there is actually a simple formula for idea weight:

height in cm - 100 = idea weight (with bf% < 10%, for male)

which means that u can actually bulk to >85kg, before cutting back, since u are quite tall.

good luck.

hi kenny,
no it will not take that long. just eat 5000-6000 calories a day and don't worry about bf% for 2-3 months.
you will be in the sweet spot where u will see all ur lift numbers going up 100-200 lbs at the minimal (squat, deadlift, press, bench).
what u will gain is probably 60% muscle and 40% fat.
http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site...ct#.UNjrv28p98E

after u hit 85-90kg only then u cut.

cuttting is easy anyway, it is the gaining muscle and strength part that is difficult.

http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/steel_odyssey
http://www.basbarbell.com/

hi alien,
1. first of all, kenny is massively underweight to begin with. he gotta add some weight fast. 5000-6000 calories/day is perfectly achievable, real life wise or medically speaking, and had been documented pretty well. if the calories surplus is just 300-500 calories/day, it will probably takes him 3-5 years (didn't do the math) to get to his end destination.
2. if kenny can lift big while ingesting 5000-6000 calories/day, it will put enough stress on his body and force his body to grow some serious muscle quick. 60%/40% muscle/fat growth is perfectly achievable.
3. cutting is the easy part. even using ur worst-cast number where 7kg out of the 10kg weight increase is fat. it is easy to get rid of that 7kg, but do u have any idea how hard it is to add 3kg of lean muscle? u see a lot of people in the gym everywehre, doing abs, bicep curl and other fancy shits day-in-day-out, without the slightest increase of muscle all the time, all the time.

read the novice effect article by mark rippetoe. the transformation is simply amazing!

paulthebug

hi alien,

wow wow wow... so much questions... why worry so much bro?
just go out eat big and lift big. in 2 months time, if it is not working, what's there to lose? at most some 10kg of fat, which can be dealt with easily.
but if it's working, the decomposition can be finished within 6 months (3-4 months of muscle gain + strength increase, and 2 months of cutting).
life is short.

paulthebug

p/s: bro alien, please do not think that i dismiss all ur questions arrogantly. to answer each and everyone of your questions, i suppose, is beyond the scope of this thread. i think the answers can be found in:
http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3r...s=mark+rippetoe
and
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Programmin...s=mark+rippetoe
i bought this two books back in 09, i think.

bro, u must be an academic in real life, so knowledgeable...
simpleton like me only know simple things, like for skinny fat newbie,
whatever u eat & drink (be it nasi lemak, ramli burger, mee goreng, boneless chicken breast, what have you), double it;
whatever u lift, at least triple it.

eat like a badass, train like a badass...

again, what is there to lose if it doesn't work? just 2 months...

merry christmas and happy new year.

Pseudo-science perhaps?

(ok, time to put on my sincere and more serious face)

I had been fooling around in the gym since I was 16. I am turning 36 in less than a month time. God knows I had wasted enough time following this or that “scientifically-proven” workout routine or nutrition plan. You name it, and I had tried it all.

Of course a lot of them worked. There is a great example for such a phenomenon, it is called “novice effect.” Say you put a completely sedentary guy on badminton practice 3 times a week. After a while, he will claim that badminton had helped improved his bench from 50kg to 70kg. We all know that’s crap.

Throughout the years my observation is as such:
A plan gotta work, simply, efficiently and effortlessly. No such thing you said? In reference to an underweight, tall, skinny guy like Kenny, here is the plan:

Workout plan
Go to gym 3 times a week, spend no more than 45min - 1 ½ hour there. You don’t need more than 3 times a week, you will not recover fast enough. Ditch cardio totally, ditch all those isolation exercises totally. Doing only squat, bench press, overhead press, deadlift and chin-up. Warm up properly, doing no more than 3x5 on each. Start with a low-ball number, like 50kg squat for an 80kg male. But up the weight on every exercise by 5kg for lower body, 2.5kg for upper body, every single visit. Make sure you note down all the weights used though.

Again using squat as an example, 3 times a week multiples by eight weeks, you gonna end up squatting 170kg. That is entirely possible. You will eventually stall or slow down. Once you cannot complete 3x5 on a given exercise, use back the old weight on previous visit. Also, eventually the weight increase will slow down to 2.5kg, 1kg, etc. What weight you end up at the end of 2 months times is depending on your will power, technique, recovery rate and makan plan. A good ball park figure for a novice is deadlift 2-2.5x bw, squat 1.5-2x, bench 1-1.5x, press 0.7-1x, chin @ bw 1 set > 20.

Makan plan
Of course eating clean is better than eating junk, it is so common sense that it goes without saying. But still, I rather be dead than eating only carrot, broccoli, tuna and protein powder. A good makan plan is one that you can stick to for the rest of your life. So go ahead and drink your tiger, eat your nasi lemak and whatever that you fancy. Just, proportionally, eat more clean food that junk. More, much more, so that you can get 5000-6000 calories during the bulking stage.

The makan plan is intertwined with the workout plan. You really need that much calorie surplus to fuel your recovery and force your body to grow more muscle than fat to be able to lift heavier and heavier weight. If you don’t lift heavy enough, chances are you will grow more fat than muscle from the calories surplus. If you don’t makan enough surplus, you will not grow enough and recover fast enough to lift.

Now the question is clear-cut, how best to bulk another 10-15kg of lean muscle?

My proposition is simple, doable, and more importantly, can be done quickly; whilst brother Alien’s proposition is something like go to gym another 3-5 years (please correct me if I misrepresent you here).

It is so easy to tell whether it works or not. Just invest 2 months of time to try it out, which is just 5% of 3 years. What’s the down side?

p/s: I don’t body build, I lift weight.

wassup dan?
yeah, if it doesn’t work, sure, plenty of fat to cut, which will waste probably another 3 months? the payoff in term of time still looks good. and that is only if it doesn’t work, what if it works? what's the relative upside and downside?

cutting is much easier than bulking anyway, at least for me personally.

wassup tunertoobe,
kenny is tall enough (182cm) and way too skinny (72kg). assuming current bf% of 15-20%, his fat free mass is only 57.6-61.2kg, and that is inclusive of water weight, and even less if his current bf% is higher. he needs to bulk A LOT. the most time effective way to bulk A LOT is to eat a lot and subject the body to serious tonnage to grow more muscle.

let's see, he will need to have excess calories of 7700 just to grow one more 1kg (regardless of muscle or fat). if you do the maths you will see that he really needs that much more. also remember, during the bulking stage, we always shoot past the ideal weight target, only then we start to cut. The six packs can come later.

5000-6000 calories a day is pretty well documented by mat salleh. ff you go to starting strength forum, you will see not just one, but hundreds of well documented training/nutrition log. http://startingstrength.com/resources/foru...splay.php?f=152

can be done. i did not pull the number out of thin sky. i din't say 10,000 calories a day or whatever other numbers. it can be done because plenty of people had done it before.

The usual mat salleh’s method is to drink a gallon of full milk a day, short for GOMAD (google it, bro). But a lot of Asians are lactose intolerant, doesn’t matter, drink lot of protein powder, eat 2 chickens, eat 1kg of beef, whatever.

Wassup alien,



now bro, you think it is outrages because you had never heard it before, and don’t believe it. i can totally understand your feeling. it is like during medieval time everyone believes that the sun circles around the earth, and suddenly, someone come around to tell them it is the other way around… well, the solution is simple isn’t it? someone gives it go and check it out. the thing is, why would I tell a lie that can be disproved so easily? have I anything to gain?



hahaha, i wish. i am actually quite meticulous on tracking, so i know my numbers. my muscle mass had been stuck at 60kg max since my early 20s, and since i like to stay around 65-75kg range (i am short @ 167cm only), meaning that i hardly have anymore room to grow more muscle. i can’t bulk up more, because i benchmark myself as weightlifter (not powerlifter, mind you), with 62kg, 69kg, 77kg weight categories. liao hui (168cm, 69kg, 2008 beijing olympic weighlifting gold medalist, 69kg categories) is my target.

do I still have that novice effect?
yes and no. i stopped training since 2009 and had only started again on dec 5. anyone who missed more than 10 sessions gotta reset, and is considered a novice again. i started deadlifting @ 135 lbs, squatting @ 95 lbs, benching @ 65 lbs, overhead pressing @ 65lbs on Dec 5 (1st session), and yesterday was my 10th session, i deadlifted @285 lbs, squatted @ 175lbs, benched @ 115 lbs, chinned 1x18@bw. my all-time high was deadlift @ 190kg (different gym, different measurement), squat @ 150kg, bench @ 125kg, press @ 80kg, chin, 1xbw>50 rep. other than deadlift, which has less set, there rests are all 5x5.

i am on the heavy side, which is another way of saying i am fat f*** (yesterday’s measurement @ 80kg, which was down 2kg of fat from dec 5), so bulking up is not applicable here. i can’t add another 20kg of muscle on my short frame, unless i don’t mind getting bigger than my target range.

lastly, i didn’t started out to write this long and try to be argumentative. i actually come to this forum to see where can i get a belt that can add weight for my chin-up, you see. usually I just keep to myself. but one thing leads to another, and here i am. i am not of course advertising for starting strength. just that throughout my 19 years of trial-and-error, i finally found a program that work effectively in the long run. after all, how many of us have time to hit the gym 6 times a week? might as well share my thought/experience. rest assure that all written is with sincerity and without malaise.



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hi tunertoobe,

72kg/182cm, i think is a bit skinny & pretty sure is without much strength (the second part is just wild guess), but that is of course my personally opinion only. fyi, i use olympic weightlifter standard to come to that conclusion.

well, i think he wanna bulk doesn't he? then just eat & train-loh.
nah, any amateur can strength train, no different for skinny dude or fat f*ck, those numbers that i wrote earlier are just base-line numbers. if elite or pro, it will be something like deadlift 4.5x bw. and remember, with real strength, (not just flexing on ur gym mirror), u will generally feel much better, more spirited, and healthier.

one year? hahaha, no no no. just 2-3 months, at most 1/2 year will do, the length depends on each individual. the moment you stalk on weight increase, then the program changes. and no, if u handle heavy enough iron, it will not all be fat.
yes, personally i think bulking is more difficult, it is sometimes hard to eat that much.

bro,
i found out about starting strength method in late 08, me think. before that i was fooling with all sort of stupid stuffs, circuit this, hiit that, isolation whatever. but no real, tangible progress.
the thing about the ss method is 2 folds:
first, u progressively increase the tonnage and note it down honestly. u can tell tangible increase in strength relative to ur body frame. it will force ur body to adapt by increase or at least retain whatever muscle u have (depending on ur starting point as skinny or fat).

why only compound movements? because if u take care of ur big muscle groups, the rest will follow. obviously u probably will not have bigger/ more define arms than those who specially train for it. but again, that is beyond the scope of this thread.

second, the makan part is only for bulking stage, that is the best stage for explosive real increase in strength and muscle mass. and it can happen fast. Not another 3 or 5 years. it is only the first stage. of course u gotta cut later lah, but again, cutting is beyond the scope of this thread. if u open another thread on cutting, i will try to answer u there, i don't wanna hijack's kenny's post. note that i also did not touch on makan plan for fat guy because it is not relevant to the thread.

i still don't quite understand why u arbitrarily define this a clean or dirty bulking? of course, don't try to get more calories from drinking coca-cola lah. eat more protein lah. common sense why... all i was saying is that don't be so strict on urself that u cut out all the fun out of life.

Don't you think that within that 20 years of experience, you should have at least more poundage on all that lifts considering that you are advocating starting strength?
not fair!!! i blame my mama and papa for my small frame!!!!!!!!!!!!!
joke aside, obviously there is limitation on how much one can squat or whatever, otherwise all of us will be squatting like 1000kg right? and obviously i had stop and reset multiple times. for a guy like me who just start over again, a tangible, achievable 3 months target is: deadlift 3x bw, squat 2.5x, bench 2x, overhead press 1.5x (maybe a bit stretch, but we always aim high right?) . don't let anyone else tell u can't do it otherwise! only then i will add snatch and clean & jerk into my program.

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Added on December 27, 2012, 4:48 pmof course lah, bro, that is a given.

all i am saying is that u can bulk and cut in 6 months, it doesn't take 3 or 5 years.

This post has been edited by pleowcw: Dec 27 2012, 04:48 PM

whatever, all i am saying that it can be done, inclusive of cutting, in 6 months.

yes, maybe i am wrong on that front.
i was working on the assumption of 182cm - 100 = target 82kg with 10% bf.
assuming current bf% @ 15%, that is at least 12kg of lean muscle to be gained.
add in the unavoidable fat gain, then the total weight gain is about there loh.

if the goal is more modest, then by all mean, eat less loh.

fair enough. like i said, i was just passing by the forum here, opened my big mouth and answered a direction question without considering everything. for that, i apologize. it is just that i know it can be done. knowing is still better than staying ignorant.

edit: i currently work out @ gorgeous fitness @ jln sg besi, for the next few weeks, my schedule is mon/wed/fri, usually 10-1pm, the exact hour varies.

This post has been edited by pleowcw: Dec 27 2012, 07:06 PM

yes, your normal meals, plus one gallon of milk a day, GOMAD, more or less.

bro, google it loh. all these questions had been asked to dead before.