Thanx for the support Guys!!!
[quote]Joel602 wrote:
I have Been overweight all of my LIFE I Boxed for 2 years and lost about 70lbs but didnt have any muscle… Then i was injured… So being depressed I couldn’t compete anymore I gained it back I went back to 270lbs … It has been One Month of “serious” training and I weigh 257 But I have more musle tone than ever and I can see my veins when I work out!!! I have always loved that and I OWE it all to T Nation this website motivated me beyond beleif… I went from fat ass to almost solid in about 1 month so you are doing something very wrong if you dont see results![/quote]
OK, my turn. Great job Joel. I’m coming from the other way. I’ve always been skinny as a rail - but as I approached 40 I got a pot belly thing going on. I was becoming the worst possible thing - a fat skinny guy.
In 11 months, I now look like a collegiate swimmer. Not big, not a “bodybuilder” for sure, but definitely a much more athletic looking person. With my shirt off, there’s no doubt I work out. I have a long way to go to get where I want to be, but I’ve come a long way in 11 months.
If you’ve been doing this for 7 years and aren’t getting where you want to go, then either:
A.) Read and apply the principles on this website whilst simultaneously disregarding all printed bodybuilding magazines.
or
B.) Lower your expectations. Seriously, bodybuilders have a good look, but so do swimmers and gymnasts. They just aren’t as big.
In my case, it was unreasonable for me to state: “I want to look like Ronnie Coleman, so I’m going to get a Smoothie King and go to the gym”. It was not unreasonable for me to watch the olympics and say: “I want to look like one of those swimmer dudes”. (Actually, at the time, that was a little unreasonable, but, hey, what can you do?)
Hope that helps.
RB
[quote]Professor X wrote:
John K wrote:
I’ve put on 20 pounds before and had people tell me they didn’t see a difference.
They say it is hard to see body weight differences less than 20lbs, but most should be able to discern a 20lbs difference in muscle mass. Maybe you gained it mostly in places that don’t catch attention at first. Bodybuilders notice leg and back development. The general public really doesn’t give a shit.[/quote]
These people are fucking retarded. Most of my friends lift fairly often and are more perceptive than most, but they can notice when people gain 5 or so who lift fairly often. Especially considering weight gain occurs in spurts, by the time you pack on 20 lbs, you have to be flat out fucking retarded not to notice. Or weigh somewhere around 380.
[quote]Garrett W. wrote:
Professor X wrote:
John K wrote:
I’ve put on 20 pounds before and had people tell me they didn’t see a difference.
They say it is hard to see body weight differences less than 20lbs, but most should be able to discern a 20lbs difference in muscle mass. Maybe you gained it mostly in places that don’t catch attention at first. Bodybuilders notice leg and back development. The general public really doesn’t give a shit.
These people are fucking retarded. Most of my friends lift fairly often and are more perceptive than most, but they can notice when people gain 5 or so who lift fairly often. Especially considering weight gain occurs in spurts, by the time you pack on 20 lbs, you have to be flat out fucking retarded not to notice. Or weigh somewhere around 380.[/quote]
I have experienced the same, but I assumed he was speaking of “the general public”. The people I lift with can tell differences to the point that they’ll notice if I dropped my carbs too low for a week. To most who are perceptive, muscle mass gains are visible.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Garrett W. wrote:
Professor X wrote:
John K wrote:
I’ve put on 20 pounds before and had people tell me they didn’t see a difference.
They say it is hard to see body weight differences less than 20lbs, but most should be able to discern a 20lbs difference in muscle mass. Maybe you gained it mostly in places that don’t catch attention at first. Bodybuilders notice leg and back development. The general public really doesn’t give a shit.
These people are fucking retarded. Most of my friends lift fairly often and are more perceptive than most, but they can notice when people gain 5 or so who lift fairly often. Especially considering weight gain occurs in spurts, by the time you pack on 20 lbs, you have to be flat out fucking retarded not to notice. Or weigh somewhere around 380.
I have experienced the same, but I assumed he was speaking of “the general public”. The people I lift with can tell differences to the point that they’ll notice if I dropped my carbs too low for a week. To most who are perceptive, muscle mass gains are visible. [/quote]
Yeah, that’s an easy mistake. The gym is a microcosm. Problem: You want to look better on the beach. Solution: Go to a Texas Beach.
Remember that it’s all relative. I’m in the top 2% walking around Galveston. The fat women practically trip over themselves to look at me - or maybe they’re just tripping on their laps.
At South Beach, I couldn’t even take a drink order without getting laughed at.
My point is that practically everyone in the gym is far more attuned to body issues and in far better shape than the average population at large. Particularly here in Houston, America’s fattest city.
RB
folks, folks, calm down. it was just a question.
and i can see that i got some good answers. but i’m going for another 7 years.
how ya like me now,
raul_90013
[quote]raul_90013 wrote:
folks, folks, calm down. it was just a question.
and i can see that i got some good answers. but i’m going for another 7 years.
how ya like me now,
raul_90013[/quote]
All right! Good plan.
Try another 7 years of training, then and only then should you look at your results and see if anything you did caused ANY change in your body.
After that 7 year re-evaluation, you might want to consider taking your evaluations of your workouts a little sooner than evey 7 years or so.
Best of luck to ya!
Oh, and I like you soooooo much better now that you are showing that you haven’t read many articles on this site and that you aren’t going to make much use of the good advice you recieved here.
Way to fight the system and not give into peer pressure!
No way are you going to be a conformist and give into all of this building size and strength, and losing fat B.S.
Working out for years on end with no results is the way to go.
[quote]raul_90013 wrote:
i’ve been at this now for 7 years. can anybody tell me how long before 7 years of powerlifting and body building starts to change your body? at least if sombody replies, and gives me an estimation of how long it took them to transform into a “bodybuilder” maybe i will sleep better at night.
[/quote]
In my case it took me about 15 years of training to gain around 60lb of lean mass and add 300lb to my bench (never touched a roid in my life either). Three quarters to ninety percent of my size and strength gains occured within the first five to seven years.
Bottom line is I think that if you’ve been eating and training (and resting) right you should look like you wouldn’t look out of place in a (natural) body building contest after around five years of body buidging.
If you haven’t made any significant gains after seven years then I wouldn’t be betting big bucks on you suddenly gaining a significiant amount of muscle over the next seven by continuing to do whatever it is you’ve been doing.
Obviously youve got to make some sort of radical change to you body building program. Youre either over training or under training or more likely under eating.
[quote]raul_90013 wrote:
folks, folks, calm down. it was just a question.
and i can see that i got some good answers. but i’m going for another 7 years.
how ya like me now,
raul_90013[/quote]
Don’t
I’m 17, so this may not apply to you much, but after 2 months of training, the first few weeks of which was dicking around and changing programs weekly, and without any proper nutrition, I have went from 155 to 161 and have put on visible size.
[quote]NNNNate! wrote:
Same here. It didn’t feel good.
Let’s see what happens when I put on 40.
John K wrote:
I’ve put on 20 pounds before and had people tell me they didn’t see a difference.
[/quote]
It took me about 45# for people to start saying I looked bigger (I’m 6’5")
Though you have to wonder about waiting seven years to ask … It is a reasonable question that I bet passes through a lot of people’s minds.
Let’s make it more specific → How long does it take, with average genetics, decent but not saintly training and diet, to look like a bodybuilder to the average person. Not a pro, not a contest winning amateur, just someone with defined muscles ?
Sounds like the consensus is around 5 years?
Any suggestion on average path?
year 1 → muscles become detectable, learn to do exercises, lots of trial and error. Lose fat and develop work capacity
year 2 → start to develop strength, develop thickness in some areas, start to wonder how long it will take
year 3 → easy gains in strength and size slow, more attention to diet, starting to look like a bodybuilder but without impressive size, just better than normal person definition.
year 4 → more of year 3 except some parts now getting to be noticable thickness. Diet dialed in and body maintained at lower level. For some reason, strenght climbing again.
year 5 → after a winter of greater volume than ever before, favourite parts have decent (but disappointing?) size. Work hard to drop fat for beach season and all of a sudden people are making comments about steriods …
[quote]chub39 wrote:
Though you have to wonder about waiting seven years to ask … It is a reasonable question that I bet passes through a lot of people’s minds.
Let’s make it more specific → How long does it take, with average genetics, decent but not saintly training and diet, to look like a bodybuilder to the average person. Not a pro, not a contest winning amateur, just someone with defined muscles ?
Sounds like the consensus is around 5 years?
Any suggestion on average path?[/quote]
Why are you even making this that complicated and what good would this do anyone? It takes years of hard work to actually build enough muscle to look like a “bodybuilder” or someone who most people assume must either play pro football or act as a bouncer for local nightclubs. How many years is largely up to genetics and how consistent you are as far as hard work and food intake. Some of the people I have known with what seemed to be the greatest genetics weren’t very interested in bodybuilding. They quit lifting eventually…usually as soon as their brief college football career was over.
The only thing that usually stands constant is that if you have trained hard for this and eaten enough to gain and after five years you STILL don’t get people calling you out and noticing you for your size at all, chances are, you may not want to jump into any bodybuilding competitions any time soon. Your genetics probably aren’t that great.
With the growing number of people who seem to be afraid of gaining any weight at all because they might lose an ab, even fewer will ever reach their potential. Very few people on the planet are pure mesomorphs where the only thing they seem to gain is muscle.
thanks, that is definitely much better.
raul_90013