Body Before and After 2 years of working out without proper knowledge

@sydneyelise Thank you for sharing! I'm just starting my journey and it'll be useful to know what you find out. I'm mostly just trying to exercise more regularly and make moving and getting my heart pumping part of my lifestyle.
 
@sydneyelise I think considering this was your first time implementing an exercise routine you have achieved very good results. You have the perfect attitude and approach to improve even more over the next 2 years.
 
@sydneyelise Great progress! Very inspiring. I have a few questions:

- What do you mean by "split sessions", and them being something you shouldn't have done?

- What do you think is the biggest cause of your plateau currently?

- What do you think is the main reason you had success in just 12 months going from 0 pull ups to 12?

I'm struggling with my pull ups right now, still trying to be able to do 8 pull up negatives (can barely do 5 now), and I'm curious to know how others achieved success through the progressions in the recommended routine.
 
@dawn16
  • By split sessions, I meant partial body workouts per sessions instead of the full body workours per session. So what I kinda did was to split pulling / pushing / core and leg exercises into 3 different days. However, that reduces the total volume of work done on each group of muscles which is not optimal for muscle growth for "beginners". There is a more detailed information somewhere in the FAQ if you want more details :)
  • Not sure about the "biggest" but several main factors I realized are that: I put too many different types of exercises working on the same group of muscles (like 5 ~ 8 back exercises for eg), therefore my volume of work per day per muscle group was too high. (Eric Helms say to do between 40 ~ 70 where I was doing 90 ~ 170), I was not progressively overloading regularly. Diet wise, I consumed too much fats with sub par carbs where I need enough carbs to do strength exercises and overall calorie intake seem to have been a little bit less than optimal considering my weight has gone down where I heard muscle growth is optimal when fat is not going down if not going up.
  • One main reason I can think of is the fact that the more beginner you are, the less muscle you have, the easier and faster you will grow. Also, for the first 8 months, I did not do split sessions but full sessions with only a couple of exercises per muscle group (sounds like my workout routine from my 4 ~ 8 months in was pretty optimal..lol)
I knew about the recommended routines just a week ago. I am going to try it out and garbage my current routines which was based on my brain without proper knowledge. Lol However, I believe your pull ups will keep growing fine if you stick with the recommended routines (following all the details like sets/reps/temp/rest/rest days/etc) and correct macros in your diet
 
@protectionet I started with lat pull down when I could not do pull ups and there was a short period of time in the beginning when I did bicep curls and wrist curls using dumbells which I stopped doing. I only do BWF now. Thanks! I hope you will be more successfull than I am!
 
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