After 2 Years of Extremely Serious Training. Reached Serious Plateaus as a Natty. Help?

[forever02]

Long story short, I am 29 years old. I have been involved in sports all my life, from a young age until I was 21-22, when I dropped out after five years of American football and became a couch potato. Seriously, I didn’t even walk until I turned 27. At that point, I had a serious talk with myself and decided to get back to the gym for real. I looked like crap, felt like crap, and lived like crap, so I decided to finally change it. Being a sports person, I knew that progress was going to be extremely slow, but I was determined to do it right.

When I went back to the gym, I felt extremely weak and could barely lift anything. I was doing bench presses with just the bar and two 5 kg weights, and I couldn't handle it. Four months in, with 4-5 workouts per week and a full-body split, I saw progress. I dedicated myself to learning from both science-based and non-science-based lifting. I studied a lot and came to understand my body and how to build muscle and strength, as I cared about both.

After the first four months, I made a personal oath to do five workouts per week, not drink alcohol, and stop smoking for a year. I did it, and let me tell you, progress was booming. I kept educating myself and learning more and more. After two years of working out, I grew bigger and extremely strong.

Now, I am here to ask the community of intermediate to advanced lifters for advice, as I have seriously hit plateaus on almost every exercise and lost about 15% of my strength on most lifts. My biggest strength is my lateral raise, doing 56 kg x 10 reps (28 kg per dumbbell). My deadlift max is 200 kg (with relatively poor form, but it was my goal since I started). My bench press max is around 140 kg (with a machine, not a barbell, as I simply can't stand it). My leg press max is around 280 kg x 8 reps.

I evolved my workout split to fit my personal goals and understanding of my body. I do a mixture of strength training (especially as the first exercise of every workout) and then focus on hypertrophy. Do not try to convince me that strength and hypertrophy do not work together, as I have personally tested doing them separately and found little to no difference, except probably at my current level of hitting plateaus where I need to concentrate on one or the other.

I eat really healthily, with a weekly cheat meal of a large pizza. Generally, I lift until past failure, as I feel like a wimp if I do not. I know it's not the best to always go to failure, and I am pretty sure I have hit overtraining.

This is my workout split, custom-made by me for me:

Monday at 18:30 (Chest | Shoulders | Triceps): https://hevy.com/routine/3mZfrbYvrA2

Tuesday at 18:30 (Heavy Back | Biceps): https://hevy.com/routine/GZG1YxFKaox

Thursday at 18:30 (Legs): https://hevy.com/routine/7liUupnSW92

Friday at 18:30 (Shoulders | Chest | Triceps): https://hevy.com/routine/EyFM3HfW92U

Saturday at 11:30 (Light Back | Biceps ): https://hevy.com/routine/20SMCUPGu7k

This is me playing around with 60 kg lateral raises (for fun, don't judge the form as it's not "perfect"):

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

I don't consider myself the most aesthetic or the biggest dude, but it's been 2 years since I started, and I’m really happy with my progress. Feel free to browse through my Instagram for physique updates.

My question is simple: what do you fellow lifters recommend I do after losing power and strength? Keep in mind that I am also cutting extremely slowly, at about 1-2 kg per month.

 

[limetree5]

@forever02 Well you hit the nail on the head. You CAN build size and strength at the same time. Until you can't.

The rep range for optimally building muscle is something like 8-30 to hit failure. The rep range for optimally building strength is like 3 or 5-8. But honestly, anything from 5 to 30 will build both, it's just not optimal. Which is why when you hit major plateaus, you start having to choose a little bit in order to optimally break through them.

What you can do on the strength side, is use approx 85-90% of your 1rm, and work on explosiveness for your doubles. Mess with rep schemes like doing:

Sets of:

Warm up

3

3

2

2

1

Then back down the weight again. Focus on form, not ego lifting like I'm seeing with those lateral raises. If your form isn't perfect for your doubles, lower the weight. Be honest with yourself. Explode up as fast as you can for each rep.

For size, you can focus on form, again. You need good form or you'll start using other muscles to help and it becomes impossible to track if you're actually progressively overloading. A single arm lat pull down is awesome, and to squeeze out a few extra reps by using your other hand to force some extra reps. You can progressively overload this. If you started using your other hand with 3 reps left in the set last week, but this week you did it with 2 reps left, thats progressive overload.

Another thing is a deload. I just went on a 24 week pump of heavier and by week 16, all my lifts stopped going up, some started going down. But I was 2 weeks into my meso, so I said "I'll just finish this."

Wish I just stopped and reloaded for a week right there. Because after finishing that out, then deloading, then starting a new meso, I'm already breaking plateaus.

I don't know what your diet and sleep schedule is like, but you should make sure they are in check. It's probably the biggest killer of gains for most people who are consistently in the gym. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night, I suck at this myself.

 

[limetree5]

@forever02 One thing I'd like to compliment for on the lateral raises, though.

Muscles seem to build the most strength and size when put through tension in their lengthened position. Which does mean your lateral raises are fine to do that heavy. But one thing I'd recommend is to use a cable that keeps them under that tension and not just allowing gravity and your grip to do all the work in that position.

You can use this rom, it will be fine, but I'd use a cable and let the cable and my arm stretch across my body so the tension remains in that stretched muscle position. This would make your heavy as hell partials okay in my mind.

 

[limetree5]

@forever02 I'm going to weigh in, but I'd like to see you be doing lateral raises with 60lb dumbbells lol

Oh, you did. Also those are too heavy for you to be doing that. I'd scale that back for sure and try to get to at least parallel, even a bit higher if shoulder pain permits.

 

[forever02]

@limetree5 As I stated, it was for fun. If you watch the rest of the clip, I’m using good form with 26 kg dumbbells. There’s no reason to keep arms parallel. Bending elbows also takes away joint stress.

 

[limetree5]

@forever02 I left another comment stating when I think this is totally fine, and my recommendations for doing so. Also, I meant parallel to the floor, not your elbows and torso.

Totally agree with these points.

 

[forever02]

@limetree5 Yeah, apologies, just read. Honestly my shoulders got enough growth. My weakest point in aesthetics would be my biceps and triceps. Anyhow, my main issue is the big loss of strength after merely dropping two to three kg. Sleep and meals are on point but I do have stressful periods. I guess I’m at the point where I need to count even one extra rep as “huge progress” now.