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"):

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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.

 

[matt21]

@forever02 First thing is, I don't see any mention of your diet. How many calories you are eating, what your macro splits are, etc... If you are in a deficit to lose1 - 2 kg a month, you are going to struggle to get stronger. Your body doesn't know that you just want to cut fat, all it sees is less energy coming in and will consume the excess from wherever it can, mainly fat stores. But at the same time it's not going to prioritize building more muscle, as that could put you into an even bigger deficit.

Looking through your routines, you have a lot of high rep isolation exercises but very few heavy weight low rep compound lifts. I have been lifting very consistently for 30 years now, and have generally found that lifting to failure in the 10 rep range is good for both hypertrophy and for building work capacity, but if I neglect the heavier stimulus that comes from lifting compound lifts in the 1 - 3 rep range I never progress in strength. You may want to consider cycling off your PPL routine for a while to something more like 5/3/1 to see if that helps kick you out of the plateau.

You mention you "can't stand" a barbell bench press, what specifically puts you off of it?

 

[student1963]

@forever02 It's pretty common to stall in a cut after the beginner phase. I would consider bulk/cut phases and start looking at places like Rennisance Periodization for some ideas about the next phase of your journey.

 

[nebula1]

@forever02 You’re in a deficit, your progress will plateau.

I highly recommend you pick a better routine to follow, there’s tons of junk volume in these routines and it’s holding you back from recovering and making progress. If you want to put weight on the bar do a program for powerlifting, if you want to build muscle then do a hyper trophy program. I personally prefer a program that uses % of my max rather than RPE.

 

[mikeb34]

@forever02 Change your programming. I only looked at the first day, but that's a ton of volume that is just headwind. If the rest of the days are like that as well it is not good.

You need to train legs more than once per week.

You've probably reached the point where you need measured volume and dial in your diet. Have a reason for every single exercise you do and why you do it. Be quick to remove, slow to add.

 

[sw501]

@forever02 Sounds about right, the new lifter gains are slowing down and you're straddling the fence of cutting while trying to get stronger at the same time. Finish the cut then worry about the weight on the bar.

 

[lanman87]

@forever02 I know you said don't judge, but I'm sorry I have to judge and be honest. What I'm going to say here, is that the world record for lateral raises in a minute, is 1,575 KG, which was 35 reps of 22.5 KG. You only need to bang out 27 reps and it's yours. I'm not entirely sure you can do even one rep that Guiness would accept, but you seem confident.

It's simple, aside from the cutting details which is a huge part of it, if the numbers matter to you more than aesthetics, then you'd do a program which increases the numbers. If aesthetics is more important, you do something along those lines, if you want a balance, you split the difference, but you have to accept the numbers may not move as quickly or easily.

 

[forever02]

@lanman87 I know the 30 kg dumbbells weren’t in good form but I’m pretty confident you can count the 26 kg as relatively fine form (next clip in the video). Again, these were for fun to see what I could raise mid-workout. If you consider a static core, arm 90 degree swing from paralel to body to perpendicular, then I guess we are stick men. Check Jeff Nippard and Dr. Mike and see how they perform them too, much similarly to mine. Anyhow, post wasn’t about lateral raises.

 

[dawn16]

@forever02 What do you mean you cant stand barbell bench? Do you do barbell squats?