Growth and Strength-SCREECHING HALT!!!

Mr.Burns

Mr.Burns

New member
Awards
0
I don’t know what happened. Im 34 years old, 6’4” relatively skinny guy that started lifting as heavy as possible, 4x5 on all lifts, and eating like a maniac last January. By March by all my main lifts had increased significantly and I was getting noticeably bigger, even grew out of a shirt size. I took most of May off because of a mysterious nagging left shoulder thing. I came back in June and basically started all over but this time, all new strength and muscle growth stopped immediately near the beginning of August.

Since July all of my lifts have totally stagnated. Bench, db presses, bent over rows, squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, overhead presses, etc are STUCK! Since low reps and heavy weight stopped working I moved over into 4-5 sets of 10-12 reps on everything and still nothing! I haven’t successfully added a single rep or extra 5lbs to anything. I’m so frustrated I can’t stand it.
 
Outofbody

Outofbody

Well-known member
Awards
2
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Are you logging your lifts/routine and diet?

If I am religiously logging my lifts, and am following a set routine, it's impossible for my lifts to stagnate unless I am cutting.
 
Whisky

Whisky

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
  • Best Answer
Welcome to lifting bro lol

In all seriousness that happens (you hit plateaus etc) after a while but normally more like 18 months to 2 years or more so imo the following is most likely

- you aren’t eating enough (this is the most likely - remember as you getting bigger your metabolism increases so you need more calories to grow than you did before

- the rate of growth has slowed and you are expecting the sort of increases you got early on - that’s not gonna happen bro. First 6 months of lifting everyone is jumping 10lbs a week and stuff, that slows dramatically and you have to start looking in cycles of time. Like increasing by 10-20lbs over 3-6 months etc. Can be hard to see development over a few weeks.
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Do more sets
 
Wobmarvel

Wobmarvel

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
Do the pyramid thing if for arguments sake you have stalled bench at 225 for 5 sets of 5 and come back the next workout and can't manage 230 then instead do five sets with the first at 135, then 157, 180, 202, then 230. So just one set at the target lift weight instead of aiming for all sets at that weight straight out the gate. Then stop, that'd still a pb. Then next workout do the same but add 5 pounds to each of those weights. It gives you more warm up, gets the fibres firing and psychologically helps get you in the zone. Your maybe trying this already (I presume your doing warm up sets) just my two cents.
 
Whisky

Whisky

Well-known member
Awards
4
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
  • Best Answer
Do the pyramid thing if for arguments sake you have stalled bench at 225 for 5 sets of 5 and come back the next workout and can't manage 230 then instead do five sets with the first at 135, then 157, 180, 202, then 230. So just one set at the target lift weight instead of aiming for all sets at that weight straight out the gate. Then stop, that'd still a pb. Then next workout do the same but add 5 pounds to each of those weights. It gives you more warm up, gets the fibres firing and psychologically helps get you in the zone. Your maybe trying this already (I presume your doing warm up sets) just my two cents.
I’m following the madcow 5x5 at the moment - is exactly this, it definitely works
 
Wobmarvel

Wobmarvel

Well-known member
Awards
3
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
  • RockStar
I’m following the madcow 5x5 at the moment - is exactly this, it definitely works
Just another tip which I found works to improve pull ups. If you find your struggling to perform even 3 or 4 strict pull ups and end up doing like 3, 3, 2 and a half and 1 if your lucky. Start with just 1 strict pull up then rest for 90 seconds, then do 2, rest then try for 4 and I guarantee you will find it easier, then I would work to 1, 2, 4, 4, then 1, 2, 4, 6, then keep going in that fashion and you end up doing like 1, 3, 6, 8 and so on. It works and its like the pyramid system but with pull ups using extra reps rather than weight as the progressive resistance. I got a pull up bar for Xmas not last Xmas but the one before and I went from barely managing one pull up to 3 sets of 12 to 14 using this system.
 
Chados

Chados

Well-known member
Awards
2
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Eat more.. A lot of people or shall I say pretty much everyone eats at maintenance naturally, everyone has their own natural weight until someone decides to eat crap and gain a ton of weight. When you go from eating whatever to eating healthy youd might experience no weight gain and maybe even lose weight because you don't eat enough calories.

Eating healthy means you also need to eat much more to get the calories.. Add one meal with chicken and rice to start with
 
Outofbody

Outofbody

Well-known member
Awards
2
  • Established
  • First Up Vote
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that as they grow in strength and size, they need to incrementally increase calories to keep the gains going. Sometimes doing so is a struggle in it's own right.

Same goes for cutting, need to incrementally increase calorie expenditure over time, otherwise you'll just move in blocks.

You can also try strategic deconditioning.
 
AlexPowell

AlexPowell

Well-known member
Awards
1
  • Established
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that as they grow in strength and size, they need to incrementally increase calories to keep the gains going. Sometimes doing so is a struggle in it's own right.

Same goes for cutting, need to incrementally increase calorie expenditure over time, otherwise you'll just move in blocks.

You can also try strategic deconditioning.
It's the biggest struggle for many of us :)
Especially those of us with very adaptive metabolisms, we have to eat a lot to grow and diet on very few calories!
 

Similar threads


Top