Strength/Weight

[dms]

For someone who is naturally thin, so that exercise is not likely to cause much weight loss (let's assume none for this discussion), how strong is the correlation between strength gains and weight gains when lifting?

If such a person is not seeing much improvement in strength or an increase in weight after lifting for 1-3 months, is there a good chance that he simply isn't taking in enough calories? Or would strength be expected to increase a fair amount even on a very limited diet?

(If it helps to keep things simple, let's think of "strength" as measured by 1 set of 8-12 reps doing as much as one can do.)

[Thremp]

dms,

This is a thought problem with not enough parameters. I'll give some vague answers.

1) Fairly.
2) Very.
3) Only in untrained individuals who are getting sufficient cals/recovery. There is really to much to explain.

[dms]

Thanks Thremp. What other parameters do you think are important? (Obviously types of workouts, sleep, etc...?)

Do you think diet would be the most significant thing to look at before checking out other possibilities (Assuming the person has a good understanding of weight lifting)?

[Thremp]

Genetic ability is probably the most prominent. There's a million different things that affect your strength and weight.

Weightlifting is probably 80/20 with diet/weights in terms of altering body composition.

[Colt McCoy]

From another thread:

1 - Eat everything you can get your hands on. DON'T be picky about what you eat. DON'T try to eat a low-fat diet.

2 - Sleep as much as possible; at least 8 hours every night.

3 - Do three short, intense workouts per week. Do ONLY bench press, squats, deadlift, 5x5 for each. You want to do just enough to stimulate growth w/wo burning extra calories.

4 - No cardio.

Being a hardgainer sucks. Eat a ton and don't burn any more calories than you have to. It can be frustrating but if you do that, you will gain weight.

[skunkworks]

The correlation between strength gains and weight gains definitely exists -- bigger muscles are more likely to be stronger muscles -- but this isn't necessarily so. Like someone else has mentioned here before, much of your initial strength gains involve an improvement in your central nervous system at doing a better and more efficient job recruiting more muscle fibers and also coordinating effort between different muscle groups during compound lifts.

If after 1-3 months of lifting you've peaked, something is seriously wrong. Either your nutrition is terrible, or you're somehow overworking your body, or you're doing really [censored] exercises, or something else along those lines.

[wpr101]

There's a good chance that you are staying at the same weight but getting stronger. Basically you are putting on muscle but burning off what little fat you have.

If you have never lifted before you should definetly be seeing improvements after one month. Why do you say 1-3 months? Have you been working out for 1 month or 3? Because it is a pretty big difference.

[dms]

I started working out about 3 months ago, but haven't been consistent over that entire period.

I have lifted fairly seriously before and was starting out this time being out of shape.

[wpr101]

[ QUOTE ]
I started working out about 3 months ago, but haven't been consistent over that entire period.

I have lifted fairly seriously before and was starting out this time being out of shape.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you give us more detail about the number of workouts you have done and what you did during those workouts? It is still kind of hard to know without this.

[dms]

Sorry for not being more detailed. I was intending to keep it general so that maybe the responses would be more useful to more people, but that does leave lots of room for guessing/confusion...

Anyway, I recently read "The New High Intensity Training" and it seemed very focused on adding mass. This seemed like something good to try since I'm 6'7" and 190 lbs. during a lazy, out-of-shape phase (and that's eating more than the most of the population and not exercising). I've lifted in the past, without which maybe my lazy weight would be more like 180-185.

So, I started keeping workout records when I started 11/1/06. Since then I've only worked out 12 times (as I'm writing this I'm realizing how little that really is compared to what I'd thought it was, although the 12 times are concentrated in 3 spurts and I was out of town for the other portions). The New HIT recommends lifting 3 times a week, with 1 set of 8-12 different exercises each day with each set being the max you can do getting between 8-12 reps.

My workouts have been:

Leg Curl
Leg Extension
Squats
Straight-Arm Pullover
Bench Press
Back Row
Overhead Press
Bicep Curls
Tricep Extensions
Wrist Curls
Calf Raises
and some type of Ab exercise

And while I've seen minor gains in some of the exercises, others seem to be nearly exactly the same now as they did when I started. I realize that I haven't been as consistent as I should've been, but I was in pretty poor shape when I started in November and lifting lighter than I've been able to in the past. This made me expect faster initial gains than I've seen, even taking into account my lackluster frequency.

My priorities now are to become more consistent and eat more, as I know I haven't been great at either so far. But I'm still a little suprised by the lack of any significant improvement so far, so any explanation or advice is appreciated.

Thanks.


PS - I probably do something like play basketball or ultimate or snowboard 1-2 times a week.