First cycle completed

C

chadenegger

New Member
Well i just spent 30 mins typing up a detailed run down of my first cycle before my computer died and i lost the whole lot:(

So here is the abbreviated run down.

6 weeks long, body weight up 6.7 KG, waist up 7cm!, upper arm up 1 cm, thighs up 6cm, strength is pretty much what i started with-all in all feels like i wasted a month and a half:(

This is the routine i ran which is based around me only having a bout a half hour every morn to train.

M,W,F Rg chins, deadlifts / BB hack squats which were alternated
T,Th,Sat Ring dips,OH Press

Everything was done for 30 total reps untill about week 4 at which time it was taking too long. About week 5 i dropped one dead/hack session and reduced reps to 15 per work out. I also split/alternated OH Press and dips into seperate sessions. By end of week 5 i was pretty beat up, and had a few injuries so dropped volume on everything in week 6 to a single set of 5. By end of week 6 everything feels heavier than it should, ive got no motivation and i need a break from eating all the food i have been.

Time to SD and think about my next move.

So what do you guys reckon??? Should i have made better progress? Was it my routine?

Let me know your thoughts.:)
 
There could be a number of things that have hampered your progress during this cycle. The first thing that seems interesting is the fact you were injured. What did you injure? Obviously if you train while injured youre not going to be able to perform optimally. That needs to be sorted before you do anything else.

If you felt beaten up then it could be due to the volume or you perhaps worked out your RM´s a bit wrong whereby sending you up the scale a bit too far too soon, so to speak. What reps did you do for each exercise each week? It seems like the general set-up is out a bit. If you´ve estimated your RM´s it could be that.

Youve abviuosly put on weight and volume due to you eating more. You dont know if you´ve gotten stronger until the next cycle. Did you manage to meet your weight/rep targets?
 
gbglifter said:
There could be a number of things that have hampered your progress during this cycle. The first thing that seems interesting is the fact you were injured. What did you injure? Obviously if you train while injured youre not going to be able to perform optimally. That needs to be sorted before you do anything else.

If you felt beaten up then it could be due to the volume or you perhaps worked out your RM´s a bit wrong whereby sending you up the scale a bit too far too soon, so to speak. What reps did you do for each exercise each week? It seems like the general set-up is out a bit. If you´ve estimated your RM´s it could be that.

Youve abviuosly put on weight and volume due to you eating more. You dont know if you´ve gotten stronger until the next cycle. Did you manage to meet your weight/rep targets?
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First "injury" was a tweaked neck/traps, it sorted it self out in a bit over a week after a heap of deep tissue massage and dropping my deadlift volume. Second injury felt like an overuse type strain after a diipping session, 5x5 with 22.5kg if i remember correctly. Thats when i split my overhead pressing and dipping into seperate sessions, again thats fully healed now.

As for my hitting my rep maxes, i just did straight linear progression all the way through, i knew my 5 rep maxes for everything and just worked back 18 increments ( 6 weeks, 3 work outs a week). i stayed well clear of failure up untill the last week. i started with 2 sets of 15 at the start and just dedcreased reps and increased sets to maintain the rep total through out as the weight increased. If anything i thought i just simplified the whole process??

Personally im thinking it was probably the volume that caught up with me, probably should have stuck with only one or two sets throughout.
 
chadenegger said:
As for my hitting my rep maxes, i just did straight linear progression all the way through, i knew my 5 rep maxes for everything and just worked back 18 increments ( 6 weeks, 3 work outs a week). i stayed well clear of failure up untill the last week.
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You probably started with too low of a load. 18 linear increments is too much, and is partly why Bryan has a bit of zig-zag in the vanilla program, because you don't want to start your cycle TOO light. Also, in general, you should be training CLOSE to failure, not all the way to failure, but you want to pump out reps until it becomes hard to maintain good form.

So start out your next cycle heavier, and work a little closer to failure, that and hopefully your injury is better, and your can get your diet dialed in.
 
Strength gain is not the primary focus of HST training, hypertrophy is and all your measurements increased. Higher fat to muscle ratio I'd bet. It looks like your surplus was a bit too much with nearly 3 lb per week weight gain. I'd dial back the calories to 1-1.5 lb per week gain. Also, you may have simplified too much with the weights. Each mini cycle should start at 75% of RM for each rep scheme and as noted above, stair-stepping is OK.
 
Sci said:
You probably started with too low of a load. 18 linear increments is too much, and is partly why Bryan has a bit of zig-zag in the vanilla program, because you don't want to start your cycle TOO light. Also, in general, you should be training CLOSE to failure, not all the way to failure, but you want to pump out reps until it becomes hard to maintain good form.

So start out your next cycle heavier, and work a little closer to failure, that and hopefully your injury is better, and your can get your diet dialed in.
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Thanks for the reply. Dont think i started too light though as my first session was only just off my 15 rep maxes, if i had done it vanilla style, starting weights would have been much lower. Also i worked to with in a rep or of failure all through out.
 
T-man said:
Strength gain is not the primary focus of HST training, hypertrophy is and all your measurements increased. Higher fat to muscle ratio I'd bet. It looks like your surplus was a bit too much with nearly 3 lb per week weight gain. I'd dial back the calories to 1-1.5 lb per week gain. Also, you may have simplified too much with the weights. Each mini cycle should start at 75% of RM for each rep scheme and as noted above, stair-stepping is OK.
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Yeah agree calories were high. Also agree strength isnt primary focus, but i had just come off a cut and was expecting a bit more of a rebound in strength.

Thanks for your input.
 
I am not sure why you didn't gain any strength. Maybe keep a log next cycle, so it is easier to see what you are doing.
 
Totentanz said:
What's the reasoning behind that?
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Well i would always make sure at least one of my sets was atleast slightly challenging, and then make up my rep total with successive sets a bit easier. If i didnt atleast do that, whole work outs in the early stages would have felt like nothing more than warm-ups. As the weight got heavier i did a lot of clustereing to hit my rep totals.

Do you think i went too hard????
 
Who cares what your workouts feel like?

I mean, isn't whether it is working properly more important than how you feel? Your muscles don't have feelings. They won't get upset if you don't feel like you worked hard enough.
 
The science behind HST is that many of the training sessions won't feel like any work is being done. But, if a proper SD is done, hypertrophy is induced with the sub-maximal loads, TUT, and progressive loads. Leave feeling out of it and trust the science. There are a number of guys here that are proof that this training works.
 
Totentanz said:
Who cares what your workouts feel like?

I mean, isn't whether it is working properly more important than how you feel? Your muscles don't have feelings. They won't get upset if you don't feel like you worked hard enough.
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Your right, i dont really care how my work outs felt. They were real easy at first and i never did feel like i had worked out up untill a few weeks in, point is though i didnt get any where near the progress i had hoped for.
 
T-man said:
The science behind HST is that many of the training sessions won't feel like any work is being done. But, if a proper SD is done, hypertrophy is induced with the sub-maximal loads, TUT, and progressive loads. Leave feeling out of it and trust the science. There are a number of guys here that are proof that this training works.
Click to expand...

Submaximal loads-check,
TUT-check,
progressive load-check,
SD-check

Feeling was left out and the science was trusted, hence sticking to a full cycle.

Thanks for the input, hope i didnt come off as sounding rude:D
 
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