Newbie - Not Gaining Strength, But Gaining Size...What am I doing Wrong?

[PhatGus]

What up guys,

This is my 1st post, so be kind if I sound like a fool.

I am 20 and have been lifting for 2 years, but wouldn't say I got serious untill 8 months ago. Previous to when I got serious I was basically doing circuit training, and although I was getting slightly stronger it wasn't much. The beginning of summer 03 is when I got serious. At the beginning of the summer I weighed 265 ( I am 6'2"), I went low-carb and lost a lot of weight. I currently weigh 203, but I am not low carb anymore, just a good lifting diet (I think). Although I lost all that weight I got a lot stronger compared to where I was, but over the last 5 months haven't gotten any stonger although I have gained size. None of my maxes have gone up more than 5 pounds, nor have my rep weights gone up more than a few pounds. For my size I feel that I should be lifting much more and I have also been gaining a lot of overall size.

Max Bench is 285
Max Curl is 135
Max Squat is 450
(these are the only ones I have done recently)

I am going to list my diet and workout routine, tell me if I am doing anything wrong, and possibly give me tips on how to gain more strength.

Workout Routine:

I do 3 days On, 1 day off.
I workout everyday at about 5 P.M.

Day 1:
Chest, Tris
Incline Dumbell Press - 3 sets of 8-10
Flat Dumbell Press - 3 sets of 8-10
Cable Fly - 3 sets of 8-10 on the high position 3 sets of 8-10 on the low position
Decline Bench - 3 sets 8-10

French Military Press 3 sets 8-10
Overhead Single Arm Tricep Press (not sure if this is the right name) 3 sets 8-10
Cable Tris w/ flat bat 3 sets 8-10
Dip Machine 3 sets 8-10

Crunches 4 sets 25

Day 2:
Bis, Back:
Preacher Curl(inner grip) 3 sets 8-10
DB Curl(standing) 3 sets 8-10
Concentration Curls 3 sets 8-10
Cable Curls 3 sets 8-10

Seated Rows 3 sets 8-10
Wide Grip Pull Down 3 sets 8-10
Close Grip Pull Down 3 sets 8-10
Lat Pull Overs 3 sets 8-10
Lower Back Raises??? 4 sets 12-15

Day 3:
Shoulders, Legs
DB Should Press 3 sets 8-10
DB Delt Raise(side) 3 sets 8-10
DB Delt Raise(front) 3 sets 8-10
Rear Delf Fly 3 sets 8-10

Standing Leg Press 3 sets 8-10
Calf Raise 4 sets 15
Quad Raise??? 3 sets 8-10
Hamstring Curl 3 sets 8-10

Side Crunches 4 sets(each side) 15

Day 4:
Off Day
Run 1.5-2 miles
Crunches

Day 5:
Start Over

My diet basically consists of:
Breakfast:
Bowl of Cereal (no sugar) or oatmeal
Protein Shake 55g protein 4g carbs

Lunch:
Tuna or Deli Meat
Cheese

Mid Day Snack:
Protein Bar
Fruit

Pre-Workout:
Protein Shake 55g protein 4g carbs

Post Workout:
Protein Shake 55g protein 4g carbs
Natural Peanut Butter
Small Amount of Fruit

Dinner:
Chicken Breast or Steak
Mixed Vegitables

9 P.M. Snack:
Sugar Free Jello
Protein Shake 55g protein 4g carbs

Overall I am taking in about 250-300g Protein and 80-130g Carbs per day.

I can't see why I am not getting stronger??? I have gained a considerable amount of muscular size, everyone I know says I look huge, yet I get no stronger. I never expected results overnight, but it has been 5 months with little gain, I feel like I missing something here.

Am I overtaining? Am I doing something wrong?

Let me know what I might be doing wrong, if anything, or where I might improve.

Thanks for any advice!

Eric

[meathead198]

Could be the rep range, 8-10 wont produce much in the way of strength gains.
Try 4-6or if you really want some strength, try 1-3

[PhatGus]

Ok, I might try to do a more weight with fewer reps.

Am I simply overtraining though? I work a muscle every 4 days and I have read a lot that says to work stuff once a week. I really feel like I should be working a muscle more than 1 time a week and the few times I have tried spreading things out like that I felt like I was loosing strength because it was so long since the last time I worked a particular muscle. Maybe I am just a gym addict!

Don't get me wrong, I want to keep my size and muscle definition that I have developed, but I feel that I should be going up in strength more than I have been.

Especially my chest, I feel like I am really lacking there. I feel that at 6'2" 205 I should be able to max bench a lot more than 285. I have a very built chest, but there is no strength there.

Any more advice and opinions would be great.

Thanks,
Eric

[BearFan]

You are doing more of a bodybuilding routine.Meathead is right cut the reps for strength.Try some 5x5 routines for major muscles is a nice mix and cut your sets as you won't have enough recovery between heavy workouts.
Me myself lift MT-TF .Hitting one bodypart a week is all my body can handle to recover.I am 39 and 6ft 203.I don't max cause I lift alone but have hit 275x7 in bench.Another thing hit your tries and shoulders more than chest for an improvement on bench.Good Luck!

[Mikey1]

bump to all......lower your reps if you want strength......try a week at 3-5, then go to 1-3

[PhatGus]

Ok, so with that rep range how many sets should I be doing?

[BearFan]

See what works for you.What works for some else is not always what works for you.Personally I do 5 sets of bench and 2 warmup sets,also 3 sets of dips and thats it for chest.If your strength goes up in a cycle then its working,obviously.

I said 5 reps cause it seems to give strength as well as size.1-4 I would say strictly a strength deal.

[Nick666]

Mmmh, this is interesting. You're not taking AAS or anything?

[lift2survive]

Good job on looseing the weight I am on the other side I normally get stronger on maxes but gain less mass. It took me about a year to start getting stronger maxes. I dunno.

[PhatGus]

Originally posted by Nick666
Mmmh, this is interesting. You're not taking AAS or anything?

What's AAS?

Only things I take are:
Protein
Green Tea
Carnitine (not always, just when I am feeling tired and need a boost)
And I go on cycles of NOx2 every few months

Never taken anything else.

[Nick666]

Originally posted by PhatGus
What's AAS?

Only things I take are:
Protein
Green Tea
Carnitine (not always, just when I am feeling tired and need a boost)
And I go on cycles of NOx2 every few months

Never taken anything else.

Anabolic Androgenic Steroid.

I asked the question because what you report is rather unusual, and I don't really know what happens when someone takes steroids or pro-hormones.

Given the frequency and volume that you use, I'd say overtraining might be a problem. But IMO if you were overtraining you would not be gaining mass like that. Especially if you never overload, your muscles should become accostumed to the load and stop growing.

You didn't say if you train in cycle. And do you go to failure?

[PhatGus]

Definetly no Roids! I have never and will never take anything besides what I listed. But I can see your point, most people that are getting bigger would be gaining strength unless they were muscles in a bottle so to speak...

Once again you will have to excuse me and my being somewhat new to weight lifting, but what is traing in cycle?

I go to failure on the last set of the last exercise for a certain muscle group, but not on every exercise. On all of my other exercises previous to the last one I push near failure, but not all the way.

Like I said, it is not a total lack of gain, but my brother and a few of my friends all started lifting seriously about the same time I did and we are all basically using similar workouts. Based on their gains I am not getting near the results that they are, although size wise I am growing at about the same rate.

It isn't related to poor form either, I could see not gainign strength from having bad form, but I am VERY conscious of form and when I catch myself starting to use bad form I will drop 5 pounds and make sure I do the exercise correctly.

I am pushing myself and I am determined, so it is not lack of effort. While I have been at school I haven't had a gym partner, so the lack of a spotter causes me not to go quite as far as I usually would, but either way I push myself and like I said bring myself to failure at the end of my exercises.

I thought I might be making too much of this, but like I said based on others that started with me and do similar things my results have not been near as good when it comes to strength.

Eric

[Nick666]

You certainly don't have to excuse yourself! And I am not an expert! Many people on this forum know more that me..


You didn't say if you trained in cycle. Do you take layoffs sometimes, and start again slowly and progressively, or have you been basically doing the same w/o for month?

[VincentVega]

Correct me if im wrong, sounds to me cycling is same thing as taking a week off every so often? If so, how often do you take weeks off Nick?

[Nick666]

It depends on how I train. When I do heavy duty there is no need to take layoffs.

Other than that, usually every 6 weeks.

What happens when you train is that your muscles become physically more resistant. This is called the RBE effect ( repeated bout effect ). Which means that you HAVE to overload every w/o to counter the increase of resistance of the muscle. After a certain point, you are "caught up" by the conditionning and cannot stimulate hypertrophy anymore.At this point, you decondition, which means that you wait for the resistance of the muscle to lower, so that training can be effective again.

I am asking this to PhatGus because if he trains in cycles, it is possible that he lost a lot of strength while taking a layoff, and just gained back its original strength. In that case, he can become bigger without getting stronger. That's the HST theory.

If that's not what happens, I really don't know how to explain what happened to him.

[PhatGus]

Nick - Not offended...don't worry!

I don't cycle, I workout all the time. I've take a week off once in a while because I was busy, but nothing really planned. I have also not been getting to the gym totally consistently at the beginning of semesters while I get used to new schedules, but other than that I really never take a layoff.

[Nick666]

Theoretically - well at least according to the HST theory -, your muscles get accostumed to a load after about 3 weeks.

So it is possible that the week off you took was enough to decondition you enough for the load you use, and that you were able to grow the 3 first week or so. After that it is possible that you took creatine and thought you were gaining muscle, while it was mainly water retention..

Did you react normally do creatine? - get bigger and at least a bit stronger while you were on it and the contrary when you stopped it?

Other than that I have no idea - but I'd like to know because it contradicts the HST theory..

[PhatGus]

Well I went back over my workouts from the last few months and I realized that I have been gaining a decent amount of leg strength. I also realized that I lift my legs with less frequency than my upper body, usually only once a week.

So I think that I am going to switch to a 4 or 5 day split doing basically 1 major muscle group a day instead of 2 groups every day twice a week. I will see if spreading it out more helps. I am also going to move to 4 sets of 5-6 and see what happens for a while. I also realized that although I had previously mentioned that I recovered too quickly to lift a group only once a week that my recovery time has been longer as of late, maybe due to the fact that I lift with a lot more intensity. Plus with the help of this site I now have some good ideas about how to do a proper 4 or 5 day split.

Thanks for the help guys...I really appreciate it, and if there is anything else any of you think of related to my issues please chime in.

Thanks,
Eric

[PhatGus]

Originally posted by Nick666

So it is possible that the week off you took was enough to decondition you enough for the load you use, and that you were able to grow the 3 first week or so. After that it is possible that you took creatine and thought you were gaining muscle, while it was mainly water retention..

Did you react normally do creatine? - get bigger and at least a bit stronger while you were on it and the contrary when you stopped it?

Nick I don't take creatine...I listed Carnitine, but look at my post above and see if what I said makes sense.

Thanks for the help,
Eric

[Nick666]

I was referring to the NOx2. It is a creatine based product, isn'it?

As for reducing frequency, I think it is the right way to go, you're probably overtraining currently.

Good luck!

[PhatGus]

I don't think the NOx2 is creatine based but it does have similar results, except supposedly instead of putting extra water into the muscles it actually increases the amount of blood in the muscles. Could be wrong, but from everything I have read that is how it works, and I researched it quite a bit before I started to take it.

Thanks for all the help!

Eric

[samsonnite81]

weird ive never heard of not gaining strength and gaining size

yes iknow there isnt really a collation between size and strenght

[Nick666]

Indeed it is wierd. Maybe one of the pros on this forum have an idea???

You're right Eric, NOx2 has nothing to do with creatine. My mistake..