Please Help - Getting Weaker On Hst

N

np89

New Member
Hello everyone,

I am new to lifting and started at the beginning of April. I was on a 3 day a week split routine that I ran for 12 weeks and my 1RM lifts went from:

Bench Start: 135lbs
Bench Finish: 175lbs

Squat Start: 140lbs
Squat Finish: 195lbs

I switched to HST training after this 12 week cycle and I am in my second week of 10's and I can't help but notice I am much weaker than before. Just a few weeks ago I was doing 1550lbs on the bench for 8 reps, but I just got back from the gym having struggled to bench even 150lbs for 5 reps (I failed first set). The only part of me that seems to be stronger is my legs, I managed to squat 170lbs today for 1 set of 10 but even that to be honest felt really heavy on my back.

Is this just mental or something else? I work really long hours so usually work out at 9:30PM at night. My diet looks like this:

breakfast: two whole wheat slices of toast
Mid morning: coffee, glass of milk, fiber one oat bar
Lunch: chicken breast, rice, beans or chicken breast, boiled egg, basmati rice, peppers
Dinner: Chicken breast, sweet potato fries or something
Before bed: protein shake with creatine

I would really appreciate any help. I was really enjoying my time at the gym when I was making progress but it's become very demoralizing.
 
Newbies will see quick gains in loads in the early days, to enable people to help you can you advise height and weight please

Doing a quick calculation your approximate caloric intake is as follows

Breakfast - 140 plus butter / margarine
Mid Morning - 210 - assuming semi skimmed milk in coffee and 250 ml of semi skimmed milk in glass
Lunch - 620 - assuming 200 g of chicken and 100 g of rice and 50 g beans
Dinner - 530 - assuming 200 g of chicken and 85 g of sweet potato fries
Protein drink - 250

Total - approximately 1750 kcal and depending on your weight and goals this could be quite low!!!
 
mickc1965 said:
Newbies will see quick gains in loads in the early days, to enable people to help you can you advise height and weight please

Doing a quick calculation your approximate caloric intake is as follows

Breakfast - 140 plus butter / margarine
Mid Morning - 210 - assuming semi skimmed milk in coffee and 250 ml of semi skimmed milk in glass
Lunch - 620 - assuming 200 g of chicken and 100 g of rice and 50 g beans
Dinner - 530 - assuming 200 g of chicken and 85 g of sweet potato fries
Protein drink - 250

Total - approximately 1750 kcal and depending on your weight and goals this could be quite low!!!
Click to expand...

Sorry my weight is 178.4lbs (morning) and my height is 6'2. Pretty skinny I know -_-
 
np89 said:
Sorry my weight is 178.4lbs (morning) and my height is 6'2. Pretty skinny I know -_-
Click to expand...

1750 calories (if my calculation is correct of course) is nowhere near enough if you want to get stronger, I am not surprised you are losing strength at that intake - how long have you been eating like a 'sparrow' and how much weight are you losing per week?

I recommend that your calorie intake should be your body weight in lbs multiplied by at least 15 (if not more) not 10 (this is a quite a low level for most people) if you want to build muscle etc - for the record I am 176 ish @ 5' 9" and losing a lb or so a week @ 2300 - 2400 kcals.

As O&G said have you read the ebook as this will explain pretty much everything, a couple of links below if you haven't

http://www.mediafire.com/download/nz28u6ifk7h36he/HST_Ebook.pdf]http://www.mediafire.com/download/nz28u6ifk7h36he/HST_Ebook.pdf

or

http://thinkmuscle.com/community/threads/the-hst-ebook.41974/

another section of this forum that is very informative and can help is http://thinkmuscle.com/community/forums/hst-faq.35/
 
Last edited:
Same thing everyone else is saying, you need to eat more. If you aren't gaining weight then you likely are not gaining any muscle. Hopefully your weight has been steadily increasing over the weeks, if not then you shouldn't expect strength and hypertrophy gains.

Secondly, some of it is mental. If you failed the first set but succeeded on the second then you either were not warmed up or you were not focused.

Finally I wonder about your form. 155x8 should equate to about a 200lb bench, 170x10 should equate to a 230lb squat. If you find that your strength curve diminishes greatly as you approach maximal load it is typically a sign of poor form.

Good news is that it is all fixable. 8)
 
Thanks everyone for the help.

I haven't gained much if any weight over the last 15 weeks. Maybe 1 lbs or so but that could be from creatine. My form on squat is excellent, I had a friend who lived for the squat rack and he ingrained in me always parallel or lower. That said, I do find it hard sometimes to stop my legs from bowing in, I point my toes out but it doesn't help a huge amount.

I will up my calories from tomorrow. Thanks everyone for the help.
 
Well if you want some feedback on your form feel free to post it, there are a lot of adept squatters here. Glad to see you're fixing your calories, learning to eat for gains will be a game changer.
 
Keep in mind that if you are lifting after working long hours, that is already one point against you. Then not getting near enough calories, you are basically setting yourself up for failure. You need to give yourself plenty more food like the guys already said, but I would look at your schedule and see if you can optimize anything there.
You are lifting most days around 9:30 pm? What time are you going to sleep and then waking up each day? How long of hours are you working? There is usually an optimal time of day for each person to train where they will see their best energy levels, on average. If you can pin that down and reserve that space for lifting each day, it will be greatly beneficial. Have you tried lifting before work? I don't know about you, but when I work a long 10-12 hour shift, going to the gym is pretty much the last thing I want to do. I guess this depends on your actual job, but even if your job isn't physically demanding, you are still likely mentally drained. A preworkout stimulant could help but if you are going to bed shortly after your workout, then obviously that would disrupt your sleep if you are sensitive to that kind of thing.

With regards to the calorie intake - I am roughly the same height as you, and when I was around your bodyweight, I was eating 2500-3000 calories a day to gain. Granted, I was in my mid-20s then and had a crazy metabolism but I think that you should up your intake to 2500 a day asap and ramp that up to 2800 over the course of the next week or two. Try to get at 150-200 grams of that from protein, about 75 grams or so of fat though you can let that one vary a bit, and get the rest from carbs. When you are working long hours and trying to gain muscle on top of that, the carb intake becomes more critical than it would be if you weren't working so much.

If you aren't already clustering, you should switch to that instead of sets asap. For example, if you were planning to do 2 sets of 10, we will instead shoot for just hitting 20 reps total and break that up into however many sets as possible. Then take clustering a step further and use it to regulate volume based on your energy levels and state of mind that day. So rather than shooting for 20 reps each workout, you will make it a range. Maybe 16-24 reps. On days you feel like poop and just aren't getting it, you will stop at 16 or 17 total reps. On days you feel good and strong, do the full 24 reps. The idea is that you don't want to burn yourself out from lifting but you also want to do enough work, so you just allow yourself some wiggle room with the volume to accommodate the fact that your strength and energy levels will change from day to day. Hope that all makes sense.
 
Wow you guys are really really helpful compared to some of the other bodybuilding forums.

I upped my food intake since Thursday. I added an extra protein shake and switched to a higher quality powder (myprotein). I also added eggs to my breakfast meal and a snack in the afternoon of 4 pieces of grilled bacon (british) and two slices of whole meal. I used myfitnesspal which is putting my daily now at around 175g protein and 2450 calories.

I don't know if this is just mental, but I had a great workout Friday night. I was on my last day of 10's and managed to do 1 set of 10 175lb squats with ease, actually felt like I could have kept going. I struggled with the 155lb 1 x 10 bench, but got to 7 reps and then took breaks between the remaining sets (I guess this is called clustering even though I didn't realize it) - I will admit there was some bouncing.

Last night I went down and did some iso exercises since I mainly do compounds 3 x a week for HST. Just 2 x 10 of preacher curls, lat raises, front lat raises, and pull ups. I feel like I have actually gotten a lot stronger in some aspects with HST. I used to only be able to do 4 wide grip pulls up put I knocked out 6 without really trying that hard last night.

During the week I usually get to work around 8:30 and leave work around 8:30pm (walk home about 30 mins - I live in NYC), take a 30 minute break and go down to my apartment gym to workout. I could do it before work but I struggle to wake up in the mornings and usually feel light headed when tryin gto workout. Usually go to bed around 12:30am and wake up at 7:45am.
 
You could always split your workout to AM / PM split and do the less demanding upper body exercises in the morning and lower body at night.

Also watch your salt /sodium intake with the bacon
 
Hey guys, just an update for you all. Eating more seems to have worked! I have gained about 1lb since my original post. And I am at the end of my first week of 5's. I managed to bench 165 lbs 5x2 and squat 185lbs 5x2. My squat continues to get much stronger than everything else, before I started HST my 1RM on squat was about 190lbs so to be doing 185lbs for 5x2 is very encouraging.

I have a question though. I am going on vacation for a week at the end of August. I would like to time my SD for that week if possible. Next week will be my last set of 5's, so I will have 4 weeks between my last set of 5s and my vacation....what should I do in that time? Do another 2 weeks of 10's and then 5s? Or another 2 weeks of 15 and then 10s? Obviously want to look good on vacation haha
 
Hey everyone,

Just an update, I increased my calories, and more importantly i have dramatically increased the quality of my meals (lots more clean chicken, sweet potato, 2% milk, 2 protein shakes a day). My weight had increased, but I looked this morning and I'm down to 176.5lbs now, not sure if that's fat coming off or what but my pants are loser so I think some of the belly fat I had is disappearing.

Nevertheless, my strength has increased over the last few weeks. I did a shortened HST cycle before my vacation in 2 weeks. I already did the 10's, now on the first week of 5's:

Squat - Last night I did 195 lbs for 2 sets of 5 reps. Last 2 reps I struggled a bit, my back folded over and they turned into a bit of a good morning

Bench - I have switched to dumbell bench press as the regular barbell bench hurts my wrist and I don't have a spot. I did 70lbs for 2 sets of 5 last night

I can knock out 10 reps of decently wide grip pull ups now

The 5's don't really seem like much of a challenge. The heavy weight certainly hurts, but there's no pump and its the day after and I feel like I should workout again today because I'm not sore or anything.
 
Good job.

Consider a metabolic set after the 5's if you want to feel a "pump."

Also consider a neutral (palms facing in) grip with DB presses to reduce wrist involvement. Same thing applies to pull ups.
 
Came back from my vacation yesterday. What an unhealthy week! carb heavy diet, no working out, I was shocked to see I hadn't lost much weight.

I just went down and did my first workout with the 15's again. It wasn't bad but boy did I feel out of shape - but I assumed this would be the case after 8 days off with a poor diet and switching form 5's to 15's.

Anyway, I am not sure if I am doing enough exercises, my current routine is below, but I know the ebook has a lot more exercises but I just don't have time for 8-9 different exercises. Am I doing enough?

Squat 1 x 15
Leg press 1 x 15
Dumbell bench press 2 x 15
wide grip pull up 3 x 5
tricep push down OR skull crushers 1 x 15
 
np89 said:
Wow you guys are really really helpful compared to some of the other bodybuilding forums....
Click to expand...

The experts on this forum are the best, hands down. Always helpful, open minded, and tons of experience and knowledge to back up their advice. I can't thank them enough for their participation over the years...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top