Need Help Gaining Size

Bigger Stronger Leaner
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Alright, so here’s the deal.
I’ve been working out ever since January 2013 with a PT that I consider to be pretty good.

Back then I had a very annoying lower back issue with a bulging disc that somewhat limited a lot of my lifts, or just made me feel awful pain with mostly anything that wasn’t chest. So at first I only lifted 3x a week and it wasn’t exactly what a normal person would do as we had to take safety precautions.

So basically I didn’t squat, deadlift, didnt do many free weight exercises and such. My diet probably wasn’t good enough as I didn’t pay any attention to it. Later it changed to 3x-5x a week depending on the pain. Cardio has been pretty much left out of the question because of how it hurt.

While my back issue has been getting better with time, I’ve basically made a tremendous recovery starting from September 2014 thanks to physical therapy to the point that now I can do pretty much anything, some exercises still with a little pain but nothing crippling to the point I feel bad while doing it.

While I have gained quite a lot of strength during almost 2 years of working out, I feel my size gains have been minimal. And now I’m able to work without any restrictions caused by my lower back. Heck even when I couldn’t do everything, I sure as hell did my best with the stuff I could go without pain.
And like I said before my strength has always increased through it all.

I’ve tried changing my diet, I’ve gone to a doctor that had me eating 200g rice/pasta/sweet potatoes & 150g chicken breast x5 a day with a lot of supplements(Myoplex, Glycomaize, Glutamine, Casein, Creacore) yet I only felt myself getting fatter… I’ve already cut the carb part to 100g only and didn’t really feel any strength loss.

Basically all the TL; DR about lower back was me wondering if it’s because it took some time for me to train full strength that limited my size gains or not…

I’m at a loss here, I’m guessing my diet is still the issue since I keep getting strength but not size?
Currently I weight 72.5kg, 174cm tall.

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I’ll leave addressing the diet to someone else, but if your back is healthy again I’d say start squatting and deadlifting. Go lighter than you think you should in the beginning and focus on technique. I have been a 3 day/week lifter for a while. In the past couple months I have done a program that hits the main lifts once a week, then the same muscles later that week.

I do OHP on day 1, then log press on day 3, deadlift on day 2, then atlas stones, and carries on day 3. My program is geared towards strongman, but hitting everything twice a week has helped me make some solid strength gains, and some noticeable growth without changing my schedule.

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If it’s not working change it. Everybody is different but in my experience more is better. But more in a smarter way, not just randomly more. I would drop all of the supplements and switch to a diet that dramatically reduces carbs (20-40g) five or six days a week then have a carb up day. I have no intentional carbs five days a week; on Wednesday night I have about 50-100g carbs and on Sunday night for a few hours I have whatever I want but try to get about 500-800g carbs on Sundays.

I stopped doing three or four day splits because they were not working for me. I work out most everyday. Generally, I alternate an upper and lower split but I include a lagging body part which I work everyday (see Chad’s article posted today). I rotate heavy weight/low reps with lower weight/higher reps. As a side note, I have found that I started getting a little more out of higher weight/lower reps. I have recently discovered that pre-exhaustion/stretch tech. work well for me (see the thread on EyeDentist). So, I’ll do leg extensions or leg curls prior to squats (I also use the hack squat machine a lot). I’ll use the pullover machine with an underhand grip with limited range of motion (thanks EyeDentist) prior to bent (fully bent) rows. As I stated usually more is the answer, not less. But diet is number one if your after the best look. Best of luck!

Most on here know more than me, but find what works for you and don’t be afraid of overtraining.

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[quote]DDanny wrote:
While I have gained quite a lot of strength during almost 2 years of working out[/quote]
What are your best lifts on the basic exercises? Squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press, row (any variation), and pulldown. (I know you’ve probably only squatted/deadlifted the last few months, but at least list some of your other strong lifts).

That doctor is a fuckwit, please don’t go back there. A generic food plan and over-reliance on supplements is a guarantee for problems.

What, exactly, did you eat yesterday?

Could be diet, or could be your training plan. We have no details, so no way to really tell…

What does your training week look like? The days, exercises, sets, and reps.

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Clearing up your back issues is great and now that you are free of these issues you may see better progress. I am guessing you must have learned quite a bit about your body along the way.

Keep reading and researching on this site. Everything is here. Keep pushing yourself. It may be that you’ve been spinning your wheels a bit in the past two years but now you’re in a strong position to move forward.