[quote]laxman55 wrote:
I started on a pure DC split for a couple months, but after evaluating my progress after a couple months I thought that my body might respond better to a bit more volume.
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Whoah. Just out of curiosity, how was your progress in those 2 months?
[quote]laxman55 wrote:
Thanks for the advice. What would you consider the “earlier stages”? As i said earlier, i’ve been lifting since 01 (started at 145), and like everyone else I had my easy newbie gains, but i have had to fight for every pound since then (granted, conditioning for lacrosse wasnt exactly condusive for weight gain, but hey.
whose counting). Maybe its my diet holding me back?
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I’d consider the earlier stages to be anything other than advanced (probably anything less than 3.5 lbs per inch). Obviously the closer you get to your genetic limits the slower your gains will get. But you probably have a decent ways to go before you have to start worrying about that.
Yeah, probably is your diet, or your mindset.
Well, you might be able to hold onto your gains well if you gain slower, but you’ll still never achieve as much progress as someone who is willing to smooth out and gain muscle while allowing some fat to accumulate as well (I’m not saying to get sumo wrestler fat though).
According to Berardi (and this seems to be fairly well backed up by anecdotal evidence as well), you will always gain some fat when you gain weight/muscle.
The percentages of each will change depending on how quickly/slowly/cleanly you gain. But the total amount gained might be greater even if you gain less of a percentage of your weight in the form of muscle in the end.
For instance, let’s say that over the course of a year you gain 10 lbs (for ease for illustration), and you gain 90% of it in the form of muscle, the other 10% is fat. Your net muscle gain is 9 lbs.
At that rate you’d need to continue this process for over 10 years to gain 100 lbs of muscle (if you ever got to that point).
Now let’s say you gained 40 lbs over the course of a year and only 60% of it is muscle. That’s still 24 lbs of muscle gained. That’s almost 3x the net muscle gain than in the first example.
At that rate you’d only need to train for a little over 4 years to hit the 100 lbs of muscle mark. You’d also have the advantage of having been considerably heavier, which many believe will allow you to again reach that mark, yet leaner (aka muscle memory).
You’ll also have the advantage that, once you cut down from the bigger bw (and cut all the fat that you gained) you can take advantage of the “anabolic rebound” and potentially gain muscle at a very fast rate (at least initially).
Seems like very little food for your height/weight, especially for a mass gaining diet. Looks more like a cutting diet honestly. But your portions/serving sizes are a little vague. Have you ever tried to figure out about how many calories you are consuming on an average day?
Also, what phenotype would you say you most identify with (ecto/naturally lean, small bone structure; meso/naturally muscular; endo/puts on fat easily, large bones structure)? They’re not perfect descriptions and most people fall somewhere between them, but still identify with one the most.
That’s a commonly held (and unfortunately commonly parroted) misconception. Heavy compounds are important exercises, no argument there. But they simply do not adequately challenge the entire musculature to an extent that will cause evenly distributed muscular growth.
Usually that mindset winds up with people having their limbs (arms in particular) greatly lagging behind their torso, which is exactly what has seemed to have happened with you.
No, that’s right no, very advanced BB’ers (that I know of anyhow) completely rely on compounds to build their entire musculature. They all do isolations due to compounds not adequately stressing certain muscle groups.
Compounds are good mass builders because they have such high potential for strength increases, and yes, to a degree do also have a strong hormonal effect. This doesn’t mean though that every muscle in the body is adequately stimulated to produce optimal levels of growth.
Squats are a great exercise and yes do have a hormonal effect on the body. But you aren’t going to build 20" arms from just squatting (unless perhaps you’ve got freaky arm genetics, in which case it wouldn’t matter what you did). You’ve got to take advantage of that hormonal effect by also stimulating the arms to grow through exercises that actually stress them.
Unfortunately there really aren’t many tricks. People could also give you “tricks”, but unless you have your diet/training down, they aren’t going to help you much. You also need to realize that genetics do play some role in this. You can make a muscle bigger, but you can’t change it’s genetically predetermined shape (like you can’t do an exercise that will give you a better “peaked” bicep, or a longer muscle belly, etc…).
No, I don’t think your split allows for enough recovery. The difference between your split and a 5 day split is that you are only hitting the same muscle once every 7 days on a traditional 5 day split.
Very few people can actually hit big muscle groups like back/legs twice a week and continue to make noticeable gains from workout to workout (Ronnie Coleman is one example). Most will either burn out on that in no time flat, or will have painfully slow progress in terms of strength/muscular gains.
What would I recommend? Why not do the DC two way split as it is written? Or if you don’t feel you’re ready for that, try an Upper/Lower or Push/Pull split working out on MWF, or TuThSa alternating between the two workouts.
That’ll mean you’re training each muscle group every 4-5 days and only training 3 days a week (making it easier to gain weight, since you can get a surplus of calories easier on your off days). That’ll also give your CNS/musculature more time to recover.
Strive to add weight to the bar every time you hit the gym, stick to moderate rep ranges (don’t go below 6 reps, maybe as low as 4 on deads and squats) and eat to keep the scale moving in the upward direction.
Alternatively you could try a traditional BP split if you truly feel like volume is where it’s at, or you don’t feel you can muster the intensity to make that one “work” set truly effective.