My 1 1/2 year progression

H

heavenhome

New member
Hey everyone,

so 1 1/2 years ago, i decided to go to the gym. I was always very interested in fitness, doing a lot of different things, but after all, training in the gym was the thing i enjoyed the most. Im very proud of the progress i made in the last years so I wanted to share it with you all. English isn't my first language so i hope everything is understandable.

Imgur album with before and after pictures:
https://imgur.com/a/60n87oC

Starting stats: Age: 20 Height: 173 cm ( 5' 7'') Weight: 67 kg ( 147 lbs)

Stats today: Age: 22 Height: 173 cm ( 5' 7'') Weight: 81 kg ( 178 lbs)

Diet:

At first, i wanted to hit 3000 calories a day, which I calculated and tracked with the App YAZIO. Tracking macros and calories was really stressful for me, which is the reason why I stopped it after 3 month. I made good progress and it definitley helped, but it was not worth it for me. The tracking helped me to develop a relativley good feeling about the amount of food I had to eat, so that wasn't a problem. After that, I somewhat eat everything I could, as long as i felt good about it, so i never forcefeed myself.

Excercise:

For the first 2 months I did a full body workout 3 times a day to get comfortable with the machines and weights in general, after that i started to do a push pull leg split 4 to 5 days a week. This was the time my muscles started visibly to grow and i made good progress. I started with a 3x10 bench press, lat pulldown, seated rows, squat, you name it. I pretty much did the basic stuff you can find all over the internet. Jeff Nippard provided me with a lot of helpful information, so did my one and only doctor Greg Doucette who helped me to train harder than last time. I learned about progressive overload and that this doesn't mean to increase weight every training, but to have a mentality to push yourself every time a little bit more. Since 5 months I'm doing 4 to 5 day Chest/Back, Legs and Shoulder/Arms split with a range from 5 to 12 reps, depending on the exercise (Compound movements like bench, squat, deadlift 5 x 5, every isolation exercise 3-4 x 10-15) which works pretty great for me.

Excercise stats:

So I injured my lower back 1 year ago which prevented me from heavy lifting for 6 month, so i guess my stats could be better, but since max attempts and heavy weights are not that important for me, because I always aimed for hyperthrophy, its okay.

Bench press: 40 kg ( 88 lbs) --> 90 kg ( 198 lbs) (x5)

Deadlift: 40 kg (88 lbs) --> 140 kg ( 308 lbs) (x5)

Squat: 30 kg (66 lbs) --> 110 kg ( 242 lbs) (x5)

So thanks for reading, let me know what you guys think about it ! I'm happy to get some feedback.
 
@heavenhome Nice work! You started out really skinny and are already pretty jacked. I'm sure a lot of young, skinny dudes who may not believe they can put on respectable size will be inspired by this.
 
@j3r3m3 Thank you! Yeah, some friends couldn‘t even believe their eyes after they saw me for the first time after a year of lifting. Pretty great feeling. And yes, i hope i can inspire some guys with this post!
 
@heavenhome There are so many highlights in this story:
  • Starting lean enough and actually letting his body weight go up (31 lbs, so nice) because muscle isn't actually filled with air.
  • Starting by tracking his intake to get an idea of how nutrition actually works.
  • Moving away from tracking, putting adherence over dogma when he realizes it's not sustainable for him.
  • Still continuing to put in practice what he learned when transitioning to intuitive eating.
  • Using a good acclimation phase with a fb 3x protocol which is very appropriate.
  • Adding more sessions for a total of 4-5/w when transitioning to more serious training, instead of stubbornly insisting with making the previous 3x work for longer.
  • Learning different things from a variety of sources.
  • Actually training for physique and not strength.
You restored my faith in humanity [sup]for at least the next hour.[/sup]
 
@dageo The problem isn't inherent to full body workouts, the problem is the only 3 sessions per week part, which just happens to be how most people run fbw, well rather, the reason why they run them in the first place, because the other standard programs require more days.

You have a certain amount of work (sets per muscle group per week) you need to do in order to produce some good growth. That amount increases alongside your training level, so the more advanced you are the more work you need to do.

When you're a rank beginner, only going to the gym 3x/week isn't a problem because the amount of work you need to do to grow is very little, you only have to do a handful of compound lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, OHP, chins, rows) for a couple of sets each, so 3 days per week is more than enough. The work you have to do here is kind of the same for multiple fitness goals.

After some months you outgrow that phase and become a mid-beginner. By now you developed some work capacity and became acclimated to resistance training, so you're able to do more. Because of that, it's the proper time to start applying some specificity to your training. Until now your training was the same for multiple goals that involve resistance training, just a handful of major compounds lifts, but now you start incorporating specific training for bodybuilding. This means dedicated work for the calves, hamstrings, biceps, triceps, and shoulders, while implementing variation in the rest of your training to hit certain muscles from different angles and to allow for better recovery. So before you had this:
  • Bench press.
  • Overhead press.
  • Rows.
  • Chins.
  • Squat.
  • Deadlift.
And now you have this:
  • Chest: horizontal press, incline press, isolation.
  • Back: Horizontal pull, vertical pull.
  • Shoulders: overhead press, lateral raises, facepulls.
  • Biceps: curls.
  • Triceps: some triceps isolation exercise.
  • Quads: Squats, some alternative quad compound, leg extension.
  • Hamstrings: a hamstring specific hip-hinge (romanian deadlift/good mornings), leg curls.
  • Calves: two calf variations.
So you moved from 6 exercises to like 17, which looks like a lot but it's a conservative amount for bb. And when it comes to total sets per week, it went from ~30 to ~65. Now it's one thing doing 10 total sets per session 3 times per week as you did until now, but to accommodate the new work in the same 3 sessions you will need to do 22 sets per session now. There are two clear consequences for this:
  1. Your sessions are now two times longer.
  2. Because it's full body, each workout you accumulate a lot of intra session fatigue, so the exercises you do towards the end of the session tend to suffer. It's one thing doing a heavy barbell row when it's the first or second exercise in the session, and a completely different one if you have to do them after heavy squats and deadlifts for example.
Still at this point it's not impossible, many people can make it work, you're just going to be in the gym for like 1.5-3 hrs for no reason, and even if some can make it work now, it can become very unsustainable long term.

And that's just the case for when you're a beginner, when you're an intermediate the amount of work you have to do increases again.

So what happens in practice? People start with a 3x/week setup, stubbornly insist on keep using it way past its time, and because it's unsustainable to do the amount of work they should be doing, they end up doing way less, expecting to grow at a good pace as a mid-beginner or intermediate with the work for a rank beginner. The result? Shitty gains overall, no calves, no hams, etc.

You don't necessarily need to throw the full body scheme away, but just incorporate one more session per week, it can make all the difference. And then when you become intermediate, adding another one is a very good idea.

Well this got long[sup]that's what she said[/sup]
 
@niecey85 Can confirm. When I started in the gym, my goal was always physique and look great naked, unfortunately I fell in /r/Fitness fallacy (just do a 3x week full body SL/SS/531/Greyskull LP/insert 5x5 here, focus on getting 225 bench/315 squat/405 deadlift and you will get bigger), now I don't even look like I lift, even after 2 years of training, it's shameful, I was just spinning my wheels.

To get a sense, in that time, I never did a single routine focused on physique, I was just bindly trying so hard to get my numbers up in the big 3, my mindset was: only change to a physique focused routine after hitting 225 bench/315 squat/405 deadlift, because I was told that this was the way to get bigger and stronger for a natural.

Fortunately, even after this long time, I found this sub and great resources (3DMJ, RP, Andy Morgan etc) and now I know what to focus on, it was hard to admit that load on the bar is not the only way to progress and sets of 5 wouldn't fix my problems lol

I can't wait to go back to the gym with a new perspective of training and nutrition and how my body will react to a 4x upper/lower (the routine from Eric Helms/Andy Morgan), in the meantime, I'm doing the Quarantine Workout Template.
 
@maria28 What routine do you follow when you’re in the gym now?

I attend gym on and off usually following full body but tbh, I’m wondering if it’s worth it for me. Think it may be time to try something different, I see some progress but nothing major.

I just enjoy the idea of gym 3x a week, I enjoy gym but can’t say I love it...Maybe if I made more visual progress I would.

Like you I’m just trying to look good naked, not be the strongest person out there. I’ll take aesthetics with a bit of size ultimately over strength.
Obviously I know strength can help reach their but I see a lot of fbw prioritise strength which I guess isn’t inheritently bad as a base to move on from.

But think it’s time to switch it up when I’m back in December.
 
@maria28 Thanks I’ve seen that quarantine one so may give it a go, but I can never motivate myself enough at home.

But that gym routine looks decent may run that when they reopen.
 
@dageo
but I can never motivate myself enough at home
Click to expand...

I feel you, in this quarantine, I realized that I fucking hate bodyweight workouts lol, but that's the minimum I can do to maintain my work capacity, so there's no other way, I have to do it.
 
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