Do you have to build a strength base if you're lifting purely for aesthetics?

This and bodyweight

Yes.

>much simpler and easier to progress with barbell compounds rather than tracking rep progressions of a dozen cable/dumbbell exercises
>you're not good enough at lifting and adapted enough to actually need stuff to do stuff like slow tempo burns
>compounds, if done with proper form, will get rid of imbalances and minor mobility issues allowing you to start your intermediate training with a more balanced body
>high intensity compounds strengthen joints, cartilage, tendons, bones etc. - which you probably need unless you were athletic before lifting
>even if you go the "aesthetics" route later on - you'll still need an adapted CNS, good luck getting good volume with good tempo even on isloation work if you're spastic

TL;DR
If you were athletic before: you MAYBE can skip straight to a bodybuilding LP programe: but it's still going to be less effective than SS/SL/etc. + some isolation for 90% of people.
If you were sedentary: do your fucking 3X5s or 5X5 like a good boy unless you want to spin your wheels and snap your shit up.

So what if I'm a 5'7 manlet, should I still wait until 1/2/3/4?

Im not sure if you do or dont. I do know that beginner strength routines work. 4 months of SS and 2 months of TM and I bench 250 5rm. The guys that I see doing rando high volume shit never seem to progress much

Honestly, the discipline, scheduling, time managent, and focus toward perfection form are all such good things to take away from a full body strength routine that they're worth it in themselves.

Not saying you can't start with hypertrophy and stay with it for forever, especially if you're young, but like other anons have said you'll never get big, and there's some decent logic in establishing big weight numbers (let alone activating cns properly) so that you can use that strength to train bigger numbers in hypertrophy.

But it's all internet dyels fretting over tiny symantic details. You gain some strength with hypertrophy, and vica versa. It's always the same answer: those that put in the work versus those that don't actually get the results. And that even means those that go to the gym, even if they fuck around, will achieve more than those who miss days and make excuses. You'll make even more progress if you set goals and train to improve each workout if novice, and weekly if intermediate.

>But it's all internet dyels fretting over tiny symantic details.
Tiny semantic details that make a huge difference, especially in the long run. Not just in terms of gains, but also in terms of preventing burn-out and injury.

>And that even means those that go to the gym, even if they fuck around, will achieve more than those who miss days and make excuses.
Of course putting in the work is a perquisite, but "fucking around" can get you amazingly shitty results results and end up in injury much easier as opposed to a proper routine. Will you get a 170 bench in a couple months no matter what you do? Most likely. Will your progress halt to a grind or will you impinge half the stuff you can impinge? Very possibly.

>You'll make even more progress if you set goals and train to improve each workout if novice, and weekly if intermediate.
As I said, that only works until you hit very low numbers. If you don't know what you're doing you're likely to fuck up your rotator cuffs too much to bench or snap your lower back or consistently over-train if you go just by "aiming to improve constantly."

It's not rocket science, but at least for the first year you're much better off going by established routines rather than trying to make shit up yourself. Assuming you're natty, no matter what you do in the first couple of months - you won't go from dyel to built, natty lifting takes a lot of time to get you great results - why rush the first couple of months and set yourself up for failure? You want aesthetics in 3 months?

Just do SS/SL and add a superset of lateral raises/curls/skull-crushers at the end of each workout, maybe some crunches and calf raises. It won't impact your training unless you overdo it and you will get that tightness in your polo-shirt sleeves a bit sooner.

Also don't forget that for a natty (and also roiders in fact:) aesthetics is at least 50% body-fat numbers. Don't permabulk, don't do GOMAD - and you'll be fine.

> Depending on your height, 1/2/3/4 is a lot harder than it would be for people taller than you, and some parts of it will be harder (bench+OHP are harder the shorter you are).

How come? Can you please explain? I thought weight lifting was harder in general for taller people since the range of motion is so much bigger.

There is relative strength and there is absolute strength:

A 170cm 70kg manlet will be able to push their body-weight on bench after X months of training.
A 190cm 90kg lanklet will be able to push 0.9 times their body-weight on bench after the same amount of training.

So relative to their body-weight the manlet is stronger, but the lanklet still pushes 81kg while the manlet does only 70kg.

Also, just because you're a manlet doesn't mean you automatically have good leverages or if you're a lanklet it doesn't automatically mean you have worse leverages. Although the tendency is definetly there - people past a certain height tend to be taller because of disproportionately longer limbs.

Being relativley short is an advantage in bodybuilding because it's easier to fill out your frame and look bigger. An manlet might have a chest that allows him to bench 140kg and look fairly impressive, a lanklet with the same bench has obviously similar muscle mass - but it looks like it's a lot less on his frame. Still: this is a tendency and not a hard rule, there are always good and bad genetics (for bodybuilding) at all heights (at least until you really start getting into very tall teritorry where the tendency becomes almost a rule.)

A similar thing for frame size:
Someone with a small frame can put on less muscle (muscle and bone mass are very tightly correlated) but any mass they have looks more impressive on their smaller bones - at least until you see them in person, that's when the illusion falls apart.

*5'6

Typo

You don't "wait for 1/2/3/4" that's idiotic.

You do your beginner routine until you stall
Then you deload and try again, if you stall again - you deload again and try to eat and sleep more.
If after 2-3 successive deloads and after increasing your caloric intake you still can't consistently or at all progress in a linear fashion - then you're done with linear progression and beginner routines.

Congrats, you're an intermediate lifter. Intermediate doesn't mean you hit an arbitrary goal - it means that linear progression fails to elicit a (consistent) response from you anymore.

Where will your lifts be at that point? For an average height guy usually somewhere around 1/2/3/4, for you probably a decent bit lower. Also the ratios depend on your proportions, if you have short arms ie. wingspan shorter than your height - then your can forget about having a deadlift that's 1plt higher than your squat.

holy shit them digits. anyway most lanklets also have worse leverages and have to move the weight for a longer distance because they have longer limbs most of the time under greater angles and if you calculate the mechanical work put into the system to combat the weight ( mass*gravitational acceleration*bar path ) you will see a higher energy input and output. that energy comes from potential chemical energy stored in muscles in glycogen, creatine, atp and other chemicals that aid muscle contraction. then again as most people have pretty much similar metabolism and body chemistry the lanklet will have to work agains more energy and worse leverages while a manlet works agains less total energy and leverage.

now i'm not saying that manlets have it easier, n fact there are many dyel manlets and strong/buff tall guys, and all in all it matters more how much work you put into lifting but by a small measure manlets have it easier

>tl;dr manlets have it easier because physics but not much easier so stop being a bitch and train harder

correct, but you are underestimating severely the disadvantage of lankletism

it is not unheard of for a lanklett to have almost twice as long arms as a manlet

this will mean you need more then twice the power output to even move the bar on bench, and that is without even counting the awkward angles your elbows will be in

when manlets bar on bench touches the chest then barely even have any angle in their elbows, certainly nowhere close to 90 degrees, while tallfags will have a ridiculous angle in the elbows long before even hitting the chest

the beginning of February I started lifting at 5'10 137lbs. I wanted aesthetics too but, being a beginner, I started with a variation of ss just to get used to lifting. I already ran all the time and cycled so cardiovascular health was taken care of.

I didn't follow the gomad shit either. Just ate a bit more than usual and ate clean. I am already seeing aesthetic gains AND good strength gains. Bench alone has gone from 90lb to 120lbs.

Tl;DR just go for strength and fix your diet and you'll be good

trust me i know, i'm only 6'1 but i have a 6'5 wing span and it's fucking with my bench and my ohp. i'm saying that as a lanklet. altough having arms twice as much as another man, be him a manlet is an exageration. now i haven't done the math and i probably will in the future since i'm autistic enough but i guess it's about 20-25% easier for manlets to lift in pushing motions and about 15% in pulling motions. that however depends on relative heights and arms length

>Dyel with no previous lifting experience reaching 170lb 1RM bench press in 2 months

O I M Laffin'