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(Totentanz @ Apr. 13 2008,12:13)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">To be honest, at your size, you probably don't need to worry about it yet. Just focus on putting on mass and I think you'll find a lot of your imbalances will become less significant.
Also, it won't matter how many times you eat per day. Just eat however many or few meals are necessary to get in sufficient calories. You'll want to get more than 2500 a day, that is probably enough to maintain if you have a fairly average metabolism, but it definitely isn't enough to grow. I would eat at least 2800 calories a day. Less than that and you are definitely selling yourself short on your potential for gains.
What does your routine look like? I think you could do with a "Simplify and Win" type of routine for now while you concentrate on building a base to work from. If you can get your core lifts up to higher poundages while packing away the food (with plenty of protein, of course) then I am sure most of your concerns about stubborn/imbalanced muscles will go away.
Failure - no, it is not necessary. Failure does not cause growth, it does help train the CNS but that's not something you really need to worry about right now.
If you want to post your routine, I'm sure that most of us can help you out. Also, you could start a log and post each workout so we can see how your results go. I'd be interested in seeing daily totals on calories and protein in your log too so we can see how the diet is going.
Just so you know, here is how muscle building works:
1. If you are not gaining weight, you are not eating enough. Your body cannot build muscle (except under special circumstances, but don't count on those) unless you are gaining weight. You want to be gaining about a pound or two every week.
2. Once you are eating enough to gain a pound or two a week consistently (remember, as you get heavier, your body will require more calories in order to continue to gain) then you can worry about your routine. If most of the weight you are putting on is fat, then you may not have sufficient volume in your routine.</div>
Thanks for the reply. I used to use the Optimum Anabolics program by Jeff Anderson since 20 weeks ago (5 months). His program is almost the same as HST because he has progressive overload and strategic conditioning of a different style, just that he splits it into 5 days with different muscle groups each day. When I started out I was 125.4 pounds (57kg) and now I managed to gain to up to 160.6 pounds (73kg) in 5 months. With his program I gained about 4.4 pounds (2kg) every 3 weeks. But here are the problems that I'm facing.
1. The body fat percentage on my stomach is about 16% (I used the body fat caliper). I found that I am gaining a lot of muscle, and also lot of fat. But the muscle I gained, I think its not enough, that is why I want to try the HST program now. I hope it can give me more muscle than fat. I'm thinking that, whats also holding me back from gaining more muscle is also because of the stubborn muscle group, their counterparts grows really fast but the other, its just so hard to grow, and the imbalances are more visible now I think. My left chest is about 3 times bigger than my right.
2. Jeff anderson's optimum anabolics program already had me calculate my daily calorie needs and it's almost the same as HST. I already raised my calories a few weeks ago, I ate more but what happened was that I started to go to the toilet even more, like 5 times day, and thats crazy. Before I raised my calorie intake I only need to go to the toilet 2 times a day, and thats already tiring. So I reduced my calorie back to the usual.
I will post my routine and diet soon and see how it goes first
