Variation for relative strength athletes?

[mmafan]

Hey coach I was just wondering if you would change anything for an athlete not looking to gain much size but mostly strength and power. I;m a grappler and compete in submission wrestling and would like to get stronger and more powerful with minimal weight gain.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Don't eat to gain weight, and you should be fine.

[mmafan]

Thanks coach. Are their any specific exercises I should do besides the squat dead press clean chinup and row for my goals?

[stakehoagy]

I was thinking about the same thing. Suppose I want to run 100 meters for track next season. If I don't eat all the food required to gain some mass, how would it affect my strength? would my linear progress stop quicker? i was planning on taking .9 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. double that in carbs, 4 or 5 fruits and 4 or 5 vegetables with 4 glasses of skim milk per day. but it seems that is close to what you recomend anyway except for the skim not whole milk.

[Mark Rippetoe]

As is usually the case, your barbell training should reflect the level of training advancement you have achieved in barbell training. IOW, if you are an experienced grappler that has never trained with weights before, you train with weights as a novice and your novice program is just the six exercises. And a novice progression in the absence of a way to gain muscular bodyweight as rapidly as the program with the normal novice diet provides will plateau earlier that it would if the lean body mass had increased.

[Dan F.]

[...] And a novice progression in the absence of a way to gain muscular bodyweight as rapidly as the program with the normal novice diet provides will plateau earlier that it would if the lean body mass had increased.

Once this plateau has been reached is it possible, changing to intermediate program, to gain anymore some strength without gaining muscular bodyweigtht through diet? And if possible is that new strength only from neuromuscular improvement (apart improvements in form of exercises)?

I ask this somewhat theoric question because sometimes I read here or there that gains in strength are possible, not only in a novice period, without gaining muscular bw: I always thought it's impossible if we speak of "absolute" strength and not strength relative to bodyweight. But I'm often wrong in many things...

[Mark Rippetoe]

There will be a point at which all the neuromuscular/technical improvements that can be made have been made. At that point some muscle will have to be grown. Normally these two processes proceed together, and that's why novices normally gain weight. If you restrict calories to the effect that muscle cannot grow as it normally should and will, you restrict most of your progress to that which is possible with neuromuscular/technical improvement.