Need Advice After 1.5 Year Break

Background: Weighed 205 lbs, had a 295 lb bench, 415 lb dead lift, 385 lb squat. Used to run alot, had trouble breaking 170 lbs, found T-Nation, hit 205 after 2 years of solid diet and exercise.

Problem: Did nothing but sit on my ass, drink, and smoke for a year and a half after several things I’ll unneccessarily whine about. Also have a desk job further increasing the sitting on my ass.

Current: Back on a regimented diet and in the gym for 2 weeks and my numbers are pathetic. My lactic acid tolerance, endurance, stamina, and strength all pathetic.

First thoughts: Train volume and explosive strength until my numbers get to about 75% of previous numbers.

Questions: I haven’t started any supplements except for L-Lysine to help with muscle soreness, greens, and protein powder. Is it worth it to go on a full supplement stack or just stick with solid nutrition for now? If so, any stack recommendations that would be best to get my strength and endurance back? Does my training methodology make any sense at all or are there better ways? How often should I change my exercise set/rep schemes? Since I’m trying to get back to previous numbers would going for adaptation be better, or still stick to a 2 - 4 week interval?

Thoughts? Comments? Insults?

I should also add that by no means do I consider my previous numbers anything to brag about and I know many people consider those numbers to be pathetic as well. Just looking for some advice so my numbers are no more pathetic than I used to be…

It’s alot easier to regain lost muscle mass than it is to build new muscle, so a bunch of supplements aren’t really necessary - though they might speed up the process.

My own personal experience along somewhat similar lines: after coming back from a badly broken leg (lost 30 lbs and was in a cast for 4.5 months) it didn’t really matter what kind of rep/scheme I did. As long as I pushed myself, the muscle just came back at rate well above a pound a week.

As long as you push yourself sufficiently, you’ll probably be adding weight to the bar every session.

How many days a week are you training and what does your split look like? “Train volume and explosive strength?” How much volume, exactly?

Stop smoking and only drink in moderation. As far as the supps go, you may want to consider adding creatine, but you should be good otherwise. Key thing is to eat and rest enough to recover.

EDIT:

Unless we know what your routine looks like, there isn’t much more to say.

im coming back from a break as well soon, personally im gonna wait a while before going on supps. not an expert but my thought process is my muscle memory will bring along the first set of gains fairly quickly, as soon as i hit a plateu im going to start creatine, argine, and L-Leucine. i will start right up with fish oil though, and whey. like i said no expert here, hell i could be wrong, just my plan to start and food for thought.

In regards to my workout frequency, the first 8 days I went to the gym every other day alternating upper and lower body. This week I went four days in a row alternating upper and lower body workouts, planning on taking a day off then doing lower, another day off, then upper, another day off, then four days in a row again. I was planning on repeating the second week scheme at least one more time before going to a more advanced routine.

My exercise selection I’m trying to target the big lifts to get under as much weight as I can starting with around 5 rep warmups working up to doubles and singles. Once I can’t progress in weight I’ll switch to another lift for explosive strength targetting around 5 reps per set. After that I’ll go for volume trying to hit 100 reps with a weight I start to get fatigued at around 10 reps and take as little rest necessary between sets.

Current lower workout: Heavy set alternates between squat and deadlift, explosive set is jump squats, volume set is single leg leg extensions, finished off with 15 minutes of incline walking.

Current upper workout: Heavy set alternates between a) bench b) barbell lat pulls and a) close-grip incline bench b) lat pulls, explosive set is a) barbell bench press variation b) lat pull variation, volume sets are a) assisted pull up b) assisted dip and a) fly b) reverse fly.

I try to do as much as I can every time, didn’t know if I need to increase rest times or if it’s better to reduce volume for now… It’s really basic, but I can’t handle the routines I used to do at the moment.

you better throw in some Rows to your upper body routine or else your shoulders might get hurt

try and balance horizontal pushing/pulling and your shoulders will be safer

so you havent trained for 1 1/2 years

and you want some advice

start training.

lm roughly the same,
96kg 18months ago,
down to 81kg,
back to 87kg already- 2 weeks

lm finding varying the sets/reps is working best, training hard with mostly compounds.

it comes back ALOT easier the second time,
your best supp atm is alot of food

What’s safe and effective isn’t legal and what is legal may not be safe and effective.

[quote]LiveFromThe781 wrote:
so you havent trained for 1 1/2 years

and you want some advice

start training.

[/quote]

Second this one. I’ll sound arrogant, but some people have to be worthy of being given advice too, they can be a loss of time.

In regards to the horizontal pulling, I meant lat rows… I am trying to hit alternative movements, starting to work in more vertical pushing/pulling too. Don’t know if this is the wrong perspective, but I wasn’t planning on hitting my shoulders heavy until I could get more strength back to do (with my numbers) some respectable cleans and push press.

In regards to the start training and being worthy of advice, I’m back up and not letting what happened in my life cause the same results so I hope I am. I bust my ass while I’m training, research as much as possible, eat strictly, and humbly accept advice from those more trained and knowledgable then me. If my current training plan above makes no sense (now I’m just inviting insults) please tell me I’m a dumbass and I should try again… I’ll take that advice humbly but would rather have at least a pointer in the right direction. But hey, only redirection can be better than going the wrong direction…

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:

First thoughts: Train volume and explosive strength until my numbers get to about 75% of previous numbers.

Questions: I haven’t started any supplements except for L-Lysine to help with muscle soreness, greens, and protein powder. Is it worth it to go on a full supplement stack or just stick with solid nutrition for now? If so, any stack recommendations that would be best to get my strength and endurance back? Does my training methodology make any sense at all or are there better ways? How often should I change my exercise set/rep schemes? Since I’m trying to get back to previous numbers would going for adaptation be better, or still stick to a 2 - 4 week interval?

Thoughts? Comments? Insults?[/quote]

Alrighty bro:

Your priority should be building up your intensity to get to your goals. I assume your first goal is to get to 205 again. Progress on loads bro, as for volume and explosive strength why?

The main factor that builds muscle mass is intensity in the… 4 to 12 rep range principally (regarding this last statement anyone could prove me wrong around here).

Explosive tempo? you can do an explosive concentric without losing the notion of using the muscle to lift the weight, contract the muscle at the middle of the movement (the muscle should be fully contracted right?) and do the eccentric portion without counting 3 or 6 seconds.

For what I know this is a bodybuilding rep. I don’t get why are you estimating to increase those capacities until you get to 75% of your previous maxes. Start bodybuilding again and try to improve from your all time best shape in the shortest time possible.

I had a 6 month layoff. The first thing I did when I came back is to buy a BIG, I mean BIG bunch of supplements, eat as much protein, carbs and fats from clean and some dirty sources and build up my intensity. I did a little more volume at the beginning, to compensate the lack of intensity I guess.

But almost anyone can get to a point when intensity won’t let you do a lot of sets, if a substantial amount of effort is put on the lifting sessions. If you don’t plan to layoff again, why not get fully into it?

Another thing or issue is, DON’T CHANGE, PROGRESS. Yes, you can change some accesory movements, but what you should do is find a solid program that worked for you and progress upon it. You can be 12 weeks, 1 year on the same program and keep progressing, and growing, and getting stronger. I hope this gives you a better idea of what to do.

Thanks MEYMZ.

I chose to focus on volume because my endurance, lactic acid tolerance, and stamina all were pitiful. Regarding explosive strength, I felt I was able to push myself harder with dead stops and putting everything I had into a lighter weight than hitting the 3 - 5 rep range with “standard” tempo and weight because of the said above problems.

I thought about your last point training today, and it’s a great point. My thoughts have been centered around getting back to where I was most quickly, but I’m intent on not letting another break happen so I should train to progress past my previous marks.