Could I have some critique!

[ThePman]

For women especially I've found it's better they not get fat in the first place, since it's not always so easy to get it back off.

The short-term calorie fluctuation is probably a better choice just to minimize fat gains in the first place. Yeah it may cut absolute mass gains, but that's no big deal since it won't really affect the net LBM gain, which is all she's after (I think).

Slower gains are pretty much necessary to minimize fat gain.

[rose]

will do the same thing ... :nod: just not as fast gains

Slow and steady wins the race. Like I said, I'm no expert, nor am I a bodybuilder and I don't have an off season. Just offering an alternative suggestion, especially as I feel a woman might find a month above maintenance too much. Many women struggle with eating at maintenance let alone above. Having tried it both ways, I'd prefer to stay leaner year round and get steady consistent gains without worrying about fluctuating body fat.

[Optimass]

... your still in denial Rose .... or is that a PL pose :grin:

15% bodyfat isn't a lot for a woman though. Not to hard to come back from 3% fluctuation.

[rose]

LOL! No denial here! Just trying to keep le People off my case :pfft:

I personally think women have more potential to store extra calories as flabbular mass when eating over maintenance, hormones can be dodgy at the best of times etc. This is just my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent proven scientific fact. Heh :grin:

3% BF might not seem like much when stated as 3%, but it's actually quite a lot when you're trying to get rid of it. I'd rather not get it in the first place. As Pman said, it's harder to get rid of each time it comes back. Kthxbai

[genetic freek]

Rose=Iris Kyle...but less male looking hahah

[HumanPerformance]

LOL! No denial here! Just trying to keep le People off my case :pfft:

I personally think women have more potential to store extra calories as flabbular mass when eating over maintenance, hormones can be dodgy at the best of times etc. This is just my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent proven scientific fact. Heh :grin:

3% BF might not seem like much when stated as 3%, but it's actually quite a lot when you're trying to get rid of it. I'd rather not get it in the first place. As Pman said, it's harder to get rid of each time it comes back. Kthxbai

I agree with you rose, women do have alot more potential to store bodyfat, and definately have a harder time losing it than males do. As you correctly stated this is due to hormone differences between males and females(women having alot higher estrogen,progestorone, and lower testosterone etc). Not sure what bodyfat you are sitting at in your photos (is it around 12%?) but it looks the perfect balance for you as you still have a full chest :oops: but look tight and hard around your arms, delts, and an exellent V taper down to your waist. If your are around 12% and look that good you are genitically gifted and should feel quite lucky. The majority or women cannot get such a "feminine" look while sitting at 12%.

If as you say you can gain muscle while staying around 12% (from your picture you obviously have a shit load of muscle!) you again should count yourself extremely lucky (im assuming you are natural?) as most women cannot gain the amount of muscle you posess by staying at 12%.

I think this is one of the points optimass was trying to convey when he suggested fluctuating between 12-15% bodyfat. From his personal experience (he worked as a PT for many years) he would have found it almost impossible for a women to gain muscle at any appreciable rate while staying at 12% bodyfat and thats I think what he was alluding to

[Sakura]

Looking good courts. Excellent frame and muscle base. Keep doing what you're doing. :nod:

Rose can crack walnuts between her bi's and forearms, so her advice is solid.

[Animal101]

WOW :grin:

[jonafat]

Looking good courts. Excellent frame and muscle base. Keep doing what you're doing. :nod:

Rose can crack walnuts between her bi's and forearms, so her advice is solid.

Thought you were going to say thighs lol oops

[courts87]

wow thanks guys for all the helpful info. i'm gna try out what rose suggested with the 3 days above maintenance followed by one day below. i def wanna gain as less fat as poss (dont we all). i'm currently on 11.5 according to PT so can afford to put a bit on. i get what opti means by making substantial gains with fat gain being inevitable etc. i'll post some pics up in the same thread in a few months from now, hopefully ill be lookin buff!

cheers

~Courtz

[ThePman]

wow thanks guys for all the helpful info. i'm gna try out what rose suggested with the 3 days above maintenance followed by one day below. i def wanna gain as less fat as poss (dont we all). i'm currently on 11.5 according to PT so can afford to put a bit on. i get what opti means by making substantial gains with fat gain being inevitable etc. i'll post some pics up in the same thread in a few months from now, hopefully ill be lookin buff!

RE: body fat numbers. I'm going to guess you were calipered to get that number. Calipering is notoriously inaccurate and unreliable as anything more than a way to track a trend - and even that can be skewed by a whole lot of things. Even the gold-standards like the dunk-tank and DEXA scans can only get so close to the real value.

Another issue is that women are going to have a higher % than men at any given "appearance" of leanness. In other words, what would appear similar to 10% on a male might be more like 15-16% on a woman. There are differences in fat storage patterns that make women carry higher values (because you have T&A, mainly).

To eyeball you, and a DEXA scan would probably back this up, you're very likely in the low 20s - I'd say 20-22%. At most, high teens. Don't get scared by that, because that's absolutely normal for a fit, healthy woman. It would be equivalent to a legit 13-15% on a man.

BF% is something that gets bro'd out a lot, with the real numbers being a bit sobering in comparison to the "Internet numbers".

To expand on the bit about LBM vs. fat gains, women are somewhat disadvantaged here. You're not going to partition calories as well as a male, which means that for any given calorie surplus, less of that will go to muscle and more will go to fat. A realistic rate of gain for an untrained woman will be somewhere around 0.25 to (maybe) 0.5 lbs of muscle per week, and only the latter if you've got everything dialed in.

I want to reiterate that: if you're gaining 1 lb (450g) a month of muscle, you're doing well. Much more than that likely will be fat gains. Unfortunately drug-free women just aren't going to gain at the same rate as men, and getting fat just won't have the same effect on LBM gains in women.

[Optimass]

Solid post Pman ..

BF% is something that gets bro'd out a lot, with the real numbers being a bit sobering in comparison to the "Internet numbers".

Quote of the week .

I want to reiterate that: if you're gaining 1 lb (450g) a month of muscle, you're doing well. Much more than that likely will be fat gains. Unfortunately drug-free women just aren't going to gain at the same rate as men, and getting fat just won't have the same effect on LBM gains in women.

If someone can provide a plan that will gain 450g of actual muscle ... for a male let alone female > Patent it quickly ... they're going to be very wealthy. :nod: Although not sure I undertstand the bit in bold ...

Are you saying that an increase in bodyfat won't indicate an increase in muscle in a female, or, that females do not respond the same way to hypertrophy that male athletes do within an ideal bfat range? Not talking about pound for pound growth ... but the system of how the body grows.

[ThePman]

It's kinda both, really, but I was leaning more towards the latter bit.

The regulatory stuff that really controls mass gains is central (via the hormone leptin), so in the sense of having an "optimal hormonal environment", you're looking at a similar response in both males and females wrt bodyfat levels

Get too lean and you mess up that signaling, get too fat and you mess it up in other ways. There's definitely a "just right" BF level for the best gains.

It's when you start looking at the absolute amounts gained that you have to take things into account, and that's why I'm leery of telling most women to just bulk up.

With a guy, you can tell him to slam 5000 cals a day and he'll add enough muscle to compensate for the fat gains. He'll get fatter yeah, but with enough muscle to make it worth the time. A guy can also diet down easier than most women, from what I've seen.

On the other hand, a woman isn't gonna gain as much muscle. So say your guy was getting 600g of muscle and 400g of fat for every kg of weight gained - your girl might only be getting 200g of muscle and 800g of fat. It's a skewed partitioning ratio because of women's different hormonal profiles.

So they add 5kg of weight - your guy has added 3kg of muscle, but your girl has only added 1kg. Not only did she gain less, she's also got that much more fat to come off.

For men, I completely agree with your suggestion of staying in the 12-15% range. That's solid advice. And honestly any woman that wants to try it out is welcome to do so; I don't think people will be worse off for trying things out and seeing how they react, because let's face it, this is as much an artform as it is raw science.

I've just found that being more conservative with women seems to pay off more, because 1) they tend to freak out the instant clothes get tight even if it's water weight and 2) there are real problems in getting fat off women, and there's not that benefit of the muscle gains that men can see.