Daniel Town

Hey guys, I'm 175cm (5'9 ?) weighing in at 93kg (205lbs). My numbers are as follows: SQ 165k 2x3, BP 121k 3x3, Press 81k 3x5, DL 190k 1x3

I did a dexa scan recently and am 21% body fat with 70kg of muscle. I went from a skinny dude to a pretty decently size man, I feel as confident as ever. Sadly, my wife thinks im too big and wants me to cut.. I need some advice..... at first I was wanting to hit 100k and cut/maintain, looks like it's not going to happen. What's the ideal bodyweight for my height? I want to be able to keep pushing up my numbers.

Robert Santana

This is a good start if your goal is to lift competitively. If you want to settle your wife down, I wouldn't lose more than 5-7 kg, while continuing to move the needle on the lifts. What is your waist circumference?

Daniel Town

I am 37.5inches from the bellybutton around. Will my numbers take a hit when loosing weight?

Robert Santana

Most likely, especially on squat, bench press, and press. Deadlift may go up. Depends on how you approach the weight loss and how low you go.

LuciusSulla

This reminds me of a call in on a similar topic where Rip told the guy to get a new wife!

Robert Santana

That is always an option.

Adam S

If a lifter decides to take a month off of progressing for whatever reason (to focus on college exams, busy work periods, etc.), but is still able to lift 3 days a week, what would be the minimum effective dose for the maintenance of strength / prevention of detraining?

For example it would make sense if a lifter's last squat workout was 350 for 3 sets of 5, that the lifter simply repeat 350, 3x5, for every workout of the month. But if the goal is to maintain strength are these exact parameters required? Would 2 sets or 1 set with 350 workout be enough? Similarly with frequency, is 3 days a week required?

Mark Rippetoe

Just so I understand, you have the time to train 3 days/week, but you'd rather just fuck around instead of making any progress during these three workouts. Is this correct?

Adam S

No, I promise this is not a scenario I am considering LOL. I was trying to find a real-life example that would help with the question, but I realized the one I provided was lousy.

More specifically: we know the optimal amount of stress that results in a strength-increasing adaptation - for novices this is 3x5, three days a week, adding 5lbs a workout. I am curious as to what amount of stress is required to maintain a strength adaptation? You have mentioned before that, unlike cardiorespiratory adaptations, strength adaptations are more persistent. For the maintenance of these respective adaptations, it would make sense to me that a strength-stressing event would need to be less frequent then a cardiorespiratory event.

Knowing how often/much stress would help me get an idea of how persistent strength adaptations are. I apologize that this is an unmeaningful question, but I am just really curious about this.

jbackos

If you lift the same weight each time eventually you WILL regress - the body has nothing to adapt to, so it won't. To quote JM Blakely "if you want a plateau you'll get one. There are many in the powerlifting game who work in construction all day, then train at night. Stop making excuses for yourself.