Why is my LBM the same all the time?
tomcornhole
Posts: 1,084 Member
A little frustrated with my LBM. I have been stuck at 157 lbs LBM since Feb. I was in a cut from Feb-May and stayed at 157 lbs LBM. I maintained weight from May-Nov and stayed at 157 lbs LBM. I did a short bulk from Nov 1 to today (gained 4 lbs) and I'm still at 157 lbs LBM (all of this is from BodPods).
I started heavy lifting in May and have seen great progress on the legs:
DL: 205 to 400
Squat: 140 to 280
My bench and OHP have been hampered by tendonitis but I think I am past that now.
Bench: 115 to 205
OHP: 0 to 125
I didn't expect to add LBM in a cut or maint and even had low hopes for a 1 month bulk. But how the heck do I go from a complete newbie to a 400 lbs DL without adding any LBM? That can't be newbie gains.
I am going to cut back down to 182 lbs and start a long bulk from there. I'll get a BodPod at the start and at the end and see if my genes and age allow me to add LBM.
Thanks for listening.
Tom
I started heavy lifting in May and have seen great progress on the legs:
DL: 205 to 400
Squat: 140 to 280
My bench and OHP have been hampered by tendonitis but I think I am past that now.
Bench: 115 to 205
OHP: 0 to 125
I didn't expect to add LBM in a cut or maint and even had low hopes for a 1 month bulk. But how the heck do I go from a complete newbie to a 400 lbs DL without adding any LBM? That can't be newbie gains.
I am going to cut back down to 182 lbs and start a long bulk from there. I'll get a BodPod at the start and at the end and see if my genes and age allow me to add LBM.
Thanks for listening.
Tom
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Wow, that does seem hard to believe that your existing muscle mass was good enough to support those huge improvements without needing more, or for that matter the other stuff of LBM besides muscle increasing.
Were you already in pretty good shape, except for more shape from the fat loss?
Since the Bodpod's have stated accuracy of 3%, if all is done right, could that be the case, just moving in the range?
Like pretty sure not retaining water from prior workout on measurement day? Or prior measurement days.
Or doing more cardio so blood volume was increased, or stopped doing some so it went down, or winter and not sweating as much so it went down.
That would be lowered LBM, that if it's not showing up then perhaps actual muscle mass is taking it's place on the LBM scale, you might say.0 -
I was in pretty good shape in Feb when I started getting bodpods. I lost 50 lbs to get to 205 and maintained that for 6 months. I did some machine lifting, but not a lot.
I had 6 bodpods done starting in February and the last one was today. Always at he same place with the same operator. I understand it's accuracy can be off, but 6 points does draw a nice flat line on my chart. Only thing that seems to change is the amount of fat I have. I'm really good at making that go up and down.
I guess I could have made those gains without adding LBM. There are guys that have 157 lbs of LBM that can pull 400 lbs in a DL. But I have obviously not figured out how to add LBM. I do not accept the hard gainer excuse so I will reset and try a real bulk.
Tom0 -
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A little frustrated with my LBM. I have been stuck at 157 lbs LBM since Feb. I was in a cut from Feb-May and stayed at 157 lbs LBM. I maintained weight from May-Nov and stayed at 157 lbs LBM. I did a short bulk from Nov 1 to today (gained 4 lbs) and I'm still at 157 lbs LBM (all of this is from BodPods).
well you have only been in a calorie surplus for 4 weeks in that entire period....if you want to gain any significant muscle you are going to have to run a surplus for a significant amount of time.0 -
Realistically you only bulked for a month, I would think any LBM gains in a month (maybe a pound or two, if done right) could easily fall into the margins of error for the test. Don't forget that LBM is simply anything that isn't fat - water weight will affect your LBM calculation. So maybe you gained a pound or two of muscle but you were slightly dehydrated on the day of the test, averaging out to neutral. The rest of the time (deficit and maintenance) you are pretty unlikely to gain any LBM.
For reference, my deadlift has increased from 0 to 415 (tested max a few weeks ago) and according to my calculations I have actually lost a small amount of LBM (2.5 years of dieting and 100lbs lost overall so I expect to lose a little LBM).
So in other words, I think you're fine. To see significant LBM gains you're going to have to go on a dedicated and prolonged bulk (I'd say 12 weeks bare minimum). You're obviously quite lean, you can handle a nice bulk for the next 6 months easily
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You saw what newbie gains are. You can seriously get a lot stronger without putting on a lot of mass. It's all your CNS learning/adapting to the increased load and learning how to fire more muscle cells at once as you do a lift. You'll hit a wall at some point and then you'll need to go on a caloric surplus to build more muscle to get stronger.0
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Realistically you only bulked for a month, I would think any LBM gains in a month (maybe a pound or two, if done right) could easily fall into the margins of error for the test. Don't forget that LBM is simply anything that isn't fat - water weight will affect your LBM calculation. So maybe you gained a pound or two of muscle but you were slightly dehydrated on the day of the test, averaging out to neutral. The rest of the time (deficit and maintenance) you are pretty unlikely to gain any LBM.
For reference, my deadlift has increased from 0 to 415 (tested max a few weeks ago) and according to my calculations I have actually lost a small amount of LBM (2.5 years of dieting and 100lbs lost overall so I expect to lose a little LBM).
So in other words, I think you're fine. To see significant LBM gains you're going to have to go on a dedicated and prolonged bulk (I'd say 12 weeks bare minimum). You're obviously quite lean, you can handle a nice bulk for the next 6 months easily
^ I generally agree with this, especially the bolded part.0 -
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