Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

In september I moved to Germany, having a first great training month in october, being forced due to personal issues to drop athletics all together in early november. Back then I could have gone like 4x90kg in the squat at my best after one month of training.

Since then the only thing I did was riding my bike to the train station, drinking beer and sporadically went to the forest to jog a little bit and do something intensive tempo, with luck twice a month. I went from 73 to 81kg BW (not muscle for sure), dropped now to 77kg and incredibly gained almost 2cm of height, having been stucked at 1.845 since 5 years ago.

Last friday I went back to the gym with some friends and found myself incredibly strong. Could squat 6x100kg without much effort (that’s a pb level from august), while normally after such a long layoff I would expect, being lucky, like that at 70kg. Something similar happened with my bench press.

Now, what the hell happened? How is my strength at pb level after 3 months of beer drinking? My eating even went worse at the beginning, with me having a cholesterol spike in mid november. The biggest change was from eating lots of cow meat to lots of pig meat, which has much more iron from what I have heard.

Thanks a lot!!

pd: I am 19 years old

73 to 77 is key I think.

Even if it’s just fat?

Francisco Falise - 07 February 2010 04:50 PM

Even if it’s just fat?

For max strength, yep.

Denis Eradiri (sizerp) - 07 February 2010 05:44 PM

Francisco Falise - 07 February 2010 04:50 PM

Even if it’s just fat?

For max strength, yep.

Are you sure on this? I was always under the impression that fat won’t do anything directly at all.

trackspeedboy - 07 February 2010 09:40 PM

Denis Eradiri (sizerp) - 07 February 2010 05:44 PM

Francisco Falise - 07 February 2010 04:50 PM

Even if it’s just fat?

For max strength, yep.

Are you sure on this? I was always under the impression that fat won’t do anything directly at all.

Look at the shot putters, sumo wrestlers, strongman competitions ...

All have lots of muscle, but at hte same time are fat, no two ways about it, even tho the elite shot putters are very athletic they still have quite a bit of fat

Fat does absolutely nothing to increase max strength. However, if your diet or exercise patterns have you in a calorie deficit, even in the short term, it may adversely affect your strength levels. BUT, adding nothing but fat to your body does not make you stronger. A diet that allows one to add bodyfat will tend to be more anabolic than catabolic and also tend to help you gain muscle as well, but if two people are at the same weight and on the same diet and one works harder and gains five pounds of muscle and the other slacks and gains five pounds of pure fat, the one gaining muscle will get stronger, the one gaining fat and no muscle will not.

In your case, you probably gained muscle mass, especially considering you gained almost an inch in height and over 17lbs in bodyweight. You are a bigger stronger person now as compared to then. Secondly, your diet/trainng may not have been conducive to max strength development due to caloric restriction or competing training requirements.

Bottom line, getting fatter did not make you stronger unless it also allowed you to gain more muscle, or at minimum, allowed you to put your system into a more ‘max strength friendly’ state due to additional caloric consumption.

Thanks for the replies!

Is interesting the effect of the long term rest. In fact I jumped from the coach into the squat rack. I even now have the dilemma wether to train at all lol.

I was also thinking about a possible conversion towards fibers IIb after so much time.