oooh cool! i deffinately will!! thanks ya’ll!!
Hey, Carrie! Welcome, you look great! I think you would look even better with a little more muscle, so good for you! Have you read thru many of the training and nutrition articles yet? I think you might want to change up your rep/set scheme to more like 5x5 or 10x3 to focus on building muscle. Chad Waterbury has a lot of excellent programs you might like and many people have had success with.
What sort and how much cardio are you doing? You will want to really limit it while focusing on gaining for a while.
I think 14% bf is about where the woman in your picture is and a great goal to shoot for (it’s mine, too!). Just so you know, 6% is not even attainable for a woman. I believe 8% is the barest minimum, and that would be for an ultra-shredded bodybuilder, and not maintainable for long.
Several women in the vixen forum have “bulked” successfully - check out AG1 and JinxMe’s threads. Good luck!
Hi Carrie! If those three pics are of you I would say don’t worry about BF%. You look fantastic. Just up the calories. Try a program for hypertrophy that will make you hungry. I’ve done CW’s ABBH1 and 2 and am now completing TBT. I will skinny before and they have given me some great gains. Check them out.
Good Luck!! AG
If you want a tweak type of change instead of a massive reorganization, since it looks like things are working well, you could do something like this…
Whenever you CAN do your sets of 10, up the weight a little bit. Then, you should find that you CAN’T complete your sets of 10 (with good form anyway). Then, when you can again, then up the weight again.
Hmm, to keep it a tweak thing, you wouldn’t have to increase all your weights at once, just one or maybe two, per workout.
P.S. Did you check out the T-Vixen forum yet? You may get more female advice if you post there… but you can certainly post here too.
You look really good right now…don’t worry about your body fat.
you dont need to worry too much, you look like your on the right track, just listen to the advices given and stay committed…good luck.
thanks so much everyone! So, i’ve been reading a lot of the articles and forums, and i’m taking all of ya’lls advice, and I’m coming up with a new plan this weekend…I really can’t wait to get started!
…gosh, i really love this site…
HI Carrie!
I have approx. the same BF as you and I started building a couple of months ago. I agree that it’s a little scary, and you’ll always gain some fat (or at least it looks like it, also because you eat more).
I always did a regular split-program, but I started with ABBH1 from Chad Waterbury (if you’re not familiar with hypertrophy, that’s the program to start with) and I really like it. I’m now doing ABBH2.
I always did way more cardio, I only do 2x20 min. each week right now.
I can maintain my bodyfat for the most part, and I’m gaining muscle. Also, I’m amazed by the amount of calories I can eat. You might want to check out articles from John Berardi, or the carb cycling method from Christian Thib.
If you track your progress, nothing can go wrong. Just make adjustments if needed.
Good articles before you start:
Carb cycling index from Christian Thib.
Tailor Made Nutrition from J.Berardi
I wish you all the luck!
hello carrie, i’m michele levesque
It’s true that on those pictures i’m at about 7% bodyfat. Usually, ikeep my bf at around 10-11% all year long.
I’m really small, so i had to work really hard to put on a bit of muscle mass.
4 series of 6 reps is what i was doing for a couples of weeks (6). Don’t be afraid to lift heavy! And i wasen’t doing any cardio during the bulking up phase. The diet did it all. 6 small meals a day, mainly protein and veggies.Carbs, only 2 times a day. At lunch and after my workout. make sure you have all the vitamins you need. After that, if you want to dicrease your bodyfat, you can do cardio, but not to much caus you will lose all your muscle mass that you just build up. Once you bring down your bodyfat at a healthy level, you can maintain it all year long by eating the right food and continue trainning.
oups, Carrie, email me on my website, and i’ll send you other pctures if you want to. The one i posted didn’t work
michele