First a bit of history. I started training in middle school and then high school under a basic program, never really went too hard since the instructor was afraid of going too extreme. I never really made any progress in those times.
Then in college at age 20 I got motivated. Went on a rampage doing a self-designed program 3 times a week for about 15 weeks. I plateaud at week 11 and totally lost my motivation when I couldn’t change up to make what I deemed progress. I made badass improvement for that 11 weeks going from 135 to 185 bench and similar improvements (incremented 5 or 10 pounds per week) in legs as well. I did squats and/or leg presses to be well up over 500 press and approxamately 250 squat by 10 reps. I was feeling awesome with the progress till I plateaud.
During this timeframe I saw no real size improvement even though I felt my strength was going through the roof. When I plateaud (as I saw it then) I lost all motivation when after 5 weeks I couldn’t even tack on 5 pounds.
Fast forward 10 years to current day. I’m 5’11" 225 lbs, and what I’d assume as 20% BF. Hopefully I’m overestimating as even after getting the freshman gut I was only at about 10-12%.
I’ve been reading T-Mag for a few months, following as many links as I can and reading as much as possible. I’m finally comfortable with my knowledge and feel I’m ready to tackle this monster and take advantage of any genetic potential I have and then some.
Thinking back now in college I had two main problems. First one being obvious that I was probably severely overtraining as I was doing all body parts 3x a week at 10x3 for sets. No wave, no pyramid, nothing but flat sets. Second major problem that limited my hypertrophy had to be lack of protein/kcal ingestion as I was still eating a college kids diet and not increasing what I should have. A weak grocery store bought protein supp once a day wasn’t near enough.
Now, armed with my new found resouorce of T-mag(which I waste at least 5 hours a day pouring over, seriously) and having the flame ignited under my ass, I’ve cut out what I felt was limiting my ability to hit the gym and am now ready to assault my physique. I’m going to get a membership at the local Y next week if they’ve got the equipment necessary(if not I’ll likely sell out for 24hr fitness or some other spandex-fest gym within walking distance, I live in SF without a car) and have armed myself with Alpha Male, Red Bands, and just ordered some Grow! to add on. I started the Alpha Male and Red Bands already to try and get my system functioning in a T elevated and metabolism cranking state before throwing the weight/strength training on top so as to shock it into a fuel burning mass producing machine.
I’ve decided to slowly transition myself to the T-Dawg diet (I’m a glutton for pizza and beer and know I’ll have slip-ups, I figure this is the most adaptable for a protein and carb freak like myself) but want some suggestions for what workout plan to aim for.
I can’t decide if I want to go for powerlifting goals ala westside, or physique goals with a little bit of power ideas. West-side for skinny bastards sounded like a decent plan of attack yet today I stumbled across ABBH and the article on EDT, which both sounded like nice programs to slim down and approach strength/size gains. However, not having the base strength to hit one of those programs full force I can’t decide if I should try a cutting program or a pure strength program and rely on the type of diet I’m shooting at to do the cutting for me, with a little help from the supps.
Please help me pick a workout to get me started. Thanks.