olympic lifting and size

[Averof]

i started olympic weightlifting a few months ago with a lifting club.. what i'm wondering is how does it affect your size

i put on about 25 pounds since november up to 185lb.. mind you most of that weight was put on in like the first 2-3 months..beginner gains i guess..and things then started to plateau..
in april i stopped working out consistently and my weight dropped down to 178ish.. and sometime in june i started with the olympic club. ive since put the weight back on to 185 but i credit that just to starting to lift heavy again despite the kind of training i'm doing..

so i'm wondering if i will make any significant weight gains doin the olympic stuff and eating like a horse...
i train about 3-4 days a week.. i didn't start it to get big, thats not really my goal ... but for my height and frame, bout 6 feet, another 15-20pounds wouldnt hurt..and im curious if i should expect it to happen from this training alone..

in this sport i've seen and heard of a lot of skinny 130pound women/girls clean and jerking liek 120 kilos or something and i wonder how the hell they don't put on weight doing it ..

[Sleepy Guy]

Training some high intensity with oly lifting has resulting in me not putting on any weight but a significant strength increase.

I am not expert on the subject but would think in order to gain weight oly lifting you will have to eat lots and lots of food. And try to keep the cardio down to almost nothing.

I failed at gaining much weight while oly lifting but that was not my goals. The big fat oly lifters have next to no cardio endurance which would make me think they pretty well always do low rep high weight kind of deal.

[RhodeHouse]

I don't know a tremendous amount about Oly lifting, but it's not a sport that will build muscle. The movements are not condusive to a lot of muscle gain. EAT! And do some rep work to increase muscle mass - bodybuilder style.

[JHarris]

I don't know a tremendous amount about Oly lifting, but it's not a sport that will build muscle. The movements are not condusive to a lot of muscle gain. EAT! And do some rep work to increase muscle mass - bodybuilder style.

Actually, Olympic lifting can be great for putting on mass. The olympic lifts and the auxiliary lifts you do for the sport(squatting, rdl's, pulls, shoulder presses, etc) are all based on large compound motions with reasonably high intensity and more volume than your average gym rat. Those sound like great in-gym factors for gaining mass to me. Further, since you are moving at maximal velocities you are recruiting and stressing the most high-intensity type II's, which have the greatest potential for hypertrophy.

There are a few reasons people don't gain mass in it. The first is that they are in a weight class and don't want to get too big for it. The second is that they don't eat enough. For most dedicated OL'ers, its the first. I imagine that's true for powerlifting too; weightclass athletes in any sport tend not to gain a lot of mass despite weightraining due to diet.

Take a look at Shane Hammon, or Cheryl Hayworth. They are both superheavies and they are big. What about Reza zadeh? Strongest man in the world and also large. You can even take a look at weight classers like Dimas. Most 250lb bodybuilders dont have quads like Dimas's. Look at the chinese lifters on their flickr site. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dehwang/page2/) Great muscular development.

There may be better ways to put on mass, but Olympic lifting is definitely conducive to it.