[quote]Azzurri wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Also, what does “I’ve tried the eat, eat, eat approach before, but my body didn’t react well to it” mean? What does your current diet look like? Are you currently gaining weight?
I did “massive eating” on two different occasions for around 3 months each. I was extremely clean, used fitday/excell to track everything. I just basically got soft and my lifts didn’t go up. When it got time to diet down I was back to where i started. The first time I dieted down I did T-dawg which was probably too extreme for somene with not as much muscle, but the second time i took a longer, less drastic diet down approach and still came out with the same result. Thats when I gave up the heavy bulk/cut routine.
Right now I’m around 300carbs 225protein a day. As strange as it sounds, the day i stopped keeping food logs/trianing logs, is the day i started to finally see some gains in strenght. I stopped concentrating on the scale and basically go with the mirror now.
Sentoguy wrote: As to your question about changing things up, from the information that you’ve told us so far, I don’t really think that changing things up/or the lack thereof is the reason why you aren’t gaining muscle mass. Much more likely is that your diet isn’t in order and you neglect key exercises (like squats). I seem to recall you also said that you haven’t incorporated compound lifts in your routine? Well then that’s probably also a big reason.
Yea, this was the main reason i posted. I’m just looking for a compound-lift dominant split program. I know theres a very helpful search button on ths website, but I feel like posting something would help give me that “reality check” in areas I may have been forgetting.
Here are some of my stats. People have always told me I am a lot stronger than i look (ill post some pictures soon) which reiterates that maybe something is up with my diet.
Starting weight? 150 (skinny fat, not skeletor).
Bench: Starting/current? as of 6 years ago to now? could barely do 90lbs. Stuck on 3 reps of 225 for quite some time
Squat: Starting/current? (I realize that you said you don’t do legs much, I’m just interested to see) Starting 0 (had to do ian kings limping to get my form down)/my last squat worout:
10x95,10x115,10x135,10x155,8x175,5x195,2x225
I was a lot higher at one point, but that was when legs were a priority, not a liability.
Dead: Starting/current? 135 vs 245
Other movements that you regularly do: starting/current?
pullups/chinups: 0 to 6x45[/quote]
Ok, first, Scott gave you some really good advice in his last post, I’d suggest following it.
Second, many people find food logs helpful in that they tell you exactly how much you ate on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Your seeming inability to know exactly how much you’re eating is a good indication that you might want to start keeping one again.
Or, alternatively you could do as I do. I figured out how much protein I need to be consuming to promote muscle gain and to prevent muscle loss, and how many calories I need to take in. I then figured out how much of each type of food that I would need to eat to reach those levels. Every morning I weigh out the amount of each type of food that I will need to consume (if you don’t own a food scale, they’re a good investment) and take that food with me to eat throughout the day.
I eat every 2-3 hours (sometimes more frequently depending on time constraints) and just make sure that I finish all of my food for the day. Sure, it’s not exact as I don’t actually carry my food scale around with me, but it really doesn’t matter all that much either. If I finish my food I get enough calories. If I eat every 2-3 hours I know I’m always providing my body with fuel and it never has to break down my body for energy.
As far as a training log, this is absolutely positively crucial if you want to continue building. As Stronghold alluded to, you aren’t going to get bigger if you aren’t providing your body with overload. If your numbers have been the same for longer than 2 consecutive workouts, then it’s time to change exercises and work on getting as strong as possible on the new ones.
You need to either lift more weight on the bar, or the same weight for more repetitions each and every workout. You need to force your body to adapt. Without a good reason to do so (progressive overload) your body has no reason to build more muscle.
If you find that you can’t improve from workout to workout, then either:
- you’re not getting enough nutrition to allow for repair and growth
- you’re not giving your body enough time between sessions to improve
- you’re not getting enough sleep
- a combination of several of the above
You’re also going to need to take rest/back-off weeks every now and then as the body can’t handle going balls to the wall week in and week out indefinitely. So, when you start to feel chronically fatigued, or irritable, or you lose your drive to train, take a back-off week or two (10-14 days works well for a lot of people). Then hit it hard again. Rinse and repeat.