Beginner Workouts - 2 Days in a Row?

Training
21

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
I’m thinking Arnold’s Beginner Workout 3x a week instead of 6 but it’s a lot of volume
[/quote]
Taking a plan that’s meant to be 6 days a week and only doing it 3 days a week is about as nonsensical and pointless as taking a plan meant to be 3 days a week and skipping workouts.

Your diet was not high in protein. From your thread a few weeks ago:

[quote]breakfast normally consists of whole milk and cereal or almond milk and cereal with peanut butter toast

lunch is normally cheese sandwiches or houmous or egg sandwiches (3 eggs); that or eggs at breakfast

dinner is some sort of curry which is either beans or quorn (meat substitute). Again, as I only have 4-5 meals a day the dinner has carbs in it

before bed I have another shake or some cheese

diet is high in cheese!

I’ve not been measuring my macros due to the depression. But postworkout I have a thick protein shake of 30-40g OR i’ll have 20-30g protein and carbs

as I don’t have protein shakes atm I drink 600-1000ml skimmed milk postworkout[/quote]
I didn’t run the numbers, but if that’s much more than 100 grams of protein, I’d be pretty surprised.

There are no “best” programs. Pretty much any one in the Archive here should suit you. Although, I didn’t notice you specifically stating your goal. That’s kinda a big factor.

Yes. 5/3/1 is, essentially, an upper/lower split.

As was said, first and foremost, changing your training without addressing the other issues (diet, motivation, depression, etc.) is a band-aid solution at best. Secondly, again, your goal should dictate your training plan. Thirdly, as was also said, lower reps tend to build strength and power more efficiently than moderate-to-high reps. So if that’s what you’re after, that’s the ideal path. Correcting all the other issues should kick you out of your plateau.

Not true, and that wasn’t your situation. You did several things wrong, not one. You screwed with the training plan and screwed with your nutrition and screwed with your consistency. But those are all fixable and they don’t have to keep happening.

22

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
I’m thinking Arnold’s Beginner Workout 3x a week instead of 6 but it’s a lot of volume
[/quote]
Taking a plan that’s meant to be 6 days a week and only doing it 3 days a week is about as nonsensical and pointless as taking a plan meant to be 3 days a week and skipping workouts.

Your diet was not high in protein. From your thread a few weeks ago:

[quote]breakfast normally consists of whole milk and cereal or almond milk and cereal with peanut butter toast

lunch is normally cheese sandwiches or houmous or egg sandwiches (3 eggs); that or eggs at breakfast

dinner is some sort of curry which is either beans or quorn (meat substitute). Again, as I only have 4-5 meals a day the dinner has carbs in it

before bed I have another shake or some cheese

diet is high in cheese!

I’ve not been measuring my macros due to the depression. But postworkout I have a thick protein shake of 30-40g OR i’ll have 20-30g protein and carbs

as I don’t have protein shakes atm I drink 600-1000ml skimmed milk postworkout[/quote]
I didn’t run the numbers, but if that’s much more than 100 grams of protein, I’d be pretty surprised.

There are no “best” programs. Pretty much any one in the Archive here should suit you. Although, I didn’t notice you specifically stating your goal. That’s kinda a big factor.

Yes. 5/3/1 is, essentially, an upper/lower split.

As was said, first and foremost, changing your training without addressing the other issues (diet, motivation, depression, etc.) is a band-aid solution at best. Secondly, again, your goal should dictate your training plan. Thirdly, as was also said, lower reps tend to build strength and power more efficiently than moderate-to-high reps. So if that’s what you’re after, that’s the ideal path. Correcting all the other issues should kick you out of your plateau.

Not true, and that wasn’t your situation. You did several things wrong, not one. You screwed with the training plan and screwed with your nutrition and screwed with your consistency. But those are all fixable and they don’t have to keep happening.[/quote]

Do you honestly think doing that workout 6 times a week is wise? It’s already a lot of volume even on 3 days and going onto his level 2 workout means you do it twice a day 6 days a week.Then there’s the competition training program which I assume are level 3 and 4.

I read that he started with 5x5 and/or his Golden 6 workout and then did level 1 in the Encyclopedia

23

[quote]ronki23 wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
I’m thinking Arnold’s Beginner Workout 3x a week instead of 6 but it’s a lot of volume
[/quote]
Taking a plan that’s meant to be 6 days a week and only doing it 3 days a week is about as nonsensical and pointless as taking a plan meant to be 3 days a week and skipping workouts.
[/quote]
Do you honestly think doing that workout 6 times a week is wise?[/quote]
There can certainly be some effective 6-day a week plans. My point was, if a plan is intended to be done 6 days a week, it’s a huge change to chop the frequency in half.

You’re not really trying to do everything Arnold did, right?

24

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
Btw; my diet was/is crap (e.g eating anything as long as scales and strength go up but still being high in protein) because I have depression (officially diagnosed and am on medication)
[/quote]

Like I said in your other thread, DEPRESSION IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR POOR NUTRITION.

I have been diagnosed, spent plenty of the time in the hospital, ECT’s, meds, the whole fucking thing.

The ONLY thing that kept me going was my love for training and a proper diet. Stop using this as an excuse to eat crap food.

25

[quote]howie424 wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
Btw; my diet was/is crap (e.g eating anything as long as scales and strength go up but still being high in protein) because I have depression (officially diagnosed and am on medication)
[/quote]

Like I said in your other thread, DEPRESSION IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR POOR NUTRITION.

I have been diagnosed, spent plenty of the time in the hospital, ECT’s, meds, the whole fucking thing.

The ONLY thing that kept me going was my love for training and a proper diet. Stop using this as an excuse to eat crap food.
[/quote]

I’m trying and slowly i’m getting better. It doesn’t help that I only got treatment in April and I was depressed as early as August. I only started going because I saw my progress was crap and it may help (which it is a bit- on Zoloft now)

And when I followed crap programs in 2007-9 I was on a diet so I was put off dieting as I didn’t make progress back then. And in the ‘noughties’ I focused on kickboxing (2010-2011) and judo/wrestling (2011-2012) and didn’t lose weight even with diet due to crappy sleeping pattern due to being at University.

But i’m slowly making the adjustments

26

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
I’m thinking Arnold’s Beginner Workout 3x a week instead of 6 but it’s a lot of volume
[/quote]
Taking a plan that’s meant to be 6 days a week and only doing it 3 days a week is about as nonsensical and pointless as taking a plan meant to be 3 days a week and skipping workouts.
[/quote]
Do you honestly think doing that workout 6 times a week is wise?[/quote]
There can certainly be some effective 6-day a week plans. My point was, if a plan is intended to be done 6 days a week, it’s a huge change to chop the frequency in half.

You’re not really trying to do everything Arnold did, right?[/quote]

I’m not trying to do everything he did but when I was young and naive, at after crappy ‘bulking’ workouts from my old personal trainer, I had a habit of creating my own workouts/changing what I saw.

Then I tried Rippetoes in summer 2010,2011 and 2012 and while I am not doing things properly now, I did it properly during those summers (3 months).

So I realised that I shouldn’t change workouts. And I was told that Arnold’s Beginner workout is not what he did originally but is still good for size. Apparently he did 5x5 and bodyweight exercises and Golden 6 before moving onto this (though I do not know in which order he did these 3 ‘preliminary’ programs and for how long he did them)

27

[quote]ronki23 wrote:

[quote]howie424 wrote:

[quote]ronki23 wrote:
Btw; my diet was/is crap (e.g eating anything as long as scales and strength go up but still being high in protein) because I have depression (officially diagnosed and am on medication)
[/quote]

Like I said in your other thread, DEPRESSION IS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR POOR NUTRITION.

I have been diagnosed, spent plenty of the time in the hospital, ECT’s, meds, the whole fucking thing.

The ONLY thing that kept me going was my love for training and a proper diet. Stop using this as an excuse to eat crap food.
[/quote]

I’m trying and slowly i’m getting better. It doesn’t help that I only got treatment in April and I was depressed as early as August. I only started going because I saw my progress was crap and it may help (which it is a bit- on Zoloft now)

And when I followed crap programs in 2007-9 I was on a diet so I was put off dieting as I didn’t make progress back then. And in the ‘noughties’ I focused on kickboxing (2010-2011) and judo/wrestling (2011-2012) and didn’t lose weight even with diet due to crappy sleeping pattern due to being at University.

But i’m slowly making the adjustments
[/quote]

I was where you are a while back. One thing that really helped me was the gallon of milk a day diet. You don’t need to slowly make adjustments. You can make all the adjustments you need now.

GOMAD might not be for you, but if you want to give it a shot, just see if you can drink a gallon of milk in a day. You don’t really even need to eat anything else that day since the milk will be more than you’re eating currently.
If that goes okay, then keep doing it, just add food to the diet until you’re eating 3000+ calories a day. I used to just drink the milk, eat some steak, eggs, roast beef sandwiches or turkey burgers, and add some vegetables regularly. I was usually eating 3500ish cals.

After a year I had gained from 135 to 205 with moderate fat gain, deadlifted 435x2, benched 275 narrow grip, was not too fat to do pullups or dips, etc. It does work and its actually a lot cheaper than it sounds

28

I think we’ve established that gaining weight per se isn’t the hard part for the OP. I don’t think GOMAD will improve things for him; it is meant for skinny hardgainers, not for someone who’s already at 20% bf.

29

[quote]nighthawkz wrote:
I think we’ve established that gaining weight per se isn’t the hard part for the OP. I don’t think GOMAD will improve things for him; it is meant for skinny hardgainers, not for someone who’s already at 20% bf.[/quote]

possibly. OP is not lifting with intensity or eating enough. The intensity isnt going to be there unless he consistently eats right to have the energy for it, so diet comes first. Ice cream and pizza are not good energy sources for intense lifting. But a cutting diet isn’t going to help his intensity either. So there is a tricky double bind here

I can’t account for OP’s weight gain but i have to believe it stems from consistently eating the wrong things, not consistently eating too much. but yeah GOMAD might not be the best idea

30

[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:
pizza are not good energy sources for intense lifting[/quote]

I get what you’re trying to say, but technically, pizza is one of the best foods for intense lifting, absolutely.

31

You want to see “CNS fatigue”?

Go hard on something every day (could be heavy lifting, some kind of hard skills practice) until you have a day where your warmup weights staple you. That’s CNS fatigue. That’s when you go home and get some sleep. That’s what I did just this week, then I came back the next day and hit a lifetime PR.

“CNS fatigue” doesn’t happen to novices with a max pull of barely over bodyweight. Sometimes I dream of going back to my noob days and not having a program. Just going in and doing some fast, heavy practice with the core lifts, bust some moves, get a pump and leave. And if I want to do something on an “off” day, I fucking go do it and not worry about whether hill sprints will disrupt my squat recruitment pattern. And when a fellow gym rat tells me they have the magical sets and reps to take me out of my noobiness I say, no thanks, lifting heavy makes you stronger and that’s good enough for me.

Don’t ask for permission to train two or three or eight days in a row. How would you explain this to a child? “Yes, I look like shit and can’t even tug 1.5xBW. So it’s really important that I don’t exercise.”

32

[quote]marrot wrote:
You want to see “CNS fatigue”?

Go hard on something every day (could be heavy lifting, some kind of hard skills practice) until you have a day where your warmup weights staple you. That’s CNS fatigue. That’s when you go home and get some sleep. That’s what I did just this week, then I came back the next day and hit a lifetime PR.

“CNS fatigue” doesn’t happen to novices with a max pull of barely over bodyweight. Sometimes I dream of going back to my noob days and not having a program. Just going in and doing some fast, heavy practice with the core lifts, bust some moves, get a pump and leave. And if I want to do something on an “off” day, I fucking go do it and not worry about whether hill sprints will disrupt my squat recruitment pattern. And when a fellow gym rat tells me they have the magical sets and reps to take me out of my noobiness I say, no thanks, lifting heavy makes you stronger and that’s good enough for me.

Don’t ask for permission to train two or three or eight days in a row. How would you explain this to a child? “Yes, I look like shit and can’t even tug 1.5xBW. So it’s really important that I don’t exercise.”[/quote]

Only reason I thought it was CNS fatigue was because my strength barely increased over the last 2 months (whereas it went up [though diminishing] in the first 4) and I was eating loads/my weight was going up

I didn’t have shakes in Nov-Jan and Mar-May but had 600-1000ml milk postworkout. And in May-June PR barely increased with 2 daily protein shakes

33

[quote]Claudan wrote:

[quote]Facepalm_Death wrote:
pizza are not good energy sources for intense lifting[/quote]

I get what you’re trying to say, but technically, pizza is one of the best foods for intense lifting, absolutely.

[/quote]

All imma say is I eat a entire Pizza and Pint atleast of Ice Cream for dinner every Saturday and pretty much every Sunday I smash a Squat PR so its obviously not a bad choice :slight_smile: