Why not pursue a performance goal vs a physique goal?
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For sure I could!
Any suggestions to get me started?
This is kind of like going to a grocery store and asking âWhat should I eat?â
I donât know what kind of performance excites or interests you to even begin to be able to offer a recommendation. I could say something like âsign up for a boxing matchâ, only to find out youâre a sworn pacifist.
What do you LIKE to do thatâs physical? Consider finding a competition in that realm and training for it.
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Gotcha! I wasnât for sure if that was what you were referencing, but I can definitely do something like this! Thanks!
Looking at your pics, there is no way I would recommend cutting any further other than for a contest. There is way too much detail in your back to indicate that a cut is anywhere in your immediate future.
IMO, pick two or three totally different compound exercises and try to improve your strength in all of them. Just add a little more calories to what you are eating now and track your body weight and strength increases and keep an eye on your mirror and % body fat scale. Donât gain body weight too fast. Keep your major muscle group separation.
You have a problem body part area that needs addressed. Your abs are just not good. You have reasonably good serratus, so I donât believe it is a fat problem. You need to prioritize ab work to add muscle. That said, if you posted an ab pose it would be helpful to assure whether it is an abdominal muscle deficiency or maybe a heavy abdominal sheath similar as Boyer Coe had.
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The ab pics help. It does seem that you have a thicker ab sheath than most. Just make sure you are consistently training abs with resistance, as if you are trying to add abdominal muscle.
Back size would be a good focus for one of your compound exercises to get stronger, and hopefully larger (width and thickness). What heavy back exercises do you do? IMO, the two best would be pullups and rows. If you pick pullups, strive for 4 sets of 8 reps. Once you get 8 reps strap on some weight and shoot for 4 sets of 8 reps, add weight as you progress.
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I do heavy back rows. Seated, chest supported and Meadows Row. I could incorporate more heavy pullups tho.
It would be plenty good to try increasing your row strength. IMO, front-to-back work is for thickness. Do pullups too in your back workout, but your strength focus should be the rows.
Then about 2 months later change the focus to top-to-bottom work for more width. Do the pullups first, focusing on getting stronger and also do rows in your back workout.
IMO, most people should put maximum strength effort on the first exercise, and then do supplemental work following the BIG exercise.
I have two back days per week. I have both front to back and top to bottom lifts in each day. Is that a mistake?
No. What is most important is the focus.
I felt my back thickness was lacking: I put my strength focus on barbell rows.
It looks like you need both width and thickness, but I believe you will better results if you focus on one at a time. For a two month period focus on thickness, and then the next two month period focus on width.
You will be doing thickness and width work on every back workout, but the focus will be on only one of the two at a time.
When thickness is the focus, the heavy rowing exercises are first and the âlighterâ pullups and pulldowns are the last exercises.
Note: âLighterâ doesnât mean light weight, just that there is less in the tank when you get to them.
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If i were to offer some unsolicited opinionsâŠ
You have a wide torso and smaller limbs (visually, i mean).
As mentioned above, i would consider running some hypertrophy programs to work on evening all that out. Id recommend Trainer By Jordan Peters for this.
That being said, you should know that youâre top 1% physique regardless.
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Is this doing 1 set of each muscle group to failure 3 times per week?
it rotates pending which phase of the program you are on. it is failure based.
You could apply these methods to a full body split and train 3-4x weekly and get the same stimuli you are speaking of (I believe JP even has a template for a full body approach⊠something along the lines of heavy upper\light lower | light upper/heavy lower).
Everyone I know whose run this program has put on size.