You need to stop watching YouTube fitness videos. I believe they have been the leading factor holding you back all these years.
You don’t have to trust anyone on here.
Trust the process.
Trust the man who wrote the program you are running.
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Just to clarify, I’m not in a deficit and I’m not advocating that. I don’t have an issue with being in a surplus. The point I’m trying to make is the size of the surplus. The video is only meant to support the idea that a smaller surplus is better than a large one. I’ve had large surpluses and it’s gotten me fat. I’ve tried to eat myself out of a benching plateau in the past and it didn’t help much.
I keep taking 7 day averages of my weight and I’m confident it’ll be up next time I report on it. I just want slow and steady vs fast. The reason I’ve quit in the past is because I got fat. If I put on too much body fat to the point where my waistline balloons I will get discouraged. I’d rather go slow and take longer to attain all those newbie gains vs rushing it and risking going overboard and putting on too much fat in the process.
I feel you still have a fundamentally backwards understanding of how nutrition works as it relates to training.
You don’t eat a calorie surplus and then hope it turns to muscle via training: you TRAIN for muscle and then eat a calorie surplus to recover from that training and ensure that it happens.
If your training is not putting any sort of demand on your body to create more muscle, THAT is how you get fat from a caloric surplus. That’s what most people do, irrespective of training: they eat more food than their body needs to recover from the tasks it has performed.
When gaining muscle is the goal, you start training HARDER than you had before, so that you create a new demand on your body to start making more muscle as a response to the stimulus placed upon it. If you don’t create ENOUGH stimulus through training, your body has no need for a surplus of calories, which means that the surplus you eat simply becomes fat: it’s excess calories with no purpose.
I feel that, if you focus more on training hard enough to create a demand on your body to make muscle, you’ll have far more success with making muscle and getting less fat compared to if you concern yourself with the degree of surplus you have. In truth, I would not eat a surplus UNLESS there was a specific need to do so: in this case, stalling or regressing in lifts or a lack of recovery from training in general.
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This should be a sticky on top of T nation main site, this should be read by anyone who wants to train to get big and strong.
You really are something Pwn. Thanks for this little gold nugget.
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Much appreciated @mortdk . Hope it takes.
Pwn’s explanation is the best one you’ll find anywhere. If you understand that and apply it you will be successful.
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Thanks for the feedback guys. OK, I think a lot of this is making more sense to me and I agree with the 2 lbs a month too. Not trying to be difficult/argumentative…just trying to make sure I understand the “why” behind everything. Just in my nature. I know that it’s possible to gain 0.25 - 0.5 lbs a muscle a week. So it makes sense that early on you are closer to that 0.5 lbs a week range. So yeah, I should be aiming for 2 lbs a month. My next weekly weigh in is tomorrow and based on my weight this past week I’m on target to be close to that 0.5 lbs weight gain (based on 7 day averages).
I would think of this more as lean mass vs muscle.
I’m pretty sure it was @The_Mighty_Stu that presented this idea, and I’ve stolen it greatly, but when you think of muscle, think of ground beef. You go to the store and look at 1lb of lean ground beef, that’s what 1lb of muscle “looks” like. So if someone says they gained 30lbs of muscle, that’s like taking 30lbs of that stuff and distributing it across the body. You can see how that’s a HUGE amount of tissue, and with that tissue comes all the OTHER weight that comes along with muscle (via water and glycogen). That other stuff that comes along with it is all stuff that contributes toward lean mass, but isn’t purely muscle.
Gaining .5lbs of muscle a week is VERY fast accumulation of muscle. In the span of just a month, that’s 2lbs of that ground beef. In 12 months, that’s 24lbs of it. That certainly CAN happen, but that’s a dude that has everything on point and ALSO went up even MORE in bodyweight than just 24lbs.
But .25-.5lbs of lean mass? That’s far more reasonable.
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Ah, thanks! Yeah, I should have said lean mass instead of muscle there.
I plan to start taking creatine too (should be delivered to me on Friday) so I don’t know how that effects things, since I understand it makes you retain more water.
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Deadlifts
65% 147.5 1 5
75% 170 1 5
85% 192.5 1 5+ (20 reps)
65% 147.5 5 5
Press
65% 72.5 1 5
75% 85 1 5
85% 95 1 5+ (10 reps)
65% 72.5 5 5
Assistance
Incline BB bench: 80 lbs - 15,15,10,10,10
Chin-ups: 5x10 (decreased rest time)
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It’s the most well-researched supplement out there and the general consensus is that it works. You will gain some water weight if you drink enough (4 liters per day is a good idea). Don’t let it worry you if you notice you’ve gained a little faster within the next two weeks as the creatine pulls more water into your system. Your body will even it out.
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Weekly 7 day average weigh in
May 22 - 136.2
May 29 - 136.8
June 5 - 137.3
There was a 0.5 lbs increase from last week, which sounds like the ideal increase amount.
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lol, I love that analogy. I forget where I first got it, but it makes you doubt whenever you hear someone online brag about how they put on 20 lbs of muscle over a summer.
I also like to reference how Dorian himself always said that the best genetics, with the best training, best nutrition, and best “supplements” is only going to gain a solid lb or two per month maximum, even under outlier conditions.
Reality is never as cool as we imagine it to be, BUT, anyone who puts on an honest 5 lbs of solid muscle in a year is doing damn well IMO.
S
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Bench
65% 90 1 5
75% 105 1 5
85% 120 1 5+ (11 reps)
65% 90 5 5
Front squat
65% 75 1 5
75% 87.5 1 5
85% 97.5 1 5+ (20 reps)
65% 75 5 5
Assistance
Skull crushers/EZ Bench: ~40 lbs 5x15/15
DB rows: 30 lbs - 5x20 (2 min rest)
Leg/hip/toe raises: 4x20
Hill sprints - x37 - 20 min (pausing timer/rest after 10x)
Don’t do 37 hill sprints. Find a bigger hill.
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I’ve thought about this. I remember looking at to size of a couple of 8oz steaks once and thinking in all honesty - if I could get 15/20 of those evenly distributed around my upper body I’d be HUGE.
I thought I was weird. Turns out - even if I am weird I’m in good company.
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Hey man - Just passing through. I can see you’re getting some great advice. But I can see you are worried about gaining too much fat.
For my money - so long as you are working the dead lifts and squats hard any weight gain will be much leaner that you might think.
I notice you are not back squatting. I assume there is a reason for this so wont tell you to do them. However there are a load of different squat patterns. And the more you squat the more lean mass you will add.
I mean - its almost plagiarising @T3hPwnisher. But the more stimulus you give the body to turn food into muscle, the less fat you will get from your surplus.
So if you are still worried about gaining any fat - add in some different squat patterns after your main work.
Haha. Yeah, maybe so. It’s just that this hill is so conveniently close. There is a much bigger hill though I can try out next time.
You can do front squats as your main lift with 5/3/1 according to the book. I was doing front squats at first because I thought my form was bad with back squats. However, after some videos it seems people thought form wasn’t as bad as I’d originally thought. I will eventually do back squats but I’m enjoying front squatting at the moment.
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