Your Fighting GB Weight

How important is it to be at my ideal gb weight to progress through Mastery of my sticking point exercises?

Once I progressed through Mastery of the easy exercises I could do at the beginning of my gb life I reached my first wall of exercises to push through.  I've been on some of these for 14 months including RC/PE1 and HBP/PE3.

I'm 162 pounds, but I should be at 142 pounds to look like the athletes in the vids and some of the other people here on gb.  So I would say I'm about 20 pounds or about 14% overweight.

How much can that affect my ability to progress through Mastery of some of the 7 gb exercises like RC/PE1 and HBP/PE3?

Good Sir, there is no ideal GB weight, if so i would had to stop long ago.

Its possible ypur brain and body give up at the same time, you must overcome the body at some point.

Looking like the athlete in the video and being as strong are two different things that dont equal each other. Being muscular doesnt mean your strong, and being thin and scrawny doesnt mean your weak.

I say forget the weight issue and analyze your roadblocks from a more concrete viewpoint: rest, nutrition, training history, mobility, etc.

5' 7" 185 10%bf, looks like i should be very strong but alas not that strong, just born mesomorph in this life.

Agree with above comments, and just to show the variety, I'm 5'6.5" 135lbs ~23%bf. down 8lbs from nearly a year ago and feeling much more 'solid' than flabby.

My fighting weight is probably a very lean 120lbs.

....I went from 148lbs to 160-162lbs. >_> not so sure about body fat % 

has anyone else gained weight and things have gotten much easier? (couldn't do 1 set of FL PE1 when I first got foundation for example)

 

I have gained 10 kg and im finally getting good results in GB and MMA. I was too small for really long time. Im 184cm and 82kg now

I have a different approach than most probably. I start from week 1 on everything, even if im close to mastery, im just enjoying the ride. Weeks 1 to 5 are easy and i focus in my cardio/ handstand work, i basically have more room for playtime. Then, when things get real at week 6, i stop extra sessions and focus 100% F and H. Seems to work well, only isssue was with ABH.

So, im curious Dynamo, did you start at week 1 for your difficult elements? You might have missed out on the very adaptation we need for certain moves. Also, mastery is much easier if you have made lots of small successes, one right after another. Ive made it to PE3 on everything that way, soon to be on PE4.

I think some may start too late in the cycles, and wonder why they cant master it.

I'm 185 and up to 92 kg now. Still making more progress with foundation than anything else.

Riku Calderón said:

I have gained 10 kg and im finally getting good results in GB and MMA. I was too small for really long time. Im 184cm and 82kg now

My size and weight exactly

Christian said:

I'm 185 and up to 92 kg now. Still making more progress with foundation than anything else.

Wow, that's kinda heavy for your height. As far as I recall you're not fat, you must be one stacked dude!

I guess my BF is around 15% ish. Would like it lower. I don't know why my weight is so high now, was 87-88 then shot up to 92 now. My legs are a bit heavy though.

Christian said:

I'm 185 and up to 92 kg now. Still making more progress with foundation than anything else.

I am 184 and 92kg. Whenever I get lighter my performance drops. I am eating for performance rather than trying to get a lower weight so I will see where my weight ends up.

Not exactly a physique model here either, don't find it hinders weekly improvement

I would say that being quite lean (as in 7-8% bf%) would be beneficial to GST progress IF you are getting sufficient calories and nutrients through good nutrition to support performance ie. you are not going too low carb or too low on calories to get as lean as possible just for the sake of it.

I'm currently 73-74kg at 169-170cm and around 11% bodyfat and am experimenting with dropping to 68-69kg at a lower bf% to see how this affects my training.

To answer your exact question as to how important it is to be at your "ideal GB weight" I would say that as long as you are sub 14% bodyfat your main priority should be focusing on the quality of your actual training as opposed to trying to drop weight. If you are 15% bf or above then getting leaner should be quite beneficial.

Weight does affect some exercises, if you have more weight around the midsection things like MN will greatly be affected. Anything that requires leverage will be affected to some degree depending on where a majority of your weight is situated. Weight is not something to entirely dismiss. That is not to say anything is impossible, but difficulty will scale depending on body types and the kind of weight, bone, fat or muscle.

@Zach, would be nice to be 160, that would be my ideal weight, I've been struggling to move past 145 at 5'6 while keeping my bf where it is. 

I'm 185 tall and ~87 kg in the morning. Bodyfat around 10% at the moment, cutting down to my "GB special", which is around 7-8%. I like being there the most.

I am 6' (183cm)  205lb (93kg). For sure some of these exercises are a bit difficult at this weight for me; I recognize that to an extent, weight plays a part in all of this training. This I would say is especially true if an individual has no prior strength training coming into this program. That being said, it is easy to underestimate how your body adapts to stressful or uncomfortable situations. It is not a bad idea if one is concerned about their weight to supplement the GB program(s) with cardio training 2-3 times a week.

Right now my ideal weight would be close to 185lb (84kg). However I am shocked at how my body has adapted to some of the holds given my weight. Keep at it!!

I hope your listening Dynamo, there is some serious wisdom being dropped here. Im glad to hear from all you folks.

Thanks All,

Well it's good to know that 14% overweight shouldn't preclude Mastery of the exercises; perhaps its just slowing me down a little.

To some extent I think it's self regulating in the sense that if I work it smart, keep cycling the workouts and shooting for Mastery's and can maintain an active enough lifestyle then my weight should automatically find its sweet spot and I'll have that beach body or better yet one day a gb body

Currently I'm bogged down between a day job, night school and a small business on the side that all really cuts into my rest and recovery and the lack of sleep makes some of the workouts difficult to get through so I'm going to work on better time management to try to give gb the better quality time it deserves.

Thanks RJS for the suggestion "So, im curious Dynamo, did you start at week 1 for your difficult elements? You might have missed out on the very adaptation we need for certain moves. Also, mastery is much easier if you have made lots of small successes, one right after another. Ive made it to PE3 on everything that way, soon to be on PE4. "

On exercises where I'm having difficulty I may start going down to 4 week cycles I can Master with perfect form and then cycle back up towards Mastery on an as needed basis to see if I can push through.

5'10" - 145lbs. Below 10% body fat. Weighed 155 before starting but had more body fat.

Man, i dont know about u skinny fellas. Do little guys get a pump when they work out?  

U know the kind of pump when u cant hardly move, doubled in size, and feels like ur filling up with liquid.

I'm 5'7" and 135 lb......would not say I'm skinny, just short and very low body fat...

I think is not a matter of weight, but rather size/proportions and body fat %.

fat should be ideally as low as possible, i believe...at that point weight depends on lean mass, so if you are heavier you re likely stronger as well (although hipertrophy is not necessarly creating more strenght and vice versa...)

I am 5'10" and 170lb.  I don't know how much fat I have, but I am fairly lean with visible abs.

Out of curiosity I measured myself today at 5'10", 86kg / 190lb. I expected to see a lower scale number as I have noticed my clothes fitting looser and more definition on me lately.

I improve week to week and feel good about it

1,79cm @ 84kg. 8-7% bf.