I watched a YouTube video on Powerlifting Weight Classes and how your height affects which class you should try to lift in to be competitive. I even dared to read the comments. It was quite informative, if not disillusioning, because at my height (just a sliver under 5’11”) I would need to be considerably heavier to be competitive, albeit at the elite levels. In theory, the goal is to be the shortest person in your weight class, because you’d be carrying the most muscle and would likely have a competitive advantage.
At my height, according to famed Russian Powerlifting Coach Boris Sheiko, I should be in the 242-lb class to maximize my competitiveness. I immediately shrugged this off as absurd, but as I thought about it further and looked at his recommendations for the other weight classes, I started to see the reasoning behind it. I am a very lean, at least by powerlifting standards, 170 lb male who would cut weight to enter the 165-lb class. The good news is, I would be at the heavy end of the class, but now the bad news: How tall is the average 165-lb male? According to some data I found from the Society of Actuaries and Association of Life Insurance Medical Doctors of America, somewhere between 5’6″ and 5’7″. So my competitors will most likely be much shorter than I am, increasing their competitive advantage and likely erasing any I had from coming in at the top of the weight class in terms of lbs on the scale. They will have more muscle packed onto their smaller frames.
My thoughts then ran toward increasing my weight to at least get to the 181-lb class (a rather constant dialogue in my problem solving brain), but then I recalled competing in the 198’s not long ago. My first competition in 2008 was in the 220-lb class. I weighed in at 216.7 lbs and I was a fat slob. So I have experience at being heavier… much heavier.
Did I look good at those weights? No, not at all. But more importantly from a powerlifting perspective, did I perform better? I don’t think so, although it’s hard to compare because I competed in gear back then and trained with the “Westside” method, so I really don’t know what my best raw competition lifts were to compare. But that’s still not the most sobering fact I am faced with. This is:
I know that I carry 153 lbs of LBM on my frame today, and I know my body fat level. I can estimate my bodyfat level when I was 198 lbs (see photo) using this chart (see photo). Let’s split the difference from the 20-24% range I think my photo represents and call it 22.5% body fat. I was carrying 153 lbs of LBM then too.
So despite all the weight training I have done over the years, I have added zero muscle mass. None. Zilch. Nada.  ничего. Niente. Nichts. 没有.
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