Recovery and progression without gaining weight

[Brenden]

Rip,

I've been coaching a friend of mine for the past month. She's starting to fail on her work sets, on almost all of her lifts. Her weight has fluctuated by no more than 2 pounds over the past month, right around 138. I'm aware that it's impossible to get As Strong As Possible without eating enough to fuel recovery processes and muscle synthesis, and I've done what I can to explain that to her. I thought it might be helpful to show her the two possible paths she can take and their outcome in terms of strength: eating enough to fuel moderate weight gain, or eating as much as she ate before beginning strength training. So my question to you is, have you ever had experience with young, fit, female trainees who did not eat enough to fully recover, and at what point do they usually have to stop their novice progression, as compared to those who ate enough?

More background info on her:
5' 5", 138lbs. Very low bodyfat, has a sub-4hr marathon time, does lots of running, hiking, backpacking. She's vegetarian, and probably gets around 60g of protein per day. Her goals are to maintain health, improve her performance in rock climbing, and be all-around stronger, especially upper-body. Over a month of training, without any missed training sessions, her lifts improved as follows:
Squat: 70 -> 120
Bench: 65 -> 75
Press: 45 -> 57.5
DL: 65 -> 140

She's currently incrementing all her lifts at 2.5lbs/workout, and deadlifting every other workout, alternating with chins/back extensions.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I have never trained a vegetarian. I would not agree to do so, and as a result I can't really help you. If she won't do what she needs to do for recovery, she's not willing to do what is necessary for progress on ANY program. It looks like all the easy gains that really don't require a lot of architectural changes have already been made, so she's about through unless she can be convinced to eat more rationally.

[Brenden]

What sort of results should the typical woman (who eats well and gets plenty of protein) of her size see in terms of bodyweight and strength at the end of a novice progression, and how long would that take?

[kel]

Will she drink milk?

[Mark Rippetoe]

What sort of results should the typical woman (who eats well and gets plenty of protein) of her size see in terms of bodyweight and strength at the end of a novice progression, and how long would that take?

She should be able to get her squat up to bodyweight x 5 x 3, with the other lifts proportionate for a female. Bodyweight will go up a little with a loss of bodyfat.

[Brenden]

She's willing and does eat milk, eggs, cottage cheese, and the occasional bit of smoked salmon. She's considering now whether to accept what gains she's made and move on, versus eating enough to fuel continued progress.

Rip, I'm surprised that that the LP ends at such a light weight for women. Is that because the typical weight gain is less than for most lightweight males, plus hormonal differences?

[Mark Rippetoe]

That's pretty much it, although there are obviously exceptions.

[Tamara Reynolds]

I'm 5'8. I got up to 3 x 5 x 193 lbs on novice linear progression, bringing my bodyweight from about 145 lbs to about 152 lbs. I had already put on a little over 10 lbs by doing some other strength work and cutting out conditioning. I probably would have had to reset at that point, but I switched my squat programming anyway. At 145 lbs I was still pretty lean although my meth addict CrossFit abz were not quite as visible. At 152 lbs, I'm still pretty lean. My boobs are just a lot bigger.

The vegetarian marathon running nonsense adds a whole different level to things, but generally, I think a big reason that many women don't progress as far as they could is because they are scared of the bar as soon as it feels heavy rather than for any physical reason.

[Gunnhild Bruno]

The vegetarian marathon running nonsense adds a whole different level to things, but generally, I think a big reason that many women don't progress as far as they could is because they are scared of the bar as soon as it feels heavy rather than for any physical reason.

I know a lot of women who don't mind the weight of the bar but freak out over their own weight, size, and/or fat gain. I tend to see this as just as likely and just as big a problem. I've seen women do "scary" things and be fine with it, but when their clothes start getting tight, they become incredibly conflicted. I once knew a woman who would spar with a man who easily outweighed her by 90 pounds and was taller than her by a foot. He would kick her across the room--it was like a cartoon: her feet would literally leave the floor for many feet--and she would be up and back into the fight immediately, no problem. But when her pants started getting tight around the thighs from muscle gain, she considered quitting.

[LarsM]

but generally, I think a big reason that many women don't progress as far as they could is because they are scared of the bar as soon as it feels heavy rather than for any physical reason.

That, and being deathly afraid to gain even a single pound.