37/M, 6'0. Starting weight: 194 lbs. Ending weight: 204.
I want to hit the 1,000-lb club by the end of this year. I did a nice cut throughout the spring/summer, and then kicked off a 12-week stint on the nSuns 5-day regimen. (Credit: /r/nSuns).
Lifestyle factors: busy job and family at home. I have 45-60 minutes to get my workout in, max, so I can't spend a ton of time at the gym. To address this, earlier this year, I installed a squat rack in my garage. This cut down substantially on the time I had to devote to getting my workouts in, while giving me greater schedule flexibility too. I highly recommend it, if this is an option for you.
The lifts: I started off the program with an estimate of my training max for each lift, and then held at a given weight or increased it depending on how many reps I could get for my 1+ set. So note that these are not necessarily PRs, but rather what I actually rep at least once on my heaviest set.
Nutrition: obviously a key element to all of this. I have a structured meal plan in which I eat pretty much whatever I want, as long as I hit certain calorie/protein goals. Given the nature of my office job, it's usually pretty easy to maintain a very predictable schedule. [Takes a moment to shovel a forkful of spinach in my mouth.] I eat at a 400 calorie surplus every day with ~180g of protein. About 100g of that is from whey powder.
Challenges:
I want to hit the 1,000-lb club by the end of this year. I did a nice cut throughout the spring/summer, and then kicked off a 12-week stint on the nSuns 5-day regimen. (Credit: /r/nSuns).
Lifestyle factors: busy job and family at home. I have 45-60 minutes to get my workout in, max, so I can't spend a ton of time at the gym. To address this, earlier this year, I installed a squat rack in my garage. This cut down substantially on the time I had to devote to getting my workouts in, while giving me greater schedule flexibility too. I highly recommend it, if this is an option for you.
The lifts: I started off the program with an estimate of my training max for each lift, and then held at a given weight or increased it depending on how many reps I could get for my 1+ set. So note that these are not necessarily PRs, but rather what I actually rep at least once on my heaviest set.
- Bench press: 235 => 255 (+20 lbs)
- Squat: 280 => 315 (+35 lbs)
- Deadlift: 300 => 345 (+45 lbs)
Nutrition: obviously a key element to all of this. I have a structured meal plan in which I eat pretty much whatever I want, as long as I hit certain calorie/protein goals. Given the nature of my office job, it's usually pretty easy to maintain a very predictable schedule. [Takes a moment to shovel a forkful of spinach in my mouth.] I eat at a 400 calorie surplus every day with ~180g of protein. About 100g of that is from whey powder.
Challenges:
- My bench press has effectively stalled. I haven't gone up at all in almost 5 weeks, and I'm not sure how to keep progressing here.
- After gaining weight steadily in the first few weeks, my gain has begun to level out. On average, I've gained a bit less than 1 lb/week, which I think is acceptable in terms of muscle/fat gain mix.
- Aesthetically, I look basically identical. nSuns is not an aesthetics-focused program. While I've recorded small centimeter gains in some parts, they are very minor. This is always disappointing, but it's what you sign up for on this program.
- Aesthetics aside, my lifts have definitely gone up, which I'm pleased with.
- I like nSuns because it just throws a ton of volume at you, and automatically increases your weight as you complete more 1+ reps. It's easy to follow.
- The downside to nSuns are that (1) I felt sometimes like I was leaving too many reps in the tank, especially on the lighter sets. I actually went off-program and added more reps sometimes to account for that. (2) Finishing all 9+ sets was hard for me to do in the time I had allotted, especially if you also want to hit some accessories.