Bakergirl":1c64ncw8 said:
Happypuppy":1c64ncw8 said:
I have high hopes for him. He was working with a trainer and a nutritionist and I have read he is the strongest player on the OL now. I think what
PC was saying is he lost fat and added muscle. I would like to see him about 10-15 lbs lighter on his repaired knee
Exactly. Carpenter is in better shape by far this year just by the addition of muscle mass and the loss of fat. Numbers on the scale can be misleading. If his overall number hasn't gone down, but he's managed to strengthen his muscles and slim up he's heading in the right direction. Muscle strength can help prevent re-injury, as well as future injury.
It's not as easy as all that to change your body composition. You cannot gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. So, you have to either lean out a bunch and then very carefully ratchet your diet back up in small increments so that as you gain weight a larger % of it is muscle, or you must put on the muscle first then very carefully lose weight slowly so that you are losing a greater % of fat as you lose.
That sort of change takes a shit-ton more control than Carp has ever shown. Nutritionist or not. I'm not discounting it out of hand, but with Carp I'm not going to buy that story straightaway. I would buy it more if he weighed the EXACT SAME but strength went up, I'd buy it if he weighed less and his strength had been maintained. But I do not buy that he is *much* leaner if he's right now heavier than he was.
Also, his strength may have increased a lot, but that simply indicates gaining muscle, and also perhaps neurological strength. It says nothing about body composition.
Lastly, whether it's muscle or fat, it would still be better on his repaired knee for him to be lighter on the scale. For someone to add appreciable muscle mass, it by necessity must be added proportionate to the size of the muscle group. Your big weight-adds are going to be in your back, your quads, your butt, then maybe chest and arms.
So we're not talking about a guy who only added muscle around his repaired knee that would stabilize that joint. We're talking about a guy who added a little muscle/strength around that repaired knee, and then added mass a bunch of other places that do nothing but add load to that joint whether that mass was made of fat, muscle, or admantium.
It's better for all of us if Carp is lighter.