Been training for years and on the verge of giving up due to lack of progress, what should I do?

[barefoothannahb]

25/6’7”/230 lbs

To be clear, I mean “giving up” as in no longer bulking/cutting, pushing progressive overload, and tracking my food. I’ll still work out and be generally healthy.

The picture says it all. I’ve been training for 4-5 years now and I’ve seen no results from the last 3. I bulked. I cut. I trained 4-6 days a week with intensity/progressive overload in mind. I tracked my workouts. I tracked my calories and my protein (always >185 g a day). I even did my best to improve my sleep. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to and I look exactly the same. I’ve probably spent 3 or more hours a day focused on this and have had no benefit. Am I doing something wrong? Is it just bad genetics?

Muscular Potential Calculators say that I should be able to get to my current weight at 6-7% body fat. I know they aren’t precise. Maybe they are thrown off by my height. I consider my physique pretty mediocre; I should be able to gain at least another 20 lbs of muscle, I would think.

I would try to stay around 210 but that was very hard to maintain for me. 245ish is where I felt best but obviously it’s a little fluffy.

So what is it? I’m getting older and won’t have as much time as I did the last few years. Is it time to just give up and go on cruise control. I feel like I’ve wasted so much time with this. My last idea would be to bulk slightly higher than I have before, maybe around 265 lbs and see if that does anything? Otherwise, I’m out of ideas. It makes me sad to come up so short though.

 

[piescko]

@barefoothannahb Get a coach, not the online version but someone that will interact with you at a personal level and watch you lift and talk to you about goals. You are obviously missing‘something’. A good coach will talk to you and help you figure it out and you will learn if you want to push hard or just stay casual. Getting to ~75% of your generic potential is prolly ~75% effort. Getting to 85% is like 95% effort and that last 15% is kill everything effort.

 

[dg71]

@piescko Yea lol it’s not magic OP. You eat enough, sleep enough, push hard enough, recover enough (which is mostly just eat + sleep) and you’ll grow. If you aren’t growing and can’t figure out why, pay someone who isn’t inexperienced to tell you which one of those three it is.

 

[frustratedhusband]

@piescko Nah it's closer to the 80-20 rule. 20% effort for 80% of results, 80% for the rest 20%. 5 sets per week get you 65% of the gains you get from 20 sets (don't recall exact numbers but it's something like that)

 

[moonlightlaura]

@frustratedhusband Don't agree with this for bodybuilding. A lot has to be dialed in to get results, and keep them. I think good progress in the gym means doing at least 60-70% effort (could add some muscularity and leanness). Meh progress for 50% (could probably lose some weight). Anything below does basically nothing (so slow it doesn't matter).

 

[frustratedhusband]

@moonlightlaura Yeah you might think so but it's not what the studies tell you. And I see a lot more comments about doing too much where lowering volume lead to better results than the opposite.

 

[oregongirl1]

@barefoothannahb 10$ that you are running shit like 531 BBB and you are half-assing your assistance work. Switch to high intensity BB program if your goal is hypertrophy.

 

[barefoothannahb]

@oregongirl1 I ran 531 before these photos but haven’t done it since. I usually lean more towards higher frequency programs. Ironically, 531 is the first program recommended when you look up the FAQs for this sub. What would you recommend in terms of high intensity programs?

 

[seayain]

@barefoothannahb You should keep doing 531 because even if you feel like you're making no progress 531 is sort of designed to indefinite make slow progress over many years.

Just add hypertrophy volume accessory work around it.

Powerlifting might not be your thing. But if your squat dead OHP bench keep increasing slowly but surely. Then 100% you're getting stronger. And eventually 100% this DOES lead to hypertrophy.

People knock it because it's slow. But it's actually perfect for someone who's lifted for years who feels like they've been stuck no matter what they do.

5 pound PO increments monthly is almost impossible to fail. The program has very good recovery.

I'd do that and then I'd take everyone else's advice and get an experienced personal trainer who can analyze you from an outside perspective and find the weak spots your missing.

Remember even when it slows down, lifting is a life long game. There is no end. Love the process don't chase the result. If you love the process. Everything else falls Into place. Consistency becomes easy.

You dread the process but only want the end result. You're gonna endup failing. This is why most people fail.

 

[hubies]

@oregongirl1 Got a link to the high intensity BB program?

 

[kpatrick1111]

@hubies It's not exactly "High Intensity" but this routine has me making progress again after a couple years of stalling. I follow a lightly modified version.

https://muscleevo.net/upper-lower-split/

I've tried a few different UL splits, this is the good stuff. My only complaint is it's a *little* lacking in the upper back and slightly heavy on the hamstrings. I just add a few sets of facepulls, some abs, and some neck work. It's a great BB template.

 

[hubies]

@kpatrick1111 Thanks! This is great.

 

[greyowl]

@hubies I do that one, and have found it worked. I have just over a year of experience, and started it 6 months in after fucking around myself. This is also extremely similar to Nippard's fundamentals of hypertrophy program.

 

[hubies]

@greyowl What do you think about mixing it with 5/3/1 BBB? That’s what I’ve been doing. I like getting in those 4 big lifts with the barbell. You know what I mean?

 

[greyowl]

@hubies that upper/lower split includes the 3 barbell lifts.

 

[greyowl]

@kpatrick1111 I do this routine too! Though I also made a few changes, based on likely availability of equipment in my gym, and I added some additional ab and glute work on the leg days. I've been happy with this program!

 

[losvelle]

@oregongirl1 Out of interest, what's wrong with 531? Is it just that's it's not a bodybuilding programme?

 

[justincann]

@losvelle Okay so nobody's answered so I'll take a crack.

Hypertrophy, to broadstroke a lot of the literature and theory requires a general proximity near failure and generally more reps in the 5-20+ range. The science of why this is true is a bunch of still debated factors. But outside the absolute beginner stage we probably think you need to get at least 3-4 reps away from failure to really turn on the mechanisms that stimulate growth. 2 reps away seems to be a decent enough sweetspot between stimulus/fatigue/volume and occasionally going 0 to keep yourself honest and test yourself with endless variations on how to structure that in a bodybuilding program.

Nearly all 531 templates including BBB are excellent mid beginner to mid-intermediate general strength programs. But they are lackluster hypertrophy programs. And the reason it is good for one and lackluster on the other is the same reason: it straight up tells you to stay well away from failure for nearly all your sets. Both in the %'s prescribed to each lift and the supplementary volume lifts. Seriously, of the sets you basically have a single set per week in each big lift that meets this metric. And secondly, it tells you to stay away from failure by using a training max the author straight up says to err with caution. For a beginner (and intermediates though most are not great at admitting it), continuing to develop snappy perfect form is imperative. You are still learning a skill. We don't think of the powerlifting lifts as like a skill in the same way we view the Olympic lifts. But they kind of are, just on a different spectrum. And beginners and intermediates are not at the expert level where form on a lift meet platform is looks the exact same as the warmup with the only difference being barspeed. It also helps that it turns out strength gains are not as reliant on being in a general proximity to failure and in fact may benefit the most from working sets being well away from failure.

Now 531 does prescribe a number of accessory movements after the main and supplementary lifts. But Wendler famously doesn't want to get into the weeds, tells you to just do "50 pushing reps of...something. 50 pulls, 50 legs/abs, etc" and straight up says don't worry about the details on that because its "majoring in the minors, just focus on the main lifts." All that is great advice for a general strength program he mostly uses on his true calling of being a high school football coach. This is excellent generalist advice....but not necessarily for bodybuilding. Sure you could do that accessory work as a more standard bodybuilding style on machines, going harder to near failure. Wendler has actually actually taken a stab at exactly that in his blog. But the main books don't tell you to do that and at that point its kind of like fitting a square peg in a circular hole. There's better bodybuilding and power-building programs.

 

[losvelle]

@justincann Thanks for taking the time to write that long response. It's really useful feedback

 

[tp243]

@losvelle 531 is fine but is catered more to strength than hypertrophy and gives people free reign to pick their accessories which they almost always fuck up