Thanks man I take a look at those plans.
I just had a visit with my health coach and did an in body analysis. I am 9.1% bf
Yeah he brought up good points and you are probably right as well when saying I don’t need to go 4 times a week. Maybe I’ll try the 2 a day as that would be a lot easier for me anyways. With my work/family life.
Here again my untrained advice would be to give your favorite peptide/sarms website a visit and buy some Tamoxifen. 20mg/day for the next 6 weeks. If this does not work you really should see a doctor. You don’t have to tell them about your gear usage. Many guys get gyno when they are kids. With any luck your medical insurance will pay for the surgery. I had it, it is painless.
Depends on the method. Was it Dexa or the underwater method? Otherwise I’m highly skeptical of the results. Not trying to put you down, it’s just important to know your starting point.
Dexa. even if its off by a bit its consistent and I’ve been consistent in the 9% for 2 months. So whether that’s actually 12% or somthing that I couldn’t tell you exactly.
Honestly it’s not that bothersome I was more worried that maybe I had to high of estrogen or not enough test. But again thanks for the advice! But sounds like I should just do some bloodwork.
I don’t see anything wrong in what you posted. Decent starting dose, oral kickstart, actual PCT. looks almost exactly like my first cycle.
But that was 6 years ago for you. Is the issue you just can’t seem to put on weight? Eat more. I know you’re going to say “but I eat a really healthy diet of 3000 clean calories every day”. Yeah, eat more than that. If you’re losing weight on that diet then it’s not enough for you.
Get labs done if you want, can’t hurt to be MORE informed on what’s going on inside you, but nothing you’re describing now has anything to do with your cycle, IMO
As someone that had to have gyno surgery because his PCP did not know what he was doing when administering T gell with no experience. That is my background. I have since moved to the best HRT clinic in America and I have never regretted it.
Thanks man! Makes me feel quite a bit better after a few of you guys saying it wasn’t my cycle.
I’m going to go to 2 a week for a couple weeks and by then my health coach will be comfortable bumping me up to 4k calories. See what happens from there.
I’ve got some good and bad news for you:
Bad news is you are a complete novice. You don’t know how to train and eat properly.
Good news is you are a complete novice. You don’t know how to train and eat properly.
Now that you ruled out subpar testosterone levels, the only thing from keeping you from making gains in the weight room and on the scale is your diet and programming.
At 6’1’’ and 150 lbs you are completely emaciated. I can almost guarantee that you are not consuming the amount of calories you think you are consuming. Anyone besides an ultra marathon runner standing 6’1" at 150 lbs stating to be eating in excess of 4000 calories (3000 from whole foods and 1250 from a mass gainer) is either miscalculating his overall daily caloric intake or has an underlying medical condition which needs to be addressed asap.
You state to be 9% body fat but your pic shows little to no muscle development. Congratulations, you have a lot of room to grow if you’re willing to put in the work. Start by truly eating 3000 calories from whole foods and throw in a gallon of milk on top of that. A gallon of whole milk provides roughly: 2,400 calories, 127 grams (g) of fat,187 g of carbohydrates, 123 g of protein. It’s cheap and effective. See if that budges the scale upwards.
Although a fantastic program, doing 5/3/1 is not for you if you want to see optimal growth. It will make you grow if done properly but as I mentioned above you are an utter novice. You have room to grow even faster then by doing one of Wendler’s programs. Transition to 5/3/1 after you have exhausted your newbie gains.
Also, training for 2 days each week is not enough if you want to see optimal growth. You need to train 3 times a week, every other day, doing A/B/A programming, for example on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Here is what my program would look like if I were you:
A: Squat, bench press, deadlift
B: Squat, military press, power clean
Each lift is performed for three sets of 5 reps except for the deadlift which is done for one set of 5 reps.
On your first training session, determine your starting weight for each lift. Pick a weight which is challenging enough that you can feel the weight but good enough to perform with perfect form. For your first session just perform one set of each lift to determine your starting weights and call it a day. Be conservative with your starting lifts because for the next training session you will be adding 5lb on each lift and will continue to do so until you are no longer a novice. This type of programming should last anywhere between 3-6 months.
After the first three weeks learning the basic lifts feel free to add in minor assistance work like chin ups and the ‘mandatory’ barbell curls after your sessions. Whatever you add make sure it doesn’t interfere with your progress on the basic lifts outlined above.
For full details on further programming and to actually understand why and how you should be doing the above program, buy the book ‘Starting Strength’. It’s available everywhere.
To actually learn to perform the main lifts correctly, there are free videos on line. Even better, hire a starting strength coach, which brings me to my next point.
You have a health coach and a diet coach which you pay to receive terrible advice that is keeping you from progressing. Ditch the health and diet coaches and hire a strength coach. If you live in or near any major US city, my recommendation would be to visit a starting strength facility and a starting strength coach. You will pay top dollars for one of these but will end up saving money because you will know what to do on your own after a couple of consultations, training sessions and form improvements.
After that, it is all up to you and your determination. Set short-term, mid-term and long-term goals for yourself and see that you hit them regarding diet and training.
Wow lots of information here I appreciate it a lot!
I’ve tracked my calories diligently this passed week and have been hitting 3000 daily with foods. My job also consists of me walking, climbing ladders, getting up and down off the floor, and lifting moderate weight say 200lbs with another guy to move stuff around. I work 10-12 hours a day 5 days a week.
I’ve always had trouble putting on weight and now that I’m a little older maybe it’s just that much harder?
Not gonna like eating 3000 calories and not being able to eat wheat is extremely hard for me… nobody said it would be easy but also no one told me I’d wanna puke all day from the amount of food I’m consuming.
That being said it sounds like increasing my caloric intake is the main take away so I will try!
Again thank you, your advice is appreciated more than you know.
I don’t know if it’s been said or not here but get bloods, including thyroid. If it’s imbalanced you’ll never be able to overcome it without meds. Even if your one cycle didn’t mess your test up, it could still be off. You could be spinning your wheels until you get these things done. What you’re consuming and doing, I don’t see how you aren’t putting weight on. When I was a tad younger than you I found my thyroid was overactive. MD prescribed meds to slow it down which is a no-no, because it shuts down thyroid production. Now I’m on meds, but I was finally able to put weight on.
Hard painful lump, that’s breast tissue. It can alleviate or soften but it’ll be there. I wasn’t fat as a kid, I just had two hard lumps as a teen. As an adult, it looks like i carry more fat around my nipples.
A lot of advice around training you’ve already gotten. Your split wasn’t terrible. I don’t see where you said how long you’ve been training, but if you didn’t take off after your first cycle I wouldn’t consider you a newbie after six years. I saw you commented you’d been on your current regimen for a few months but I don’t assume you took off unless you’ve indicated, and I’m sorry if I glanced over that. Four day split is fine if you are absolutely religious with it, otherwise you need to shorten the split to fewer days and repeat. A lot of these guys are in for strength and building, and your four day split is bodybuilding. If thats closer to your goals, great.
So, do bloods. If they are fine, modify your calories and training. Good luck.
Yeah so I quit lifting around 5 years ago. And just started back a couple months ago. The first time around I had a personal trainer that taught me mma and weightlifting. He had me on a workout plan very similar to starting strength with a little bit of Wendel 531 in there. This worked great for me. Went from 135 to 175 in a year all lean muscle. Then I did my cycle got to 192lbs and around 15% bf if I remember correctly.
Felt amazing!
At this time I had just joined the marine Corps reserve infantry unit near me. between all the cardio and hiit workouts they forced on me, my weight slowly went back down to 170ish but still felt stronger than before at that weight. Eventually it just became to hard to do all this exercises and hard labor with the marines and have time to workouts on my own. So I stopped.
I was then medically discharged 3 years in due to a vision issue. So here I am out of the marines and yet again sick and tired of ppl saying I’m so skinny and so small, “that they can touch there fingers together around my arms” etc. I hate it and I’m ready to make a change. If that means eating more than I do now I will 100% give it my all to do so.
That being said thank you for you time and response! I’ll look into getting labs done here soon.
Edit: I forgot to mention that thyroid diseases do run in my family. Not 100% sure it’s hereditary or not although I’m assuming it probably is. My mom had to have radioactive thyroid treatment when I was younger. (Couldn’t be around her for 3 days or so because she was still radioactive) so checking my thyroid is somthing I always thought I should probably do. Thanks for reassuring me that thats the right thing to do!
Thanks for replying. I couldn’t put weight on either, I always competed in light weight classes. Fixing the thyroid helped, so did age. I couldn’t shake a six pack until I was almost 30. I can put weight on now that I’m older. Every variable similar. Check out that thyroid.
funny how attached i am to Jims stuff that this made my blood boil a bit and i had to remind myself that everyone is different and can like different stuff 
I love Jim and his programming, I used it and it works great. It puts on size on your frame and weight on the bar if done properly. I just think that Wendler’s programming is something one should do once they exhaust their ultra newb gains.
Wendler’s 5/3/1 and it’s variations is great for everyone in general looking to get stronger. It just plain works.
Starting strength is basically great for the completely untrained or detrained (like the OP) looking to pack on strength and add to the bar as quickly as possible. If you are not a novice and can’t progress linearly, than SS is not for you and it’s time to move on to something more advanced like Wendler.
No hard feelings.
I agree, SS just adds lbs to the bar every week. For a month or two max, tho…
The only method worth a damn IMO, is visual by someone who knows what is what with body fat. I’ve seen absolutely shredded guys (like 2 weeks out from a BBing stage) clock in at 10%, and guys who have no abs, or definition other places clock in at 10%.
I had an electronic measurement put me at 7%. I was closer to 15%.
This is true for some. Not for me, I am as @hankthetank89 says a fatty at heart. I do know some guys that have a huge amount of muscle, that eat McDonald’s every day. The one in particular I am thinking of eats it twice a day. I would be a super heavyweight by 2022 if I did that.
It may seem like a curse to always have to force food for gains, but the opposite isn’t all that great either. I’ll be cutting 9 months out of the year, hungry at night trying to sleep. Sure, when I bulk, I don’t even have to try, but I can’t do that for long or I’ll just end up very strong, but fat.
I think the programming advice given here is good. I personally, got a lot of muscle from getting stronger. I feel for most guys getting strong is the best path long term. You can refine your stuff once you are strong, but being able to do that same BBing workout with double the weight, and the same form is going to net results. For that you need to be strong.
One of my critiques of a lot of the strength programs, is that for many guys, a few areas are neglected. Vertical pulling (pull ups / chins) seem to not get much attention by many of the programs. These are a great lift for looking good. Rows are generally another. If you are not going to compete in powerlifting, I don’t see why these wouldn’t get the same attention as the bench. OHP is great too (that one is included in a lot of programs though).
Thats why i said it to him - he seems like the skinny guy, like me.
If i wanna bulk i have to just swallow highest caloric foods. I always feel a bit toxic, always slow, always looking preagnant. I had all my shoes made with zippers(costs more than the shoes) as i actually vomit in my mouth every time i try to tie shoes.
You always have to hold in farts. Like - ALWAYS. There is just unlimited amount of farts and you always have to hold some. In addition - you need to take a shit at least 3 times a day and its not even a normal shit, its almost diarrhea 24/7. I wake up and i still burp up yesterdays food.
But yes, i understand that the other side is also not great - my GF is a fatso in heart, so i see her struggling with NOT eating, while im next to her choking on my bigmacs.
For us fatties, if we get our training even a bit right, we put on muscle though (with fat usually). At least we have that going lol. When it comes to having a lean muscular physique, both are probably about equal in terms of difficulty. Just one has a tough time with the muscular part, and the other has a tough time with the lean part.
I think one of the traits one wants to have good genetics is being in the middle.
Uh I missed that! Thanks