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No i've always held the individual is different and that's the message others are missing because they're projecting their assumptions of what a person should be (based on BMI which is bullshit anyway) at a given height and weight. I'm not the one arguing against individual variation, they are!

It's common knowledge that you can improve your T-levels by reducing bodyfat % and decrease it by increasing bodyfat%. And insulin sensitivity does improve when you're leaner and it does worse when you get fatter. These things are good reasons to get lean regardless of the messenger but the main reason I believe in becoming lean first is the because bodyfat amount (in grams) will go up when you gain weight and if you start off with too much fat then you will end up too fat. To gain muscle you obviously have to gain some weight so that's unavoidable.

But yeah i'd just ask everyone to be patient and defer their criticisms until i've finished this cycle (<75kg/165lb) in ETA 10 days time. After that im going to stop cutting per se and just focus on getting stronger and gaining some muscle while staying at 75kg or less. For a while. And i'll get the DEXA scan for your edification so we can get an objective 3rd party opinion on the mystery of my bodyfat%.

I dont know if my vertical has not gone up cause i haven't focused on peaking it since i lost this weight. But of course that the next phase when i get off the cut will be to peak my vertical which should be interesting to see. I do expect PRs though, just dont know whether it will be low 30s or more than that.

TLDR:  i'll update with photos in 10 days after finishing this cut. And after some weeks of stabilising at 75kg/165lb, will get a DEXA scan done.

Sure here you go, sources below. And lol, yes it is well known among the lifting community .. esp bodybuilding!

If you’re above 15% body fat (about 24-27% for women), diet first. If you can get to the 10-12% (19-24%) body fat range or so, I think you’ll be in an overall better position to gain mass. Trying to get super lean will probably end up screwing you in the long run because your body will be primed to put back fat on (and most other physiological systems are screwed up as well) when you get super lean.

The question is why, why is bodyfat percentage having such a profound impact on P-ratio. Well, there are a few easy answers. One is that bodyfat and insulin sensitivity tend to correlate: the fatter you get, the more insulin resistant you tend to get and the leaner you are the more insulin sensitive you tend to be.

You also get more testosterone production at that bodyfat % .. which is another nice bonus.

I will get a DEXA after i stabilise at a leanish 75kg. Pointless getting one now. It will tell me nothing useful. Getting one later will be purely for curiosity sake .. not anything else.

It seems like you didn't even read my post. wtf is that essential athletic bf you're talking about you make up all these "fancy words" but it doesn't really make any sense at all! haha

Essential atheltic bodyfat is around 7-10kg (15-22lb) for most males. It's basically 10% of 70kg-100kg.  I have a lot more than 7kg. I have something like 12-15kg which is too much. Hence i wanna reduce it to 7kg. Then i'll start gaining weight and muscle.

I really don't get it why you are so stubborn when it comes to achieving a certain weight. Your mental occupation with dieting and achieving "X" bodyweight or bodyfat level is pathological. I mean as T0ddday said, I saw you going through several phases where you made some decent strength gains only to kinda lose most of it during your "cuts/recomps/whatever" It's like you're complaining about a headache while repeatedly banging your head against a wall. 

Goals like bw are measurable and concrete but ones like actual bodyfat% values are not. Unfortunately this means i'm coupling my bodyfat% milestones to bodyweight milestones like 80kg->77.5kg ->75kg ->72.5kg ->70kg etc or in pounds 185->180->175->170->165->160->155->150. Thats how I arrived at 165 .. there is nothing to say it will correspond to any meaningful bodyfat% -- it's useful only in relative terms that losing 1kg ~ 1%bf and so 5kg ~5%bf. In other words bodyfat changes go like 20->17.5->15->12.5->10->7.5 and so on. It's a rough approximation of meaningful milestones of relative bodyfat% CHANGE not actual bodyfat percentage values that are meaningful to us (15% vs 10% for example). 

I know from past experience I can afford to get down to 72kg from my current 77kg and still not be "ripped" -- which tells me i can afford to lose 5kg yet. But working backwards that means i have a surplus 5kg of adipose above and beyond my essential athletic bodyfat of ~7kg(10% of 70kg). If i do a bulk that +5kg will only increase .. and it's easy to imagine it going to +7kg. That's 7kg on top of the essential athletic bodyfat amount of 7kg. Too much fat. Good luck bulking, gains will be mostly fatty bulking from such a high bodyfat percentage.

I've talked about this in the past but there is a  lot of value in getting down to ones bare "essential bodyfat" - not because that is desirable from an athletic or aesthetic viewpoint long term.. it's just a good starting point to start training and eating properly. Maintain it for a while (say at least a few weeks or months) then start gaining weight SLOWLY after getting as strong as possible at that bodyweight/bodyfat%.  If i take it real slow from there and gain weight in a decent fashion (say at most gaining 0.5-1.5kg (1-3.5lb) bodyweight per month) while eating clean (oats + low saturated fat etc) and small surpluses (<+200-500kcal a day) i'll gain mostly muscle and good (male) bodyfat distribution. Obviously gaining some bodyfat as well which is okay cause bodyfat% will go up proportionally to bodyweight and you can more or less maintain your target bodyfat (say 10-12%). But if bodyfat% goes too high, cut for a few weeks and then repeat. Basically the most common advice from the bodybuilding community which has long figured this stuff out..

Yeah forgot you were special man.  Just keep going to 155lbs at 6'4" lol

There's 2 parts to this but only a few ppl on this forum would be able to relate to this. Those who have allowed their bodyweight to drift wayy past their setpoint (from injury induced layoffs or whatever). So i dont think i was born to have this storage pattern. There is a good quote on this if i can paraphrase it fairly, "As men get fat they take on female storage patterns" and vice versa, "as women get fat they take on male storage patterns". So as a woman gets obese she'll start to grow a protuding gut and pile on the lower back fat when women normally wouldn't store fat there. Similarly when a man gets obese he'll start to store fat in his hips/butt/thighs/chest when normally he wouldn't. This does bad things for a man hormonally too, reduces testosterone production and increases oestrogen production.

The point is if a male has "let himself go" at some point, that fat is there and it must be dieted off or whatever. And then maybe if you do it right, ie minimise saturated fat intake and overall fat intake for that matter and keep calories in check not gaining weight too quickly he will be able to gain weight in a more "normal" manner for a male, which is good.

The thing todday doesn't get and it's easy to understand if you do make a quick table like i did on this thread:


The difference between the guy who is 10% at 90kg and 10% at 70kg is ONLY 2kg of adipose. SO it's only wishful thinking to say you should "just gain some muscle" - of course you should gain muscle! But if you already more than say 2-5kg of extra adipose, you would have to gain wild amounts of muscle to nevertheless improve your bodyfat% appreciably. This is all very depressing of course but the numbers are undeniable...

But that's confusing, i always thought I was hip dominant... so im not sure if this is me.. b/c i too was able to dunk while heavy (~220lb) .. and quite obese, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't athletic but i could do it. I always thought my quads were not strong enuf, that was why i started to front squat. And so on. Later i decided the front squats did help me but only indirectly cause the ATG FS is a great glute and pc chain exercise (for me and my build type) and it wasn't really the quad panacea i had thought it to be, and rather the BS was superior for my quads .. but i digress..

I dont think im as lean as you think i am. I get it, at my height and weight i should be quite lean. I'm actually obese though, so maybe im an outlier an exception to the rule. I do actually believe that strongly. I dont want to cut forever but i do want to cut enough to be lean and then start from scratch, building myself up slowly and staying lean and being super patient when i do right i may be able to be a lean 80kg/175lb .. but right now im an obese 168 (in athletic terms) .. and will prob be around 15% bodyfat give or take when i reach my goal weight of 165lb. Is 15% lean enough? fuck no but i will stop and take a diet break. This thing isn't going so smoothly anymore .. it's taking ages to lose weight now and i think my body needs a break from dieting. Later on  when im fresh i'll tackle the next cut from 165 down to ... maybe 155 (75kg -> 70kg) --somewhere in that range i may hit 10% hopefully.

That's amazing. That's the first time anyone has ever told me that. Wow. Question is, How do I make these changes happen?

if ur quads are sore, chances are u are push running and not pull running -> dynamically weak hams

sorry i dont know about running dynamics. is this the same as forefoot v heelstrike?