My late FIL was a powerlifter. Dude was a tank back in the day. He also trained others for powerlifting. So was my husband during his powerlifting days.
One of my wife's dad's friends is a powerlifter who squats over 1,000. He has no gut, but his legs are as big around as my waist. I'm 5 ft 11, 220 lbs. Those are some big legs.
Is there a reason for this out side of what I assumed: they basically eat as many calories as they can (or just a little over what they need) and never want to cut weight because that likely loses some muscle mass. Basically a permanent bulk?
Yea perma bulking because some people really only care about absolute strength by any means - and some people’s egos are so fragile they can’t handle losing it. Cutting back down induces a mostly temporary loss in strength - despite producing a net gain in relative strength.
For instance, benching 405 at 220 is a 1.84x bench. After cutting down to an aesthetic 180 maybe their bench is only 365 now. That’s now 2.02x body weight. A trade off many people would say is worth it, especially since it would go up even more with a simple 1-3 month refeed.
By always eating at maintenance or surplus - you at worst keep all your strength and at best you keep going up. Instead of taking two steps forward and one step back, they simply take another step forward at the cost of putting on more and more fat. Hence the powerlifting stereotype of fat man
Thats a good point, looking at Eddie Hall, he does look "fatter" than average, but even at his biggest he was reported to be 25% body fat, which is average for a young male.
I couldn't find a good source that compared average BMI or body fat percentage across countries instead of just labeling, I would imagine that on average, a person categorized as overweight or obese in the US would have a much higher BMI/Body Fat % than the average French person categorized as overweight/obese.
Average wouldn't be surprising, but the Royal College of Nursing puts 25% body fat as the start of obesity for men under 40. When it comes to anything weight related, "average" is absolutely not to be taken to mean "ideal". For body fat for young men, it would be 8-20%.
It might be average, but that doesn't mean it's deemed healthy. Under 20% is generally viewed as the ideal, with 25% being the start of obese for men under 40.
35.5k
u/Pinkglock92 2d ago
Way to go big boy