Bodybuilding tactics

[broseph]

I don't think any of us will achieve the size and aesthetics* of these bodybuilder/athletes naturally.

*size and aesthetics: Let's say a BMI > 26 with BF% <15% for men.

If you’re talking about the typical “bro % body fat” chart, I meet these criteria without drugs.*

*I’ve taken clomiphene for around a year and a half now, which took my T from <200 to ~400, but most of my gainz came before that (lifting for decades).

for about a decade I thought bodybuilding training was pump and fluff bullshit and you'd get just as big training for strength and doing submaximal sets etc

actually giving bodybuilding an attempt over the past few months has completely changed my view on this, there's a reason bodybuilding training looks so much different and it's not because the bros were stupid

Yes to this. I actually think bodybuilding is the most healthy/safe/sustainable style of lifting because:

There's also the issue of having emotional attachment to lifts. There are plenty of people that do not do well with SBD. Yet, because they are TeH bIG ComPOUnD lIFts and their manhood is tied to doing them, they will spin their wheels for years and fail to try something else aside from looking for some magic combination of sets and reps that finally makes their muscles explode with growth. There is a lot less of this tendency in bodybuilding because there is no reason to be married to any lifts, you just use all lifting implements available that work for you.

[DCR]

I find pauses to be useful for targeting the quads during squats. Pausing during an SSB or high bar squat makes it easier to drive with the quads out of the bottom as opposed to bouncing out of the hole with the hips. The anti-hip-drahve, if you will.

I find that to be true even with LBBS to a lesser but material extent.

Did these with HBBS yesterday - the second time that I did HBBS in the last decade or so since my SS brainwashing - and they felt incredible. I may have said this the one other time I tried them in the past few years, but it felt like being 24 again, because HBBS were all that I did pre-brainwashing. The groove felt perfect, and my quads were trashed this morning, which hasn't happened in forever. LBBS obviously never did it, and I always fail front squats via my upper back rounding long before my legs are done. I'm not judging the quality of the session on soreness, but this is a good feeling.

Yeah, I won't confidently proclaim paused HB/SSB squats are the path to quad glory but I can definitely mirror what you have described. I almost never really feel my quads work during LBBS. I mean, I know my quads are obviously working, but I don't really feel strong contractions when squatting. With the paused HB/SSB squats, I feel like 80% of the force is coming from the quads. I feel them contracting hard and driving the weight up. It actually feels pretty damn good and "natural", if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. In my 20s, I was a really good squatter. Not in terms of max strength (at the time, at a BW always around 160, I never squatted over 295), but I had pretty form, could rep out like crazy, loved the feel of the movement, and had jacked legs. I never needed a leg press or anything else - I was a guy whose legs grew solely from squats. Then I detoured into BW training for a few years, during which my legs shrunk, and when I came back to lifting in my mid-30s, I bought into SS hook, line, and sinker, and for the first time began squatting low bar. I eventually squatted an utterly unimpressive 355, weighing 50 lbs. more, and grew to hate the movement. My legs never really came back and all that it got me was a big ass and a nasty case of anterior pelvic tilt. It never felt right to me. I tinkered with it every fucking session for years, trying to find the cue or whatever that would make it feel "natural" like squats always had when I was younger. A few months ago, after literally years of loathing (and a few lower back injuries), I switched to front squats. Between getting bored with my inability to rep out on them, and seeing your initial post above, I came back to HBBS this week. Legit can't wait to get in tomorrow and do them again. (I am gonna keep some front squatting, though. I really believe that they helped my DL considerably.)

I'm a terrible squatter, but one cue that Zack Telander said in a recent video really clicked with me. He said when coming up from the bottom, think of pushing your knees towards the ground. It's weird, but for me it was the only thing that really allowed me to use more quad than posterior chain.

Well over a year passed after I made that post before I actually began a real effort to fix all this shit. (Despite my excitement there, “high bar” wasn’t the cure, not because it wouldn’t have worked for the purpose but because I realized that my “low bar” wasn’t very low to begin with and is by far the most comfortable position for me, whereas what I thought of as “high bar” was too high and felt like shit on my back, despite making the movement seem easier at first.) I’ve been working on it via an LP for about two months now, my guide being this video that I’m sure folks are sick of me linking:



The key to it all is the slight full body lean that Chad explains, and holding it for the entire rep, all the way down and back up. Doing so has been very difficult for me even at low weights, but it makes it nearly impossible to rock back onto your heels. My quads have been in a near constant state of soreness and the mirror is telling the tale.

I’ve been practicing that slight lean constantly when on my feet, standing or walking, staying midfoot or slightly overcorrecting ahead of it, and holding my hips under me.

[DCR]

for about a decade I thought bodybuilding training was pump and fluff bullshit and you'd get just as big training for strength and doing submaximal sets etc

actually giving bodybuilding an attempt over the past few months has completely changed my view on this, there's a reason bodybuilding training looks so much different and it's not because the bros were stupid

I think of it this way: if the dudes consciously shortening their lives to be as big as possible, who desperately need that prize money to pay for their drugs or have to earn it… other ways…, thought that there was a better means of getting jacked (e.g. 5x5 with SBD), you can be motherfucking sure that they’d be doing it.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@aurelius Like others have mentioned, I feel that the target of a 26 BMI and 15% bodyfat you set sounds plenty achievable providing 5-10 years of consistant training for size with cutting and bulking. Now I don't like body fat percentages because I think the only accurate way of assessing bodyfat is dissection but bear with me. If you're 5'11, 26 BMI with 15% bodyfat is 157 lbs of lean mass. I'm a middle aged loser who sucks at lifting and I'm 5'11 about 210 lbs and I'm pretty convinced I'm below 25% bodyfat (navy formula says I'm 17.5% so I added a generous 7% of error to avoid the "oh but everyone underestimates their bodyfat"), so I should have at least 157 lbs of lean mass.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@DCR @janoycresva One quote that I always remember was when Izzy was discussing bodybuilding with other individuals at the old forum, and in the heat of the discussion he said something along the lines of "do you guys really think that bodybuilders are all stupid and don't know how to train ?".

@DCR Great point about "there was a better means of getting jacked (e.g. 5x5 with SBD), you can be motherfucking sure that they’d be doing it." I mean bodybuilders have been experimenting with bodybuilding for centuries, trying all sorts of whacky sets and reps and tempos and angles and whatnot but somehow the eggheads on the internet imagine that they don't know what they are doing and they just missed a super obvious, super simple and effective strategy (be it 5x5 or 3x8 or 3x10 on some basic compound lift or whatever and try to add weight when you can). It would be like a layman going to a professor in medicine asking him "Well I've been listening to you guys talk and I was wondering, did you guys ever try aspirin and shit when people get headaches and stuff ? Might work you know".

[aurelius]

@aurelius Like others have mentioned, I feel that the target of a 26 BMI and 15% bodyfat you set sounds plenty achievable providing 5-10 years of consistant training for size with cutting and bulking. Now I don't like body fat percentages because I think the only accurate way of assessing bodyfat is dissection but bear with me. If you're 5'11, 26 BMI with 15% bodyfat is 157 lbs of lean mass. I'm a middle aged loser who sucks at lifting and I'm 5'11 about 210 lbs and I'm pretty convinced I'm below 25% bodyfat (navy formula says I'm 17.5% so I added a generous 7% of error to avoid the "oh but everyone underestimates their bodyfat"), so I should have at least 157 lbs of lean mass.

I think bro % body fat is way lower than actual. By 5-10%. I just pulled 15% out of a hat as that is pretty lean for an adult male.

Wouldnt 85% of 210 is 178.5. Which kind of is my point. Holding BW, That is essentially 20 pounds of additional muscle on the same frame compared to the 157 (25% bf). Google fu tells me 40% of lean mass is muscle in typical man so 20 pounds is a significant increase in muscle.

My OP was poor. I read an article about steroid use in crossfitters. The article went into some depth comparing pre-drug and post-drunk bodybuilders and athletes. Pre-drug bodybuilder and athletes rarely exceeded a BMI of 26. So they used that as the cutoff point or it may have been BMI of 28. I forget. Unsurprisingly post-drug bodybuilders and athletes exceeded the cutoff BMI at like 10 times the rate.

Just sharing my thoughts and am open to being wrong. But I do think discussing the effective tactics of bodybuilders to achieve hypertrophy while ignoring they are on drugs seems odd.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

I might have been unclear (or I misunderstood your last post), my calculations were:
- Your target is 5'11 with a BMI of 26, so he weights 185 lbs. Furthermore he is 15% body fat so that 85% of his body is lean mass, which is 157 lbs
- I am 5'11 with a BMI of 30, so I weight 210 lbs. Furthermore, I am (at most) 25% body fat so that (at least) 75% of my body is lean mass, which is also about 157 lbs.
In both cases that's an FFMI of about 22, which sounds very attainable to me.

[TimK]

My OP was poor. I read an article about steroid use in crossfitters. The article went into some depth comparing pre-drug and post-drunk bodybuilders and athletes. Pre-drug bodybuilder and athletes rarely exceeded a BMI of 26. So they used that as the cutoff point or it may have been BMI of 28. I forget. Unsurprisingly post-drug bodybuilders and athletes exceeded the cutoff BMI at like 10 times the rate.

You're thinking of FFMI (Fat Free Mass Index).

[aurelius]

You're thinking of FFMI (Fat Free Mass Index).

Duh. Thanks for the correction.