Well I’m new to T-Nation so first, hello everybody I’m a 19 y/o gym lover. I have been training on and off (more off than on) for 2 years, but in the last 4 months I’ve been very serious about my training and I could stick to the gym to follow my routine everyday, even if I was ill.
The problem is, I can’t really feel any mass gains in any of the routines I’ve tried so far.
I started 2 years ago with the basic split of Chest/Bis, Back/Tris, Shoulder/Legs with basic exercises and machines (no squats or deadlifts tho). When I rejoined the gym here, I made two different workouts of my own, with some info taken from TN and other forums:
October-November: Full Body workout, one exercise per muscle group. 3 sets of 10,8 and 6 reps. I did one different exercise each day, trained on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
But about a month and a half, I started to feel I needed more intensity, I found myself doing two instead of one biceps exercise and that kind of stuff. So I created a little more complex routine:
November-December-January: It was based on three basic workouts: Chest/Triceps, Back/Biceps, Shoulders/Legs. And then some I called “reinforcement” workouts, doing targeting antagonic muscles: Biceps/Triceps, Chest/Back, Legs/Shoulders (not really antagonic, I know). I trained on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, then, depending of what muscles I trained on Monday and Tuesday, I did a different reinforcement routine on Friday. I did 4 exercises per big muscle group and 3 for the smaller ones, in the reinforcement, I did 4 for each.
Some interesting and unexpected results came up. With the full body workout, I managed to become a lot stronger (getting to almost double my noob bench press weigh from 110 lbs to 200). But I noticed little mass gains.
With the second workout, my bench press went up a little more (to hardly lifting 200 lbs to be able to comfortably perform 210) and so did the rest of weighs, however, I experienced the biggest strength gains on the reinforcement day, the funny thing is that day was supposed to add intensity but the muscles should have been tired enough to do a crappy performance. No matter if I trained until exhaustion, 2 days after I was fully charged again.
So I was a little disappointed by the fact that the Full Body worked better than the intense training, and that one worked in an unexpected way.
So for the new routine I was thinking about doing an antagonic muscle group 5 days a week, grouping Bis/Tris, Chest/Back and Legs/Shoulders like:
Monday: Bis/Tris.
Tuesday: Chest/Back.
Wednesday: Legs/Shoulders.
Thursday: Bis/Tris.
Friday: Chest/Back.
On monday I’d train Bis/Tris lightly, to be able to perform fine Chest/Back on Tuesday, and the other way around for Thursday and Friday. 100% intensity goes for Legs/Shoulders training day.
So, any tips for this new routine? I had to write a long post with my other workouts in order to be able to receive critique and wisdom about what was right or wrong. I want to try something different.
P.S.: I know most of the results come with a correct diet, but I live in a dorm room and they cook food for 300 people. So you can tell it’s a low quality, cheap food full of fats. I can’t get a proper diet here, so I want to get the most of my routine. I sleep about 6/7 hours a day (if I sleep more I’m tired all day long) and drink little water unless I’m training, I’m just not thirsty at all.