[quote]jt339 wrote:
I’m not so sure it’s the diet. I don’t have a strict one but it’s basically like this
Egg beaters
Couple pieces of bacon
Big bowl of oatmeal with some granola and raisins
Bagel from local bakery (300 calories, 5g fat, looked it up)
I would guess this to be around 1200 calories
Whatever meat is served at the hospital. Usually baked cod, tilapia, or chicken. I load up on it.
Handful of whatever veggies and some kind of rice ( we get some rice or pasta every day)
Guessing around 1000 calories, 50-100g protein a day depending on what’s served. I actually brought in my scale one day to weigh the tilapia and chicken lol. Now I just eyeball it.
Dinner is usually cheap steak in olive oil and some pasta and milk. Around 1000 calories
Greek yogurt plain, 40g protein. If this is post workout then I have some light ice cream or pasta.
All around it’s 3k-3.5k and I’m 205 today when I started at 198, 10 weeks into the bulk.[/quote]
If you are actually having problems with such a small volume routuine I suggest actually figuring out what you are eating you will be surprised. ALmost everyone who has never striclty counted is quite surprised at what it takes to get to “high calories”
Example i am eating 3450 cals. And a rough macro breakdown ( i am not gonna go look at my macro counter now) is 450c 270p and 55f or somewhere near. The food i eat. 1kg of cooked rice. Yes KG. 1.5lbs of chicken. 1/2 container of Cottage cheese. 1tbl spoon pb. 1/3 cup coconut milk. And 30g of carb intra workout. 60g of carb added to my Cottage cheese. 3 cups of cereal with 2 scoops protein powder pwo. I missed a couple minor things but that is the volume needed to hit 3450 for me.[/quote]
Well I’m gaining a little over half a pound a week so I thought I was doing alright.
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But losing strength only doing the routine you posted…something doesnt add up.
I am interested in the time frame of your regression. How long have you persisted before having to dial it back?
Honestly, unless you have some kind of actual medical condition or something hormonally going on, I think you may just need to accept that your body is lying to you and keep doing as much as you want. Training work capacity is a thing just like training strength or endurance or whatever. You might just need to ignore everything for a couple weeks and force your body to adapt.
[quote]csulli wrote:
I am interested in the time frame of your regression. How long have you persisted before having to dial it back?
Honestly, unless you have some kind of actual medical condition or something hormonally going on, I think you may just need to accept that your body is lying to you and keep doing as much as you want. Training work capacity is a thing just like training strength or endurance or whatever. You might just need to ignore everything for a couple weeks and force your body to adapt.[/quote]
Timeline is usually 4-8 weeks, but I’ve done it in as little as 2.5 when I was going very low volume, high frequency, high intensity. Made great strength gains and managed to keep most of it, but I literally couldn’t do 80% of that weight for even the same reps for almost two fucking weeks.
Even with such a dramatic strength drop off and feeling like shit? Hormones are in check. I was a jackass about five years ago and ran hdrol for six weeks waaaaaay before I was ready for it and my test levels just never came back. 8 weeks with test in the 50s is god damn terrible. Now I’m on 100mg cyp a week for life. May try and come off again in the future, but that’s another discussion.
As far as the under eating comment goes, you need to educate yourself more. At my level, more than two pounds a month and you’re gonna start getting fat. In my experience this has been true.
Even with such a dramatic strength drop off and feeling like shit? Hormones are in check. I was a jackass about five years ago and ran hdrol for six weeks waaaaaay before I was ready for it and my test levels just never came back. 8 weeks with test in the 50s is god damn terrible. Now I’m on 100mg cyp a week for life. May try and come off again in the future, but that’s another discussion.
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This is extremely relevant information that you probably should have mentioned in your initial post. When was the last time you had labs done and what did you have tested? Might be worth posting to the T-replacement forums to at least rule out things like elevated E2 or SHBG.
My levels have been stable for quite some time. I’ve had the gauntlet of tests run on me. I’m also a few months from receiving my medical doctorate and have had some endo training so my family doc and I look at my bloodwork together. I sit right around 700.
Everything else is normal other than obviously fsh and lh. Was last tested three months ago. Unstable values have never been an issue since moving to weekly injections years ago which is why I didn’t feel it necessary to bring up. Sex drive is normally sky high and I still get raging boners haha. A little too high for my girlfriend, but even when I feel like this I still have a good sex drive and perform well.
To be clear, this has been happening to me long before the trt, before I was serious about training. Even back in high school, but when I’d burn out is get frustrated at not lift for quite awhile. That was about 8-10 years ago.
Okay, assuming that your hormones are in check, these are the things that I would consider as possible causes of your problem and/or areas to address.
Diet. You frequently use words like “about,” “approximately,” “basically,” and “I think” to describe your diet. Instead of guessing and estimating, weigh and measure everything you eat for an entire week to see what your ACTUAL calories and macros are. Tracking is easy to do now that there are tons of apps like MyFitnessPal available. Just think about it: if each of your meals is only 100 calories off from your estimation, that means you could be getting in 400 fewer calories each day and 2800 fewer calories each week than you think you are. This is significant. Even if you are slowly gaining weight, your calories may be insufficient to recover at the level that you need/ want to.
Training. Even if its not terrible, your training seems to lack structure and you admit to changing variables up frequently. It might just be the case that at this point in the game (after 6 years of training) you need to start following some form of periodized program. There are many to choose from on this site and elsewhere. 5/3/1 has several 2 days per week templates that people have been successful with.
Lifestyle. You just mentioned that you’re in the final months of a PhD program. I imagine that this is a very stressful time in your life, and as such your ability to recover from training may be inhibited. Are you sleeping 8 hours a night? Taking “down time” to unwind each day? If not, those are things to look into. In either case, it might just be true that training has to take a back seat for now as you finish up with your PhD. Find a way to make some progress with your twice weekly training sessions and understand that when your life becomes less stressful you may be able to push things a bit harder in the weight room.
Genetics. This might not be a popular opinion, but I find it hard to believe that everyone has the same genetic capacity to recover and adapt to training. Even among high-level athletes there are guys who do better training 6 days a week and others who thrive with only 3 weekly training sessions. IF you get everything else dialed in and you find that you still feel shitty with higher training volumes, maybe you just need to accept that you’re personally better off with 2-3 weekly training sessions. If thats how you’re able to get results, then who really cares? Do what works for you and your body and don’t worry so much about what other people are able to do.
Personally, in addition to addressing the diet and recovery issues covered above, this is what I would do if I were in your position: Switch to a proven twice a week training program, and then work on slowly building up my work capacity by (1) adding in a third session of low-stress activities like sled drags, bodyweight movements, light conditioning, etc and/ or (2) attempting a high frequency training method like Chad Waterbury’s PLP 60-day challenge. Eventually you may be able to add a 3rd and possible 4th day to your routine, or you might discover that two intelligently programmed sessions and some daily pushups, pull-ups, and lunges are all you need to see results.
I am gaining 2lbs a month so I am hitting the right amount I need to be hitting. I tend to underestimate protein when I’m not sure just to be safe.
Agree with you here. I think less heavy and hard sets is probably a good idea.
I will actually be a physician and will not be obtaining the PhD degree, however, the last year of medical school is by far the lightest of all years. I’m pretty stress free at work and stress free by nature.
At this point, I really can’t argue with you. I can’t find anything logical at this point that would better explain this. I’m thinking I just don’t tolerate as many heavy sets as I’m doing. Maybe reducing to one all out set per exercise and that’s it. This is my instinct as I’ve done ok on a 3 day routine in the past with low volume and high intensity.
[quote]jt339 wrote:
So it seems like any routine I do that has some volume (10-12 sets per muscle or so) I end up overtraining and regressing. That’s not even a lot of volume. I sleep 7-8 hours a night and have zero problems gaining weight. I tend to overbulk and have to lose some fat because I start looking chunky. How the hell do I avoid this because I am damn frustrated. Haven’t made much progress in my upper body in a long time.
Don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but I’ve also noticed after one all out set for a muscle like bench for chest, my strength drops dramatically for the rest of the workout. Seems like most guys can do many sets on big lifts while keeping their strength somewhat respectable, but I’m spent after a couple hard sets on a muscle.[/quote]
Have you tried Plazma?
Quoting points that, based on your response, I feel like you may have overlooked. Additionally, on the subject of weight gain: it is possible to shift your macronutrient ratio in such a way that you lose weight on higher calories, are able to eat more calories and maintain the same rate of weight gain, or shift where your weight gain comes from (muscle or fat) at the same calorie level. If you care about performance (which is what this post is about, I thought), stop thinking that gaining weight = your diet is not an issue. If your only goal is to gain weight at the rate that you are, then sure, you’re doing that so your diet must be good. However if that were the case I don’t think you would have started this thread asking for help.
[quote]TrevorLPT wrote:
Even if you are slowly gaining weight, your calories may be insufficient to recover at the level that you need/ want to.
It might just be the case that at this point in the game (after 6 years of training) you need to start following some form of periodized program.
Are you sleeping 8 hours a night? Taking “down time” to unwind each day? If not, those are things to look into.
[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
I do 30-60 work sets a week for large muscle groups. Been progressing and no overtraining. You aren’t overtraining on such a tiny amount of training. [/quote]
Great that you can do that. I can’t. How do you explain every single one of my lifts dropping like this then? I feel exhausted all day, no appetite, no motivation, yet I am not sick for a week or more.
Just now I went to do deads. One week ago when I started to feel like shit, but still performed decent, I got 335x10. Today, 315x3 and that was it.[/quote]
Maybe you have mono.
I am gaining 2lbs a month so I am hitting the right amount I need to be hitting. I tend to underestimate protein when I’m not sure just to be safe.
Agree with you here. I think less heavy and hard sets is probably a good idea.
I will actually be a physician and will not be obtaining the PhD degree, however, the last year of medical school is by far the lightest of all years. I’m pretty stress free at work and stress free by nature.
At this point, I really can’t argue with you. I can’t find anything logical at this point that would better explain this. I’m thinking I just don’t tolerate as many heavy sets as I’m doing. Maybe reducing to one all out set per exercise and that’s it. This is my instinct as I’ve done ok on a 3 day routine in the past with low volume and high intensity. [/quote]
Haven’t tried Plazma. I’m a bit hesitant to try a supplement as I usually try and stay away from them, but it’s something to consider.
Good point Trevor. Up the protein and maybe drop carbs just a tad?
Well spar based on what I’ve said I can certainly see why you might think that, but I don’t have any other symptoms other than fatigue, loss of strength, appetite and motivation. No fevers, sore throat or swollen lymph nodes.
Nice Ryan! Going into internal medicine and then heme/onc. Going through the gauntlet of interviews right now. Save some cash!
I have experimented with different training splits. I like to train 6 times a week, and design my programs with this as a given. I have had the experience that when I use a traditional bb type split where I train a body-part once a week, that I can push as hard as I want and I have plenty of time to recover.
However, my experience with a high frequency program, such as an upper lower split 3x a week will result in my regressing if I overdo the volume; I have good work capacity, so this is easy to do. As with you, under-eating is not an issue as putting on fat is the default. I am 38 and my total test is around 760 ng/dl.
To all the folks stating that there is no such thing as over-training, just under-eating, I would ask if you have personally tried high frequency training with high volume. My suggestion, based only on my experience, is to use a low frequency traditional bb type split and see if you recover. Good luck.
[quote]aeyogi wrote:
I have experimented with different training splits. I like to train 6 times a week, and design my programs with this as a given. I have had the experience that when I use a traditional bb type split where I train a body-part once a week, that I can push as hard as I want and I have plenty of time to recover.
However, my experience with a high frequency program, such as an upper lower split 3x a week will result in my regressing if I overdo the volume; I have good work capacity, so this is easy to do. As with you, under-eating is not an issue as putting on fat is the default. I am 38 and my total test is around 760 ng/dl.
To all the folks stating that there is no such thing as over-training, just under-eating, I would ask if you have personally tried high frequency training with high volume. My suggestion, based only on my experience, is to use a low frequency traditional bb type split and see if you recover. Good luck.[/quote]
Yes. I have. Along with a high volume of cardio. I may have gotten there but this was with 3x a week frequency 2x a day training many days with a good volume of cardio. Never regressed just stopped progressing.