Been lifting seriously for only 1 and a half months while trying to lose fat, eating 1500 calories a day 150g of protein. I’ve been doing ppl 6 days a week. I’ve noticed that for the last 2 weeks I’ve not been able to add any reps to my compound lifts. I never expected to get stronger every single workout but is it normal to plateau while lifting pretty light weight?
I have gained a tiny bit of size, my arms are firmer and have more definition. My best guess is that I’ve kind of made “noob gains” but now that my calories are too low to properly grow it’ll either happen very very slowly or I’ll just stay as I am.
If that is the case would I be better doing ppl 3 times a week, working each muscle group once and giving them the full week to recover? I’ve not regressed as far as I can tell strength wise and I’m never sore by the time I train the same muscle group for the second time that week.
You are 6’2, 225 lbs, eating 1500 calories and training 6 days a week.
You do not see why you are not gaining size or strength?
Lowering training frequency will not change that. You need to eat to grow.
That’s fine, just wanted to double check more in terms of time it’s taken to plateau more than why it’s plateaued if that makes sense. I’ve no issue with not gaining strength and size at the moment, I want to prioritise fat loss, I’m lifting to keep whatever muscle I do have, I don’t feel comfortable physically if that makes sense.
So to the frequency question, is there no point in me training each group twice a week if I’m only going to maintain what I have?
I believe that kind of frequency is detrimental for your current calories and experience, not just pointless.
It’s not typically my cup of tea, but Paul Carter had some low volume, 3-day routines on here I think would fit the bill
Perfect, cheers
If PPL isn’t your routine of choice what’s your recommendation?
I am of the opinion that your current level of recovery should dictate what will be the most appropriate training split you use. PPL 6 days a week sounds great in theory when you write it out on a sheet of paper but if you can’t properly recover from the previous day or week of training you are just digging a hole for yourself.
This point is really frustrating when you actually look at it objectively, because I like you , can just push myself to do hard and stupid things but all that ends up happening is you end up spinning your wheels for a few months or worse. Grinding through difficult workout after workout with the hope of getting stronger, but really getting no where because you didn’t consider the recovery aspect of your training. Which seems to really be the other 50% that we don’t want to think about because it involves going to bed on time, eating properly, doing cardio, etc…
It seems to me from experience that you can greatly affect your ability to more appropriately recover by adding in food and sleeping more. However it seems adding in calories is exactly what you are looking to avoid at the moment. I think coping with the reality that although you CAN do 6 days of PPL each week while in a calorie deficit is possible for you through sheer will power (this is great btw)… is it actually producing the physical results that you are expecting (getting stronger and losing fat)??
If it is not doing what you intend is it worthwhile to consider an alternative (pull back on training frequency, increase calories, sleep more, etc)?
Gaining strength works for a while without muscle gain, but eventually you need to add new tissue to get stronger. Adding new muscle tissue follows the laws of physics such as “conservation of mass”. You can’t build something out of nothing. To do it properly you will need to increase (not decrease) calorie intake. But it can make you fatter too if you are not careful, as I am sure you have noticed.
Nothing is free in this game and the best advice I can give is to try and look at your situation objectively, listen to what your body and experience is telling you, make adjustments, and keep trying things out. You may eventually find that sweet spot we are all searching for of losing fat, gaining muscle, and getting stronger all at once. But more than likely you will need to focus on each of these three goals in phases and separately throughout the year.
In short, if you are in a calorie deficit and trying to lose weight (fat) then I would not even consider worrying about strength plateauing for the time being. It seems this should actually be expected.
This is kind of what I’ve what been thinking. As far as I can tell I’ve not regressed on 6 days a week so in theory I’m not overtraining ( If I’ve understood it correctly).
Losing fat is my main goal atm, above gaining muscle. It’s not comfortable in the heat and then there’s the health concerns. I’m more than happy to keep working out without making much if anything progress if it keeps what I have and I don’t regress. I’d much rather sacrifice strength and size gains if it’ll make the fat loss work better.
Seems like doing it the extra 3 days isn’t really going to help much, it might be more productive to spend that time doing some cardio or something
Coming to similar conclusions with my own training. Need more cardio but damn if I don’t hate that reality.
Best of luck, it sounds like you are on the right path of thinking.
Yea I don’t like cardio. I’m not a fan of the heat so counter intuitively I tend to get out more when it’s cold.
Cheers, I’ll drop it back to 3 times a week for a few weeks and see if there’s any change.
I don’t have an issue with the split, I just haven’t really fallen in love with the low-volume for every movement approach he likes. There’s no question it works, it’s just not my personal preference most of the time.
I had a quick look and it seemed low, 2 sets I think, but the only experience I have is 3 months of starting strength maybe 8 years ago. It probably isn’t optimal but I do 2 compounds and 1 isolation for group, never below 3 sets and if I feel good up to 5 sets.
So push would be gymnastic ring push ups for 3 sets up to 15 reps, once I’ve hit 15 easily I’ve made it harder (I don’t have a rack atm so I’d rather not bench and I’m relatively weak for my body weight so I can adjust the height of the rings to make it harder/easier), then overhead press 3 sets same idea with the reps, then tricep push downs with a rope, 3 sets. Takes about 45min or so
I wouldn’t stress about “optimal” too much. What does your set-up look like in terms of equipment. I could certainly give my recommendations for a push day, if you’re interested.
By the way, I agree completely with the conversation you and @mechinos had. If you’re not recovering, that’s what you have to address. Your goal is losing fat, so you just need to not lose strength (vs. run yourself into the ground); if you haven’t been lifting, you should still be gaining strength - that’s a great thing. And, worst of all, cardio seems pretty magic for most of us!
I’ve got gymnastic rings, a bench, 3 kettlebells 12kg, 16kg, 20kg. A ez curl bar and a normal barbell, both those cheap York things, not Olympic, and 60kg of weight. My thinking behind the exercise selection was if I choose a body weight exercise as the main movement there should be improvement in reps as my weight decreases. Using the same thinking for the pull day, doing body weight rows with the rings as the main movement.
Yea I’m going to just do ppl 3 days a week for a couple of weeks, providing my numbers don’t decrease or anything I’ll stick with that.
In regards to cardio I might get a heavy bag. I did Thai boxing for a little bit a LONG time ago and hitting stuff is more fun than most cardio. Bas rutten has a couple of heavy bag routines online, those a couple of days a week to start can’t hurt
I’d make a minor change to your Push Day, but you don’t have to go with anything I say. It’s all preference.
- Floor Press (since you don’t have a rack): 4x6. Folks can disagree, but I think this can be a great exercise for chest if you focus on the contraction.
- Superset ring flyes with pushups: 3 x 8-12. Come closer to failure here. You killed the contraction above, now let’s hit the stretch. If you prefer progressing on pushups the way you have, just do that.
- OHP: 3 x 8. Clean the first rep of every set, and rep away.
- Superset ring Y raises (rear delts) with a single-arm KB side raise: 3 x whatever you get
- Superset skullcrushers (you mentioned doing pressdowns earlier, but I don’t see that in your setup; if you can, I prefer those) with close-grip pushups off the bench: 3 x 12-15, coming close to failure on everything.
Personal preference, but I do think you want some external load. All that said, there’s some absolutely jacked dudes on here that focus mostly on ring and bodyweight progressions, so it’s certainly viable. If it floats your boat, ignore everything I wrote and keep doing what you’re doing!
Cheers I’ll try it out :).
Oh yea I forgot to put I made a pull down machine with a rack mounted pull down pulley attached to a beam in the garage
Btw unless it’s mention I assume the supersets are as many as you can do?
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I also did a lot of reading and studying and – experimenting to validate ideas.
Just throwing some stuff out:
- fasted morning cardio. Some caffeine (make sure there’s no sugars) and some fast-for-you walking on an incline treadmill while watching something on your phone. Same idea works for other cardio, but this is the mostly-brainless version.
- full clean and press until form breakdown - single clean and press is cool too, but the full power-clean and press uses more energy, even with lighter weights; use something light enough you’re not going to hurt yourself when the form breaks down, but heavy enough that it’s not “easy”
- there’s always burpees and bodyweight squats, and swings, but I hate all of those personally and never used them effectively; other people have
- cardio every day, but PPL-break-PPL-break is better to keep the lifts going up. Or Upper-Lower-break.
- don’t skimp on protein intake; shifting to a more protein-heavy diet may help
General rules of thumb that worked for me when I did a pointless cut long ago (basically I cut from “skinny” to “you look like a drug-addict” without losing any strength).
- daily fasted morning cardio
- increased protein
- decreased overall calories - but not so far as to become weaker on the heavy compounds
- keep lifting heavy-for-me
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I reread your posts. Some specific answers: Protein is probably fine. Maybe actually bump your daily calories up a bit from 1500. Add another rest day. Add daily fasted cardio. Maybe use AMRAP on your last sets of each lift.
Cheers :). I’ve pretty much implemented all of those, apart from the lifting heavy as such, I’ve been doing bodybuilding reps.
The one I’ve not done is daily cardio, I can’t stand cardio! But as I said above I’m going to get a heavy bag and use that as cardio
Regarding the calories I worked it out as being a 500 deficit so it would be about 1lb a week, 2 at a push. I’ve been on track for that so far apart from this week, I lost 0.6lbs but my diet wasn’t the best last week, I still lost though so I’m not heartbroken