Some of Casey Butt's posts over @ the weightrainer.net board really motivate me to get down to 10%. This is just one of his many 5 star posts. I've read this at least 10 times lol.
"Most natural bodybuilders spend years chasing more size (which is often a largely futile battle) because they think they need bigger muscles to "look like a bodybuilder", when the reality is that they're too fat.
I have a friend who has been training for more than 20 years, has simply massive arms, but yet still wants to know the secret of getting bigger. When I was in my best shape he once asked me to leave the gym because I was making him look bad ...said, "Jesus, now I'm ashamed to take of my shirt with you here." It was quite ironic considering he was roughly my height and out-weighed me by about 30 pounds and his arms were probably an 1 1/2" bigger than mine - yet I was the one getting all the attention. If this guy lost 20-25 pounds the tables would be turned and he'd be shocked by how he looked in the mirror.
Look at top natural bodybuilders of your height. You'll probably be surprised to find that they weigh less than you ...perhaps even in the off-season. For instance, right now, at 185 pounds I'm about 1.5" taller than the top middleweights and about the same weight as them in the off-season. I'm carrying a bit more fat than they would at this weight, but I'm also smaller boned. That tells me that I'm just a few pounds short of their level of development. Obviously then, the reason I don't look like them is because I'm too fat at the moment. You're probably in a very similar situation. I don't mean to say that you'd look like a world champion if leaned out, but probably a lot more like a "bodybuilder" than you realize.
When I did get down to the 10% body fat range I was simply shocked to find the body that lay hidden beneath the fat. Suddenly everyone was asking me for bodybuilding advice. I even began getting a reputation around town as "the bodybuilder". The Olympic Lifters in my gym started calling me "Mr. Universe". Young girls started whistling at me when I went to the Mall, and I became cougar-bait when I went to the bars - simply shocking considering three months earlier, nobody even took me seriously in the gym despite over 10 years of training.
Did I build the muscle in those three months? No. In fact, according to body fat estimation (using skin-folds, BIA and measurements) I lost more muscle over the three months of weight loss than I should have (I followed a very strict diet and trained a bit too much ...lost a lot of strength). The muscle was there all along, but I wasted several years chasing yet more muscle and failed to realize how advanced I already was. I learned a big lesson and I've come to see it time and again: MOST EXPERIENCED DRUG-FREE BODYBUILDERS ENDLESSLY CHASE MORE MASS WHEN THEY SHOULD BE LEANING OUT AND DISPLAYING WHAT THEY'VE GOT. Just a small layer of fat can completely obscure muscle development and keep trainees from ever realizing how developed they really are.
Plus, when you're lean you can gain muscle much more effectively when you switch gently to a building-up program. Fat people tend to just get fatter, lean people tend to build more muscle when they judiciously build up."
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