I’m more than a little confused at the moment… I seem to be gaining weight, but not really gaining much strength with the bar. Can anyone shed any possible light? Stats are as follows:
23 years old, 180 lbs, 12% BF.
Eat ~3100 cals on workout days (about 260g protein) and ~2900 cals on off days.
Workout 4x per week, 2 upper and 2 lower days, 45 mins per session.
Have gained consistently around 0.5-1 lbs per week for the last 4-5 weeks, having been through a random spell of gaining 3 lbs two weeks in a row.
I know the usual advice when your lifts aren’t going up is ‘‘eat more’’, but surely in this case, that can’t be so, as I’m gaining weight…?
Even if it were just fat you’d expect his bench and squat to benefit a little, not to mention gaining muscle is not the only way to gain strength obviously. I agree, something is very wrong training-wise…
I have been putting on a good amount of size and pounds over the past month or so, but have not been seeing good strength gains. I dont think too much of the weight is fat as my ab visibility in the morning is the same as before and I eat very clean.
Is it possible that I don’t gain strength because I take almost all of my sets (especially so with the compounds) to failure, maybe causing too much CNS stress??
2 - You might not be training hard enough.[/quote]
I push myself in each set, pretty confident I can’t squeeze any more sets out as I pretty much reach failure in the last few reps of the last set in each exercise. As mentioned, I superset or alternate sets wherever possible in my workouts, and I try to keep my rest periods down. How else can I improve how ‘‘hard’’ I train?
This may be an issue, but it’s been ongoing for a year or so now, so I doubt it’d be responsible for my recent worries. Long story short, I find myself waking up 1-2 times each night for the loo… bit concerned about how it’s affecting the depth/quality of my sleep.
The first few weeks I’d been making great gains, perhaps I’ve just grown ‘used to it’?
[quote]5 - The fact that your eating a lot doesn’t
mean it’s the right kind of foods.[/quote]
Also a valid point, but I put a lot of effort into calorie counting, staying clear of chocolate, sweets, sugary or simple carbs, and I’m eating around 250-300g of protein per day. My main problem is that (for convenience) a lot of my protein sources are ready-cooked, so I’m not sure about the preservatives etc they have added in, and I eat a lot of prawns. Would I be better off cutting out the pre-cooked stuff and just doing lots more chicken breast cooking etc myself? What about the prawns… good/bad?