You’re an idiot, and all of this is wrong. Deal with it. I am on steroids now, but I have used drugs for 3 years, and lifted naturally for over 10 before that. The picture I’m including of myself is what I looked like before steroids. I have never in my life carried more fat than what I did in this picture.
You’re also a high level strongman competitor. I don’t think other people, especially recreational competitors or lifters, should be held to a similar standard.
I don’t know if losing body fat for me would be detrimental or good because I simply havent tried it, but I def feel like having a little more body fat gives me a great training/life balance, and I don’t have to carefully gauge what I eat to have enough energy to train.
In other words, I think prioritizing size and strength while putting body composition on the back burner will result in getting bigger and stronger, but def not with getting lean.
In fairness, he was not a high level strongman competitor when he took that photo.
That having been said, I DO agree with the sentiment that you can’t be as lean as possible and perform as well as possible, but the issue is people take that and run WAY too far with it. You can start lean and then start slowly adding quality muscle with a controlled diet and make solid progress that way, and yes, in doing so, your abs should get blurry and may completely vanish by the end. However, you don’t need a spare tire and a c-cup to get strong.
that picture was actually taken within a few weeks of my first strongman comp, in which I placed last in the lowest weight class. I came in last in every event but 1, actually. I log pressed an epic 190 lbs, I believe.
The specific thing I disagreed with was the direct correlation erik made with strength and bodyfat %. He said ‘when someone is a higher bodyfat % they will perform better in the gym’. And I strongly disagree with that. The implication here is that a 200 lbs guy with 13% bodyfat would perform better than a 200 lbs guy with 8% bodyfat, at the same height.
If Erik doesn’t believe that, he’s free to correct me.
I believe what pwnisher suggested, that blurring the abs is totally fine while adding muscle. But the reason for that is NOT that the bodyfat itself makes someone a better lifter. The reason is that to ensure a person is taking in enough calories to grow and make the most of their gym time, you HAVE to make sure you aren’t undereating during that period. But leaning out in and of itself does not make one weaker, when LBM and water retention remains consistent.
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I assumed him to mean a 200lb guy with 13% bodyfat will perform better than that same guy if he was 8% bodyfat and weighed less while still have 174lbs of lean mass. If both are 200lbs, but one is leaner, he’ll have more muscle.
It’s something of chicken and egg for me. Do the abs get blurry because one is eating enough to grow and therefore performing better than one who is not eating enough to grow and therefore has less bodyfat, or does additional bodyfat aid in the moving of heavier weights as well. I believe the latter from experience, even at equal amounts of lean mass. It seems being fluffier makes my joints and ligaments feel more stable, and when I blew out my ACL I was at the leanest I had ever been, but that can also just be correlation and speculation.
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What’s a superhero traper?
