I Feel I've Hit a Plateau, Help

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

This is the deal, I’ve been an athlete my whole life who has trained with weights. I’ve wrestled D1 and played rugby in college. For some odd reason I decided losing weight was better than putting on weight with weights in wrestling. Not too smart, I know. I still play rugby in the summers and I am trying to play at a high level.

I have recently realized I am a fucktard (about four months ago), and I have been working daily to gain muscle mass and lose that stubborn belly fat. About 4 months ago I weighed a soft 222. I have a big frame, I’m 6’4" and I now weigh 234. I’ve made strength improvements over the last three months but it has seemed like I have plateu’d, especially on gaining in the biceps. I’ve done a lot of reading and there is a ton of info on this website alone, let alone the web. I’ve read Vince Gironda about a year ago and I really liked the old school hard core approach of less rest between sets.

Basically, I have been using some of his principles in my workouts that fit what has worked for me in the past. My problems are many and I am looking for some guidance on things I have absolutely no knowledge on. That being; when should I do One Rep Maxes?, how often? (I haven’t attempted any yet), how do you determine what your max should be?, how do you put size on slow gaining biceps?. Please scrutinize the below training, you will not hurt my feelings.

Each workout begins with stretching the body, and then a ten minute run to break a good sweat. I have used a five day workout cycle that consists of:
DAY 1: Chest and Back
-Flat Dumbell Press supersetted with Dumbell bent over rows 4 sets of 8 reps with 60 seconds between sets.
-Pullovers 4 sets of 8 reps
-Dips 4 sets of 10
-Incline dumbell press supersetted with incline flyes, 3 sets of 8 reps.
-Machine flyes, 1 set dropdown until failure

Day 2: Shoulders and Lats:
-Dumbell shoulder press 4 sets of 8
-Barbell upright rows 3 sets of 8
-Shrugs 3 sets of 15-20 reps with a static hold on the last rep
-Lateral raises to the side and closing to the front 3 sets of 8 reps
-Arnold presses 3 sets of 8 reps
-Lat pull downs 3 sets of 8 reps (machine)

Day 3: Biceps,triceps and forearms:
-Standing Cambered barbell curls supersetted with dips, 4 sets of each 8 reps
-skull crushers 3 sets of 8 reps
-incline curls 3 sets of 8 reps
-tricep pushdowns (machine) 3 sets of 8
-standing reverse barbell curls 3 sets of 8
-standing alternating dumbell curls
-static plate hold (3 times)
-barbell wrist curls
-wrist roll (weight hanging off rope)
-pushups to failure

Day 4: Legs:
-Squats 4 sets of 8 reps
-Straight leg deadlifts 4 sets of 8 reps
-walking lunges 2 sets of 30 steps
-quad extensions 3 sets of 8
-hamstring curls 3 sets of 8
-calf raises 3 sets of 8

Day 5: Rest.

I am currently deployed and the food here is absolute shit. However, I have good friends who have sent out some whey “Detour” protein bars. So I have been eating half of one between meals. My diet is:

Breakfast: 4 fried eggs. 1 banana with peanut butter
Snack: 15g protein Detour bar
Lunch: Chicken breasts with large salad, italian dressing, turkey breast lunch meat, and rice if available
Snack: Banana
Dinner: Beef if possible, either pattie form, salibury steak, or ground beef (possibly camel, never know here) with a salad and potato, vegetable if available.
Supplements: Multi, Tribulus, Free Form Aminos and whey protein bar.
Workout at 930 at nite and after workout I eat a Detour whey protein bar. I only drink water. Some days I will cheat and have some orange juice. Thats pretty much it.

Am I taking in enough calories, protein to gain muscle, or just maintaining? I feel like I have hit a plateau as far as size gain, even though I’m only in month four.

My goals are these:

  1. To become explosive
  2. To get stronger
  3. Lose small love handle
  4. Gain muscle mass
  5. Maintain or improve speed

My current workout weights in each major lift are:
Dumbell press: 100 lb dumbells
Bent over rows: 100lb dumbell
Shoulder press: 70lb bumbell
Squat: 255
Straight leg Deadlift: 275
Barbell curls: 100lbs

Thats pretty much it. Within the week I will start running to include sprints, fartleks, and long distance. 4 times a week to prepare for the summer sevens season, which I should be back for.

Any criticism and guidance would be mmuch appreciated. Thanks!

Mick

2

Wayyyyy to much volume dude. I highly doubt with your diet and training your body has time to recover.

Thanks for serving our country.

3

How long have you been doing those same exercises with those sets and reps? If it’s been more than 6-8 weeks, then I would suggest changing your routine either by using a program from T-Nation or creating your own but with different parameters.

4

I’m not even going to begin to form an accurate guess of the calories you are eating, but when you talk about salads and half a detour bar, my radar goes off about not eating enough to support your size and volume.

You may or may not be willing and able to be “full” due to the way your day goes, but if you can’t eat enough to support you goals, you’ll probably have to drop some volume so that calories you eat don’t have so much work to do, if you know what I mean.

5

[quote]vroom wrote:
I’m not even going to begin to form an accurate guess of the calories you are eating, but when you talk about salads and half a detour bar, my radar goes off about not eating enough to support your size and volume.

You may or may not be willing and able to be “full” due to the way your day goes, but if you can’t eat enough to support you goals, you’ll probably have to drop some volume so that calories you eat don’t have so much work to do, if you know what I mean.[/quote]

I am definitely willing, I’m just not sure what I need to be taking in as far as “full”. I’m afraid of over eating, I really don’t want to go home overweight, and the variety of food over here is severly limited. The menu is out of my control as far as lunch and dinner. The only thing they serve that is consistent is icecream and cookies. Which I stay completely away from. They have milk here, its shitty but its better than nothing.

Should I be hitting more protein? As far as protein shakes or meats. I’m just not sure what amount and what times and such.

I have been doing the same basic workout for 3 months. Every two weeks I will do a variation of the workouts, whether its adding box squats, olympic lifts, or substituting declines with inclines, or cable crossovers with flyes. Please explain to me “way to much volume”. Is that too many sets, or too many exercises?

Thanks man,

I apreciate it any help you can give

6

[quote]shamrock8man wrote:

I am definitely willing, I’m just not sure what I need to be taking in as far as “full”. I’m afraid of over eating, I really don’t want to go home overweight
[/quote]

What does this mean exactly? To get bigger arms…you have to grow all over…which means increasing your body weight. If you aren’t willing to do that, how much progress could you possibly expect to make?

7

“too much volume” --what he means is that he thinks you are overtraining. Personally, I think if you feel good about your workouts and the weight feels light to you, I wouldn’t worry about the volume as much. You wrestled D1 and play rugby, you are probably in pretty good shape as far as work capacity goes.

I think the majority of trainees are out of shape in regards to their capacity for handling volume (agreeing with CT here), and I know that I am. I’ve been working on fixing that, and I think that if you feel good with your volume, you should keep it up there.

That being said, you’ll need back-off weeks or recovery weeks every 4-5 weeks of training, where you drop the volume every training session and let your body heal. My hunch is you’ll need recovery weeks more often if your diet is that restricted calorie wise. Obviously being deployed is going to make it difficult to gain significant muscle mass. My advice is to concentrate on strength and explosiveness for a while and come back to hypertrophy work a little later. Your diet may not be able to support gaining. Maybe concentrate on fat loss, since your diet is not as calorically dense as it needs to be. But if you can eat more than you are currently, please do.

Prof X is right, if you want bigger biceps you’ve got to grow all over, which means eating more calories than you use up. Hence no fat loss. PIck your main goal, then do what it takes to get there. Trying to do 4 different things at once will get you nowhere.

8

Oh yeah, and you need a crapload more back work.

Flat Dumbell Press supersetted with Dumbell bent over rows 4 sets of 8 reps with 60 seconds between sets.
-Pullovers 4 sets of 8 reps
-Dips 4 sets of 10
-Incline dumbell press supersetted with incline flyes, 3 sets of 8 reps.
-Machine flyes, 1 set dropdown until failure

bench, pullovers, dips, incline press, incline flyes, machine flyes–chest, chest, chest/tris, chest, chest, and chest.

And you do 1, count it 1, exercise for your back. Come on, you know better than that. Give me a break.

Chest/push reps–152 reps for chest + a drop set finisher

Back–32 reps.

There’s no excuse for that kind of imbalance.

9

[quote]E-man wrote:
Wayyyyy to much volume dude. I highly doubt with your diet and training your body has time to recover.

Thanks for serving our country.[/quote]

wtf do you mean? he only works out a bodypart once a week. He has been working out his whole life so how do you know if his body can’t handle a lot of volume. HIs body will adapt to high volume and if he has been training that way his whole life then he will need high volume in order to progress. I personally train with an amount of volume that i know people like you would call way to much volume yet i have never felt even a slight symptom of overreaching. Everyone is different. He probably just needs to eat more, and/or change up his program because he said he has had the same basic program for a couple of months.

10

As far as the volume of exercises I feel good, my body is recovering fast, at least I think so. I’m not feeling abnormal soreness after workouts and over the last 3 1/2 months I have been improving every week as far as weight and reps gain. I’m definately not overtraining, I feel like I’m undertraining compared to the workouts of the past, especially cardio wise.

You are definately right on the lopsidedness of my workouts, and at first it was intentional and now its just become routine. I wanted to really gain mass and definition in my chisticles. It has worked well, however I now think that I need some back work. Most definitely wide grip pull ups at a minimum.

In particular, What other back exercises should I be knocking out?

And can someone please cover the One Rep Max and how to do that whole workout session (finding your max)? To me it would feel like I was cheating myself if I went in the gym and did one or two reps of each exercise.

Also are straps for deadlifts ok? I have a bad wrist and as I go higher and higher in weight I’m having problems with it.

Thanks for the guidance, I was trying to do contradicting things, cutting and growing don’t mix now that I think about it. Definitely going to go with the growing. I’ll cut later. Thanks again.

Mick

11

WTF are chisticles?

On the more important issues you raised:

  1. working up to a 1 rep max. Estimate your 1 rep max to start with. Then use the following progression to work up to it:

4 reps @ 40% 1RM 10 secs rest
4 reps @ 40% 1RM 10 secs rest
2 reps @ 60% 1RM 30 secs rest
2 reps @ 75% 1RM 60 secs rest
1 rep @ 80% 1RM 120 secs rest
1 rep @ 85% 1RM 120 secs rest
1 rep @ 90% 1RM 180 secs rest
1 rep @ 95% 1RM 240 secs rest
1 rep @ 100% 1RM 240 secs rest

Then keep going if you think there is more in the tank.

Thanks to Charles Poliquin for this workup layout.

On the more general issue of gaining power, strength and mass, I suspect you are just expecting too much too soon. These things take years, not weeks or months. However, I do suggest that you do some serious reading on this site. One thing you need to do is vary your regime from time to time. You could follow a few cookie cutter programs from Thibaudeau, Waterbury or whoever, while reading up on how to design your own programs.

The other thing you need to do is know your own body. I started out with similar parameters to yours, and made only slow progress. It wasn’t until I switched to lower reps with more sets that I started to really achieve something. So it is worth experimenting with different rep ranges to learn how your body responds.

Finally, for more back work you can do different types of rows, shrugs and deadlifts as well as pullups. Check out the authors I mentioned above.

12

Sharetrader made a good post in regards to working up to your 1RM. I would add that each has a different way of working up, but this is a really good way to do it. The key point is to avoid getting too much volume that will drain your system before you get to the heavy weights, while at the same time taking small enough leaps between training weights that your system feels warmed-up to the work load. I would not suggest any smaller jumps than 5%, or any larger than 10%, those being the extreme ends. Poliquin’s work-up table is a great method to use. Rest intervals are also individual, as some people need longer or shorter breaks. Typically, if you’ve done a lot of hypertrophy work or conditioning work, you’ll feel fresh much sooner than your body actually becomes fresh for your next set, so start with the rest intervals as written and tweak from there. CNS takes a longer time to recharge than muscle’s energy stores, even if you feel ready.

Last thing, I’d personally say take a conservative estimate of your max to start with, then keep going with singles at small jumps if you get to your estimate and feel fresh. Try not to end on a failed attempt. Instead, use that last completed weight as your new max estimate for the next time you work up, and try to beat it by 5-10 lbs. If that PR feels good keep going, but you don’t need to smash a record to make progress, just a few pounds better is ok. Better is better.

Throw some more rows in there for your back, drop one or 2 chest/push motions.

13

Sharetrader and Aragon,

Thanks for setting me up for success. I will definitely institute the Poliquin ORM method. My body always needs a good warm up before I can go heavy.

How often should I be doing ORM? Once a month? Or once every 45 days?

I will look into the different authors here on T-Nation for some different exercises and routines as recommended. What are both of your thoughts on 5 sets of 5?

Do either of you know anything about Olympic Lifts? I have been experimenting and getting the form down. I would like to implement these into my workouts, specifically Cleans. Should I do these on a seperate day or include this into my legs day?

I really appreciate the knowledge that you both have bestowed on me already, and I will take your advice and make changes to improve. Thanks again.

14

How often you work up to a 1RM depends a lot on what you are lifting for, and why you are working up to a max.

Some powerlifters work up to a max in a squat variation and a bench variation every week, but usually change the variation after a couple of weeks. For example, you might do high box squats and two board press for a couple of weeks, then change to good mornings and four board press.

Some Olympic lifters work up to a “training max” - the most they can lift on the day without getting psyched up - every day, then use that max to work out what weights to lift for the rest of that training session.

For ordinary mortals it is probably more appropriate to work up to a max once a month or so. However, in between you should aim to do quite a few lifts in the 90%+ range so you get used to handling heavy weights. At any one session for a particular lift you shouldn’t do more than 7 reps in this range. Keeping it at 3-6 is probably good.

5X5 is a classic basic strength building format. The original guru of this method was Bill Starr, more recently it has been taken up by the likes of Glen Pendleton and Mark Rippetoe. If you want to find out more, go to Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

I am no expert on Olympic lifts. I would suggest that if you want to do cleans, stick to hang power cleans (easiest to master) and do them before deadlifts.

BTW, you still haven’t told me what chisticles are!

15

Share-
Your words have brought clarity to the ORM and the frequency of the workout. Thank you. I will definitely read into the link that you posted.

Chesticles are just pectorals. Just a joke between friends of mine, a combination of testicles and chest= chesticles.

Cheers!