Aonther "Feeling Frustrated" post

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imported_deolmstead

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Please forgive the ranting, I hope to get to a point later in the post...

OK, so I just did a body measurement/photo check in, and I went in feeling pretty optimistic because I've been feeling pretty good about what I see in the mirror lately. I'm coming off a three-month slow bulk followed by a one-month cut, and my weight's back to where I started, so I wanted to check the numbers while I had apples and apples.

Nada. My measurements are EXACTLY the same as they were in October.

Here's the outline of what I did: I did six weeks of what was intended to be a ten-week maxstim workout. Although I liked the maxstim in the gym, I HATED what it did to my rock-climbing - I seemed to lose all endurance on the wall, and had to rest constantly during climbs (annoying my belay partner). Since rockclimbing is a big source of happiness for me, I ultimately decided to quit the maxstim early and move to an endurance-based routine to compensate and get back in the game - essentially 2 sets of high reps (bumping the weight when I could hit 20 and 15 reps). That lasted ten weeks. During this time I was on a slow-bulk diet, shooting for about 200-300 calories over maintenance. My weight crept up about a half-pound a week, which I was happy with, and my waistline was growing, but very slowly. About a month ago, when my waistline started nearing my vanity/comfort limit, I decided to do a four week cut to get it back to where I liked it, and see where I stood.

And now here I am. I didn't expect to grow a LOT on an endurance routine, but I was hoping for SOME. My intention moving forward was to switch to a strength-based routine (traditional 3 sets at 10, 8 and 6), but I'm feeling rather shaken now in my sense of knowing anything at all about what the hell I'm doing.

I did try HST, about ten months ago. It took about five months, all told, for the full cycle (ie, after the bulking of HST to cut back to the original weight), but when it was done I'd gained a little bit (quarter to half an inch) on my chest, arms and shoulders and lost an inch on my waist. I didn't like how fat I felt at the end of the HST bulk and decided to spend some time with more traditional routines to see how those went. Not terribly well, it seems, so maybe I should give HST another shot. Maybe try to keep the bulking in check a bit more this time around...
 
The same endurance routine as before - two sets of 20 and 15 reps.

Perhaps I should add that, for nearly the last year, I've followed up my lifting workout with an hour of spinning. This is essentially HIIT (as I understand it), as I average about 88% max HR with spikes up to 96% or so, burning 800-950 calories per spin session. The weightlifting, by contrast, burns about 450.

I thikn that the spinning is most likely catabolizing much of the gains from the lifting, but between the schedule, the fact that it's something I do together with my wife, and that I just like it, it's hard to think of a different method of doing things.

Ironically, I haven't lifted a single weight with my legs, focusing entirely on my upper body, but due to the cycling and the climbing my thighs have grown 1.5" over the last year.

So my body is growing where it feels the most strain (legs), while I want it to grow my upper body. I'm not really willing to give up the spinning, so it seems I'm stuck.

Sucks.
 
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(colby2152 @ Mar. 05 2008,13:48)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">It seems as if your cut completely blanked out your slow bulk? What was your training regiment during the cut?</div>
And how much protein were you getting? You need at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight in order to preserve muscle mass during a cut -- especially if you're doing high rate cardio.
 
I'm pretty sure that there will be lots of people disagreeing with me, but I believe that you have lost all your gains because you were cutting too fast. And you're lucky, as I see it because you could have lost even more. If you did a lifting session and a cardio session on the same day, you were essentially burning 1400 calories - apart from a possible low-calorie diet. Let me ask you: would you jump into diet that is 2000 calories over your maintenance level if your intention is bulking? Certainly not. Why do you expect keeping any gained lean mass at all if you get into such a heavy calorie deficit? Don't get me wrong, but cutting needs a bit more patience than that. And patience with cutting is something of which I can tell tales - I have been cutting for nearly two years now.
 
Well, I was losing weight at a pound a week, which (as I understand it) is optimal. However, I'm not disagreeing with you - the cut could've been too much.

My training is definitely schizophrenic. The trouble is I waffle between sports training for cycling and climbing, which are the sports that I really enjoy, and bodybuilding. I don't really like working out in the gym, but I tolerate it in the hopes that it will improve my sports and my physique. So yes, of course I'll get frustrated when my brain says I want &quot;x&quot; physique, and yet I refuse to actually train for that and instead train my body into &quot;y.&quot; I also get bored with too much routine, so try to mix things up every ten weeks or so.

The good news is that I AM stronger. I can lift more for longer than I could before. I'm just missing out on the hypertrophy, and it could be that that is simply mutually exclusive with the high rate cardio I enjoy. More and more I feel like if I want to grow, I'll need to give up the cardio, and I hate contemplating the choice. Alternatively, I could just give up my aspirations for bulk and just take pride in watching the volume numbers go up.

Edit:
Huh. That Crossfit looks really interesting. Has anyone here tried that?
 
I don’t know if that’s optimal. But I do know that losing a pound of fat per week gets harder as you get slimmer, so that calculation can only be relative. There comes a time when you have to run your butts off just to lose half a pound. On the other hand, I can remember having lost up to 10 pounds a week when I was over 40% body fat by practically doing nothing. That wasn’t a big deal. But now, at about 16.5%, losing a pound isn’t quite that easy anymore. So the optimal fat loss depends on how slim you already are.
 
If the new science is showing us the best way to preserve muscle on a cut is to do heavy work with low reps...then is he not blowing off the muscle with the cardio, and high rep combinations? I shrank like crazy doing that before. I understand the need for endurance and strength, but think it difficult to have all three beyond a certain point.
Look at the Ironman competitors. All very lean.
 
If I wasnt doing HST/max stim (total body growth/strength) I would be doing crossfit (total body strength/endurance). I would highly recommend it with what you appear to want to do. Rockclimbing as an exercise could be worked into crossfit neatly.
 
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