@ccmrockman Thanks. I took the advice from other comments in this post and started a SBS 5x week program. Already in the gym way more than I was before (now about 50-60 mins a session). I think complacency was a major factor. Also upped my food by about 300 kcal.
@sphynx That's indeed very slow and 135lb seems very little for 10y of bodybuilding. Is your nutrition and sleep in order? If yes, try to up the intensity while lowering volume and frequency. Been doing HIT for 2 months. My bench went from 100lbs to 120lbs, squat went from 150lbs to 190lbs. I'm doing 2 sets (to failure) per muscle group every 2 weeks.
@dawn16 My diet is good. High quality proteins with mid-low fat, almost no sugar and reasonable amount of simple carbs. Almost zero processed foods. My sleep is poor which is probably contributing to low energy at the gym
@sphynx Dude, how is your bench only 135 after 10 years, yet you somehow put 10 pounds on the bar in 6 months? Do you have some sort of muscular disease? I’m confused here. With 10 years experience, and weighing 145 pounds, you should AT LEAST be able to do your bodyweight. Realistically should be able to do like 185 or even 200.
@sphynx You should be much more focused on progress than just showing up and doing some fixed routine. Every workout you should be hoping to make a little progress and if you don't make it within a few workouts you should be thinking about what you might be doing wrong.
Track all your work and if your lifts are not going up fairly steadily you need some combination of more calories, more volume, higher RPE. (Or deload, not likely the case here.)
I have the sense you settled into some kind of routine and just repeated it for 10 years without actually focusing on the goal of making progress. This is what most casual gym goers do.
@sphynx 90-120 minutes a week is probably not enough, your programming and routine is most likely holding you back. If you spent more time with better frequency and bulked you’d see better results
@sphynx I'd try to find a program that lets you hit every muscle twice a week. You could also consider measuring and counting exactly how much protein you're getting just to be sure you're getting enough. You'd want around 120-160 grams of protein a day.
You said in one comment that you get high quality protein, but some high quality, healthy sources of protein like eggs don't actually contain that much protein
@sphynx My biggest lacks of progress were from not forcing progressive overload or following routines aimed at it. I just would watch more bodybuilding content but you need to add the renaissance periodization type of info to layout those individual workouts/exercises you use properly.
Also focusing growth on chest and shoulders at the same time I’ve noticed can be hard. Depending on your goals I’d do less flat bench and more incline and add in a shoulder machine/your shoulder day to the end of your chest workouts and hit the push day twice a week. And eventually swap to shoulders before chest once in awhile
Look into training blocks of 8 weeks. Also just because you can rep 185 for 5 doesn’t mean you try that every day.. to get past it sometimes you need to go back down to 165 for 10-12 etc
@sphynx Some good and bad info here. I’m 31, 5’7 and now 165 lbs, up from 130 when I started training, so I’m fairly comparable. How much are you currently eating?
