I’d like to give a little back story before getting into my main question which is advertised as the subject already.
I am a 23 year old male. I weigh about 177 pounds, and my body fat is about 10.5%. I am very slim and have always been athletic, and in recent years I’ve been able to add mass. About 8 months ago I was challenged to a body fat loss contest with 2 friends, and that’s what sparked my consistent lifting. I dropped 3.7% BF in about 7-8 weeks which I was pleased with.
When I was in high school, my senior year, I weighed about 155 pounds and had 1 rep max of approximately 335 squat, 210 bench press, 225 clean and jerk, and 205 snatch. I am not sure about deadlift.
I have changed my training a lot and gone through a lot of off-and-on lifting between high school and college, and now that I’m settled in at my job, I have gotten more consistent and have improved my bench press to 300, deadlift to 400+ (haven’t maxed in a few months), and squat I am not sure about, but I’m going to guess about 375 (although I shouldn’t guess). I don’t do the olympic lifts anymore although sometimes I have a strong desire to do them.
With all of that being said, I feel like my bench press has gone through the roof, but my other lifts haven’t gone up a great deal, and I don’t feel like I’m getting very big except in my chest. For about the past 10 weeks I’ve used a program where Monday is speed upper body (chains/bands), Tuesday is heavy lower body, Thursday is heavy upper body, and Friday is speed lower body (chains/bands).
I have noticed great changes in strength, but I would like to start adding size, and I want to just blow up some serious weight in deadlift and squat.
With that being said, I may not eat enough. Here is my typical nutrition on a training day:
Breakfast: 5 eggs, 1 banana
2nd meal: ~8 ounces lean protein, ~1.5 cups veges
WORKOUT
3rd meal (immediately post-workout): 2 scoops whey protein, water, 1.5 cups oats, 8-9 medium/large strawberries blended together
4th meal (within about 1.5 hours post-workout): ~8 ounces lean protein, ~1.5 cups veges, 1 cup brown rice
5th meal: ~8 ounces lean protein, ~1.5 cups veges, and usually some sort of quick carb like a Fiber One bar or Bear Naked brand oat/fruit mixture
I crave carbs on that last meal. If I don’t get them I feel like I’m not satiated. Throughout the day I feel satisfied, but that last meal and during the evening are the times that I want to cheat my diet because I feel like I don’t have enough carbs.
Also, my diet is not as consistent on the weekends, and I’ll often go out for a nice Mexican dish or something else. I know that my weekend diet plays a crucial role in how successful I am going to be with any program, and I know this is an area that I need to work on.
With that being said, I really need a nice balanced program, and I am always reading each new article as they come out, and I am gaining ideas every day, but the problem is coming up with a balanced program and knowing how long to stick with it. Right now I am trying the routines from “Supersets for Super Results” article, and I have been doing that this week and I frankly love it and feel like my muscles are super fatigued which is good in my experience.
For now, I am looking for general tips to increase strength while adding size. Any help that you all could provide would be very much appreciated. I apologize for my lack of knowledge and ignorance, but we all have to start somewhere, and I want to start young and do the right things.