Generic Bulking Routine

W

wobbles

New Member
http://forums.lylemcdonald.com/showthread.php?t=1696
I've been performing hst for 3 cycles. In conclusion i'm not really sure HST is for me. Gains have began to stall, not that they were ever really beaming at the start. Although I was gaining alot before hst when i was doing a standard gym goers 4 day split. Whether that was just muscle memory kicking in or not i'm not sure. But Lyles routine seems kind of similar except that it programs in some deloading and submax ramp ups, to fight against burning out. I'm curious if anyone else has given this program a go? that could give me some feedback on their thoughts vs hst etc.
 
Depends on what you mean when you say you've been doing HST. Lyle's Generic Bulking Routine follows all the HST principles. I do HST but I bet my routine looks vastly different than yours... and all intelligent routines follow HST principles, so to say you haven't made gains doing HST kinda doesn't tell us much. You'd have to break down your actual routine.

But gains aren't about routine. If you aren't gaining any weight or strength then diet is your culprit. Sounds like you've been eating like a sparrow and not eating for size and strength. If you aren't going to eat enough while you lift weights then there isn't any point in lifting.
 
been gaining 1lb a week. I made the conclusion that hst wasnt for me when i performed a caliper reading which showed a result that my lean gains have stalled while my bodyfat increased. I've been intaking 1.45grams of protein per pound of bodyweight and 0.6 fat and 2.3 carbs. You can see a clear outline of my program in the workout journals. I was very thorough in my records for my first cycle. Also to note; that my tape measurements haven't really changed much, although my waistline has started to increase significantly. Sitting at a 35" waist atm. (while this isnt huge, when the only measurement that goes up is your waistline by over an inch. I start to try and find where the problem lies).

The reason I feel HST isnt for me is the low working loads of 75%. While they are difficult after a SD, HST is based upon your previous maxes. Where Lyles are based on ramping up and deloading on a minimum of 80% with no SD for a period of 2 weeks and then beginning the program for 4-6 weeks pushing straight into new possible PR's. I feel as though the SD's may be doing more harm then good. So i'm going to give the generic bulking routine a shot and see if my body responds better to this more intense type of training. As this form of training seems similar to the routine i was on before hand and was making great gains. So for me it's just a matter of weeding out where the problem lies in my stalled gains.

Is it that HST isnt as intense as my body requires (given the set back of SD)?
or is it just my bodies diminishing returns over time?

In any case, Lyles program looks pretty legit and I'll post final results once ive finished the 8 week cycle for anyone thats interested in a rough comparison.
 
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Hey Wobbles, just out of curiosity, looks like your waist was at 33.5" when you started and you weighed in at about 185 lbs...and you are 6'4" so obviously very lean. In the post above you said you are gaining 1lb per week, and you've done 3 cycles...does that imply you are pushing 200 lbs these days?

Of course you know your body better than anyone, but is it possible the expanded waist is just some bloat from overeating - maybe a low-cal/low-carb day or two would bring you back down. Either way, if you have put on 15+ pounds with only 1.5" on the waist, there's gotta be a bunch of muscle being added somewhere.
 
Totentanz said:
You do realize that HST isn't a specific program, right?
Click to expand...

lol yes, I'm just not sure if my lean gains stalled due to a lack of forced progression. aka, working with your maxes and trying to increase them for 4-6 weeks with a slight deload before resetting like lyles program outlines. HST seems to be soft on that end and more focused on sub max weights.

HST:
- Find maxes
- SD
- Work up to previous maxes in 4-3 micro cycles.
- Repeat

GBR:
- Find Maxes
- Workup to max weight over two weeks. (ranges 80-85% and 90-95%)
- Attempt to increase maxes for 4-6 weeks
- Deload with initial starting maxes over two weeks.

GBR just seems more aggressive then HST and I think thats what might work better for me, even more so because i'm young. So recovery should be easy, regardless i'll give it a go and see if i'm right. If not, i'm back to the drawing board.
My diet and rest are perfect atm, so these are non issues. It may very well be just deminishing returns in my lean gains. But I won't know for sure until I try other options.
 
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Why are you only working up to your “previous maxes.” There is no HST principle that says you must or even should stop at a pre-calculated max. I, and many others here, always advise people that they should push for new maxes at the end of every micro-cycle because they will be stronger by the time they get there. By stopping short you are only cheating yourself.

In addition to that there’s no HST principle that says you can’t do more reps on each working set of each workout. This was the whole reason I stopped counting standard sets and reps and started doing mostly myo-reps and max-stim, so I could push to just short of failure on each and every workout to get the most out of each of them.

You are confusing HST, which is a set of principles for the vanilla workout template provided as an example of how to implement them. I sort of wish that the vanilla template never existed. People get too caught up on doing exactly what someone else tells them rather than learning what principles work and how to adapt them to their individual changing needs.

As Tot said HST is not a program. HST is a set of scientifically validated principles which the user must adapt to best fit their needs. As such HST has allowed me to gain more muscle mass faster at 50 years old than when I was 35 doing someone else’s “cookie cutter” routine. A better example is Tot. if you take a look at his log his program looks nothing like vanilla HST but he follows the principles and has not only closed in on his genetic muscular potential but also gain great strength.

Basically you outgrew the vanilla HST routine and never adapted HST principles to your changing needs so of course you have stagnated. As such by following another program be it generic bulking, 5-3-1, 5x5, pick any of them, and you will progress until once again you outgrow the program and stagnate. I’ve been following HST principles for a year now and the last cycle I finished was one of the best muscle building cycles I’ve had since I started because I adapted HST to meet my new needs.

Best of luck on your new program but take it from experience that you will keep stagnating and program hopping if you just keep following other people’s routines instead of adapting proven principles to work for you and your changing needs.
 
wobbles said:
lol yes, I'm just not sure if my lean gains stalled due to a lack of forced progression. aka, working with your maxes and trying to increase them for 4-6 weeks with a slight deload before resetting like lyles program outlines. HST seems to be soft on that end and more focused on sub max weights.

HST:
- Find maxes
- SD
- Work up to previous maxes in 4-3 micro cycles.
- Repeat

GBR:
- Find Maxes
- Workup to max weight over two weeks. (ranges 80-85% and 90-95%)
- Attempt to increase maxes for 4-6 weeks
- Deload with initial starting maxes over two weeks.

GBR just seems more aggressive then HST and I think thats what might work better for me, even more so because i'm young. So recovery should be easy, regardless i'll give it a go and see if i'm right. If not, i'm back to the drawing board.
My diet and rest are perfect atm, so these are non issues. It may very well be just deminishing returns in my lean gains. But I won't know for sure until I try other options.
Click to expand...

So basically, what you are saying is: No, you don't know that HST is not a set routine. As I already stated, Lyle's GBR is an implementation of HST. So is DC, for example. There are lots of ways to implement HST. Some, I believe, are more optimal than others. Some will be more optimal depending on where you are at in your "training age" as well.

If you were only gaining 1 lb a week then you were still eating like a sparrow, as I originally diagnosed. I can help remedy this but first you need to open your mind and accept that you are not yet a master, and perhaps then I can show you the way to eventually become a master. GBR will work for you if you start eating finally instead of remaining completely terrified of any sort of fat gain. Fear is the mind killer, and in your case it causes you to stagnate and make little progress. So... as long as you continue to insist that your diet is perfect, well, you will continue to make small micro-gains each cycle. Lyle would agree. If you really want to maximize your lean gains while minimizing your fat gains, I can help you with that, but we will need to get into your diet a lot more. Diet is what makes or breaks your gains.

Honestly, I wouldn't do Lyle's setup quite the way he did it and I don't do HST the way that the sample program is laid out. I can give you my input on that too but only if you persuade me that you will listen seriously to what I recommend.
 
fair enough, although in my mind if i'm gaining at 1lb a week and then take my measurements a month later and see nothing but fat gain. I cant see how it would be wise to increase the calories. Which would only increase what i already don't want. However, if my bodyfat was remaining the same while making lean gains then i would have reason to believe i could increase the calories. So as a result I made the previous diagnosis that my training was inadequate, hence looking for an alternative program to pull me from my stalled progress. I'm more then happy to accommodate any plan whether it be diet or training to get to my goals. But if there's something i'm not doing, it's because i believe it would be incorrect to do so and not because i'm making excuses because it's "too hard".

This is currently my nutrition and training plan that i'm on. I've just started GBR and have down half a week so far. So still on the ramp up. Let me know what you think?




 
Have you considered timing your feeding around your workouts? Intermittent fasting works pretty well for that if you can get in enough calories within the eight hour period. Looking at your diet, I would definitely up the protein another 50 grams or so and drop 50 grams of carbs to compensate. GBR is a solid routine but I would probably do the split differently for myself, however we will need to wait and see what kind of strength gains you make. I would prefer to see calories closer to 3900. I would also like to see some beef in that diet somewhere. Beef is seriously underrated by bodybuilders for it's potential in a diet.

As for your supposition that you gained almost solely fat - the problem with this premise is that even if you did nothing and just overate, you would gain both muscle and fat. I'm sure you've heard the story about the sumo wrestlers who do not weightlift and carry more lean mass than the biggest bodybuilders. The other problem is that bodyfat measurements are horribly inaccurate and even with calipers the best you are getting is an estimation. Variances will occur based on water retention at the time, differences in how you measure each time which will happen even if you try your hardest to always measure the same, and so on. It would be preferable to base your estimations on strength gains and strict weight gain and use caliper measurements to fine tune your estimations.
Honestly, I don't even calculate my bodyfat percentage anymore except as morbid curiosity. During my last cut, depending on all those things I detailed above, my lean mass measurement would fluctuate by as much as ten lbs each week when we all know in reality that it did not really fluctuate that much. So I would encourage you not to get so hung up on tape measurements and caliper readings, as all those do for the most part is psyche you out and cause you to think you are getting too fat, or if on a diet, that you are losing all your muscle even though typically that isn't true. You would be better off not doing measurements at all for a few cycles - it takes at least a few months to know whether a routine and diet are really working or not - and only weighing yourself so you know when to adjust calories upward, since as you know, caloric requirements will go up as you gain weight.
 
Fair enough, I'll switch in the extra 50g of protein and see how i go. I do agree that bf tests start to become less and less reliable as your body-fat increases. So i'll probably keep bulking till 210 - 225lbs depending on how my strength is progressing.
 
Wobbles,

Just for info, I am also currently doing a bit of a vaiation of Lyle's GBR, coupled with HST principles and IF.

My reasons for adopting the lesser frequency (I do the Mon-Lower/Wed-Upper/Fri-lower/Mon-upper/Wed-lower etc.. frequency) is that at 40yrs, and after 25yrs of lifting (the last nearly 10 using HST) my recovery is far less efficient.
I still use the different rep ranges (slightly varied) SD, and the progressive load.

So far I am happy with increased rest between shifts.

As Tot has said. Diet is so important.
With a good diet, you should be able to make some progress on most routines

Brix
 
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