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Thread: Too Strong / Too Big

  1. #21
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    How fat is too fat for sports do you say? ^^^^^

  2. #22
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    I feel, from a layman’s perspective, that there is an important difference between strength trainee big and bodybuilder big: The primary difference being the former has attained their size through hard progressive training of the gross movement patterns and the latter has often, but not always, attained their size through 20rep bullshit and copious amounts of steroids.

    This is all based on anecdotal evidence, but i feel like the strength trainee’s aerobic capacity develops at a natural rate along with his strength and hypertrophy. On the flip side, those big foamy bodybuilder muscles develop at a rate that exceeds their hearts ability to provide oxygen to the foam muscles.

    So if you’re wondering why the more muscular mma fighters tend to gas out quickly, perhaps its a result of training like a bodybuilder instead of a strength athlete.

    Somebody smart, please correct me if I’m way off base here!

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric Larousse View Post
    How fat is too fat for sports do you say? ^^^^^
    In Sumo? Dunno. Hard to imagine TOO fat.

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric Larousse View Post
    How fat is too fat for sports do you say? ^^^^^
    When the addition of extra fat begins to hamper actual performance of the sport....

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by UberBabs View Post
    Rock climbing. My climbing friends are sad that I gained 30 pounds for powerlifting.
    Cycling as well. I’ve put in over 100,000 feet of climbing on a Mtn Bike between June and September and, at 200 lbs with a Backsquat >300#, my uphill Strava times are consistently in the lower 3rd of the Local population with guys with a Backsquat of 0 and 50-75# less Bodyweight routinely climbing 2,3,4 even 5x faster than me. Nothing like busting your ass, in and out of an anaerobic state dozens of times for a 2 hour climb to see that some skinny guy just did it in 23 minutes. I’m not an XC racer, so it’s a reasonable compromise for “general fitness”, especially considering that I am an equally serious snowboarder where strength is much more of an asset. Not to mention, I do some Enduro racing on a bike and find strength to be an assist on aggressive downhilling and subsequent injury prevention as well. BUT, total compromise for serious climbing on a bike. Make any argument you wish, the most efficient climbers are skinny and maintain high power to weight ratios with the ability to put out sustained high wattage over a long period of time. I come into the season very strong for a cyclists and train hard, but my peak wattage is around what these guys are averaging. It is what it is.

  6. #26
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    Rock climbing really is a strength to weight ratio sport. (Not talking about mountaineering). Most climbing and particularly face/slab climbing requires you to sneak or tiptoe up the rock. Not engage in muscle up thuggery. (Laybacking and offwidth may be exceptions) Unlike powerlifting where you turn on all of your power to make a lift, in climbing you focus the power only where you need it and keep the rest of your body relaxed. Now that I compete in powerlifting I don’t have the time or energy to climb seriously. And I’d have to lose that 30 pounds.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by UberBabs View Post
    Rock climbing really is a strength to weight ratio sport. (Not talking about mountaineering). Most climbing and particularly face/slab climbing requires you to sneak or tiptoe up the rock. Not engage in muscle up thuggery. (Laybacking and offwidth may be exceptions) Unlike powerlifting where you turn on all of your power to make a lift, in climbing you focus the power only where you need it and keep the rest of your body relaxed. Now that I compete in powerlifting I don’t have the time or energy to climb seriously. And I’d have to lose that 30 pounds.
    My experience with climbing leads me to believe that you can easily make a case for an off season strength cycle, say 6-8 weeks, but climbing itself requires such a vast amount of time spent climbing in order to develop the skill set (not to mention the tendon strength in the fingers or extreme level of muscular endurance), that it would be difficult to do much more than minimal maintenance in season for most climbers.

    That being said, I spent several years of my early to mid 20s pursuing rock climbing very seriously and ran into a good amount of discomfort and body pain associated with overdeveloped pulling muscles. Almost 20 years later and much more “balanced out”, I still experience some mild aches and pains in those problem areas around the shoulder blades from those days, but it used to be terrible. I believe I could have definitely benefited, at a minimum, from some counterpoint pressing in season. Squatting in season maybe not so applicable for cragging/sport climbing etc, but the moment you start talking alpine climbing, big wall climbing or Backcountry climbing where you’re having to haul (heavy amounts) of equipment for miles or days, then squats and deadlifts would become relevant. In that sense, an off season strength program, an in season heavily modified strength program and potentially, a in season full strength program for specific trips, routes or expeditions would be relevant depending on the climbing style and goals. A competitive sport climber would strength train differently than someone headed to a big wall expedition in the Arctic, even if that trip required highly technical climbing.

    My Experience with these types of sports (Mtn biking, climbing, snowboarding etc) combined with strength training is that you end up taking wild swings in strength levels throughout the year and that the point of diminishing returns in strength levels tends to be fairly low by “strength community standards.” To be sure, I try and go into these seasons as strong as possible (which includes being 15-20# heavier) in order to hang on to strength for as long as possible, but I almost always end up back at nearly the same exact diminished strength levels and the same loss in Bodyweight.

  8. #28
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    starting strength coach development program
    Out here in Cali there is no off-season for rock climbing: Mountains in the summer/fall and deserts in the winter/spring. As for balance, a lot of climbers I see could use some pressing because there is so much pulling in the sport. They end up with rounded back/shoulders like a turtle.

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