Alright I've been at working out for about 14 months now and I have had alot of progress. Throughout whole body theres more definition and size. I'm in good shape and people notice it, while when I started out I was a pencil.
That being said the change in wieght has been next to nil, and I'm lost on this. How do you get physically defined and bigger without gaining weight. I know you'll lose some body fat but I was a pencil to begin with and didn't haver alot to lose.
I started out 6'0 145 pounds and jumped up to 150 within a month or 2, 155 withina few months and held steady for the 8 months or so. Once in a while I get up to 160 then go back to 155. Sometimes I drop below(now for instance) but thats the average. How does your weight stay the same when you strength definition and bulk has greatly increased??
Thanks for any input.
Odd progress
Moderators: Boss Man, cassiegose
you can change shape without losing wt...if you look bigger and have gained no actual wt than you've probably relaced fat with muscle at an equal rate...the only way to get bigger is to eat more as your training sounds like it's working where you'll gain some fat but keep it minimal so you cans trip it off quickly when you want to
But doesn't it ever get to the point where I've run out of burnable fat and have to gain weight? Like strength is continually progresing but putting on weight is impossible. It seems like no matter how much I eat or workout I cant get above 160, yet I'm still getting stronger. Its not like I had much fat to burn to begin with either.
I've gotten to the point where I put 2 off days between every upper body work out, I don't want to go any farther than that. Also why would resting be an issue if I'm still progressing. Thats what gets me I'm not just plateauing because I'm still growing stronger... it just doesn't translate into weight...
you may have to though or drastically increase your cal's to make up for less recovery time
you need to eat enough so as to do the following:
1 - get through everday activitiees (i.e. sta awake, sitting etc)
2 - fuel for any exercise you do...the more you do the more fuel you need
3 - enough for recovery to put cellular levels back to pre training state
4 - enough to supercompensate from previous session
most will only eat enough to get to point 2 or 3, not 4
adding more rest days will give you more cal's for growth as they aren't being used for fuel
you need to eat enough so as to do the following:
1 - get through everday activitiees (i.e. sta awake, sitting etc)
2 - fuel for any exercise you do...the more you do the more fuel you need
3 - enough for recovery to put cellular levels back to pre training state
4 - enough to supercompensate from previous session
most will only eat enough to get to point 2 or 3, not 4
adding more rest days will give you more cal's for growth as they aren't being used for fuel
diet probably isnt good enough althogh I eat about 4 or 5 meals a day, still proibably not balanced enough. But if this were the case wouldn't I just not get stronger? And would you relaly recommend taking that much time off? Seems like evntually can't have that many days off, work out every 4 days for upper body? Is that even worth it?
strength increases are from increasing your nervous systems ability to relasy messages to the body, nothing to do with food like muscle growth is (although they do correlate somewhat)...deoending on your body type, every 4 days may be optimal...if your struggling to put on wt than this is probably what you would need...you may have sub par recovery abilities so you need quick and hard inf requent sessions that brealk the muscles down then leave as much time as possible to rebuild them so the next time you train, your fully recovered and ready to go...if your not recovered by the time you train again, you'll need more recovery time that the last one as you starting digging a hole thatw as only half full to start with...make sense??
i'll try again:
when fully recovered your stores are at a 10
when you train they fall to a 0 - 4 deoending on how hard you train
if your diet and rest only gets you back to an 8 before training again and you train at the same level, you'll end up -4 to 0
the more you do this the biger of a hle you get into to resulting in muscle loss and strength decreases - OVERTRAINING
if training every 4 days is too inequent for you than maybe train every 2 - 3 days on a heavy / light system with only 3 - 4 exercises per session...you'll need to play around and see what works for you...play with volume and intensity of training and frequency...maybe check out HFT Hnadbook by Chad Wtaerbury on t-nation.com that was put up today
i'll try again:
when fully recovered your stores are at a 10
when you train they fall to a 0 - 4 deoending on how hard you train
if your diet and rest only gets you back to an 8 before training again and you train at the same level, you'll end up -4 to 0
the more you do this the biger of a hle you get into to resulting in muscle loss and strength decreases - OVERTRAINING
if training every 4 days is too inequent for you than maybe train every 2 - 3 days on a heavy / light system with only 3 - 4 exercises per session...you'll need to play around and see what works for you...play with volume and intensity of training and frequency...maybe check out HFT Hnadbook by Chad Wtaerbury on t-nation.com that was put up today
I may be able to do something like that but I feel like it just may not be enough. Generally I don't even feel that stiff the next day, I recover really quickly and by the third day I'm usually dieing to get back to the gym. I'm working out really intensely because I'm dead by the time I finish but still the next ay I generally feel ready to go.
About doing 3 or 4 workouts... will I really be able to hit everything each work out? As it is I do baout 8 for entire upper body each work out.
Like if i do one for each main group that tris 1 bi's 1 for front delts 1 for back 1 for traps 1 for chest and 1 for lats and other for forearms. I'm at 7 right there and thats just one each per workout. If I skip some each time then thats potentially at least 6 or 7 days without working a group, it seems like thats not enough. I know you'll probably say somehting like compound work outs but I find a set of 21's will burn biceps while 15 chin ups I do feel in lats but not as much biceps(compared to 21's).
About doing 3 or 4 workouts... will I really be able to hit everything each work out? As it is I do baout 8 for entire upper body each work out.
Like if i do one for each main group that tris 1 bi's 1 for front delts 1 for back 1 for traps 1 for chest and 1 for lats and other for forearms. I'm at 7 right there and thats just one each per workout. If I skip some each time then thats potentially at least 6 or 7 days without working a group, it seems like thats not enough. I know you'll probably say somehting like compound work outs but I find a set of 21's will burn biceps while 15 chin ups I do feel in lats but not as much biceps(compared to 21's).
just becasue your geting a pump doesn't neccesarily mean your going to get bigger...this the worse thing about arms, they're easy to get a pump with but won't put any bodyweight on you...at all...there's not much more i can say really as you know point of view...obviously the arm pump thing hasn't worked for you yet you still want to stick with it..if your not as little bit sore than you need something new anyway...i wouldn't do any single joint exercises until i had aprreciable mass already (which i do and i still only do a handful of them as i can't work legs at the moment)
Well biceps for instance are generally sore. I have 3 upper body days and this is how its broken down.
1)Cable Curls, reverse curls
2)Super set of preacher and side curls
3)21's with an easy bar
Plus I do some Chin ups between some sets during workouts.
You'd recommend something different from this?
How much would you consider appreciable mass? I'd say I'm probably among the strongest guys at gym(minus the guys on roids) Although I'm a pretty wiry thin guy so its more defined than seirously bulky.
1)Cable Curls, reverse curls
2)Super set of preacher and side curls
3)21's with an easy bar
Plus I do some Chin ups between some sets during workouts.
You'd recommend something different from this?
How much would you consider appreciable mass? I'd say I'm probably among the strongest guys at gym(minus the guys on roids) Although I'm a pretty wiry thin guy so its more defined than seirously bulky.
appreciable mass? maybe 15 - 20pds heavier than starting wt? no real figure but the point of that is, is that if you've gained that much than you've probably done all the right things to gain it (compounds, food etc)...if you haven't gained around that figure then the wt your using for the curls etc will not be enough to stimulate growth in any muscle anywhere...itmight feel like it is from the "pump" but it isn't...you probably need to gain 10kgs of bodyweight to gain an extra inch on your arms, they don't grow by themselves...i'm also pretty sdtrong for size but i very rarely use single joint exercises unless i can lift a pretty good weight with it...like if i was to do cable curls, depending on what version (say the 2 arm high handle ones like your flexing on stage) i could probably only do 30pds if that each arm which would be a waste of time when i could do curls with 40kgs like i can...this is what's wrong with the pump...compound exercises don't provide a pump because of the many muscles being used at the same time but iso's do because there's only a couple of muscles working located in the one are of the body...i wouldn't say do away with all them if you don't want to...CT from t-nation allows his athletes 10 - 15mins each session to work on "beach" muscles such as arms and delts but no longer which may be the way to go...as for food maybe try this:
Muscle Gain Plan - Calorie Cycling
Periods of overeating followed by periods of under eating can yield steroid like results. John Berardi had astonishing results on his subjects without resistance training. 1 test subject increased muscle mass by 4.38pds and decreased fat mass by 2pds in 12 days with significant increases in testosterone and IGF-1. To do this over feed eating whatever you want for 2 weeks with a 20% protein, 50% carbs and 30% fats ratio for a caloric total of 12 x maintenance calorific figure plus 1500 and do 5 resistance sessions a week. Then for 2 weeks after over feed period, calorific total will be body weight in pounds x 8 with a calorific ratio of 45% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fat. Perform 3 resistance training sessions and 4 fasted cardio sessions a week.
Muscle Gain Plan - Calorie Cycling
Periods of overeating followed by periods of under eating can yield steroid like results. John Berardi had astonishing results on his subjects without resistance training. 1 test subject increased muscle mass by 4.38pds and decreased fat mass by 2pds in 12 days with significant increases in testosterone and IGF-1. To do this over feed eating whatever you want for 2 weeks with a 20% protein, 50% carbs and 30% fats ratio for a caloric total of 12 x maintenance calorific figure plus 1500 and do 5 resistance sessions a week. Then for 2 weeks after over feed period, calorific total will be body weight in pounds x 8 with a calorific ratio of 45% protein, 40% carbs and 20% fat. Perform 3 resistance training sessions and 4 fasted cardio sessions a week.