Considering Throwing in Towel

Training Bodybuilding
21

From a 40 year old.

If you’re getting stronger you’re doing good. Many people with big muscles are not that strong.

The thing I would suggest is cut down on the amount of work you do. I find a 30-40 min workout of 3 exercises, 2 sets, 5 reps max (deadlift, side press, and weighted pullups) with a short intense cardio session ala HIIT more than effective. I do this 4 days a week. I use Pavel Tsatsouline’s Power To The People format.

Personally I don’t sweat my diet too much. I try to eat generally healthy, high fiber, low fat, plenty of protein and monitor my weight and waist size to tell me whether I’m overdoing it in any direction.

Briefly put, Be Strong and Keep It Simple.

22

I’ll throw in a couple of pennies… Tribulus works for me, but I recommend you use the brand made in Bulgaria. It’s almost five times more potent than US brands. I was taking two tabs twice a day and it raised my test to the point that I started getting mild acne. I dropped down to one tab twice a day and things are going fine.

Berardi reminds us that our body composition is a result of our lifestyle. It isn’t just training, it isn’t just diet, it isn’t just recovery? it’s everything you do and so it gets complicated fast when you start changing things around. I feel that diet is the foundation for everything, so get your nutrition dialed in first. You need to be in calorie surplus to grow and you need to have plenty of protein.

Keeping a food log helps. I don’t know about you, but for me, 200 calories makes a difference and so keeping a food log really helps. I use the numbers at nutritiondata.com to figure out any calories and/or nutrient profiles that I can’t get from food labels. I also weigh out and pre-portion every meal. Yeah it is a pain in the neck, but you have to take extraordinary measures to achieve extraordinary results.

Once you get your nutrition and recovery completely dialed in, it makes it easier to isolate training changes and monitor the results. My diet is so dialed in that I know when I change my training, any changes I see in my body are most likely a result of the changes in my training and not due to other factors.

It’s good to want to progress, but bodybuilding is as much about the journey as it is the destination. I’ll wager that right now you look and feel ten times better than the average guy and that is a good thing considering the poor state of fitness of the average guy.

You’re already a winner, dood! Don’t forget it!

23

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Think about how pathetic you would be if you didn’t lift.

Keep at it.[/quote]

Seriously!

I’m about your height and due to Piriformis Syndrome and a whiplash injury, I didn’t train for 3 years (except girly stuff). I dropped to an all time low of 156lbs.

24

[quote]bkmstr wrote:
Thanks to those who have replied so far with some great advice. Sometimes I try to go alone because of the challenge, but have to realize it’s OK to get a fresh look from the outside. So, I do appreciate the help. I will replying individually to some of the posts.

Just to clarify on the training routine, I currently train:

Each bodypart once a week.

Each exercise is 3 sets - one set 6-8 reps, then one set 4-5 reps, then one set 2-4 reps.

Not sure if those who thought I was overtraining thought I was training each bodypart 3-4 times a week.

Thanks[/quote]

I would switch to twice weekly bodypart hits. You might even want to try hitting each part three times a week.

You can often do the same weekly volume for a bodypart by splitting your sets up.

For instance, if you train a muscle group once a week with 9 to 12 sets, you could do the exact same volume with three weekly hits of 3 to 4 sets.

This is a good way to introduce more frequent workouts without increasing weekly volume.

I find there are only two main reasons people don’t gain (assuming nutrition is adequate), you either overtrain or adapt to the routine.

25

[quote]kroby wrote:
Crossfit?
Decrease your carbs?

That there is some really bad advice.

[/quote]

What’s the reasoning behind your statement kroby?

26

[quote]kroby wrote:
bkmstr wrote:
Keep a journal (I do for training), but not for food intake. Anyone know of a good website to track food intake?

[/quote]

www.fitday.com

It has helped me immensely once I started using it.

And it’s FREE

27

Not sure if your still checkin this thread but if you are. My advice would be to figure out why have you been training for 20 years. Have you enjoyed it at all? Do you not get a buzz when you lift.

If you are that close to quitting then forget about being paranoic about the numbers, think out a program/level/intensity that you enjoyed the most, follow it for a while and enjoy the process of what you are doing. Recover fullt from it. Do it again.

When you actually enjoy the “clank” again - then start to look at ‘progressing’

28

Try increasing your reps to 10-20 range. Many times certain people do not respond to low rep ranges with muscle growth. I have found that people that are mostly slow twitch muscle respond much better with a high reps range.

29

[quote]bkmstr wrote:
Thanks again to all who have replied, some great advice. It looks like there are some mistakes that everyone is pointing, such as,

Add a lot of good fats.

Get better or more sleep (only getting 7 hours) and even that is not good with a couple of pets moving around the house at night.

Change training routine, possible whole body workouts.

Keep a journal (I do for training), but not for food intake. Anyone know of a good website to track food intake?

Consider a supp to increase T levels.

I am going to re-visit Berardi’s Massive Eating again. I tried it once, but probably did not follow it close enough. It certainly will up the good fat intake.

Also, some have recommended full body workouts. I thought I’ve read that it is not good to train over 1 hour. If training the whole body, it seems like it would take well over an hour. Any comments on that?

[/quote]

You’ve gotten some great advice on lifting so I’ll dispense with any advice there.

Diet, that is another story. Forget JBs massive eating you’re old digestive system will probably not handle it real well, Mine didn’t I’m 48, get his Precision Nutrition much better diet information, for you.

On the fish oil end of things fuck the 9 to 12 grams a day, follow Poliquins suggestion, 32 to 45 grams a day, I presently use 48 grams a day, get the Carlson Fish oil in a blue labeled bottle from Norway, 12 grams per tblsp. You can thank me in a month!!

Also on your bloated full feeling and being a hard gainer, do a search on this site for HCL Therapy or just HCL, take the stomach acid test with some Betaine HCL, the test is outlined in the Poliquin article. Cheep supplement great effect, bet you aren’t putting out enough stomach acid to break down your food fully, get major gas? Undigested food in your stool? You need to address this problem!! Shurgart has a whole thread on HCL Diaries!

I think it was Thibs that talked about the myth behind bulking or the truth about bulking. Someone help me out with title will ya I’m old here!!

Anyway, what he says is that it is not necessary to eat huge amounts of calories above your baseline intake to gain muscle mass. Simply put you can’t force feed your body to grow.

Some 28 year old guy can eat 500 to 1000 calories more than his baseline and do OK, I can’t and I bet you can’t either. I feel like a stuffed bloated pig that has to take a shit all the time!!!

What you need to do is establish your baseline or maintenance intake (what you need to maintain your present weight and strength) great place to start is with 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. That is your baseline protein intake calorie wise. So say you are going to do a 40-30-30 intake, that’s 40% of your calories are from carbs, 30% protein and 30% from fats. So using a 200lb man as an example. Where carbs and proteins are 4.5 calories per gram. and fats are 9 calories per gram so a 200 lb. mans 40-30-30 intake intake would be:
266 grams carbs
200 grams protein
100 grams fats, and yes your fish oil intake is included in this!

This is roughly 3000 calories!

Once you establish your baseline by taking your rough estimate amount and adding or subtracting 100 calories, you will know where you sit.

From this point bump it up say 100, to 200 calories over your baseline to gain weight.

Keep up with the pre and post workout drinks, and I include those in my intake count. I also keep the post workout meals 1 hour after to around 5 grams of fat. This puts workout days in a situation where the rest of the meals after my workout are mostly fats and proteins as a lot of carbs and protein are consumed around the workout!

Thib’s has a great section on diet information and details on what I’ve said here, and if you read through the posts most of your questions will be answered.

You can do this, at your age, I AM, it’s slow but all the information that will make a difference in your approach is here on T-Nation!!!

This site is gift from the gods, everything you need to help you out and to gain muscle even at your age is here!!

You can do it!!!

30

It has to be fun. Vary your routine. Most important-be sure to use full range of motion with your squats. When the butt grows, the body grows.

31

[quote]bkmstr wrote:
My first post. I’ve certainly been impressed by all the ultra-successful posters on this board, but would appreciate some help on the following:

I’m 42 and have been lifting off and on for 20 years and am seriously considering giving up lifting since I cant seem to make any significant gains. I’m hoping to get some advice to try before I go down this road, since most everyone on this board seems to experience success. Stats are 6’ 2", 189 lbs, 34" waist. I’ve always been on the thin side (hardgainer) and also struggle with gains in fat around the waist.
[/quote]

Could I just ask how someone lifts weights for 20 years and makes progress that limited? 20 years?? It is nothing but obvious that you never actually pout much focus into this. You also never actually ate enough to gain much muscle in the first place if you still only 189lbs at your height.

That doesn’t make you a “hardgainer”. It makes you someone who never did what they needed to do to see progress.

I personally wouldn’t even claim two decades worth of lifting if I was half assing it to that degree. I’m surprised you didn’t throw in the towel about 19 years ago.

Everyone in this thread gave great advice…if it was to someone who was willing to work hard for what they want. In this case, however, addressing how someone goes two decades without EVER finding out they need to focus on one goal at a time hasn’t even been touched on.

32

I’m not going to give you any kinda pep talk, if you want to quit you’re gonna do it anyway.

Lemme just say that I’m your exact age and height and I work out in my basement. I am not anything special genetically, believe you me.

After a 13 year layoff of very heavy drinking, NO exercise and a deplorable diet I will pretty certainly have gained 20 pounds of muscle by the end of March which will be a year back. In my late 20’s I weighted under a 160 pounds, literally.

Right now I weigh 220 (give or take) at probably 15% bf and I’m growing measurably, but haven’t gotten any fatter in months. Trust me if can do it you can do it.

There are no tricks. Commitment and consistency. You should’ve gained more than this by accident in that amount of time. You just haven’t been serious at all as Professor X has already said. It’s not too late, but you have some decisions to make before any training advice will make any difference.

Step number one is to expunge the word hardgainer from your vocabulary at least as far as it refers to yourself. That mentality has spelled doom for more lifters than I care to think about. They’re defeated before they ever touch a piece of equipment.

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“I’d hate to have to go around thinking of health & shit like that.”

Keith Richards