canuckboy wrote:
Curious Delts,
Whats your take on all of it then? What has this change done for your quality of life if anything? Do you miss running and running at a lighter bodyweight?
I have personally thought of this for a while now, considering that I'm running in university next year... I don't have major self esteem issues just curious to know what the two lifestyles are like?
Whenever I'm actively training for a race, I find that the "excess" weight goes away quickly. Right now I'm around 165 lb, and by spring, if I'm able to train as consistently as I'd like, I might get to around 150 lb. Fortunately the muscular weight returns fairly easily when I'm not running heavily. My experience has been that the weight hasn't made as much of a difference in speed as I might have expected. I also put a lot of emphasis on compound lower-body lifts--power cleans, deadlifts, trap bar deadlifts--which might help counteract the effects of added mass. I have to say that I do feel more confident when I weigh more, but the difference isn't dramatic
I'm no elite, so take what I say with a grain of salt. That said, I like what Salazar said in reference to Solinsky's size in a New York Times article from a few years ago: "The engine may weigh more, but if it has more horsepower, it may end up actually getting the car faster around the track, and I think that’s the way Chris is."
Interestingly, when I started lifting seriously several years, I think that just putting on around 10 lb and going from 129 lb to around 140 lb made a significant difference in my appearance. I have a small frame and am lean, so I'm fortunate that I appear "larger" than I actually am. When looking at someone's physique, people generally are more responsive to proportionality than raw size. At 140 lb I didn't exactly look like I was going to play football or compete in throws, but I had just enough additional upper body mass that people noticed that I "worked out."