Skinniness and Starting Points

[Gary Gibson]

Hi Coach,

My buddy who squats twice what I do was wondering why I don't listen to him more. I was wondering, too.

Here's the thing. He was over six feet and well over two hundred pounds of muscle and fat halfway through high school. The first time he tried to squat he managed 315.

Contrast that to when I was fifteen. About 5'6" or 5'7" and about 120 lbs. I had no coaching and horrible form, but it was a proud moment when I finally squatted the 135 lbs I'd Steinborned onto my back in my dad's living room. At 20 I was my fully grown 5' 9 1/2" and about 140 lbs after years of "bodybuilding". I think I might have squatted 225 around then.

Just for some genetic reference: my father stands an inch taller than I but has only recently cracked the 140-lb barrier in his middle age. In his defense he has always possessed freaky grip and "dad" strength born of naturally good tendons, though he's always been skinny as a rail.

Now I'm 165 and my best squat and pull are in the mid 300's and 400's respectively. That's not bad relative strength, though I think SQ 2.5x and DL 3x bodyweight would be a lot better, especially if I weighed more. I'd worked up to about 148 lbs three years ago and have gained nearly 20 lbs of muscle with much smarter training since then...but I'm still very light at 5' 9 1/2".

What I wonder is if I should be happy with my relative strength levels (though I still want to get much stronger and crack SQ 500 and DL 600) in light of what seems an inherited tendency toward scrawniness. I know pussies cry about not being able to eat enough to gain the weight they need, but I'm in my mid-30's with 30 lbs more muscle than I had coming out of college. A thousand-lb squat doesn't seem like it's in the cards for me and I wonder if a 198 bodyweight is just as unrealistic.

Just so you know: At various times in my life I've drunk a gallon of milk daily for weeks. I've practically shat milk. I've made myself sick with the stuff. Absolutely no weight gain even though I was training and getting stronger. It's as if my body has a set rate of growth that I cannot cajole it to exceed.

Thanks for your considered opinion.

[Mark Rippetoe]

But have you drunk the GOMAD while doing/attempting a linear progression in your training?

[JLascek]

Milk won't do much unless you're eating along with it. What has been helping me are:

- Large quesodillas made with ground beef and cheese
- Vanilla ice cream with a hearty portion of peanut butter multiple times a day
- Olive oil

Everyone has their methods for dense caloric food, but it doesn't sound like you've made that effort outside of the gym.

(search function will give you more ideas)

[Polynomial]

Here's the thing. He was over six feet and well over two hundred pounds of muscle and fat halfway through high school. The first time he tried to squat he managed 315.

Were you there or did he tell you that he squatted 315? A lot of people exaggerate, since they have no idea about a proper range of motion for the exercise. I see tall college kids weighing no more than 160 put 315 on the bar and proceed to ... not even quarter, more like eighth squats, and tell their friends that they squat 315x8. I almost want to tell them how impressed I am with their strength, and that they should join the powerlifting team.

[Euclid]

Were you there or did he tell you that he squatted 315? A lot of people exaggerate, since they have no idea about a proper range of motion for the exercise. I see tall college kids weighing no more than 160 put 315 on the bar and proceed to ... not even quarter, more like eighth squats, and tell their friends that they squat 315x8. I almost want to tell them how impressed I am with their strength, and that they should join the powerlifting team.

Right on. This is what I thought of too. Unlike the deadlift, where you can grossly overload the bar and just "let go" if you can't pull the weight, the squat is one of those movements where there is A LOT of embarassment at risk if you puss out mid-way, or at the bottom. Let alone the notion that hardly no one I've ever seen "squatting" actually gets to/past parallel. Of course, maybe this friend is gifted and I'm just a jealous hack. Probably the latter.

[Gary Gibson]

This buddy is a proficient powerlifter in the 110 kg class whom I've witnessed box squatting well over 500 lbs for reps two inches below parallel. Granted this was in squat briefs. He's definitely big and strong. But yeah, we all know that most people load up four or five plates and quarter squat or bounce really heavy bars off their sternums while lying on a bench. The overhead press and deadlift keep us all honest. Unless your limbs are dwarfishly short compared to your torso, your deadlift really ought to be 50-100 lbs over your squat. If it's not, you are not hitting depth in your squat.

Case in point: Today a buddy at work heard that I'd squatted mid-300 in competition. He's a little over 170 (a few pounds out of my weight class) and was an athlete in school. He swore he could squat more than I. I told him "Let me guess; your coach had you squat to about here" whereupon I did a quarter squat and continued "and told you that a 90 degree knee angle was as far as you had to go." He acknowledged that this was so.

I then demonstrated how far down he would have to go with the weight for it to count in training or in a USAPL meet and he admitted that that sort of depth would bring his squat to somewhere "under 400." I explained that this was why competition was so important for me; so that accomplishments could be compared across the same board. I also told him that a singlet only costs about 50 bucks or so and the same for an entry fee. I went home for lunch and came back with a copy of SS which I lent him.

I would love it if I could fire up a couple of guys from the office to train properly with me and go to a few meets. I type this with the belief that none of them are going to want to learn how to squat properly or work that hard, but I hope they prove me wrong.