I am on the 3rd week of the Growth Surge Project and was quite happy until yesterday. I had extremely low energy (only slightly higher today, no appetite and my body ached all over. Kinda like having the flu but I know it isn’t. I have been eating just about 4800 cal/day so I’m pretty sure that I’m eating enough. I have also been taking a multi-vitamin, salmon oil, creatine and a protein powder. Somebody help, please!!! I am really enjoying the workouts, the size gains and the improvements in my appearance so I definitely don’t want to quit but if for some reason my body can’t keep up, I’ll have to. Any suggestions that anybody may have would be appreciated.
Take a day off. Rest. Get more sleep. Swim around and soak in a hot tub if you have acess. Take a nap. Take a second day off if needed. Go to bed early tonight. Go to bed early tomorrow. If you still feel really bad after a day or two off, you may need to either push through this stage (I’m on day 2 of Stage 2 and I’m already feeling pretty sore after only three workouts) or re-evaluate and take a full rest week.
I pushed through the first week, which also came sith some nice sore muscles, and the program was going good. I took Sunday off (like the program says to do) and then Monday and today, due to the run-down feeling. I feel that maybe my diet is lacking something? Possibly more fruit? Any ideas? I was weightlifting before this program but not near as intense as this.
Sounds like you pushed it too far. Now I have to ask did you get the soreness in the priming stage stage (first two weeks) or in the first week of the ‘growth surge’ (or what it’s called) - that would mean it’s your 4th week now. It almost sounds like you weren’t prepared good enough. If I get the program right, the first two weeks should prepare you for the intense workouts in the following two weeks, to avoid you from feeling overly sore after the intense workouts.
As I see you have two options - go to the gym tomorrow, spend plenty of time warming up, stretching etc. and try the workout. You should feel pretty early if you are going anywhere with that workout or not. If the workout is fine, watch how you feel the rest of the day, i.e. enough energy for the second workout?, or better skip it? Leave it open. Things are not working like planned anyhow so you have to try to get over this period. The other option you have is take another day off and maybe another. Possibly skip the rest of the growth stage and jump right to the recovery part. After too many days off you will have to re-prime, i.e. work your self up to a level where you can tolerate high intensity workouts.
And no, I don’t think you are missing anything
in your diet. Supplements (with the exception maybe of mag10) are nothing magic - they can help you to squeeze out lets say the last 10%, but if you are not making progress 10% of nothing will still be nothing. And even with the best diet and all supplements money can buy, you can still ask for too much from your body and it will react that way.
You haven’t mentioned what sort of anabolic “enhancement” you’re using, which makes me wonder if maybe you’ve forgotten that part of the deal. Without it, I dont’ think that there are very many people who could survive Stage Two of the program.
You may well need some rest. An extra day off is probably appropriate given that you’re level of training intensity is probably higher than ever before. You might consider a slight increase increase in carbs with a proportional decrease in fat, fine tuning. I was utterly destroyed that first week, but I learned you just gotta eat and rest, bro.
Other guys will tell you about rest, sleep etc. but you already know about that. Another thing I noticed is that my mood is greatly weather related. I have no problem with sun, rain, extremely cold or warm days. However, since I live in a moderate weather Mediterranean climate belt, what really kills me is fog/damp weather with low air pressure. Days like these are very rare here and every time it happens I feel like utter crap. It would be best for me to crawl under the rock and die during these days. It makes a difference for me - maybe it is something along these lines for you too.