UPDATE: I’m having almost no luck building muscle. VIDEOS ADDED

[hellokitty]

Body Stats*
28M
182lb
20-25% BF

Diet
Daily: 3484 cal, 334g carb, 269g protein, 118g fat

Ok so two weeks ago I made a post, which you can see here, about how I was not gaining muscle no matter what I tried. I talked about how I’m doing the Renaissance Periodization Male Physique template workout program, which uses the concept of reps in reserve (RIR). I got a lot of feedback suggesting I go up in weight and go to failure each set because I was likely underestimating my RIR and didn’t have a good idea to failure. So I decided to do just that and record myself on the sets to get feedback on my form and whether I’m hitting failure properly. I was definitely leaving reps/weight in the tank on a good chunk of workouts, others I wasn’t.

What I plan to do is follow this workout scheme for a few weeks, go to failure each set, increase reps/weight where I can, and then reassess to see if I’m making progress. I check my progress by measuring arm circumference (same time and position every day), by weighing myself, and by pictures. I’m also considering switching up my meal timing. I have a mass gainer shaker and eat a breakfast and then a lunch at around 11:30, so 5 hours before my workout. Then I eat after my workout. I have LPR (a form of acid reflux) and so that’s why I don’t eat before my workout, because it can trigger it. But perhaps I need to eat closer to 2-3 hours before my workout so I have more energy?

Anyway here are my results, i.e. my workouts. Let me know what you think about my form and going to failure. I know it’s a lot of videos, so if you look at anything please just look at my rows and pulldowns, because that’s where I’m the most unsure of if I’m judging failure correctly. I’m also unsure about where exactly failure is on the ab machine.

Workout*

Format: Reps x Weight

Day 1 (Chest Upper)

1. Incline Dumbbell Press = 14x40lb, 11x45lb (video), 10x45lb, 10x45lb
2. Pec Dec Fly = 16x115lb, 9x125lb(video), 8x125lb
3. Flat Machine Bench Press = 9x130lb, 9x130lb, 7x130lb (video)
4. Row Machine = 16x115lb, 11x125lb (video), 10x130lb (video, 11-12 didn’t quite make it I think), 10x130lb
5. Dumbbell Side Lateral Raise = 10x15lb, 11x15lb (video), 9x15lb, 7x15lb, 6x15lb
6. Ab Machine Crunch = 20x115lb, 10x115lb, 8x130lb (video)

Day 2 (Quad Legs)
1. Leg Press = 10x270lb(video), 10x270lb, 8x270lb(video), 7x270lb, 7x270lb
2. Lying Leg Curl = 11x95lb(video), 9x95lb, 8x95lb, 7x95lb
3. Smith Machine Calves = 12x215lb (video), 10x215lb, 9x215lb

Rest 1 day between days 2 and 3

Day 3 (Back Upper)

1. Underhand Pulldown = 15x140lb, 10x150lb(video), 8x150lb, 7x150lb
2. Normal Grip Lat Pulldown = 10x130lb(video), 8x130lb, 6x130lb
3. Row Machine = 8x130lb(video), 8x130lb, 7x130lb
4. Flat Dumbbell Bench Press = 7x55lb(video), 6x55lb, 5x55lb, 4x55lb
5. Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raise = 13x10lb(video), 11x130lb, 9x130lb, 9x130lb
6. Ab Machine Crunch = 14x125lb, 9x125lb, 8x125lb

Day 4 (Glute/Ham Legs)

1. Hex Bar Deadlift = 10x60lb(video), 10x60lb, 8x60lb (Weight does not include bar)
2. Dumbbell Walking Lunge = 11x25lb, 7x30lb(video), 7x30lb
3. 45 Degree Back Raise = 9x25lb(video), 7x25lb, 6x25lb
4. Leg Press = 7x270lb, 6x270lb, 5x270lb
5. Smith Machine Calves = 13x215lb, 11x225lb, 8x225lb, 8x225lb

Day 5 (Shoulders/Arms Upper)

1. Incline Dumbbell Curl = 9x30lb(video), 8x30lb(video, Angled the seat higher, is this better?), 6x30lb, 6x30lb, 5x30lb
2. Cable Rope Pushdown = 9x47.5lb(video), 9x47.5lb, 8x47.5lb, 7x47.5lb
3. Shoulder Press Machine = 10x80lb(video), 8x80lb, 7x80lb, 5x80lb
4. Dumbbell Shrug = 15x60lb(video, not sure if I should count the last few), 10x65lb, 10x65lb
5. Underhand Pulldown = 10x150lb, 8x150lb, 7x150lb, 6x150lb
6. Incline Dumbbell Press = 7x50lb, 6x50lb, 4x50lb
7. Ab Machine Crunch = 15x125lb, 10x125lb, 10x125lb

Rest 1 day between days 5 and 1

 

[searchingforsomething]

@hellokitty You are overanalyzing things and are expecting to see results in little time which is unlikely as a natural lifter. The most important things to building muscle are diet, intensity, and time. As long as you are lifting hard, and eating to promote muscle growth, then you will gain muscle but it takes time.

 

[jluponeage]

@searchingforsomething Time is such an important factor. A great way to promote the idea of lifting hard is to simplify the amount of lifts that you do. Choose 10-12 lifts and just sort them out on to the amount of days you can lift per week and just do them in various rep ranges close to failure and slowly add weight/reps over time. Here’s my list:
1. Incline DB Press/ Incline Smith Press
2. Seated DB OHP/ High Incline Smith Press
3. DB Lateral Raise
4. Cable Facepull
5. Pull-ups
6. Barbell Row
7. Romanian Deadlifts
8. Leg Curls
9. High Bar Barbell Squats
10. Seated Calf Raise
11. EZ Bar Curl/ Hammer Curl
12. Overhead Tricep Extension/ EZ Bar Skullcrusher

If you were to his reasonable weights at the 12 movements above, you would absolutely have a respectable physique.

 

[notsure17]

@hellokitty On your original post the overwhelming suggestion from folks was that you were massively over-complicating things and needed to simplify. You're now back with another extremely complicated and detailed post.

If you're not going to take people's feedback into account, then what's the point of making these posts? No one is going to give you a magic bullet to being a bodybuilder. Chill out, put your head down, and put some work in.

 

[hellokitty]

@notsure17 The suggestion was to go to failure and that I didn’t know what failure was. So I took videos of myself going to failure to get feedback. I did exactly what the feedback suggested.

I’m not overcomplicating anything. I’m following a program. I’m going to failure, LIKE PEOPLE SUGGESTED IN THE PREVIOUS POST. Your advice seems to be “just lift”. Which is what I’ve been doing for over a year and have not made much progress. Hence the post. I’m sorry but I’m just sick of hearing such useless advice. No shit I should just lift and work hard. But I have been working hard and it hasn’t been working. So I’m looking for pointers because I don’t want to keep busting my ass at the gym and not see any results.

 

[grace_chaser]

@hellokitty I think you misinterpreted some of the feedback. I think what multiple people suggested is that this program is a bit much for a beginner, for you to learn what 0rir/failure is (not necessarily train to failure on every exercise for a week in a complicated program), and for you to conquer some of your fear of increasing weights at the expense of perfect form.

At your level you need the most basic movements: S/B/DL with a handful of common accessories like a row, oh press, RDL, and throw in some curls and tricep work while you’re at it because who doesn’t like bigger arms. You’ll probably progress with just 6 sets of squats, 8-10 sets of bench, and 3-4 sets for each accessory per week. That’s it. If you do something like starting strength with extra accessory work for 3 months you’ll see good gains.

 

[pogue72]

@grace_chaser This. Looking at OP's form, i think it's quite obvious that his bracing is still lacking and most of his pressing movements still has a lot of legs flailing around. OP really needs to stop being hyperfocused on hypertrophy programs

 

[confusedgirl98]

@hellokitty You're following a program that's not made for beginners. Just stick to the basics. If you're dead stubborn, get your T levels checked

 

[sbcalady]

@hellokitty I read some of your original post and this one and watched a few of your videos.

I would say your main issues aren't that you are a hard gainer or due to your genetics, it's way to early to know that.

I would say you are over thinking things, you shouldn't be doing a RIR / RPE program until you are much stronger and know your limits. And you really shouldn't spend the coming time doing everything to failure to get to know your limits either. You wrote that you've been lifting for a year but that don't really show in your weights, you might had started out severely malnourished and we don't know that, if so you've come a long way. But if you did start out like most guys and had the same basic strength according to your size, the strength gains you've done are way too low for one year of lifting and imo you should shift your focus towards a split that is more tailored towards increasing your weights and not focus as much on RIR focused programs, since they are usually really difficult for beginners since you don't know your limits yet.

I'm not saying you should do starting strength or something that is tailored towards powerlifting, but perhaps a PHUL or upper / lower split where you set your rep and set goals and once you reach those you increase the weight and keep doing that for a year, and focus on the big compound lifts (or alternatives that closely resemble them).

Also focus less on your arm size, don't even measure it. Just measure strength gains and keep a look out for your weight and perceived body fat so you don't over bulk and get too fat in case you wanna get shredded in the future.

 

[dawn16]

@sbcalady hard gainer lol.. aka: not enough eater. Good advice on the arm size thing, though, I've been training for over 15 years and spent a good 4-5 focusing on arm size and gained only 1 inch. Sometimes genetics aren't there for certain bodyparts to just keep growing.

 

[sbcalady]

@dawn16 I've been around long enough to know that as soon as someone isn't gaining as much muscle as they hope for within a small amount of time they usually throw the word hard gainer around.

Gaining muscle is a marathon but people want it to be a sprint.

But yeah I'm the same but for chest, my chest don't want to grow as much, my legs however seem to be determined to outgrow any jeans I buy. At least they were a decade ago. Nowadays there are a lot more loose fit jeans.

 

[dawn16]

@sbcalady Yep I cringe a little any time I hear "hard gainer" or the overanalyzing of somatotypes. No, you aren't fat because you're "big boned" or "an endomorph", you're fat because you eat too much and don't exercise enough. I used to care a lot about arms when I was young in my lifting career, now I actually want the big legs that don't fit in jeans. I respect someone with monster legs over huge arms 10/10 times.

 

[hellokitty]

@sbcalady Okay this has not been a small amount of time for me. I have been at this gym for over a year now. And I haven’t made any noticeable progress for 8-9 months now. When I look at pictures of myself from last summer the only thing that I have gained is fat around my waist. I’m not expecting to be ripped in 1 month. But if I’m not seeing progress over several months then clearly I’m either doing something wrong (which is what these posts are trying to find out), or I have a genetic or health issue holding me back. I don’t know where people are getting this idea that I’m complaining that I’m not getting ripped in 2 weeks.

 

[sbcalady]

@hellokitty You are doing something terribly wrong. You are 100% using the wrong program for you. If you see zero gains in 8 months then it's clear something is wrong, if you gained fat during that time you are at least on a caloric surplus. So the program is wrong.

If I were you I would cut the program and do PHUL or PPLx2 or an U/L split. Heck I'd probably even recommend you do starting strength now tbh.

But I've read your other replies and you seem dead set on doing the wrong thing and not fixing the actual issue at hand. Which is the program. Instead you want to fix everything around the program, which aren't even the issues tbh. You are eating enough.

 

[hellokitty]

@sbcalady I’ve only been doing the program for 5 weeks. The first 3 weeks I followed the RIR part of it, the last 2 weeks I’ve gone to failure. Before I had my own workout program that I did, which was similar to a PPL. I did back/bis, chest/tris, then legs/shoulders. And I was not seeing progress so that’s why I started the different program. Because what I was doing wasn’t working. I have not been doing this program for 8 months. I’m not dead set on doing the wrong thing I just don’t like the “just lift bro” advice. Like yea that’s what I have been doing.

 

[sbcalady]

@hellokitty Share your original program, something tells me that program was actually better than this but you just didn't have a clear progression plan.

Also share your progression in lifts from day 1 (or when you started keeping track) until now. I'm just assuming you weren't super weak when you started out but perhaps you were and you've actually done a 300% weight increase (numbers might be inflated in my example) but it don't show cause we're all comparing your weights to what we did after about a year of serious training.

It's hard knowing if you're doing something wrong if we don't know where you started and what trajectory you've been having.

 

[hellokitty]

@sbcalady Okay so for the progression I’ll have to edit the post but here’s the workouts I did. I did 3 sets of each between 12-6 reps each. My progression plan was to start do 10 reps, 8, reps, 6 reps at a certain weight, then 11,9,7, then 12,10,8, then I would add weight and start at 10,8,6. Idk if this was the best. And at a certain point I think my form was breaking down and I was just trying to add weight. But here are the workout splits I did. Let me know what you think. I’m definitely gonna run this program for at least a few more weeks because I don’t wanna hop around a bunch, but I might go back to this split and take some workouts from this program that I like.

Back/bis

-Lat Pulldown

-Isolateral Low Row

-Bent over dumbbell row

-1 arm high cable row

-Alternating dumbbell curl

-one arm cable curl

-Incline dumbbell curl

-barbell curl

Chest/Tris

-Machine Chest Press

-Decline Chest Press

-Incline Cable Fly

-Machine Fly

-Dips

-Cable Pushdown

-Pronate kickback

-Laying tricep extension

Legs/Shoulders

-Dumbbell Lateral Raise

-Cable Lateral Raise

-Face Pull

-Rear delt raise

-Leg Press

-Lying Leg Curl

-Machine Leg Raises

-Machine Calf raises

 

[sbcalady]

@hellokitty Yeah tbh that program is way too much for a beginner as well, eight different exercises per session, doing 3 sets per exercise. You were probably over training doing that program, not leaving enough time to recover and going back still being depleted. Like doing dips in the end of a chest session would kill anyone.

I'm taking it you didn't do each program once per week either? But 5-6 days a week? I would probably focus on 2-3 major lifts and 2 accessories tops per day, focus on getting stronger on the big ones that you care about, like bench, leg press, pull downs, rows etc.

 

[hellokitty]

@sbcalady Ok thanks for your advice, I will consider that. I’m going to keep at this program for a bit, because I have made some small gains in a lot of my lifts when i compare the 2nd week of going to failure to the first. So I’m gonna keep at it because I want to see if those gains will continue. This program is a lot for me, so if I could transition to one with less volume I definitely will. I’ll probably make a PPL split and post it here for feedback. I’ll also do that if I’m not making strength gains on this program in a few weeks.

Also I want to clarify I don’t want to be a bodybuilder. I want to gain about 20-25 pounds of muscle and go down to 10-15% BF. I know this will take time. Likely a few years. As I get closer to my goal I’d transition more and more to a maintenance program. I also used to do Muay Thai and want to get back into that once I’m on a good track of gaining strength and muscle at the gym. Maybe I should add an edit to clarify that. Idk if that changes things.

Also this is specific. Someone said my form on the incline DB press was really bad. Did you happen to watch that video? Do you think it’s bad?

 

[confusedgirl98]

@hellokitty So you're just program hopping then?