Ive been lifting 4 years. I've made next to 0 progress but don't understand

[Darkness2Light]

its not about just moving the fking weightwhen will u idiots understand.


you need to STIMULATE the muscle, you need to go for the PUMP. you got these morons fat fuks in the gym loading up 800 lbs on the press and doing it a couple times and they got fatcep legs looking like a damn cow.

its ALL ABOUT THE PUMP remember that.

[Dennis71]

Only read the first page.

Heres the ****ing problem i encounter with everyone who "hasnt put on size" or "isnt getting bigger"

1. They dont eat enough food (not counting protein shakes)
2. they dont work out hard enough in the gym





Everyone is willing to spend $50 on preworkout, or some new protein powder. But wont spend that $50 on some 93/7 beef instead.

Most of my friends who wanna "workout sometime" ive noticed dick around in the weightroom with zero understanding of training. Even friends who have been lifting for a few years.

[Dennis71]

If your lifts are progressing (post noob gains) you are building muscle. It just takes some people longer (thanks to small frame, diet, test, lifting program)

You don't go from a 110 lb to 250 lb bench press without gaining muscle lol

Not 100% true.
Strength training taxes/trains the CNS... I know A LOT of guys who can outlift me in nearly every lift, but dont look anything close to me.

[lebronjames]

wow misc actually offering genuine advice

what a time to be alive

[ImUTI]

ive been lifting for about 3 years now and didnt start making real progress until the 6 months where i have blown up fast. What changed was me taking an appetite booster + focusing on the gym more than anything else including work

[IronBrahh]

ive been lifting for about 3 years now and didnt start making real progress until the 6 months where i have blown up fast. What changed was me taking an appetite booster + focusing on the gym more than anything else including work

so simplified, just eating more right?

[Kubensis21]

My workouts have ranged from splits to PHAT but I've settled down the past year with upper/lower/rest.

My weight has remained around the same over all 4 years. I've progressly overloaded on all my lifts the entire time.


What I don't understand - if my weight is staying the same, but I'm getting stronger, should I have been going through some sort of recomp IE. bodyfat dropping but gaining muscle? Why am I now looking back and realizing I haven't grown much muscle at all?


Also - what the **** is the secret to a good workout? I don't get DOMs. I can do high volume low rest period and feel fine an hour later. I never feel like I need a rest day, I just force myself to take them and hope for the best.

I understand that gains for nattys are slow, but I'm literally looking back after 4 YEARS and wondering wtf is going on now.


Cliffs:
-Natty
-No progress/No recomping
-Not sure what constitutes a good workout, since I'm taking rest days and lifting with volume + intensity
-advice welcome

Doms have zero to do with your muscle and how well it was worked. NOTHING. It's not related

[Kubensis21]

Not 100% true.
Strength training taxes/trains the CNS... I know A LOT of guys who can outlift me in nearly every lift, but dont look anything close to me.

The only way to gain strength is to gain size. That is true. your cns is already efficent enough and you're not really training it in a 20-25 rep range, you'd need to be doing 1 rep maxes constantly or 3 rep maxes with like 95+% to train your cns by a very very small amount.

[Dennis71]

The only way to gain strength is to gain size. That is true. your cns is already efficent enough and you're not really training it in a 20-25 rep range, you'd need to be doing 1 rep maxes constantly or 3 rep maxes with like 95+% to train your cns by a very very small amount.

Explain to me why I am much more muscular and bigger than the kids in my gym who can outlift me?

[supersystem3]

You aren't lifting weight.

I lift until the point where I have to make noise, like I'm having a giant orgasm because it's so stressful and I can't take it.

I lift 10X20 and by the time I'm done, the muscle group is exhausted.

So, try something like German Volume Training and make sure you're lifting weight where on the 10th rep, it's stressful.

Note: I had a friend who went to the gym and nothing happened, and I've seen if with many other people, they aren't lifting enough weight and struggling. They're just lifting whatever and doing some routine. Muscle is built by struggling and damaging the muscle, then it heals and you gain mass.

I've read this entire thread seeing if someone was going to say this, because this was my first thought as well. A lot of people lift with basically zero intensity, they do their 10 reps and I can see it in their face and the way they look that they could easily do another 2 to 3 reps with perfect form but they don't, and it's basically not even a set at that point, it's just fukking around. It's especially common with people without an athletic background, that don't know what it actually means to push yourself physically.

[zeBake]

Lol op sounds like he just ****s around then calls it a day

[Kubensis21]

Explain to me why I am much more muscular and bigger than the kids in my gym who can outlift me?

because they have better anthropometry and better muscle fiber types for the lifts that they beat you at. You either can or can't activate your muscle fibers in unison, it's what the first part of noob gains are, learning to activate them effectively. beyond that muscle development will be way faster than any marginal improvements in your cns.

Deloads bring u back to your optimal state. they might be more fresh



Correct me if im wrong please.


So i believe you can train it, but it's just not as fast, and seems mostly genetic to me.

It's actually faster, but what i mean is that you hit your potential faster than with muscle, so the cns improvements become smaller




Also, with what i said about training specificity, i doubt any of you are training for CNS adaptations, so it just comes down to anthromotry and other good genes rather than **** acquired through specific training. i assume you'd all be training in a medium rep range right?

[LukedaWuke]

protip: dont be an autist

the way u write gives away u are one.

[M3lony]

Not sure if trolling.

You say you lift for 4 years, you have 1.2k posts on a bb forum but at the same time you sound like someone who got in to lifting a month ago and started to read up some stuff.
You dont know how much calories and proteins you take everyday, thats crucial. You dont even know how hard you have to push yourself in the gym. Sweat is btw not an indicator for doing it right.

Seems like you just gotta go back to basics and invest some time informing yourself. Natty bb is a struggle and if it would be enough to just go in the gym and throw some weights around then lots of people in the gym would look good. Sadly the majority of the same people I see in the gyms Ive been the last 7 years dont change at all. Nutrition is key, and thats whats really hard for people.

[eod8989]

its not about just moving the fking weightwhen will u idiots understand.


you need to STIMULATE the muscle, you need to go for the PUMP. you got these morons fat fuks in the gym loading up 800 lbs on the press and doing it a couple times and they got fatcep legs looking like a damn cow.

its ALL ABOUT THE PUMP remember that.

I agree with this. The only way you really get a pump is by slow and high reps to failure. You don't get a pump by maxing out lol.

[lumbarflexbrah]

its not about just moving the fking weightwhen will u idiots understand.


you need to STIMULATE the muscle, you need to go for the PUMP. you got these morons fat fuks in the gym loading up 800 lbs on the press and doing it a couple times and they got fatcep legs looking like a damn cow.

its ALL ABOUT THE PUMP remember that.

For nattys pump training is essentially useless, no wonder you're red. The only way to make your muscles bigger as a natty is to make them stronger, this is why "just moving the weight" and training for strength as a natural is the only way to get big.

[butwhowasgains]

Eat better, be consistant.

I have spent a good amount of time wondering why i am not making gains, then i go more consistantly and eat better and suddenly the gains come again.

[KRANE]

And yet not a single before/after photo, nutrition/meal plan listed. Is there any wonder why you fail?

For nattys pump training is essentially useless, no wonder you're red. The only way to make your muscles bigger as a natty is to make them stronger, this is why "just moving the weight" and training for strength as a natural is the only way to get big.

In fact, much of what he says is true. Its not nearly as dramatic for natties but it is there. There are too many variable beginning with genetics. There is no one size fits all in weight training.

Not 100% true.
Strength training taxes/trains the CNS... I know A LOT of guys who can outlift me in nearly every lift, but dont look anything close to me.

Agreed. The CNS plays a huge part in the amount of strength and subsequently the amount of muscle you will gain. Because of that you can look small and still be very strong.

[TheAdlerian]

I've read this entire thread seeing if someone was going to say this, because this was my first thought as well. A lot of people lift with basically zero intensity, they do their 10 reps and I can see it in their face and the way they look that they could easily do another 2 to 3 reps with perfect form but they don't, and it's basically not even a set at that point, it's just fukking around. It's especially common with people without an athletic background, that don't know what it actually means to push yourself physically.

In addition, it's people who want to lift but not really because they don't want the suffering.

Planet Fitness feeds into this as they ban making noise, which is almost a must when lifting. I don't mean extreme screaming but grunting etc almost has to happen. People grunt for a reason, it's something humans do when struggling.

Anyway, if you aren't struggling you aren't lifting weights. If you pick up a pound of butter, it's not lifting weights, and neither is easily repped weights in the gym.

[TommyRO]

Incline DB 3x12 +65
Cable Row 3x12 +145
OHP DB PRess 3x12 +45
Pull Ups 3xMax (15,14,11)
Then curls/Tri Exts

Also do farmer walks and the like at the end of leg day.,

Diet is intermittent fasting, keep carbs around 100g (usually through oatmeal + banana + protein powder) then the rest is beef/chicken/salmon, eggs + bacon, and greens (spinach/broc****)

people reach these numbers in 1 yr of lifting srs

Squat is around 225
Bench max was around 225
I stopped deadlifting around 200
BB rows probably around 100
OHP around 100


Should I just reconstruct a upper/lower workout based around the main compounds (minus deadlift)?

Your diet and programing has to be dogchit tbh
Recomp is a trap because of how slow it is, eat at a small surplus and watch your lifts and body size grow

Explain to me why I am much more muscular and bigger than the kids in my gym who can outlift me?

Yes you can be big and weak true, but if you trained the main lifts you will catch up rather fast. They just have better muscle recruitment than you

[KyleAaron]

Okay, so here's you're problem right here. Assuming this is for each dumbell, you're pressing 90lbs overhead. You're benching 130lbs. You're 150lbs and yet can only do one set of 15 pullups.

Correct. 4 years have 48 months. So even if he started with invisible 0lb dumbbells, his "progressive overload every time" would come to less than 1lb a month.

Stimulus-recovery-adaptation.

The gym is the "stimulus" part. You must stimulate your body to grow. Food and rest are the recovery and adaptation part. The point of physical training is to impose a stress on the system sufficient that the system adapts so that it is no longer a stress. If doing 10 pushups was a stress, the body adapts and builds the ability to do 11 pushups - not because it wants to do 11 pushups, it just doesn't want 10 pushups to be a stress. So if you keep doing 10 pushups, your body won't be stress - no stimulus, no need for recovery and adaptation. It's like just doing the times tables from 5 to 25 years old, it won't help you do calculus.

Also: if you as a novice squat more than you deadlift, either your squats are shallow or you don't know how to deadlift; usually the former. This is what is technically known as FCKING AROUND.

Stop fcking around, OP. Don't write your own programmes. Just pick one and follow it and progress. In every session do more than you did before.

1. do more weight
2. if you can't do more weight, do more reps
3. if you can't do more reps, do more sets

And for god's sake, eat, son. At your size if you still enjoy food you are not eating enough.

[VSVP99]

fst7, brah. you'll see gains

watch your tempo. watch your form.

[Doomster23]

As a natty the key is to eat big and lift big. Getting lean and looking good lean is a mirage I fell for for years, to the detriment of my physique and lifts. Sure, some people have the genetics to stay lean natty and look good, but I don't fit into that category: hopefully that changes as my lifts keep progressing.

[TheJediBrah]

You really just must not be training very hard at all, like you started really light and slowly got a bit less light

it's the only explanation if you have been progressing with weights

You should be seeing big changes within weeks

[TheAdlerian]

This is what is technically known as FCKING AROUND.

I enjoyed how the post was dead serious, until this part.

True.

Lol.

[Eterniity]

Has anyone considered that OP might have some undiagnosed health problems? Probably extremely unlikely, but there's always a chance if what he says is true.

[NotARotter]

i have no idea what my protein is, but its entirely possible its too low now that i think about it

Come on brah...your diet is absolute trash and your "intensity" probably is too. Do you really need to be explained what "workout till failure" is?

[kalvinmc]

i have no idea what my protein is, but its entirely possible its too low now that i think about it

/thread

fix your diet brah

[JigPig]

Your genetics suck m8, time to get some of dat dere.




Jk, just consume more protein rectally, i also heard that getting more of Chad's semen in your rectum will help you gain mass.

[IronBrahh]

had a good workout and ate 2500 calories, will continue to do so


tomorrows leg day