I'm starting to become skeptical

J

Joe.Muscle

Active Member
Hey guys I am starting to wonder if Full body routines are still benefiting me. I have been doing HST for a while now about 3 years and it was the best thing for me when I started. It basically healed my joints and help with the severe overtraining the Arnold routines gave me.

But one problem I have seen the past year or so is that I am not getting any more Muscular. Now I didnot say bigger but sheer muscle size.

I know how to gain weight and I do it every year this time. I basically bulk like crazy all winter and right up unitl summer.

However my problem has been everytime I cut from bulk..I am not more muscular than I was the previous years.

Sure when i am bulking I look a lot larger but to be honest the majority of the weight is that I am getting fatter. Now I am not implying I am fat...but fatter.

The fact I have discover is that through skin calipers I am not gaining any real muscle mass anymore.

Now I am one of the first people who believes and loves Fullbody routines.

And by nature I am a creature of habit and I don't want to leave the full body routine.

But I am starting to wonder if maybe a higher training volume SPLIT would work for me now. Not one that is excessive like the Arnold routines...but maybe one that is geared around 9 to 12 sets of the large muscle groups once a week and 6 sets for biceps and triceps once a week.

I am considering something very similar to ILCARS routine a while back.

Any thoughts or suggestions. ( Oh by the way I have been getting stronger too and gaining weight) which is why I think the lower training volume of HST is maybe hindering me now at 13+ years of die hard training?

Any opinions?
 
Instead of bulking, try a slow bulk. Your cuts may be taking away too much from your bulks. I don't believe the routine is the problem, but more so the diet.
 
Thanks Colby,

And I have thought about that but I wouldn't think bulking from sub 9 % up to 14 to 15 % would cause that big of a difference???

However maybe I am wrong on this.

When I have been at my leanest ( a 4 pack of abs) I weighed about 174 to 175 pounds...but I look way better with NO (4 pack) but a flat stomach and bigger pecs and arms at 195 pounds.

Its seems the quest of abs could destroy my gains at times....but I am still not convinced that is the only problem.
 
You could try an upper/lower split. That's what I'm doing currently. I have only done two workouts, so no idea how it works yet, but I'm confident it will go well. Four times a week, two upper and two lower. Then you can pile more volume on to the areas you need to focus on.

Anyway, maybe you just don't cut very well. I think that significant muscle loss during a cut isn't very likely if you keep your weight loss to a conservative rate, but who knows.
 
Thanks Tot,

That is exactly what I was thinking of.

Do you mind posting your reps and sets...I am sure I know about what your routine would look like seeing some of your post in the past.

Im just curious what set / rep / volume of work you are using.

Thanks,

P.S. Just realized you are and EXPERT now...congrats and well deserved!
 
If I'd been doing a 3 x weekly full body routine for three years and my progress had slowed up considerably I would definitely try a 4 x weekly split for a cycle or two. It has to be worth a shot.

I think at this stage in your lifting career trying a bit more volume each session might be just the thing to increase the PS response.

I am going to be doing the same for my next year's worth of cycles to see how it goes (I think a year is long enough to show some decent results if training is consistent and progressive). I may change the per session and weekly volume each cycle as I continue to experiment.
 
Lol,

What kind of Volume do you recommend on a upper lower split.

I am thinking of keeping with the recommendations of around 100 reps per week.
Monday / Thursday
Chest 5 x 10
Back 5 x 10
Shoulders 3 x 10
Biceps 2 x 10
Triceps 2 x 10 ( I may decide to not even do arms )

Lower body on Tuesday / Friday.

Or I could do a high volume high frequency UPPER body only routine full body still 3 times a week like MikeyNov talked about a while back?

I am not affraid to not train legs for a couple of months.

What do you guys think?
 
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(Joe.Muscle @ Oct. 27 2007,21:54)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">What do you guys think?</div>
I think you just want to change your routine, which is fine. Split routines can work well and change can often help motivate you. I agree with Colby, though ... The problem you describe sounds like your nutrition is at fault, not your routine. You are nowhere near as old as I am, but I really have to watch what I eat and add calories carefully or my partitioning goes totally haywire. Have you tried having most of your carbs early in the day and right around your workout?
 
You should keep in mind the fact that this muscle gaining business tends to slow down to a crawl in advanced, natural trainees. So you'll get a lot of growth in your first year, about half of that the second year, about half of that third year and...well, after that you're pretty much moving at snail's pace. Your body isn't that keen on giving you 20 inch gunz...it's a fairly worthless endeavour for it.

How much have you gained over your training years, in terms of muscle?It could be a diet thing, of course, and perhaps you could tweak that to some extent, do something like the UD2 for cutting in order to retain more muscle whilst on a cut(hell, you could even try its mass-building variation for minimal fat gain whilst bulking). The trouble I see with slow bulking approaches is that they're quite boring...so you're not quite eating leisurely, you're still kindof dieting(coz getting only a 200 something caloric excedent needs some watching), and don't get to see much growth in the mirror.
 
Would have replied sooner but my connection has been down all day.
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Joe: You've been here longer than me and have been lifting far longer so I'm pretty certain that anything I say will just be stuff you already know or are aware of.

I don't think it's very easy for anyone to say how many reps would be ideal for you. I'm not even sure how many would be ideal for me at this point which is why I am experimenting with volume. I will be gradually increasing the amount I do if my progress slows for a long enough time. The volume I use is also very load dependent, so as a cycle progresses I tend to decrease how many reps I do each session.

If a load is still effective (because you are still ahead of RBE) then there is obviously an ideal amount of TUT using that load to trigger a response - don't forget that the 'strength' of the response will increase if you do more but it's a non-linear relationship so you might be doing tons of extra work for a very small increase in signalling while, at the same time, increasing your overall level of fatigue unnecessarily.

I know you are well aware of all the variables that you have to play with. As MDE pointed out, at this stage in your lifting career you just aren't going to see tremendous improvements whatever you do but I'm sure improvements can still be made each cycle. It's going to be very important that you hang on to as much muscle mass as possible during a cut if you don't want to end up just yo-yoing from year to year.

As an example, I remember seeing pics of Tim Belknap taken annually before he entered a show. When he got his dieting wrong he was much smaller than when he got it right. One year he lost tons of muscle whilst cutting and yet he would have had the benefit of chemicals to help him retain as much muscle as possible. I'm sure he was seduced by the idea at the time that you had to do lots of high rep sets while cutting and he probably also reduced his calories too quickly that year. When he got it right he held on to a lot more muscle and did suitably better in the contest.

Now I am older I am much less bothered about being lean so I am thinking of bulking like I did in my first year of HST. I don't expect to gain as much as I did that year but it will be interesting to see if I can push my loads up by a decent amount or whether I just get fat.

This may work for you better than it will for me Joe, as you have age on your side. I do wonder whether an annual cut is really that useful if you want to add a decent amount of extra lean mass? If you could keep on increasing your RMs while slow bulking for a couple of years you should find that when cutting time finally comes around you have made a worthwhile improvement. Steve Jones was constantly trying to improve his RMs by around 5% each cycle and look how strong he already was! If you did four cycles a year then over two years that would be almost a 48% improvement. Again, I think it will be a case of diminishing returns - the stronger you get the smaller the %age you'll likely be able to increase the loads each cycle. But even a 3% improvement each cycle would see you lifting nearly 27% more after two years.

Final thought: it's sad but true that at some point in the future we will all have gained pretty much all we are ever going to gain naturally (a way off for you yet I hope
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) and then our job will change to one of trying to hang on to our muscle for as long as possible as our test levels fall naturally with age.
 
Yeah Lol is right, age does catch up with you, no reason to give up though or get discouraged, just engage another gear, shift the training patterns, whatever works and if you p[ick enough around here you'll get something that will.
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That includes get your own opinion of what to do solidified and re-emphasized!

And so...here's my 2 cents worth:

The change you propose allows to keep HST principles without a problem...I know...I know, the full body thing is not easy to let go of once you start it...but you are trying to break through what seems to be a plateau so...split body 4 x week sounds perfectly fine to me.

The number of reps that is appropriate to you, is really for you to work out, even Michaels suggestion may work well, some people feel that legs are teh ones that need the most volume, that to me is relative because we are all different.

Hope this gives your sails some wind to engage the next HST journey.
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NB: Don't forget to start up...or add on to a log so that we can all benefit from it should we need to engage the same alternative.
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(Joe.Muscle @ Oct. 27 2007,16:37)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Thanks Colby,

And I have thought about that but I wouldn't think bulking from sub 9 % up to 14 to 15 % would cause that big of a difference???

However maybe I am wrong on this.

When I have been at my leanest ( a 4 pack of abs) I weighed about 174 to 175 pounds...but I look way better with NO (4 pack) but a flat stomach and bigger pecs and arms at 195 pounds.

Its seems the quest of abs could destroy my gains at times....but I am still not convinced that is the only problem.</div>
Bulking from 9 to 15 percent would cause a huge difference in your appearance. You want to keep the muscle on your body, correct? Slow bulking properly takes away the need for a cut, so all your gains will stay. It seems like the perfect solution for your problem.

As far as training goes, varying your training can be good for the mind and body. What the others have said about your routine could be a fix, but your diet is the problem.
 
Two things might be helpfull to touch on , first the theory behind &quot;progressing&quot; to 4x/wk , simply put is that as a lifter progresses strength and neural co-ordination wise , there comes a point where he/she is capable of inflicting a much higher degree of &quot;damage&quot; to his muscles and CNS in the &quot;right now&quot; - his strength has progressed to where it far exceeds his capacity to recover as quickly as he once may have. Put another way , strength gains eventually outpace CNS recovery abilities to the point where a 4x/wk split (hitting each BP or movment 2x/wk) becomes the most logical thing to do UNLESS he/she decides to continue , restricted   by the need to be recovered (sufficiently - think CNS) by day after tommorrow .

                Another thing that came to mind when MTDE pointed out the declining rate of size over time is a more personal , less embraced by the majority belief , and that is - I believe that as size gains slow , focusing on strength gains can re-ignite excitement for lifting AND ultimately pull size gains up along with them as long as the frequency and volume variables are conducive to allowing that to happen. This doesn't radically change anything - once the noob gains have gone , they are for the most part gone for good - but most people enjoy progress and strength can almost always be progressed unless age or injury become factors.
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One bell that just keeps going off in my head - dual factor periodization. But you've probably allready studied there.
I don't know your age, but I do know from myself and looking at older natural BB'ers that your genetic limits lower as you get older, so enjoy what you can build while you have it; and don't stress about it either, when things slow down.
Cortisol is not our friend.
 
Good points Russ. That's why I think that focussing on strength gains is a really good idea even though we are primarily concerned with hypertrophy. If you are able to constantly increase your RMs each cycle then you should be gaining some lean body mass if you are eating over maintenance. Some gains may be neural in nature but that won't be the full story unless you suddenly find you can lift more by changing/improving your technique. If you have good technique then annual improvements will more likely be due to hypertrophy as long as you are also increasing your body weight (or if you are the same weight but have reduced levels of body fat). Most of the kind of lifts that we are doing are not as technically challenging as the Olympic lifts anyway.

It is going to be much harder for a seasoned, competitive and fairly lean Oly lifter to make yearly improvements if he tries to stay in the same body weight class. Any gains will likely be mainly due to neural learning/technique although some may be down to partitioning (ie. coming in even leaner but with more muscle mass). The guys who lift the heaviest loads are invariably in the super heavyweight class where it doesn't matter how much they weigh, just how much they lift. Most of these folks are pretty large and carry a fair amount of body fat but are able to pack on more muscle without having to worry about making their class.

It would be very interesting to see results plotted for body weight against weight lifted for individual athletes over the length of their careers. Does such a thing exist in the public domain? I guess a bit of Google searching would throw up some figures. There's another rainy day project or something for someone to do whilst on SD (sadly, mine finishes today
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)
 
Thank you so much guys for your response.

Just to make sure I am sharing all the info I need to help one make an informed decision about myself I will share my peronal facts.

Age 29
Height 6 foot
Current weight around 178 I cut from 192 this summer.
Current stats I think Bodyfat is about 10% arms are probabley measuring 15.75 inches right now and chest is about 43 inches ( I don't know for sure its been a while since I measured everything)

Once I make my decision I am going to start my first training log.

13+ years of training. 10 of those have been serious training.
5 of those 10 years were Obessesive compulsize EAT Sleep Sh-it Bodybuilding ( this was during college and I was extremely dedicated)

Best gains every came about 7 years ago when I did the following routine

Day 1 chest and triceps Day 2 Back and biceps Day 3 Shoulders 4 day rest period repeat workout next week.

Important notes from the above workout were.

I didn't train legs All muscle groups got 8 regular sets and 4 drop sets.

For example

Chest was bench press set 1, set 2, 3, 4, drop set then immediate drop set

Flys same as above.

I did this for all muscle groups.

On this routine I got the best gains of my life.
1 year later I was bench pressing without warming up with some buddies ( I was not working out) and I tore my bicep / pec tie in in the shoulder.

I went from benching in the lower 300 pounds to 20 pound dumbells.

I then started a very high volume ARNOLD routine for 3 years of 20+ sets per bodypart 3 times a week.

Made huge progress at first and then stalled completely...after busting my chops and still not making strength or size gains I found HST and started the program.

Strength and muscle size started back up.

Now the past year or so I have plateaued it seems or maybe everyone is right the gains just come slower and slower.

I don't have time nor do i want to be a Volume junkie again...but I have followed Mikey Novack advice and threads for a while and I do wonder about the Right Now effect especially for Veterans.
 
I think without steroids, we all reach a homeostatic limit that is very hard to break. The body simply doesn't want any excessive hypertrophy unless it is absolutely necessary. You could probably get some more hypertrophy of specific muscles by specializing, but growing your overall musculature without gaining fat along with it is extremely difficult for most people.

I would suggest to accept your overall size and then take a really honest look in the mirror and decide which muscle groups are the most important for you. For example, you seem eager to grow your chest in particular. Try doing a normal full-body HST routine, but focus on dips, flyes, bench press, etc. and really give the pectorals a heavy volume workload.

I don't believe high-volume is necessarily the way to go full-body, but it can definitely work wonders for a specialization bodypart...look at nature, certain animals and athletes have developed certain large muscles.
I suspect the body is better able to hypertrophy a few muscle groups that are specifically overloaded, than its ability to hypertrophy the ENTIRE body which is enormously physiologically demanding and metabolically expensive.

Or get just get some steroids like most bodybuilders....
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Thanks Sci,

Right now I have it narrowed down to two routines

Lyles Upper / lower split over at this sight.

or

Upperbody only fullbody routine with specialization on Chest / Back.
My chest and Back is were I need the most improvements. My Shoulder, traps and arms are decent on my build.

However when I had the pec tear injury...I never bounced back from that in the chest area. And well Back has always been a week point as well.

I am leaning toward the full body just b/c of my career and time. I don't know if I can truely give 4 days a week every week to my workout and run my own business efficiently.

If I do that. here is what I have in mind and I will log it as well.

Monday / Wednesday / Friday (upper body only)

Specialization will be Chest and Back
Total weekly reps for Chest and back will be 120 to 150 reps.

Shoulders will get about 70 to 90 reps a week.

Rep ranges will be all over the place and I will add weight when ever I can.

So I am thinking...sort of a Chad Waterbury style full body routine for upper body.

It would look something like this.

Monday

4 set of 12 reps stoping 2 reps shy of failure I would do this for Chest and Back

Then hit shoulders with maybe 2 or 3 sets.

If I have the energy throw in some arms iso's.

Wednesday would be

4 sets of 6 to 8 reps for chest and back

2 to 3 sets of shoulders

Friday 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps for chest and back....etc.

This routine would be hard to track weight and strength increases but again my strength has been going up so that is not that big of a deal.

I am looking at just playing with volume.

I bet what will happen is this will prove to be too much but what the hell its worth a try I guess!
 
<div>
(colby2152 @ Oct. 29 2007,02:32)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I'm still trying to sell you on the slow bulk...</div>
im with u brother!
 
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