Current Bodybuilding Training Thread 2.0

Only with RDLs and Flies. I’ve been too terrified to do it with biceps tho.

I’d be too scared to try it with any spinal loading, given my spine has all the integrity of a breadstick

the new Brad Schoenfold (Schoenfield? I can never remember) article is pretty interesting, and I like the more scientific, muscle-building articles we get on here, but did anyone else reading it think “well, duh”?

Yeah I think most people who have been around in the gym long enough will feel like that with that article.

At least the article didn’t tell me I was doing something wrong, or that I don’t know how to do something. When ever I scroll through the article titles I feel like I’m being insulted.

Shoulder press your doing it wrong
Your diet is rubbish
You don’t know what incline press does
7 reasons your still weak

4 Likes

A bit of a different question here and I feel it is always fun to reflect:

Knowing what you know today, what works what doesn’t and being able to filter through all the unnecessary extra information, how would you progress yourself knowing that your end goal was bodybuilding?

What would you do differently, if anything, then what you did?
How would you train through the beginner, intermediate and eventual advanced stage, again with your goal being pure bodybuilding?

How would your nutrition progress through these stages?

Think of it from the viewpoint of how you were starting as well (the skinny kid, the overweight kid, the athlete) as it would be neat to see different starting points and how they would attack their particular situations with everyone’s goal being the same of that bodybuilder physique.

Hopefully, could provide some interesting discussion.

I would have never fallen for the the notion that one needs a “bas of strength” before they move onto bodybuilding routines. I would have never stopped the full-blown bodypart split that was working for me because I had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I needed more frequency per bodypart and that volume takes second place to frequency. Pretty much I would have not fallen for all the bullshit that was picking up in the early-to-mid 2000’s and went full blown with more social media available.

I would have not ignored top bodybuilders simply because they use drugs. That is, I would not have fallen for the other faulty notion that one shouldn’t listen to people like Jay Cutler or whoever else because they are genetically gifted and use a lot of drugs. Granted I would not perform the volume that Cutler does, but ain’t it funny how I literally transformed my body in six months when I went back to classic bodypart splits, upped my volume, decreased my rest periods, liberally used pre-exhaust, and performed 8 to 12 sets per bodypart once every six days.

Like this:

  1. Stick with full body for a few months. Move on as soon as all basic exercises are learned with good form.
  2. Upper-lower split. Learn some different exercises.
  3. Move onto push-legs-pull split on a rotating basis for four or five days per week.
  4. Bodypart split that I used to be a one-show wonder.

Not really much of a progression. Just measure food in the beginning and get a handle on how to portion foods so I don’t overeat and eat four to five meals a day. I’d simply eat enough to have all bases covered. In no way would I expect myself to count every morsel of food day in and day out. I do best with three main meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and two mini-meals/snacks per day.

Obviously if I were to compete over and over the preps would change from show to show because no prep is like another.

I was never overweight or painfully skinny. Looking back on it, I was moderately athletic considering that although I was not some future gridiron star, I was no spaz either. I actually was a pretty good swimmer and took lessons for years. Had my high school had a swim team, I would have likely made it, I believe.

I wasted a shit load of time by falling for a lot of the nonsense out there put out by the anti-bodybuilding bodybuilding crowd (no, I did not make an error in this sentence).

3 Likes

What about you?

I do not think I have the experience or knowledge to answer that question with any value behind it, especially when it comes to training for purely bodybuilding.

My training has been a nice balance of linear progressions (mainly starting strength and 5x5’s) and program hopping. Until recently, my training has always been for sport (wrestling). So my goal every offseason was to get as strong as I could without adding any unnecessary weight, this is why low volume-high intensity lp’s worked great for me and my goals at the time. Training like this, for roughly two years (junior and senior year of high school) allowed me to eventually obtain a 415 lb deadlift, 335x3 squat and 215 bench. It did not, however, develop a physique that resembled anything that one thinks of when they think of a bodybuilder. Sure, I had grown a little, but nothing extraordinary. The problem that this training also created was the dogma of “chasing numbers.” What stifles me in my training today is the idea that I need to be chasing weight and constantly adding weight to the bar.

With me quitting wrestling this past year, (wrestling d1 became a full time job that i simply could not keep up with) my training goals changed to being more physique-oriented. Since maybe December, I have been stuck in sort of a limbo trying to figure out what to do in terms of my training now that I am training with bodybuilding as my sole goal. Being spoonfed programs, I realize I do better with structure and guess I am just struggling to find that in terms of training as a bodybuilder (vs strength programs where you already know what you’re doing to a t before you set foot in the gym).

I guess my reason for the post was maybe for some clarity to see how others would go about it.

Maybe in a couple of years, I too, can reflect on this question and be able to give an educated response.

@BrickHead

1 Like

I’m in the same camp as @BrickHead, I basically let myself get in my own way. To me, bodybuilding is not an athletic endeavor, nor should it be treated as such. To look good you should avoid the unnecessary stress of pure strength work. It’s a unique beast, it’s fun, but mentally it’s a different animal. The last few tears of reading to much garbage made me dislike training, because you constantly doubted yourself. Now, at 36 and a father of 2 young ones, I look better than literally everyone I know. I lift when I feel good, drink beer when I can and play as much as possible. I’ve realized a hobby is just that… It should only add, never take away.

2 Likes

@BrickHead and @The_Mighty_Stu, the podcasts are great, please keep them coming.

1 Like

Thanks Eric! We had already outlined our next few episodes an d even spoke to a few
“guests”, but as I always say, “real life” can get in the way -lol.

Hopefully we’ll be able to knock out several in the next couple of weeks to keep you entertained for a bit.

S

2 Likes

Hey guys!

I’m loving this thread! So much great information on bodybuilding!

This year I’ve been training for 10 years, but you probably wouldn’t be able to tell from the way I look, haha. And to be honest I have made almost no gains in almost four years. That said I still love training and haven’t given up hope that I can still improve a lot!

I’d like to get your opinion on two things specifically:

Volume:
How much volume do you do? Have you cycled volume in a certain way or have you always done pretty much the same amount?

I have kinda been into the stuff of Mike Israetel as of late. He advocates a method where you increase the volume by like 2 sets a week over a few weeks and in that way kinda work your way from your MEV (minimum effective volume) to your MRV (maximum recoverable volume) and deload afterwards. His reasoning is that science seems to suggest volume to be the main driver of hypertrophy, but the body adapts quickly, so you don’t do the same amount of sets every week - you work from the minimum amount you have to do to make any gains at all to the maximum amount you can do while still recovering from it.

What do you think of that and has someone of you tried anything like that?

Inspired by this thread I started a bodybuilding split a few weeks ago and tried to apply his principles to this, but now after 2-3 weeks I’m already feeling way run down. Although I started pretty low with 9 sets per muscle per week and increased that to 11 and then 13 sets per week…

Looking back over my training career I feel like I can’t really handle much volume very well, but can train with high intensity easily. For example I have done a high frequency program time and time again where I trained with very heavy weights daily over weeks and months without a problem. Volume training seems to knock me out pretty quickly though.

That said I have been able to run programs over a longer time where I did ~12 sets or more for the big muscle groups… So in theory I should be able to handle it, so maybe the training is not the reason for me feeling run down right now. Maybe calories, too. I’m not cutting anymore, but don’t think I’m in a surplus of calories either.

Nutrition:
How much of an impact has your nutrition made on your gains? I’m asking specifically in terms of “clean eating”. To be honest I love eating. I’ve been counting my macros for 7 years now, but I’ve always been more of a “IIFYM” (…) kinda guy. I just try to get the right amount of calories and protein. That said it’s not like I just eat shit all day long. Compared to normal people I eat well, but I also wouldn’t necessarily say I “eat like a bodybuilder” allt he time. Maybe I’m asking the wrong guys here and you are those who have no problem eating bland foods and adhere to a strict mealplan because you love it anyway, haha…?

Also I’ve been stuck in the classic perpetual bulking/cutting cycles, cycling between feeling too skinny / too fat and looking more or less the same at the end of it all…

Meh.

I did less before I decided to do a contest. However, years before the contest I did more and pretty much the same I did for the contest. What happened between those times was that I got wrapped up in the THEORY that reduced volume per session and increased frequency is the ticket to muscle growth thanks to gurus touting the notion that the higher the frequency of training a muscle, the more frequent is protein synthesis, never mind that for competitive bodybuiding this poses problems for program design and that increased protein synthesis does not necessarily lead to faster size increases! That is, even if you double frequency, there’s not double the rate of muscle growth.

Mike Israetel is actually one of the gurus that pushes the notion that bro splits don’t when the fact is that nearly every bodybuilder uses them!

So in a way he advocates what many people do already: lower volume for a deload. I actually did that when necessary. I guess cycling the volume from week to week can’t hurt either, as he suggests. But here’s the thing, whether you do a lot of volume and pace yourself a bit more, a la Jay Cutler, or you do a low amount with more effort, a la Dorian Yates, if you are busting your ass, you will respond!

I personally like training with more volume but not to failure with low rest periods, a la Jay Cutler. I don’t train like that right now considering I am simply on a maintenance/general fitness program because of my life is and my changed goals.

You can’t increase volume indefinitely! If you fee you’re doing too much, you likely are! How’s your sleep and nutrition?

How old are you? I am not saying this will happen to your or predicting something bad, but that approach might not work in the future considering. There’s another forum I visit in which some guy wrote something funny: “Increased frequency doubles the rate of protein synthesis but it also doubles the rate of busting my joints!” :slight_smile:

What does your split look like?

It did a lot!

Hang out with pro bodybuilders and see how often they eat “clean”? Lol, They don’t! They might eat clean some of the time, but while they do not aim to get fat and overeat, they are not having pristine meals of rice or potatoes and chicken for one meal to the next during an offseason. I’ve sat down with two Olympia competitors several times as well as natural pros. They eat!

Exactly! That’s what nearly everyone does while building.

Make a decision then. Either you’re gonna face being somewhat lean and a bit soft and gain muscle or or stay the same size year after year.

1 Like

Dude, don’t get caught up in this, ok? Go do something, anything you think will work. Do it for 3 months and evaluate results. Right or wrong, you will lean more about your body regarding what works and what doesn’t. Then you will have confidence that what you implement based on your results will be right instead of jumping here and there trying to find what’s optimal whenever you read or hear some new stuff from some new guru.

*Just please, for the love of God, don’t do Starting Strength.

2 Likes

Thanks a lot for the replies!

My responses will probably be rather long all the time, but I can’t help it, I always get carried away writing about this stuff! :smiley: But, it’s the bodybuilding thread after all. Go!

Hahaha, it’s far too late for that… :smiley: Maybe you remember my thread from three years ago to which you replied:

https://forums.t-nation.com/t/unhappy-with-progress/203122

For those interested the thread contains my training history up until three years ago, including pictures.

TL;DR: After good newbie gains I wasted a few years with Starting Strength, got a big ass, big legs and a big gut. 2012/2013 I did 9 months of 5/3/1 and made noticeable gains, the best physique gains since my newbie gains. After that I tried the HFT stuff as well as 5/3/1 again which never yielded the crazy progress which it gave me first.

To be honest not much has happened in the three years since then. It’s a pity. I’ll tell you what I did up until now, but I’ll first adress some points BrickHead made:

Yeah, I know. I guess I just fell for another guru once again. He’s a good talker though and his stuff seems very reasonable and science-driven and… whatever, I guess you could say that about a lot of people in the industry, haha.

I know, I was just caught by surprise because it’s only been about two weeks and two volume increases… and I was still not doing more sets than I did in the past for longer periods of time (while doing constant volume week to week). That said, I’ve been cutting for a bit more than four months and have been on maintenance calories (~2500) for the last six weeks. When I’m slowly bulking I eat 3000+ so that will surely be a factor right now… mhh.

Sleep has been rather erratic in the last few weeks, but it feels that’s more in response to training/volume than anything else. It’s getting better though.

I’m 29 years old now. Well, I’m not that convinced of this training approach anyway. At least not for bodybuilding. I’ve been doing it like three times in my lifting career, but never for more than six months as that seems to be when fatigue catches up to me, despite autoregulating intensity and a few rest days here and there.

This approach with daily full body training is nice for strength though. I’ve been the strongest when I’ve been doing that. The thing is that this isn’t “real” strength. It’s mostly due to neural conditioning and doing the lifts daily. It has a big impact, but pretty much all of the strength vanishes as quickly as it came as soon as you return to a more moderate or low frequency…

Also it didn’t lead to much hypertrophy for me. The only thing it did when I was doing it a few years back was that it gave me rear delts from doing bent over laterals daily for a few weeks. Hadn’t been training that muscle directly at all before though.

So much for that, I’m not planning to do this type of training again at the moment.

Also, again talking about recovery… I don’t know how fast the body “gets old”, haha, but to be honest I don’t think I would be able to survive the 5/3/1 routine I did 5 years ago right now. At some point it just felt like too much. Of course, I was eating about 1000 calories more than right now and am maybe underestimating the impact on recovery of that… but still, I kinda feel like I’m not getting any younger, haha. Although it’s just been 4-5 years…
How’s it been for you, BrickHead? From what I know, you are about ten years older than me…??

That’s good to know. Then I don’t really think that nutrition is that much of an issue for me. I’ve been tracking my calories pretty meticulously for 7 years now and make sure that I always get at least about 120 grams of protein. I adjust the calories up or down whether I want to gain or lose… but whenever I’ve been gaining I end up skinnyfat most of the time. It’s frustrating.

I also don’t eat any cake or sweets or something other “normal” people eat. Just sayin’, haha.

I have no problem being somewhat soft. The thing is that I always end up skinnyfat and gain almost no muscle. You know the drill, you try gaining, even doing it slow, but at some point you feel fat. Then you cut the fat and start feeling weak and flat and change course again.

That said I don’t jump around all the time, I try to gain for months and even years before I go on a cut again.

The thing is, I’ve kinda always been bulking from “somewhat lean” to “skinnyfat with a gut”… and seeing that most of the time I almost gain no muscle at all I figured it might be more “comfortable” to cut down again… and instead go from “lean!” to “still somewhat lean” in the building phase. Kinda like shifting the average fatness around a bit, if you know what I mean. :smiley: I guess I’ve been bulking from like, I don’t really know, ~13% bodyfat to 20+% fat… and it kinda sucks. I would like to to it from like ~10 to ~15%…

I’m running out of time at the moment, but I’ll adress this and everything I’ve been doing training- and nutrition-wise in the three years since I started that thread later…

2 Likes

I am not posting this picture to ridicule Mike Israetel, but there does come a point in which people who seek bodybuilding advice and even more importantly those who want to compete, should listen to those who looked like a shredded bodybuilder onstage. I don’t mean a coach has to have been on the Mr. Olympia stage, but just at least looked like a shredded bodybuilder with a decent amount of muscle and some symmetry.

1 Like

Honestly, I don’t wanna derail the thread (and this applies to more folks than just the above mentioned), but you have to ask yourself what’s the deal with anyone who touts their educational credentials as a reason why they know that everyone else is “doing it wrong”, and yet they can’t even get it to work in a respectable, let alone contest winning, manner for themselves.

And yeah, all those amateurs and pros who built their champion physiques with bro-splits… must be an illusion-lol

S

1 Like

To be fair though he admits that he looked like shit back then and has improved quite a bit since then. He did a show in april and looked way better (see his instagram if you’re interested). Still not quite great, but whatever.

I get where you’re coming from though. I’m not trying to defend him here, just saying… :smiley:

So, let’s talk training… give me a second.

I have to say that I have unfortunately made next to no gains in the last ~3 years. I’m still sitting here with my 16 inch arms (16,3 flexed) like nothing happened. Maybe my back got a little wider, but that’s it (and it’s not really noticeable and could be more my hope speaking than anything else)…

I have to say that after (soon) 10 years of training I lately had a few weeks where I was really contemplating on quitting training altogether. I was asking myself why I was doing it at all any longer… it’s like I can’t build anymore muscle no matter what I try!

It was kinda shocking because in all that time I have never thought of quitting at all. It doesn’t matter though because my love for training is back and I will continue anyway. I love the process, but it’s just that I would love it SO MUCH MORE if I gained some muscle along the way, haha…

So, let’s get to it:

Let me explain how I trained in the ~3 years since I started the thread I linked above.

2015

Training:

Week 1 - 11:

I tried to recreate the success I had with 5/3/1 by running that again. Somehow I couldn’t handle all the volume anymore and felt totally beat up most of the time and even got sick one or two times.

Week 12 - 31:

In the thread people recommended that I should finally start training like a bodybuilder: With a high volume bodybuilding split. Coming from my recent experience with 5/3/1 I was convinced that I couldn’t handle that much training days and volume and did a (really) low volume 3-day split inspired by Martin Berkhans leangains stuff… I did it like this:

Monday: Back
Deadlift - 3 sets
Pull-Ups / Chin-Ups - 3 sets
Rows - 3 sets (somehow didn’t write down what kind of row…)

Wednesday: Chest
Bench Press - 3 sets
Dips - 3 sets

Friday: Legs
Squats - 3 sets
Calve Raises - 3 sets

In terms of sets and progression I did reverse pyramid training like Berkhan recommends. I would do as many reps as I could in the first set and then drop like 10 kg for the next set and the next. I’d add 5 kg per week and do that for a few weeks (one 4 week cycle and then a 6 and a 7 week cycle) so that my reps would drop from 8-12 to like 2-3 in the cycle. Each cycle I would add 2,5 kg and would try to beat previous numbers over time.

However, after 4,5 months of this I noticed that I made pretty much no rep records at all. Instead of the pounds and pounds of strength gains while simultaneously dropping loads of body fat like Berkhan presents in his testimonials. It’s embarrassing that I still fall for something like this after all these years, haha.

Week 32 - 51 (and into 2016):

I was now ready to do more training volume because I thought that those few sets I did before was just not enough. At that time I also read the whole Bodybuilding Bible thread. I still kept a 3-day split because I felt I could recover best by having 3 training and 4 rest days. (I later did a 4-way split, but bear with me). I just upped the volume. It looked like this:

Monday: Back / Biceps
Sumo-Deadlift - 4 sets of 3-5
Pull-Ups / Chin-Ups - 4 sets AMRAP
Rowing Machine - 4 sets across
Pullovers / Lat Pulldowns - 4 sets across
(Dumbbell Rows - 4 sets across)
Rear delt machine / Face pulls - 3-4 sets across
Bicep Curls - 4 sets across
Hammer Curls - 4 sets across

I’d sometimes swap exercises like Pullovers and Lat pulldowns. And in some cycles I would do additional dumbbell rows when I wanted more volume.

Wednesday: Chest / Shoulders
Bench Press - 4 sets of 3-5
Close Grip Bench Press / Dumbbell Incline Press - 4 sets across
Cable Pushdowns / Overhead Dumbbell Triceps Extensions - 4 sets across
Lateral Dumbbell Raises - 3 sets across
Cable crossovers / Machine Flys - 3-4 sets across

Friday: Legs
Squats - 4 sets of 3-5
Front Squats / Leg Press - 3 sets across
Lying leg curls - 4 sets across
Hyperextensions - 3 sets across
Calf raises - 3-4 sets across

“4 sets of 3-5” in the first exercise means that I did something similar to the 5/3/1 progression model. I did 4 week cycles, added 5 pounds per week. The reps would be 5/5/5/5+ (last set AMRAP) in the first week, 4/4/4/4+ in the second and 3/3/3/3+ in the third. The fourth week would be a deload.

I actually made pretty good strength gains doing this. The weights kept increasing and at the end of the year I tested my 1 RMs and had something like a 315 lbs squat with a belt, 225 lbs Bench Press x 3 and something like that. Still not strong, but my lifetime bests until then.

Keep in mind that then I was still pretty much of the opinion that the stronger I’d get, the more muscular I would become over time. That’s why I still kept the first progressive low rep exercise in my program, à la 5/3/1. And not seing anything changing in the mirror I was happy to at least see progress in my training log…

In the rest of the exercises I would pretty much do sets of 8-12 trying to beat last weeks reps / poundages. Most of the time I would make some progress for 2-3 cycles / months and then I’d switch the exercise.

So I had a little variation there. Sometimes, for like 2 cycles, I also switched it up so that I would do Chest / Biceps instead of Chest / Triceps and Back / Triceps instead of Back / Biceps. Not much difference though.

Nutrition:

I came from a cut at the end of 2014. So the whole year I did the 3-way split in 2015 until the beginning of 2016 I slowly but steadily bulked up from 163 pounds to 173 pounds.

2016

Training:

Week 1 - 9:

I continued the 3-day split for the first 9 weeks of 2016.

Week 10 - 44:

I got bored of the 3-way split and once again did the high frequency training for 6 months. The only reason I did it at that time was because I hadn’t really gained any muscle in that year of doing the 3-day split and I have a friend who has been doing the HFT for 4 years now and is more buff than me. I got into contact with him again and he convinced me once again to train like that.

I loved going to the gym almost every day and seeing my lifts increase. Like I said above it didn’t really lead to hypertrophy though and the strength increases weren’t really “lasting strength”. And after those 6 months fatigue started to get the better of me and I crashed for 2 weeks or something before deciding that it would be better to do a split program again.

Week 45 - 52:

I read the Bodybuilding Bible thread again and some stuff by John Meadows… and I decided to do a 4-day split program and also incorporate some bodybuilding techniques like pre-exhaust. I also decided to pretty much do it like described in the BBible thread with ramping sets and pretty HIT/Yates-like. It looked like this:

Monday: Legs
Leg Curls first (John Meadows tip…)
Squats
Leg Press
Leg Extensions
Romanian Deadlift
Standing Calf Raises
Seated Calf Raises

Wednesday: Chest / Shoulders
Flys (Pre-Exhaust)
Dumbbell Bench Press
Decilne Dumbbell Bench Press
Cable Crossover
Lateral Dumbbell Raises
Lateral Machine Raises

Friday: Back
Cable Pullovers (Pre-Exhaust)
Chin-Ups
Dumbbell Rows
Lat Pulldown
Rowing Machine
Barbell Shrugs
Bent-over Dumbbell Laterals

Sunday: Arms
Hammercurls Crossbody
Overhead Cable Triceps Extensions
EZ-Bar Curls
Closegrip Smith Machine Bench Press
Machine Curls
EZ-Bar Skullcrushers

So, here I tried to train even more like a bodybuilder. I thought about doing a 5-day split, but I always found my shoulders way more developed than my chest (still lagging after all those years), so I didn’t see the necessity to do a full-on shoulder day. Instead I just did a few sets of laterals after chest training to give my chest a chance to catch up.
But I liked having an arm day and thought it couldn’t hurt outsourcing the arm training to an extra day so that they would maybe get more motivated to grow, too, when they would get more attention than after chest / back training.

I also kept my reps in the 8-12 range instead of using low reps in my first exercise like I did before. And I used some bodybuilding techniques like pre-exhaust.

I did 2 lighter ramp up sets and 1 all-out working set where I would try to beat the number of the previous week.

The thing is that the whole program was fun and all, but it killed me! I couldn’t survive more than two weeks on this (tried it two times) and figured the whole thing was just not feasible for naturals / for me. Going to extreme failure and grinding out several all-out sets per session just killed me.

Nutrition:

I continued the bulking in 2016 and went from those 172 pounds to a lifetime highest weight of 195 pounds. I gained up to 10 pounds of that in just about two months at the end of my HFT training phase… where I would increase calories to ~4000 just to survive the daily extreme training…

2017 so far

Nutrition:

Week 1 - 23:

At 195 I was fat. Really. Skinny-fat. I couldn’t really hold that weight easily, so I kinda automatically dropped back to about 187 pounds which I kinda held then. I felt uncomfortably fat and seeing that training wasn’t going that well either, I figured it was time to go on a cut again after two years. It didn’t feel like I gained any muscle in that time so I figured why not at least try to be lean… :frowning:

So in the following weeks I dropped from 187 pounds to 176 pounds. I was too beat up from the low calories to continue any further for now. I’m still skinnyfat though, probably at least 15% bodyfat, haha. The last 6 weeks I’ve been holding that weight eating ~2500 calories and contemplating about how to continue.

Training

Training hasn’t been anything special this year so far. I did an upper / lower split during the diet (Monday + Friday upper body, Wednesday lower body) reasoning that it would be better to hit everything twice a week during a cut. Except my legs which are like my only bodypart that have grown rather easily, so I didn’t want to focus on them too much.

In the last few weeks in maintenance mode I have done that upper/lower routine as well as a 4-day split similar to the one I used before. I have just been cruising along now though.


And here I am. 176 pounds and neither really fat, nor lean. Having to go at least another 20 pounds to be somewhat decently lean. Circumferences being the same as 2-3 years ago, looking pretty much the same. That said, even after my most lenghty cut a few years ago I was 158 pounds and sitll not really lean, 12% at the most.

I think it would be reasonable for me to cut to at least 10% for what it’s worth and continue to try to build muscle from there. Maybe having a better nutrient partitioning with that lower bodyfat. Or whatever. Even when bulking rather slowly (2015) every pound on my body seems to be stored as fat rather than muscle. It sucks.

So, what the hell?

P.S.: One point I forgot is that I am a sucker for good exercise form. Since the beginning of 2015 I paused every rep at the bottom in pretty much every exercise. To negate momentum and make it easier to track real progress in the lifts. That said, to be honest my lifts have barely really increased in the last few years either. The differences in strength rather came because of the difference in calories and bodyfat as well as the different training style (HFT etc.). I can maybe go into more detail on that tomorrow…

It seems you actually have an alright grasp on this stuff and really have put in some effort and planning. I will try to respond more to all of this.