If like me you struggle to put on size and strength I know it can be very frustrating, so many times in the past I have tried putting on size and strength but always had minimal results. I didn’t know where I was going wrong, I was doing what everyone else was doing, I ate a lot, I trained intensely yet still minimal results. I would struggle to fit any more food in because I was so full which was unpleasant and discomforting, that was until I started trying new things with diet and training that weren’t the conventional way which upped my strength and muscle mass. Proving that not everyone is the same you need to workout what works for you.
I used to follow the typical split of training everything once a week 20-24 sets per body part trying to eat 5-6 Meals a day plus snacking whenever I could to and I was only able to put on a small amount of mass every year. I realised that this type of training works for some people but not for me, I started to do more research on how the older era body builders trained. Most of them would train everything twice per week, less sets per session but by the end of the week your muscles would have received more volume reaching 30 sets as opposed to 20-24 sets. I would train chest and back on Mondays, Tuesdays would be shoulders and arms and Wednesday would be quads, hamstrings and calves, I would also train one exercise of abs everyday at then end of the session. Within 9 months I went from 70kg up to 84kg and my strength shot up too, I would usually only put on 6-7kg in an entire year, but following this new regime I doubled it putting on 14kg.
My workout would consist of 3 exercises for each muscle group and 5 sets on each. I would often start on 30 reps of failure for the first set and then I would increase the weight each set until I could only perform 6 reps on the last set. Every set I would push to complete failure and week by week I would tweak how I performed the exercise. One week I would focus on the negative part of the lift, the next I would perform pause reps or ballistic styles of training. Constantly trying to shock the muscle into growth with different training styles, this kept my training fun and intense and I had never looked forward to training so much.
Training is only half the battle, for any good exercise regime there must be a great diet behind it to sustain your training. As I said earlier the 5-6 meals a day didn’t work with me, I had to stop every few hours to try and eat a meal leaving me feeling full and bloated which really got in the way of being productive. My new eating regime only I focussed only on 3 proper meals the rest was 2 snacks and 1 shake, this was not only easier to fit in my day, but I also felt less stuffed and was able to avoid force feeding. I was consuming around 3400 calories a day which is very hard when consuming relatively healthy food, it looked a little like this:
Breakfast: 2 Slices of wholegrain bread, 3-4 Scrambled eggs, 2 Rashers of fat trimmed bacon, or half a tin of no added sugar baked beans.
Snack: 1 Apple, 100g of Cashews
Lunch: 2 Cups of basmati rice, 2 Cups of mixed vegetables, 1.5 Turkey breast steaks.
Snack: 1 Toasted bagel, 40g Smoked salmon, Thin spread of cream cheese.
Dinner: 230g Extra lean beef mince, 1-2 Cups of chopped mushrooms, ½ tin of tomatoes, 150g of wholegrain spaghetti.
Shake: 400ml Whole milk, 1 Scoop of whey protein.
And that would be my daily eating, one reason why this was easier is I was consuming a huge amount of calories in healthy fats from the cashews a whopping 600 in one sitting. Due to them being high in calories but not filling I was able to consume more calories but no longer feel stuffed. This was worked out to my calories be aware if you are to copy this you may put on too much excess fat or not be consuming enough calories to sustain your weight.
If you want help with working out your calories and a meal plans you can purchase one through my website, this will be 100% tailored to you.
Thanks for reading, train and eat smart 😊