Dyel?

[FatButWeak]

Do you even lift? is a meme of sorts used to describe people who train, but get no results. I labelled my thread like this to get attention.

This is a question for answer by people who look like they lift. That is, they have a degree of muscular development that is evident when clothed. If you look like someone whos asked, "Do you even lift?" your input is not desried, regardless of your squat strength. I need the educated opinion of someone who has walked a mile already.

How strong does someone need to be in the major lifts to get big? In other words, If you are only strong enough to bench 135, then you are obviously not going to have huge thick slabs of pec meat, no matter how you program your sets and reps. You need to get up to some respectable numbers before your diet, sets and reps can work together to give you appreciable size.

So, what are those numbers? Now I know it will make a difference based on the individual - some folks are very strong, even though they don't look it. Others, due to sex, limb length, etc., will be outliers. Im not interested in them. My question is for a normal sized man (i.e. 5'10 to 6'0 with normal bodyfat, lets say 15-20%) how strong do you need to get in the main lifts before it makes sense to start playing around with increased volume and calories in order to hypertrophy onesself?

Im asking for educated opinions here, not science facts.

I'm asking because I recently hit a milestone in my squatting: 315 for a set of 5. Im now thinking about altering my training to include more reps, using 315, since as an intermediate my training goals are more hypertrophy and bodybuilding related than strength, powerlifting, weightlifting and/or other perfomance based goals. But, if 315 is just not strong enough to bother with a hypertophy based routine, I will continue to train to get stronger. But what should my jumping off point be? I mean, at what point do I stop doing the TM as Rip wrote it in the T-nation article (a great program on which I have made slow but steady gains for over a year) and modify it to pursue my hypertrophy goals, which would probably require more volume overall, at the expense of increaes in weight on the bar. I should note that I am old (forties) and tall (over 6'3") and that my gains have been slow to come, since I'm a ketard. My legs are fairly well developed, musculature wise, I'm just weak because my levers are long. So although I know that some guys finish their SS LP with a 375 5RM, that's just not me I fifnished my SS LP with a squat 5RM of 250. Since then, its taken a solid 15 months on TM to add another 65 pounds to my 5RM. Its been a long time coming with conistency to build my squat to a 315 5RM. I mention this because I have definetly paid my dues on building strength and Im not looking to "hack," "game" or otherwise circumvent the process.

So how strong is big?

Thanks, guys.

[cutlet#]

The "biggest" and most "shredded" guys at my gym never lift heavy weight on anything but BP. I can ask them how they got big...

[Cody]

You aren't weak because your levers are long, you're weak because you aren't strong. That's a terrible excuse - if it was valid, all football players would be weak since many of them are quite tall. Make sure your nutrition and recovery are on point first. Then, get your bench to 3 sets of 5 reps at 315 lbs. After that, do a top set at a new weekly PR with 2-3 back off sets at higher volume and lower intensity. DYEL?

[hollismb]

So how strong is big?

This is just my personal opinion, of course, but... When you're strong enough that you can counter any critique to your program or appearance with the question "how much do you deadlift"?, then you're strong enough that you can start caring what you look like. And by the time you're that strong, you probably won't care quite as much about how you look anyway, and everybody, including you, will know you're big.

[John Hanley]

Shit dude. I've pressed 240, deadlifted 585 and benched 335x5, and - sadly - I'd still describe my physique as E.T.-with-a-glandular-problem. Not sure that there's a threshold where strong is big. I'm certainly bigger than most dudes, but bodybuilder types would laugh.

That said, I've done zero size or physique-y work.

It's entirely possible to train for hypertrophy and strength in the same program. Something like Juggernaut 2.0 might be good as a cookie-cutter solution. Ideally, you should invest in custom programming and have someone like Andy or Jordan get you set up with a tailored program.

[idlehands]

Some people look big and are strong, some people look puny and are even stronger. All depends man. best way to LOOK strong is to get the body fat way way down.

[FatButWeak]

I guess this was a dumb question. Thanks for the replies.

[Cousin Bo]

The people in my gym who look they lift are either on something and doing average weights OR they bust their asses and are in the 300/400/500 range on the lifts.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Yea kind of an iffy question (Andrei Aramnau just looks like a 231lbs of dog shit, for example, but holds the -105kg record in snatch and total and has an Olympic gold medal) but I will try:

I was roommates with a bodybuilder once. He was maybe 5'7" 180lbs, BF around 5% year round, with a tiny 30" waist. It was extremely obvious he lifted. He did a crap ton of exercises, but his barbell 1RMs, IIRC, were:
High bar squat: 355
Bench press: 350ish
BTN press (seated): 225
Sumo deadlift: 500 (He would also give the weight a few good shrugs after standing up with it)
His main aesthetic driver though was the low BF, which meant a sad diet of chicken, tuna, and brown rice, and hours of cardio. His legs were unimpressive (his conventional DL was comparable to his crappy squat, I think) but no one cared. Jacked torso FTW.

Me, people noticed a difference around:
Press: 135x5x3
BP: 225x5x3
Squat (I squat high bar sorry I'm not sorry): 275x5x3
Deadlift: 315x5x3
Power clean: 200x1
I think the main difference was the bit of trap/deltoid hypertrophy I experienced, which made my clothes fit better. The squats made my thighs bigger but I am pretty sure no one ever noticed.

Actually, now that I mention it, if you look at any Hollywood actor who lifted for a role (the Expendables gang, Hugh Jackman, Henry Cavill, etc.) most of the transformation is in the shoulders and traps. Maybe the human eye naturally looks there to size up another human's strength or something, iono.

EDIT: In a previous life I was an aspiring comic book artist. The standard trick to making the dudes look strong? Traps. There should be a dramatic slope of muscle from the neck to the tips of the shoulders. The shoulders would ideally be broad; this is probably mostly genetic but big delts won't hurt either. Look at how Jim Lee draws Batman/Superman, for example. To illustrate that a character is extra brutish (and, implicitly, stupid...something some of us on this forum have to deal with), the traps are to be overexaggerated to the point where they push the head forward. Best example: the Hulk.

TL;DR Squats are okay but you'd better go do some shrugs too.

[Kyle Schuant]

I'm certainly bigger than most dudes, but bodybuilder types would laugh.

This is the key point, context is important. Standing out in an office full of sedentary accountants is different to standing out in a black iron gym. Thomas Plummer commented on this recently, noting that those of us who live in gyms often take for granted - even the most half-arsed approach is going to add 5lbs of lean mass and drop 5lbs of fat on the typical formerly sedentary person in their first 3 months or so. We think of that person as "the typical person", but if you want to see the "typical person", go sit outside Wal-Mart for an hour or so one day. The curlbro with his half-ROM bench press or cardio bunny with her tricep kickbacks will stand out going in and out of that store.