I will be taking time off heavy lifting (1-3rms) and want to spend a year getting leaner and then pack on as much muscle as I can.
I am a sub elite level powerlifter 1800@308+ who will be giving it all away and just wants to train for Mass (don’t really want to go into the reasons…there are a few of them).
I was a fat 308+ (scale weight 326 10 weeks ago) and slowly working my way down slowly (currently 286) trying to do it as healthily as possible.
Can anyone recommend a style of training that suits someone who is already quite strong?
As I mentioned I will not be powerlifting, I just want to be a mass monster.
Some of the strongest guys on here still do curls with 20lb dumbbells.
There was a huge mfer on here from Texas. He was 310+ at about 15% bf. I remember that because someone called BS on the weight so he posted a YouTube video of him getting on a scale. Anyone remember who he was?
Anyway he did ramping/pyramid sets with big volume. He’d do 5 sets of 20 on bench like 135, 225, 315, 335, 350. I think he did upper lower. I wondered how he had any joints left. Made a big impression on me that I wasn’t doing enough.
I said “want to spend a year getting leaner and then pack on as much muscle as I can”
so I will be leaning out first THEN putting on as much muscle as I can. I expect to only maintain if not lose a small amount of muscle in the weight loss phase
First things first, when you say lean out, do you mean as a recomp, or an actual cut in bodyweight?
Ironically your desired first step of leaning out will actually be better if geared towards just maintaining strength as best you can with a caloric deficit, which equates to still keeping the reps low and working with 80+% 1RPM (10x3, 5x2, 10x1 rep schemes come to mind).
Putting on muscle mass seems pretty standard. You’re strong enough to do any typical split and cater it to any initial imbalances you may have.
When I look closer at it he’s still doing a BB split. He Just made 3 small tweaks:
He’s using insane weights compared to anything I’ve seen.
He’s sticking to the 20 rep range instead of 8-12.
He’s pyramiding the weights. I didn’t see many drop sets, rest pause or other “forced intensity” stuff. But when you can 405×20 something… that’s intense enough.
I think he had a lean out thread as well. I forget his results.
I had the exact opposite experience. Pushing for reps in pretty much all weight ranges coupled with a lot of volume via high reps in assistance work was hugely beneficial to me while losing fat.
Were you trying to cut down in weight like the OP is trying to do, or just lean out via recomp? Two different approaches since with a recomp you can lean out by also more actively building muscle.
Of course, at the end of the day, whatever works for you works for you! Results trumps all.