I've commenced learning how to do Olympic lifts about 2 months ago, and my new trainer seems to see it as a given I'll be competing one day or another. Perhaps that's just a way to make me feel better about myself.. or he's really serious.
Whatever it is.. I've been looking at wt classes and the one applicable to me is either the sub-63kg or the sub-58kg class. I'm now sitting at 61kg and 25% bf (30d average on Omron).
The bf% would indicate I could stand to lose more.. however the other side of the coin is that I've never been below 58kg for the past 27 years. Besides, as an old chick there's apparently a different category altogether.
So question is: should I bother to lose wt/fat? And if I do, when is the time to do it? Now when I'm still new to the sport seems like a better idea than when the actual physical load will become higher.
OTOH when I just started I had to up calories as it was quite draining on the CNS at first.
Reread your third paragraph, Espi. You haven't been below 58kg in 27 years... start where you're at and see how you do, then tinker if you must. If I were you, I would concentrate on getting consistency on my lifts and then reevaluate my body weight later. It has taken me a year to start to feel like I have a clue; I have actually weighed sub-58kg in the last couple of years which is why I'm shooting for that. I would never try to hit 53kg--I haven't weighed that little in about 8 years.
I wouldn't worry about cutting any weight until you actually decide to compete, and even then, you might not bother until you've done a few competitions. Unless there are medals, records or something on the line, there isn't much harm in competing in the weight class above.
It shouldn't be too hard to get down to 58kg though.
I'm about 85-87kg now, I'll probably do a comp at 75kg within the next few years, cutting down from probably 94kg hah! I'm a nutcase like that though
That's a very nice way to put it Alcoholiday. I've been on an extremely slow cut for about 4 years now coming from an all-time high of 85 kg and a setpoint of 68-72kg.
When it comes to training, there's a severe & extreme dislike of having to adapt training to a diet, and it's always been (and will be) the other way round.
Perhaps because of putting training first & diet 2nd weight/fat loss doesn't come naturally to me, it takes dedication to details , especially since my body doesn't take lightly to (severe) undereating.. any cut I do can be at most with a 10% deficit, which means that if I want to compete at 58kg in say 18 months from now, I'd better get started now as silly as this may sound.
I will guess it means .. just plod ahead like I was doing and see where I end up at, be it around 58kg, which theoretically is doable, or stay roughly where I am.
The only downside would be that I may need to build more LBM. Now is the time to do it, since I've already seen some neat changes since starting to lift. This was a reason to stop cutting 2 months ago. A (too) severe cut would stop that process. I've never ever been able to gain or even maintain LBM in any cut sofar.
Personally I'd hate to be cutting for that long. I'd get it done as fast as possible, and go as hard as possible so I can get back to maintaining/gaining as soon as possible!
When I tried that I got sick enough to land in hospital the 1st time.. back in 2007 I also got sick with shingles (Herpes zoster).
It's not a matter of choice, it's the only way that works. Don't think I was happy being 72+kg all the time since age 21, it's not a choice to go slow and just be cutting at a pace of 5-10% max.
Anyways.. I've been infected enough by both bodybuilders to want to look good nekkid as well as by actual athletes (used to be into endurance cycling and now hope to move into Oly lifting) to want to be as strong as possible per kg BW and not carry too much excess wt. Even without the medical background, it would have needed to go slow as molasses anyway.
There's 1 thing I forgot .. I can't be building LBM when bf% is still too high. P-ratio would be too unfavourable, which is exactly true since I went on an accidental bulk after the shingles incident and had a ratio of 1:1 fat:LBM gain.
Your thread is really very useful. Your practical experience is giving me clue to initiate so many things to start soon for me. Of course I am new the the concepts. Can you please explain about P-ratio?
The P-ratio is the amount of LBM you gain in a bulk relative to total gains.
Or when cutting, the amount of LBM you lose relative to total losses.
It's a rarity to have a negative ratio. There are 2 possibilities in that case:
1 to lose LBM but gain fat which sucks royally, though it has happened to me, but only with minimal totals
2 to gain LBM but lose fat which is awesome! This also has happened, but once again only with minimal fat loss.
This is all measured by averaging 30 daily Omron BIA readings .. anything less than 30d is total crap, esp for females on a cycle, since hormones influence water retention so much.
A more recent idea making the rounds in bodybuilding nutrition is that, prior to trying to gain lean body mass, people should diet down first. This reasoning is based on a variety of data that has examined the changes in body composition that occur when you overfeed either thin or fat individuals (see for example, Reference 2 or just about anything Gilbert Forbes has written over the past 30 years).
A Primer on the P-Ratio
The above recommendation is based on a lot of data on something called the P-ratio (which stands for partitioning ratio) which essentially represents the proportion of protein (LBM) you gain relative to the total weight you gain (this isn’t the technical definition of P-ratio, by the way, I’m just trying to simplify it a bit).
Now, a lot of factors control P-ratio including genetics, hormones, diet and training (to a smaller degree than you’d expect) and probably some I’m forgetting (3). But by and large, the primary predictor of P-ratio is starting body fat percentage. Basically, your starting body fat percentage predicts the great majority of what you will lose/gain when you diet/overfeed (4).
So, when you diet, the fatter you are, the less LBM (and more fat) you will lose. Conversely, the leaner you are, the more LBM and less fat you will tend to lose when you diet. This makes sense in evolutionary terms, the more fat you have to lose, the more your body can lose without having to burn off muscle tissue; the leaner you get, the less fat you have and the more muscle you end up losing. Anyone who’s dieted naturally to sub 10% body fat levels knows this to be true: the leaner you get, the more muscle mass you tend to lose.
So what about overfeeding and gaining weight? Well, in general, the same holds but in reverse: leaner individuals will tend to gain more LBM and less fat and fatter individuals will tend to gain more fat and less LBM. This actually makes sense when you think about it. The fat individual loses a lot of fat/a little LBM when they diet and gains a lot of fat and little LBM when they overfeed while the leaner individual does the opposite. P-ratio appears to be constant going in both directions. That is, P-ratio appears to be constant for a given individual (5).
For me, P-ratio when losing seems to be a fairly constant 30% nearly no matter what I'm doing.. big culprit seems to be cortisol. I'm taking PS-100 (phospatidylserine) apart from krill oil (another phospholipid) and am hoping it makes a difference.
I've commenced learning how to do Olympic lifts about 2 months ago, and my new trainer seems to see it as a given I'll be competing one day or another. Perhaps that's just a way to make me feel better about myself.. or he's really serious.
Whatever it is.. I've been looking at wt classes and the one applicable to me is either the sub-63kg or the sub-58kg class. I'm now sitting at 61kg and 25% bf (30d average on Omron).
The bf% would indicate I could stand to lose more.. however the other side of the coin is that I've never been below 58kg for the past 27 years. Besides, as an old chick there's apparently a different category altogether.
So question is: should I bother to lose wt/fat? And if I do, when is the time to do it? Now when I'm still new to the sport seems like a better idea than when the actual physical load will become higher.
OTOH when I just started I had to up calories as it was quite draining on the CNS at first.
Advice is appreciated...
I would just get started. The lower weight doesn't sound like it would be realistic for you.
Thanks for the comment.. I've already made my decision though and have started cutting again after 2 months of maintenance.
Not even so much because i'd want to compete at a BW of such or so, since it's not even certain whether I would be able to acquire the appropriate skills, but simply because I'd love to add muscle w/o adding as much fat as I do now at a higher bf%.
Hence.. cut first and bulk later. See the post #10 above.
Cut is only approx. 10% of calories which will unfortunate probably work out to be only a 5% real deficit (maintenance will always adapt). Low enough though to slowly lose, but high enough to keep energy levels up for the lifts.
Thanks for the comment.. I've already made my decision though and have started cutting again after 2 months of maintenance.
Not even so much because i'd want to compete at a BW of such or so, since it's not even certain whether I would be able to acquire the appropriate skills, but simply because I'd love to add muscle w/o adding as much fat as I do now at a higher bf%.
Hence.. cut first and bulk later. See the post #10 above.
Cut is only approx. 10% of calories which will unfortunate probably work out to be only a 5% real deficit (maintenance will always adapt). Low enough though to slowly lose, but high enough to keep energy levels up for the lifts.
Plus, there's yet another reason to cut now and not later.. right now I'm still not suffering from SAD and with the holidays coming up I have strangely enough better discipline than in January-February. Ideally I'd be down to at least 58-59 by January and may go back to maintenance for a bit in those grey, gloomy, glum , cold & dark months, while others are trying to lose the holiday fluff
Usually I would say - get good at the sport first - then worry about things like weight classes.
dropping/gaining weight is very easy compared to getting good at any sport. Diet is important, but shouldn't be stressed over for a strength/power athlete. Keep track of daily intake within reason is the most I do.
Lose wt now, later or never?
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