You look great! I think delts, lats and arms would be the areas I’d want to add size most. You’re very lean so you’re in a great spot to start a bulk and hit some more dedicated isolation work, probably crank up the intensity a bit on your work sets for those body parts. Maybe start doing some cluster sets and/or drop sets on an exercise machine during each workout for your lagging body parts. I’d recommend specializing on just two body parts at a time for adding increased volume and frequency to, so maybe back and biceps during one 6 week block, and shoulders and triceps during another 6 week block. During that time, your other body parts are at maintenance volume.
this isn’t 14.5%. it’s sub 10. I’d guess 8%.
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Just going off the body fat % my smart scale says lol. I know they aren’t the end all, be all.
Does “Physique” mean you don’t need legs?
The clothing over your legs make them look extremely lacking in size. I would think that even if they aren’t large, they would have some nice lines.
Overall, IMO, you have very good body composition, such that you will always look good.
Now: what I see that needs work where you can.
- Your torso does not have the much desired “V” taper. The solution is to add more muscle. (This is always the cure to improve symmetry problems, too.)
- It looks like you have long limbs. This is a huge challenge. Same here, more muscle.
- You haven’t shown your back, but there might be some opportunities to improve your “V” taper with more muscle. Remember much of your traps get work training for back thickness (front-to-back pulls.)
You have nice leanness in your back.
I see your traps size concern. They look disproportionately small in both poses. Do you do any back thickness exercises? Those are heavy compound front-to-back pulls. You need more overall thickness. You have good detail, but more muscle mass throughout would be very helpful.
Can you do a back lat spread? Either the lat spread pose or “relaxed” pose of your back while spreading your lats. I want to see if you have any “V” taper, and how your lats contribute to the “V” taper.
I do seated high rows, close grip seated rows, face pulls, single arm lat pull downs, close grip lat pull downs all very regularly.
I’ve started heavy deadlifts with trap bar and heavy hang cleans recently to help with traps. Also adding trap work two other days of the week.
I’ll work on lat pics for you tonight.
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Stay focused that you don’t over train. You should never over stimulate what you cannot recover before the next stimulation.
I would recommend doing heavy deadlifts only once a week. I never did them on leg day. I liked them on back day. For example I did heavy bent over barbell rows followed by two sets of 10 reps with a heavy deadlift weight. Then do some detail work. My back workouts targeted back thickness, more that lat width. This is up to your choice. You could alternate 8 week periods of specialization (between width and thickness.)
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Thanks. I do heavy deadlifts on Thursday with my back day. Back day consists of single arm lay pulldowns, seated wide rows, reverse fly (upper back focused), face pulls. Then, Saturday double arm lay pulldowns, narrow grip seated rows, bent over rows, heavy hang cleans. Here’s the pics. Take what you can from them. I’m bad at this pose lol
You need a good bit a practice to get to just being “bad” at the back lat spread. You might be the worst I have seen, especially from someone with a nice physique.
Let’s try this. Have you seen guys walking around the gym like they have a grapefruit under each arm? They are doing a “lat spread” while they are walking. I know, it looks ridiculous. Can you do that with a pic?
The secret to a good lat spread is having muscular control of your scapula. You can swing them out for a lat spread (both front and back), and you can swing them together and up for a most muscular pose. In your case, I would guess, it will take some time to grasp the ability and coordination to control your scapula.
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My initial thought is that your back is getting too much damage to recover with a single day off between Thursday and Saturday, especially if seated wide rows, bent over rows, and narrow grip seated rows are heavy.
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Makes sense. Here’s my split:
Monday-arms
Tuesday-legs
Wednesday-off
Thursday-chest and back
Friday-arms cluster sets
Saturday-Legs, chest & back
I just really like having the Wednesday off, but with your comments doing back on Wednesday and have Thursday off instead may benefit. I just am torn lol.
In my 40’s I had a 4 day split with body parts. I did the heaviest lifts early in the week after a Sunday rest day. I consider the bench press, bent over rows, deadlift, and squats, all with a barbell, my heavy compound lifts.
My routine looked like:
- Monday: Back and Chest (which heavy lifts were Bent Over Rows, Deadlift, and Bench Press.) Assistance exercises were included here for back and chest.
- Tuesday: off
- Wednesday: Legs (Squats and Leg Presses were heavy) Assistance leg exercises and Abs were done on Leg day.
- Thursday: off
- Friday: Chest and Biceps (lighter weights on chest looking for a pec pump.) Heavy curls along with some fairly heavy curl grip pulldowns followed by a biceps pump.
- Saturday: Shoulders and Triceps (would include a fairly heavy overhead press and cleans or Parrillo seated strap face pulls.) Heavy shrugs and then a deltoid pump for all three heads. Then Triceps looking for a pump
- Sunday: off
How has this split been working for you?
Or to put it a different way, how long have you been following it? And how much muscle mass have you gained?
You’ve 8 pack abs, striated pecs and a christmas tree lower back. All of that is Awesome. Great work! Great discipline, basically great everything.
But if you’ve been following this split for awhile and you’ve only goten leaner, without adding muscle mass, it may be time for a change.
Like Nomad is saying, it’s totally possible you’re doing so much that it’s stopping you from gaining size.
I have been doing this split for 7 years, but honestly, I have only vamped up the intensity of my workouts since last July. I simply wasn’t working hard enough. Almost just going through the motions.
Some too, I am consistently 600-700 calories under my maintenance goals after training. My goal is to hit 2920 to maintain, plus exercise and I’m at the 600-700 short. I do hit my protein gram goal every day of 1.2 x body weight goal.
I may be afraid to eat at an excess in fear of gaining fat, maybe?
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Gaining some fat is not a bad thing. It assures you that you are in an anabolic state. Just keep your body fat percentage between 12 and 15% and you will be well within reach of achieving the nice body composition that you currently enjoy.
If I were to guess, about 10 additional pounds should get you into an anabolic condition.
How much did you weigh 7 years ago when you started?
How much did weigh 7 months ago when you started pushing harder?
7 years ago probably 10 lbs lighter.
About the same now as I was 7 months ago. Noticed much more definition, though.
How much above my maintenance calories do you suggest going?
I never counted calories. I worked at an electric power generation plant in the controls and instrumentation department. All the controls worked by a feedback system. I used the feedback system for all my competitions.
The metrics I used were my body weight, my strength in an upper body pressing movement, and the mirror.
If I were you I would be eating clean, which it seem to me that you must be doing that. I liked to keep my protein at 1.5 times my body weight and some fat that comes with eating lean meat and whole eggs, plus about a tablespoon of essential fatty acids. I used carbohydrates to adjust my body weight, strength, and appearance (mirror).
If I guess you could gain 10 pounds and be in a good position to be anabolic, I would adopt a feedback system that would allow my weight to ascend an additional 10 pounds, while getting stronger and keep a nice muscular look.
By muscular look I mean you want to always see major muscle group separation. As, your deltoids show distinct delineation from your biceps and triceps, which also show delineation from each other. You should lose most of your striations, but only about a couple pounds more after the striations fade. I had lean quads, and could see the long lines in my quads at my greatest training body weight.
Now, to start from your current clean diet, add what would amount to a baked potato amount of additional carbohydrates. Watch the scale after a week to see if the scale moved. Look the next week. Did the scale move the same amount (approximately)? Without AAS you cannot expect to gain more than 1 pound of muscle per week, but that is about the rate you would like. You will get to 10 additional pounds in 10 weeks. This is plenty fast. If one baked potato equivalent amount of carbohydrates isn’t moving the scale try two.
At the same time you are watching the scale, monitor an exercise or two, or three to see if you are getting stronger. You should expect to be gaining some strength. And also keep an eye on the mirror. You want to like what you are seeing.
Now I should say that I didn’t use the feedback system to gain weight. I competed in about three contests every year. I used the feedback system to lose fat for a meet. Here the feedback system is essential to preserve as much muscle as possible, while dropping bodyfat. After the contest I just let my body weight drift back to where it was before I started to train for the next contest. At these heavier body weights I tried to add more muscle. I was eating maintenance calories, but just have no idea how many calories it was. I ate the same macros every week, so I was keeping anabolic and not gaining more fat than I could lose in 8 weeks.
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