My HST Experience So Far

R

Ryan che

New Member
On 5th December I broke my arm and had 2 months off from training. I started back up at the end of January nice and deconditioned and putting much more focus on diet and nutrition. I have already done 3 HST cycles previously but with no real results, and i thought that this time it was going to be different, as i havn't been working, so have put in pretty much all my time and energy into training, cooking and eating.

I'm currently finishing my 5s tommorow and can honestly say that so far results are still very minimal. I've put on about 10lbs of weight, noticeably fatter around stomach, chest ect (which dosn't bother me) but no real muscle gains (which does).

Am well aware that there have been many posts like this one but figured it was worth askin for opinions and ideas.

Age 19
Height 6 3"
Weight about 215

My routine is

Squat
Bench
Chins
Dips
Dumbell shoulder press
Bicep Curl
Tricep Cable
Ab Crunch

Total number of reps around 20-30 per exercise.

Diet has been at around 3700 calories a day. And 250g of high quality proteins (either from whey, Meats or diary products). Around 300g if you count proteins from rice, wheat ect. I eat 6 meals a day and 3 protein shakes, and take creatine when working out. Very clean diet, no junk food, alcohol.

It seems to me that i'm not really stimulating any significant growth, just getting a bit fatter lol. I was thinking that perhaps i'm overtraining? Undertraining? Or perhaps i should just go back to doing a traditional gym routine (although i would rather not). Also with all the eating and supplements its costing a bomb and with nothing really to show for it its massively frustrating and depressing.

Appreciate any help!
 
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Good post!

I felt the same after 3 cycles, and I have put a lot of fat on around the middle!

However my strength gains have been immense and now I've started cutting the fat has started to drop off, leaving behind the muscle I gained in the last six months.

The question is would it have been any different if I had stuck to going to failure on a splits routine? I don't know but like you, I like the HST workout and am willing to stick with it until I think otherwise.

It's good you're sticking to your macros as you can judge whether your diet is sufficient, which by the sounds of it I think it is.

Also by adding a pound or two (at the most) a week, you ARE adding muscle, although it might not seem like that, coz its covered in a layer of fat!

Depressing I know, but that's bulking for ya!
 
You aren't going to be able to notice massive gains in muscle size through the course of one or even just a couple cycles if you are a natural. Building muscle is all about the long view. If, like wwazza, you are making great strength gains, then it is almost a given that you are making muscle gains, since strength is determined only by neural adaptations and cross sectional area of the muscle fibers. So... the question is, how have your strength gains been?

As for your diet... "eating clean" doesn't really mean anything. What most bodybuilders consider "eating clean" is just going to make you feel bloated from all the rice and destroy your wallet. It doesn't effect your gains. Some think that it allows you to gain more muscle and less fat but that isn't true. How much fat vs muscle you gain is a combination of training and genetics.
So... if you are having a hard time affording all the food, try buying less expensive food. Beef is a great addition to your diet and something that most don't consider a clean food, opting for chicken instead. Screw that. Just get your 300 grams of protein you've been getting, make sure your diet consists of around 25% fats and fill in the carbs however you can. My best gains in early cycles was based around fast food and protein shakes with olive oil in them, plus tons of milk. Not a "clean" diet by any means.

A lot of this is a mind game too. When you bulk up, you feel like you are getting fat and making no gains, it's easy to want to start dieting to now allow the fat to get out of control. When cutting, you think you are losing all your muscle so you don't want to continue the diet. I will say this... my most successful bulk ever was the one where I stopped worrying about how fat I thought I looked. I bulked up to probably around 20-22% bodyfat - a very high bodyfat percentage for me since I was naturally around 6-8% before I started weightlifting years ago. When I finally cut down, I was very noticeably larger than before. Granted, I bulked for like 8 months and my cut took pretty much the rest of that year to get down to 10% but it was well worth it. I know you might think that you would look like a huge hog beast at 20% bodyfat but realistically, most people won't notice that much of a difference except you.
 
Another thing to consider is, are you taking measurements. I bought a cheap tape measure which made a big difference in tracking my muscle gains since the mirror plays mind games with you. Taking before and after pictures are also helpful here.

As Tot said you can only build so much muscle so quickly as a natural. Also keep in mind that you are already fairly big in the sense 6’3” starting out around 205 lbs. so when someone your size adds say 10 lbs. of muscle it’s going to look like less compared to me 5’6” starting out at 145 lbs.

Overall you exercise selection looks good except for one thing . . . no Deadlifts. They are IMO the single best mass building exercise on the planet and have probably done as much too increase my size as all the rest of the exercises I do combined.

Some things you can try if not already doing it are to squeeze the most out of every rep even in the higher rep ranges by slowing the reps down to get more time under tension. Make sure you are really reaching your rep maxes at the end of each micro-cycle. There is nothing that says you have to stop a mico-cycle at 2 weeks or 6 workouts. If you hit the 6th workout and can keep progressing in that rep range add more workouts until you hit your true max. It doesn’t hurt you to go longer than 6-8 weeks as long as your weights are progressing.
 
Thanks for taking the time guys, very good responses. Agree with everything said.
Strength gains have been good, today I hit my 5 rep max but my arm couldn't cope with all the stress so i had to abandon bench and shoulder press. May add deadlifts in for my next cycle, although i've always been wary about form and snapping my back up.

As for diet, i've been getting a little bit sick off brown rice, chicken and kidney beans. So i will add some beef in there. I'd avoided it in the past as you hear that red meat is evil and stays in your gut for ages, but thats just BS i imagine.

I gues my main drama with HST has been that i seem to be the only person who does it. Anyone i speak to about training does the traditional, hit the muscles as hard as possible every workout routine. And 95% of the guys at the gym follow this routine and are bigger than me, so its a little off putting sometimes to be the "odd one out". The two lads i go to the gym with started HST with me, but now they've reverted back after having no results. However after reading your posts i feel more motivated and am going to keep at it.
Nice idea with the before and after pics aswell.
 
Keep in mind that HST is a set of principles (Progressive Load, Training Volume, Training Frequency and Conditioning) and not the vanilla 15s, 10s, 5s workout template. As you progress the vanilla workout won’t be enough to keep stimulating growth as you may need more volume. You can even switch to a body part split if the volume you need exceeds what you can recover from in three full body workouts a week. So you might want to try using more volume on your next cycle.
 
Yeah this is something i've considered a lot in the past but avoided due to fear of overtraining. Would you agree that increasing total reps from 15-25, to around about 25-35 per exercise will be enough.
Also i was thinking about dropping the arm iso's as the areas were i do fewer exercises seem to get the best gains (like back). Any thoughts?
 
A general rule of thumb I’ve seen is 40-60 reps per body part, not necessarily per exercise. The real key here is Time Under Tension (TUT) and not total number of reps. Keeping that in mind the heavier the weights get the slower the reps become and the more TUT you get per rep. So as the intensity increases the volume can come down while generating the same effect.

How many reps you need and can tolerate at a given frequency is only something you can determine. IMO it’s worthwhile to do so since to optimize your gains you need to be pushing yourself to near you limit without exceeding it too often. That’s why IMO developing your own workout routine, that evolves with you is far superior to following a “canned” routine of set/reps set up by someone else that’s’ designed for the masses.

The problem most people have with this is that they don’t want to be honest with themselves about what they really need and can handle. Egos can be the worst problem people have with getting quality training.

If gaining mass is your priority then I would drop the arm isos unless there’s a real good reason not to. Your arms will likely get a great workout sticking to compound exercises. If over time you see this is not working the by all means add some extra work in but that wouldn’t be my default position.
 
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