Here’s what happened IMHO.
Your lack of motivation is TOTALLY from doing too much work. And it’s likely not the heavy lifting that is the problem but the hypertrophy work. I’ll try to explain the reason why, but it requires going a bit into neurotyping so you might not understand everything 100%.
Anyway, back to doing too much. The justification you use is that your schedule is not full, it’s easy to fit the workouts in and you have nothing else to do.
The amount of free time you have should not dictate how much work you do. It is all about how your body can tolerate volume.
Now, because you are young your testosterone and IGF-1 levels are likely high. The fact that you are so strong for your age would confirm that assumption and likely put you in the very high level in both of these hormones. So you can PHYSICALLY get away from doing tons of volume: your anabolic (muscle building) hormone are high and because you don’t yet have a stressful life your catabolic (muscle wasting) hormones are low.
HOWEVER that doesn’t mean that neurologically you can handle the volume. Loss of motivation is 100% neurological/psychological. It is more often than not due to low dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter; a messenger in your brain. It’s role is to give you a pleasure response but it also makes you motivated and competitive.
As I mentioned earlier, I think you are a neurotype 1A or maybe 1B (doesn’t matter they have the same dominance). Both of these types are very sensitive to dopamine: their brain responds strongly to it. As a result they thrive on high intensity (heavy work, and also explosive in the case of 1B), on high frequency (each training session gives them a dopamine receptor stimulation and a strong pleasure response)… they are competitive and number-driven in the gym (always want to lift heavier weights).
However they are NOT neurologically built for volume. Especially volume that is not stimulating on the nervous system (higher reps, long time under tension, isolation exercises, etc.) especially Type 1A.
If they do too much volume here is what happen: they deplete their dopamine levels.
When you are training you force your body to produce dopamine. Type 1A and 1B are VERY sensitive to dopamine, but they don’t have a lot (if you are sensitive you normally don’t need a lot of a hormone/neurotransmitter). So when you are training your force your body to produce more dopamine than normal. But since your body doesn’t produce much, if you do too much work, you will deplete your dopamine levels.
Dopamine is responsible for being motivated and having drive in the gym (being competitive, with others or against the workout itself). If it crashes, motivation goes out the window. So even though you are physically capable of recovering from the work, your CNS crashes and you feel like crap.
I’m also willing to bet that at the moment you tend to eat a worse diet than before, likely eating more sugary stuff. This is because eating for pleasure releases dopamine… so when dopamine crashes your body will instinctively try to increase it…
The super accumulation program will KILL a type 1A and likely a Type 1B too… mostly because of the hypertrophy portion.
A Type 1A (and Type 1B) CAN train twice a day. BUT the duration and workload of the sessions need to be very low.
In fact I’d make the following recommendations:
- 3-4 exercises per session AT THE MOST.
- Nothing over 6 reps, and it’s best to stay below that.
- Keep rest intervals fairly long to avoid increasing adrenaline (adrenaline is made from dopamine… the more adrenaline you release, the more you deplete dopamine)
- Do very little traditional hypertrophy work.
- Keep each session under 45 minutes.
You cannot start a new program RIGHT NOW. Your motivation will NOT come from a program. The issue is chemical. You need to restore your dopamine before being able to train hard while being motivated. If you keep on push hard you will dig the hole deeper. But don’t worry it should only take you about a week.
BTW if you read the super accumulation program, it calls for a week of greatly reduced training hen you complete it. Sounds like you didn’t do that.
I suggest doing only neural charge workouts (EXACTLY like in the article… not YOUR version of it) for a week. No more than 25 min per session, no more than 4-5 sessions in the week. I would also recommend taking Brain Candy or at the very least tyrosine (2 x 1000mg per day) to help restore dopamine levels.
After that I would recommend trying out: Bulgarian Training Simplified