Gains Have Crashed

[its_just_me]

That’s a decent volume for each muscle group. For me, it falls somewhere between 8-12 max effort sets per week per muscle group.

When I say don’t become “volume phobic”, I meant that there’s a fine line between mainly strength gains and strength/hypertrophy. You could be getting stronger on the squat for example, but unless the rep volume is high enough, you wouldn’t make as much gains in muscle compared to strength.

The problem comes as a person gradually reduces volume each time (due to systematic fatigue) and gets to the point where they are increasing strength ok but not doing much for hypertrophy.

So it’s not exactly just a case of getting stronger (neural efficiency), it’s a case of doing enough reps per set, or doing enough low rep sets to stimulate muscle growth. You can easily get stronger doing just one or two sets of 5 reps or under on the squat every week, but it won’t do a great deal for growth.

Speaking from personal experience, I find I need to do at least a total of ~24 reps per exercise to get the best from it (assuming I’m properly rested etc)…and for me I do most body parts twice a week. So as an example, one exercise could be, 5 x 5 reps / 4 x 6 reps / 3 x 8 reps / 2 x 12 reps and so on…

Going back to the topic of cruise periods, there are many ways of doing this. One way, which is pretty good for keeping the strength up is to simply cut the reps in half so that you do not go near failure and maybe double the sets (so if doing 6 rep sets, do 3 rep sets for a couple of sessions). If you do this, you can almost guarantee that the sessions after those will be easy to go “balls to the wall”. So cycling intensity in this way is a way of guaranteeing you can continuously push to the max when needed instead of just at the mercy of “fate”.

[its_just_me]

Just to clarify, not every set needs to be to the max in order to stimulate growth. As long as the last set is decent enough. So when I say 3 x 8 reps, the first set (after warming up to it) may only be a little close to failure (fatigue builds up to the last set).

[jake_j_m]

Thanks a lot for the posts, useful stuff for me to think about/put into practice.

Today in the gym I fucked my back up… bench pressing!? and crushed my middle fingers under an adjustable bench with a 200lb bar on top of it (while spotting someone else, no less). It hurts to type and my fingernails may well drop off.

It’s really not been my month, I need like Eric Cressey to come and sort out how fucked up my body seems to be, interestingly my back first hurt when trying ass to grass squats yesterday with a whole 50kg purely to try and recover my CNS (in the way linked above)… ironic injury or what.

[its_just_me]

LOL, you’re welcome. Glad you’re not my spotter

Main thing to take away is what I’ve already said - push forward for a few weeks, then go easier and allow body to rebound, then push hard ahead again…repeat), in other words, you have an intense phase (taking sets to failure) followed by a low intensity phase (e.g. cut the sets a few reps short of failure) and repeat.

Also food intake - can’t stress that enough, if you don’t consciously over-eat (including taking in enough protein - e.g. ~1.5g/lbs bodyweight) then your strength/muscle growth will not progress well, if at all. Not eating enough is like going out to a river with a rowing boat and not using oars to row with - it doesn’t matter how intense you are, you can use your hands and splash with all your might to make the boat move, but you’ll burn out quickly…and not even get anywhere!

The reason why many don’t get this (especially younger trainees) is because it doesn’t take too many calories to add an extra 30lbs or so (newbie gains), but after that period, you have to start concentrating on extra calories/protein etc. What got someone from 150lbs to 180lbs will not get them from 180lbs to 200lbs (because metabolic and protein demands are higher).

I used to never go above 0.8g-1.0g of protein per pound of bodyweight because of certain “studies” and because I hadn’t had a problem in the past with this level, but when I got stronger/bigger, gains started to crawl and I still stubbornly denied that it was anything to do with protein intake! I used to just increase overall calorie intake and not bother with increasing protein, it made me a lot fatter than I needed to be (muscle to fat ratio in my gains was crap).

When eating for maximum growth, you WILL get softer/smoother. There’s no doubt about that. Fat gain (at least temporarily) is inevitable. You don’t have to turn into a tub of lard (LOL), but for your biggest “growing cycles” you won’t be “chisel lean” like in your pics.

To give you an idea, at the level I’m at just now, I have to eat over 5000 cals per day for proper growth (I take plenty of liquid calories). For yourself, I’d probably have you at around 3500-4000 cals/day to start with. You have to be honest with yourself and asses whether you do actually eat the amount that you think you’re eating.

[jake_j_m]

Thanks again- currently I’m working on eating enough, avoiding too many sets to failure till I feel 100%, then going for it 110%. I imagine it will be a lot of food to go from 185 to 200 but I should look pretty different when I do it. Also working on what I’ve seen on CTs forum/the new article about working on both the stretch reflex and equivalents of the exercises that include no stretch (eg. bench press for former, rack press for latter), prioritising whichever I decide I need to improve quicker, this should allow size and strength gains since I currently contribute my poor bench pressing to a poor turn-around more then anything.