Ok, I have taken the time to read your angst ridden posts. If indeed you are 36 you need to chill out before you give yourself a heart attack. Comments aren’t personal attacks. You’ve been training 17 days - seriously, lets have some perspective. Congrats, you can do a max set of 8 pullups, with a few more lesser sets following it, at bodyweight of roughly 170lbs (if i remember right (not hating, just don’t give that much of a shit)). You problem is that you are weak, untrained, and out of shape. My lats were miraculously much bigger by the time I could do 20+ bw pullups, triples for sets with 50%+ of bodyweight, and a max single with just shy of 80% of bw. Couple that with a few years of deadlifts (doing snatch grip (overhand) on as many sets as possible) and a few years of rows twice a week. Add 20lbs, keep doing back work, and see if your lats are still problems.
[quote]leon36 wrote:
I’m doin my deads, wide grip pull downs and rows hard, with intensity and good from but the lat width alludes me.
[…]
Name me some exercises to try and super stress or isolate that part of the pat that gives the width, name me a rep range that is best for lats, advise me if i should maybe experiement with differing grips on pull downs, or do something nuts like 6 x 8 for them instead f 4 x 8 like I do for other compounds.
Damned lats.[/quote]
You know, I think I see one of your problems. This is apparently a common misconception.
Narrow grip → wider lats… a wider grip actually hits the center of your back, not the sides. And a narrow grip hits the sides.
Yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but do some research on “narrow grip for wide lats”. As far as sets and reps, it’s like you’ve said before, you need to find what works for you. 3x8, 5x5, 6x6, 8x8, 3x12. Those have worked for other people, they may work for you.
You have been training for 17 days…
Do I need to say ANYTHING else? You look EXACTLY like someone who has been training for 17 days. EXACTLY
Come back in 17 MONTHS, or better yet, 5 YEARS of hard, brutal, training and THEN we can discuss what to do about your lats.
Where do people get their expectations? How big should your lats be after 17 days? I honestly want to know your answer to this question.
Please post a picture of the kind of lats you would like to have, and then we can figure out how long it took that person to get them. I garaun-fucking-tee you it will NOT be 17 days. Hell, it might not even be 23 days.
Hm. I’ve been lifting about 5 weeks, and I don’t look like Ronnie yet. Noes!
Man I think I’m just at the wrong forum. I’m not looking to train for 5 years to pack on massive size.
I’m looking to put on mass - yes, just not as much as you guys may want to. I remember poster lorez dissappointed and when I saw the pic he posted, I was like - man that’s a great lean atheletic looking body, maintain that and you’re golden!
I want to put on enough to change the shape and look of my body and then maintain it.
I hate the bulky look - luckilly it’s likely with my frame etc I could ever have it.
Imagine my pic I posted, the first one. Now imagine a decent drop of body fat so my abs show and me about 10kg heavier.
Then I’ll continue to work out and swim and run, find the right caloric intake and simply maintian that good shape.
I know I’m not going to pack on 10kg of muscle overnight and apparently 40lb of muscle is the most someone can expect to gain in their lifetime without a stack etc, according to this chap -
Also as I have worked out before, science says I can expect to put on 20lbs - 10kg of lean mass in 3 - 6 months if I have done it before, which I have.
"Based on the research I’ve looked at, as well as my own personal experience, the average beginner will gain somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds of muscle per month in their first few months of training.
In your first year of serious training you can realistically expect to build anywhere between 10 and 25 pounds of muscle." He then goes on to say the exception to that is if you have added that before in the past - muscle memory will let you do it quicker.
Basically I’m looking to do that and then maintain.
I want to go from the build in my pic to something like this -
http://www.diariofemenino.com/hogar/fotos/cristiano-ronaldo-piscina-nueva-york/
(I apologise for the speedos) and I reckon a year of continued training will get me there and then it’s working out how to maintain it and continue exercising (swimming, weights and running.)
And due to my straight up - straight down build with narrow hip to waist ratio I’m going to need to pack most of that onto my upper chest, deltoids and laterals. Now my chest and delts do grow fine. Lats are going to need a new approach as when I trained hard before I still couldn’t get that v shape, I was still straight up - straight down even though my delts arms and chest were decent and defined. Friends would joke I had no lats (we’d kid anohter friend about losing the battle of calvage ‘carthage’ so he went and did extra work with new exercises for his calves and they eventually over a few months came to be better proportioned in relation to the rest of him.)
So this thread is about me continuing to work hard, I have low expectations of 10kg of lean mass in a year and to finally find ways to get those wider lats.
People are saying get better at chins so seeing as I cannot do the ones at the gym due to the ridonkulously thick bar, I’ll do them at the park nearby and build them up. I reckon right now I could do two decent sets of 8 (my set / rep range for compound lifts is 4 x 8) then I’ll go to the gym for the rest of my workout and reduce the number of pulldowns I do by two sets.
Simple.
People are always asking beginners what their goals are, well mine are pretty clearly defined at least.
Put on 10Kg of clean, lean msucle in a year and try to stimulate my lats in new ways and drop my bodyfat percentage.
And I have a plan to meet my goals - I have a decent hypertrophy routine and diet and protien sups, have worked out my caloric intake and do decent cardio and am going to do a few extra sets on exercises that isolate the lats and try a new rowing motion.
If that is too much to read or too detailed for you, well sorry, I’m an analytic kind of guy and like to asses things from any different angles. Also I like to use discussions with others as a sounding board and also to find new perspectives. Wheelman13 has helped with that.
And if you’re thinking 'he;s small he never gained 20 - 40lb of muscle before - here’s a pic below of what i looked like before I ever started working out!
I’m going to give it to you straight:
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If you think you can get a significant V-Taper with a few months of training you are mistaken.
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No one here is saying you need to pack on 40 pounds of muscle. Although you WILL need to significantly increase your muscle mass AND decrease your fat mass if you want a V-Taper.
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This process takes WAY longer than 17 days, or even 3-6 months… Dare I say YEARS. The reason people have the look you want is because they bust their ass for YEARS AND YEARS at a time to get it… Not 3 months. How many people in the gym do you see with phenomenal V-Tapers? How many of them have been training for years?
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For some reason you think 10 pounds in a year is a realistic expectation. Yet are surprised you haven’t made visible progress in only 17 days. Put those two together. 10 pounds is BARELY noticeable, and that’s in a years time, but you seem to be disappointed and have not even been at it a month. What are you going to do in 6 months when you are only 5 pounds of muscle heavier and barely look any different?
Ah but I have made decent gains in a month
Before working out,
Basically a pencil with milwalkie tumors for arms lol.
And I said 10kg not lbs.
Again, lot of reading comprehehnsiomn problems around here.
I have a 44" chest circumfrence, with a 30" waist. Honestly, I still don’t look that 'V’like. And the point I started training I had been a boxer for 12 years, so was starting from a much better point than you have. Noone here has any issue with your goal. The issue is that you can’t seem to accept that event with 22lbs of lean muscle, you still aren’t going to look that ‘V’ like. I have added 33lbs of muscles since I started, in 2 years, and sit at about 10%bf.
From your post, you are basically saying you want to be a smaller version of me. I am trying to tell you from the position where you want to be that you will need to be bigger to have the look you actually want. All anyone is trying to tell you is that it is going to take longer than you think, and that you will need to add more mass than you think to be satisfied, even if you are only after the ‘athletic look’.
I thought I didn’t have any lats at one time. I wondered how everyone else had a huge lat spread when doing a front double bi pose, but mine were barely visible. Frustrated I hit lats extra hard, from every angle. Pull ups, Pull downs, bent-over barbell rows, cable rows, dead lifts, and clean & press. A couple months later my lats still looked small.
Then one day I practiced posing, and realized I had lats all along, I just didn’t know how to bring them out. You should take a front and back picture doing a lat spread or double bicep, you’ll be surprised how much bad posing can make your muscles look non-existent.
[quote]leon36 wrote:
And I said 10kg not lbs.
Again, lot of reading comprehehnsiomn problems around here. [/quote]
Yeah, you seem to have missed the point of everything that’s been said to you by people on this forum.
“I have a 44” chest circumfrence, with a 30" waist. Honestly, I still don’t look that 'V’like. And the point I started training I had been a boxer for 12 years, so was starting from a much better point than you have. Noone here has any issue with your goal. The issue is that you can’t seem to accept that event with 22lbs of lean muscle, you still aren’t going to look that ‘V’ like. I have added 33lbs of muscles since I started, in 2 years, and sit at about 10%bf."
I understand. What I’m suggesting is if I selectively slightly do more work on my lats directly - ie - cpl more sets per week than I do for all other body parts - that it might have an effect of ‘bringing them out more.’
If you just did upper body work and no squats or deads - your upper body would grow out of proportion to your legs and lower body. Or vice - versa. If you spent a month or two only doing bicep curls, I’m pretty sure your biceps would be your best body part.
All I’m suggesting is I’m looking for ways to slightly pound my upper lats more to affect that kind of change.
I don’t think that’s too unusual or out of the realm of possibility.
And I am simply going to do 6 x 8 for pull downs (or chins at the park where i can do them, or eventually at our oversized chin bars at the gym)instead of the 4 x 8 I do for other compound lifts.
I’ll see how it goes.
Interestingly when I lived in Korea I had free access to the university gym. There was this guy that only went there and did chins. Had a good V shape, although he was skinnier everywhere else than I’d rather be.
I’m surprised that nobody here realises you can selectively train certain body parts more than others to illicit a ‘body sculpting effect’ etc.
Hey ho.
44 inch chest and 30 inch waist and no ‘v shape.’ When I was in prison I knew a heroin addict that was still on the crap inside and had a v-shape.
I don’t mean that as any offense to you btw, I really don’t.
I guess a lot of it is down to our original build and he had that build - slim waist, wide shoulders. I have a mate that looks much bogger and broader than me but I weight 75 kg and he 65. He is also two inches taller than me. He just has the narrow waist, wide shoulderd build.
I naturally go straight up and straight down and am thick in the legs and butt- lol. I can get big arms, delts and chest but I guess you’re a mesomorph or you’re not. I’m not. Hey ho.
I’m still gonna bust a gut in the gym pounding the bastards (lats) with wide grip, narrow grip, pronated and supinated grip to see how it goes.
Can’t do any harm.
[quote]leon36 wrote:
Can’t do any harm.[/quote]
Unless you’re sloppy on the form, and then you can get shoulder injuries… so just be careful.
Mate I study the form on exrx.net to the tee. No swinging and heaving back and forth, leaning back at 90 degrees or mostly using my forearms to do lat pulldowns for me. If I can’t lift it with good form, I drop the wieght down until I can. I’m in no rush and know I am not competing against the bigger stronger guys. As long as I get stronger than I am - that’s gravy.
Do strict pulldowns with 300+ lbs for reps
Do chinups with 100 lbs hanging from your waist for reps
Row the heaviest db you can find/make until it becomes boring. Start doing 1 arm barbell rows if necessary.
There. Do that, then ask questions about lagging lats.
LOl Kakno, like I said I know a guy who is 65 kg dripping wet and 6 foot 1, who has the ‘v-shape.’ All he does is push ups, chins (only palms facing) and barbell curls with water bottles he duct tapes to his push up handles.
And you say I have to do chins with 100lbs hanging from me?
Ah shit, I’ll try to get there if that’s what it takes, but it’s gonna be pull downs at 80% bodyweight, or chins at the park for bodyweight only reps less than 10, for more than a few more months for me. Lol.
Anyway - I’m gonna try.
Swimming hard for cardio once a week also? I can swim pretty well.
You sure can write a lot. Maybe you should do less posting and more listening to the people who are more advanced than you.
[quote]The Rattler wrote:
You sure can write a lot. Maybe you should do less posting and more listening to the people who are more advanced than you. [/quote]
Also he should probably work out more than 7 times (his words) before he starts complaining about lagging muscle groups.
Bad lat genetics. ITS JUST ALL GENETICS
Field is right.
Unless to specifically target a certain muscle group - you end up just a bigger version fo what you were before.
But you CAN ‘bodysculpt’ to put more emphasis and development on one area.
I hear what people are saying - workout for a few years and then see.
I prefer to work on it as I go along is all.
Yes 7 workouts. But have worked out alot before in the past, jeez.