So, here is my situation. I’m 18 years old, a little youngster haha. I currently weight between 212 and 215. I’m 6’ 3". My bodyfat is somewhere in the mid teens probably. I’m really not too worried about it right now. I’m trying to gain as much weight (good weight) as I can right now. Oh, and I’ve been seriously training for about 10 months now. So, now that you know me, maybe we can fix this problem I’m having.
Currently, I train chest on monday, back on tuesday, legs on wednesday, shoulders thursday, arms friday, and abs every sat, sun, mon or whenever they fit in. I try for three times a week.
The problem is, my legs are growing quite a bit faster than the rest of me. Since I started lifting, my squat has gone up from 185 for 2 reps to 335 for 4 reps. Leg press has gone up from 225 to 530. And, they’ve gained about 4 inches.
My back has been getting bigger too, I deadlift 350 for 2 reps and can do a bunch of pullups and whatnot.
Unfortunately, my chest, arms, and shoulders seem to just not want to grow. If I had a picture of myself you’d see that my legs really stand out against my upper body.
Should I be training these week parts more than once per week, like chest. I mean I don’t want to over train. I believe the rest is really important and I don’t want to force something to grow faster than it can. I’m not sure what to do though because I don’t want to give up leg training but I don’t want to become oddly unproportiante either. Any help would be awesome… Thanx
I want some pics too haha. I’m in college man, a camera is the last thing I can afford.
I feel as though my chest gets stronger but not bigger. When I started lifting my bench was a measly 125, yeah, that was my max haha. I got it up to 255 but it doesn’t look like it grew as much as my legs. I can only military press 70lb dumbells once too. I mean i think that if my bench is at 255 and my squat at 335 I chould be doing sets of 70 for like at least 6 reps. The weird thing is, as far as legs, I have been training them for abot 2 months less than everything else because I really didn’t know what I was doing. Then I found out that when you do legs your test levels go up and everything else should benefit from it.
If it’s not working change it up. I’d want to keep it balanced though.
Maybe try an upper/lower split. Or a push/pull/leg split.
One observation is your upper body does seem disproportionately stronger than your lower body. I think a more normal ratio is 300/400/500 for bench/squat/deadlift.
I might get that 400 for squat lol, thats about it. Maybe get like 400 deadlift if I had some straps. I did chest today and felt pretty good about it. I got one more rep in most lifts than I did last week. I know it’s working, just not as fast as it is for my legs. I went from 1 rep of 335 to 4 reps in just a week.
How I know my legs are bigger than the rest of me is because when someone asks me my weight and I tell them 215, they’re like, “where is it?” Then I lift up the shorts a little and they’re like, “Oh, now I see.” Haha
Your squat went from 185 x 2 to 335 x 4 by squatting once per week? You might want to check your form, because I guarantee you’re not going low enough.
I am 6’3" as well and weigh about 210 with little body fat, so I feel your pain with the bench. Being tall and benching just do not go well together.
Measurements on the squats? Are you going to parallel or quarter squatting like approx. 90% of the lifting population?
I can’t lie, my first 2 are parallel, my second 2 not so much. I mean Im not lifting the weight to lift it, I’m lifting it to get bigger. I don’t really fuck around with doing stuff to impress people. I feel like after 2 reps I can still get more.
And I’m not complaining about being tall, it has its benefits, but it’s starting to piss me off.
My arms are 16" and look tiny compared to my friend who is 5’8" and has 15" arms.
But, the reason my squat was so low back 10 months ago was because it was the first time I went to a gym and really had no idea about feet spacing or bar positioning and I wasn’t really secure about how to do 'em. I probably could have gotten a lot more. My legs are 26"
[quote]That One Guy wrote:
Instead of more frequency, how about you train them with more volume for a while, if that doesn’t work, then do try them more often[/quote]
x2. specifically: periodically double the volume for a weak body part
Ok, so what I normally do for chest is decline bench with a bar, incline bench with dumbells, dumbell flyes and then machine flyes.
I would do my warmup set (decline) with 135x15 then I would do 185x12, 205x9, 225x6, and the 245x2 or 255x1 depending on how strong I felt.
Today was chest day so I tried to up the volume and drop some reps. I did the same warmup set then got rid of the 185 and just did 205 but I got it 11 times so I might have to make it 210 for 10, then I did 225 for 6, 245x2, and 255x1
For incline DB press I started with 55s for warmup and moved my way up to 75s for 4 reps. I used to do more reps and stop at 70s.
I did my incline flyes with 50s a set of 12,10,10,8
And then I just did the stack for my machine flyes.
This routine is ok, if you are still progressing every workout on the compound movements(mainly bench).If you are able to add more weight, or do one more rep on a heavy working set, then it is working good.Otherwise ditch.
Personally, what took my chest and shoulders to another level was low reps and high weight(90%+ of max), like (5sets of 3 reps) then i would drop the weight and do 3 sets of 10 reps.
BTW, why are you not including flat bench in your workout?
2 reasons, the first is that I don’t want to do three benches because one will suffer. When I used to do all three my flat would be good, incline would stay constant and decline would be at like 160.
Now I try to just push myself harder on those 2 benches and they both went up a lot. almost 100 lbs on flat. the second reason is I hear a sort of cracking or popping in my left shoulder. I hear it doing flat flyes too. Idk, I try not to do stuff that sounds like its breaking me haha
