, but would really like to add LBM, but it’s just a huge battle for me.

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@Lonnie123 and @The_Myth both already gave the two points I was going to make (1. skinny guys already have the bone structure and joints to help with the comic book illusion and 2. bigger guys aren’t motivated as much/can’t handle gaining weight). I will add my one personal experience with a bigger guy, though.

My boss was a big guy. I’m not sure exactly how tall he is, but he’s around 6’4" or 6’5" and once weighed 350+. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s been losing weight. He dropped about 160 lbs and is now sitting down between 200-210. Last year, he decided that he wanted to add muscle now that he’s gotten his weight under control…but that only lasted for a month because he began complaining about gaining weight (aka the scale moved the wrong way).

I can’t say this for fact because I’m one of those naturally skinny dudes, but I believe that people that start as obese or fatter than they’d like often times develop a bad relationship with the scale and can’t handle seeing the scale go up (even though it might only be muscle mass that makes the scale increment). That must be a really difficult thought pattern to break…

^^^This^^^

It’s complimicated.

I don’t disagree in the slightest

Most of you guys who started skinny already 30lb up on me! I started at 120ish at 5.9 but never felt I was drastically skinny, even looking back at pictures I don’t believe I weighed as little as I did, I think I must have a light frame.

Not sure how to upload a pic from my phone though.

Yeah, agreed here and with @The_Myth, the relationship with the scale is a tough one. Even as I’m trying to gain LBM, when I see the scale go up I still get a twinge of “aw shit” in a bad way, I think it’ll always be like that.

@Lonnie123, agreed that the naturally skinny folks might have better starting point for the BBer “look”, but aside from that I also think these folks just have an easier time putting on muscle provided they eat enough. If guys are naturally that skinny, obviously metabolism is in their favor, ya know the guys who have to make sure they eat enough to gain weight, versus fatter/slower metabolism folks who gain easily, and usually not the right kind of weight. Personally I was extremely motivated to get into the gym and still am, but I also think a “hard gainer” skinny type will put on muscle more efficiently with less body fat due to their faster metabolism.

I agree with this to an extent, but I think motivations are different. A naturally skinny person (when we say skinny we’re all understanding that we’re talking about lanky and needing muscle mass) really wants to gain weight, a fat person with slow metabolism really wants to LOSE weight. When I was a fatty I wasn’t thinking about gaining muscle and making the scale go up, I was thinking, “man I wish I wasn’t freaking fat, I would love to be skinny.” (I wasn’t even concerned with muscle mass in the slightest, I just wanted to be skinny) and I think this is where most fat people are. So I don’t think it’s a motivation issue of getting into the gym to lift or whatever, plenty of fat people are motivated as hell to lose weight. The problem is when they go into the gym 6 times a week, they sit on the treadmill or elliptical and that’s it, because that’s what most think is necessary to lose weight, rather than implementing a good training program and nutrition plan. A skinny “hard gainer” isn’t going to go into the gym trying to lose weight on the treadmill, they’ll start lifting weights.

So overall if you have the naturally skinny guy who already has very low body fat and just needs to make sure they eat enough and lift hard, versus a fat person who has a lot of fat to lose first and is gonna have a tough time doing it, has to be restricted on cals and food choices and such aside from training, it’s quite a task. Certainly not impossible and can be done, but as objectively as I can say, I think fatter/slower metabolism types have a harder road ahead of them from a BBing perspective than those who are naturally skinnier, which is why we don’t see as many FFB BBers.

I didn’t mean to say that bigger people aren’t motivated to go to the gym. Not at all. If anything, I think they have a stronger motivation to go to the gym. I meant to say that they might not have as much motivation to gain muscle (because they’re focused on losing weight), which isn’t a bad thing.

Sometimes, I’ve found that people lose motivation for something once they achieve a goal. Myself, my goals was always to get bigger and more muscular, which isn’t a goal that can ever be achieved because I can always get bigger and I can always become more muscular.

Many of the typical bigger people that I know and love in my life aren’t like @robstein. Their goal is to lose weight. I notice that that is a HUGE motivational factor for them (friends, family, coworkers…not trying to stereotype here; I love these people). But once that goal is met, I’ve noticed that the large amount of gratification it gives allows them to let off the gas pedal, so to speak.

I didn’t mean to say that bigger guys/gals don’t have motivation to go to the gym. I just meant to impart that, perhaps, there isn’t as much motivation for gaining muscle/weight when compared to a skinny guy/gal. And the important part of that sentence is the comparison…not trying to speak in absolutes here.

Ah, yes then I totally agree with you here!

Also true more often than not, I have similar experiences with friends and loved ones, I’m sure we all do. I haven’t trained anyone for a prep yet, but I have made nutrition/diet plans for about 10-12 people over the past couple of years, and more often than not they have great success and are so thrilled, then they let up. What these folks don’t understand is it’s a LIFESTYLE change that is needed, not a “diet”, and that’s what most have trouble with.

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