Tried everything!!!!!!!!!! cant gain!!

[mbuk04]

I am 6 ft 3 and have tried everything to gain some real weight. I have trained every other day pretty much for the last 2 years. I have tried low reps of heavy weights and increased the weight, but wouldnt gain much weight myself even though i have protien shakes, tuna, chicken, etc. So i then try doing high reps with small rests, for which i have to drop the weight, and then i dont gain either, just lose fat. Can anyone help me??? I want to def get my chest bigger, i do bench press, flyes, pullovers, inclines and dont really feel the burn that much in my chest, more in my shoulders??? this because my shoulders arent strong enough????? Thanks.

[jukka]

Dude, I'm sorry to not to answer your question, but you said
that higher reps with short rest periods helped you lose fat.

Could you tell me more, please...

Just a few things: how high reps, how short rest periods
and approximately how many sets/exercise and muscle group?
And how often did you do these workouts?

As for your not gaining anything, there now seems to be to schools of thought on how to gain:

I myself have made my best gains in high intensity training,
do only a few working set per muscle group, but do these sets into failure.

And failure here meaning that you do reps until you cannot perform another rep in good form. You can take the intensity even higher, but that's hell for your body, recovery takes longer than Dubya learning to pronounce nuclear.
I myself train only once in 4 days, as a result of poor recovery ability and intense workouts, but you may well have poor recovery ability as well, seeing that you're not making proggress.

Other versions of high intensity training exist, Todd here swears by Max-OT training, search for Todd's posts

KetoManiac swears with equal intensity and enthusiasm by performing sets 1-2 reps from failure, but hitting your muscles with these types of workouts quite often. As for how many sets and reps, i don't know, you can look for his posts as well.

JUST DON'T GIVE UP!! Some training method will suit you nicely!

[mbuk04]

i have done the high reps like for chest:
20 reps on fly x 3
15 reps on bench press x 4
15 reps on incline bench x 4

i had 30 second gaps in between, it really burns my shoulders though. id do like chest/back, then rest, shoulders and arms, then rest day, legs, rest day, and repeat cycle.

so does your training work for you??? how much do you weigh and how tall are you???? how many cals would you eat per day???

thanks.

[Cort]

Eat. Then eat more. If 3000 calories doesn't cut it for you, try 3400, if that doesn't work, try 3600-3800, etc...try to keep it clean and healthy though or you'll be gaining fat.

[jukka]

Yeah, my training works for me....as long as I care to do it right.
Going to gym too often results in overtraining just about immediately, in my case.

As for my weight, I'm a big fat bastard, I haven't paid any proper attention to my diet for years, so I've ballooned to 270 pounds at 6 foot 2.

But, I had a period of 18 months when i was pretty much confined to staying inside all the time, due to illness, and not doing Cheney for 18 months doesn't really promote fitness. It was also during that period that I was seriously deppressed an "medicated" the deppression with eating loads.

At the moment, I'm finally slooowwwwly getting back to paying some attention to what i eat, just basically trying to get some protein, some complex carbs and not much fat, and hopefully some fiber on every meal.

But, considering that my eating habits are crap and I STILL make gains,
that's pretty good.

For myself, I've noticed that no amount of eating cannot compensate for improper training, which to me has always been training too much, in terms of both intensity and frequency.

Yet, I also noticed that taking 'bout 40 grams of whey and 40 grams of carbs immediately after training as a post-workout supplement works wonders for me. But I guess prettymuch everyone on this forum agress that meals immediately after the workout are of crucial importance.

As far as some type of....or any type of muscle endurance is concerned,
high intensity stuff is useless. You get stronger and bigger,
but your ability to perform sustained effort goes to hell.

Not that you would be able to do tons of sets to failure anyway,
no matter what your training regime.

[jukka]

Oh yeah, about that shoulder thing, with your bench hitting your shoulders the hardest, I had the same problem.

With me it was a result of my not pulling my shoulder blades back and together hard enough. That's just about the most elementary thing about benching, yet I had sort of slipped away from it, having not paid enough attention to it.
Then I started pulling my shoulder blades back and arching my chest as hard as i could and for the first to chest sessions it was actually painful!
But I got used to it pretty quickly.

of course chest presses still work my shoulders hard,
but now my schest presses went from being just a front delt and triceps exercises to also working the tits quite nicely.

To me the bodypart split you described did not work,
chest presses hit the front delts so hard that they are still trashed when you have do shoulder presses on shoulder/arm day.
Same thing with triceps, they get worked pretty damn hard
on a chest day, and are probably really tired when it's time to work them again on shoulder/arm day.

I'd go with either upper body - lower body split or:
chest, delts tris
legs
back, bis.

Also, if you're shoulders are wasted from too much shoulder work (tired and indirect) they are likely to hinder your chest and back training as well,
as shoulders work pretty hard on those days too...unless they are too tired to do so.

BUT, all the stuff said above is what applies to me, and what i have learned about myself from personal experience.

Still, it might work for you too.

[Firehawk]

Doing high reps with lighter weight, with short rest periods, is like a weightlifting form of cardio. NEVER DO THAT if you want to retain or gain muscle, because it just won't happen.

You have to be very consistent. If you are eating 3500 calories and you aren't gaining, then eat 6000 calories, eat as much as you can, until you are stuffed 6 times a day, and sooner or later you will grow, YOU HAVE TO. You need to lift as heavy as you can in a rep range of 4-8 reps per set. I like to go 4-6 reps, but many grow at 8 reps.

You have to find out what works for you. You need to stick with something for a good 3-4 months though. You can't just try it for 2 weeks, expect to see inches put on around your arms and think you figured it out. That just won't happen.

Drink TONS of water, get plenty of rest, and be very consistent in how you train and how you eat. Eat eat eat eat. But eat clean. When you see that you are gaining weight, then you can distinguish better exactly how many calories your body needs to eat. But for now, since you are having trouble gaining, I would say eat 3500 calories and go up 500 every two weeks if you aren't putting anything on.

[jukka]

Damn, Firehawk,
doesn't high reps with short rests at least retain muscle,
though it probably won't build any?

I was getting fired up to do this, to get a change of pace from my current high intensity routine and moreover, to lose some of this....mass, I've gained.

Adding that 500 kcl like you said should be a good way and definitely the preferred way to find out if more food is what is needed.

I would definitely be vary of trying to find the solution from just eating like there's no tomorrow, there's the danger of developing Type 2 diabetes + other nastiness.

[Firehawk]

No, it doesnt retain muscle. It can cause you to lose muscle. That is how endurance athletes train for smaller but tight muscles. Your muscles will get smaller but tighter in size if you lift that way.

To make muscle grow, you have to make it believe it needs to lift heavier weight. To retain or build muscle, you should adopt a low rep, heavy as possible weight routine. If you wanna get "smaller", then high reps is the way to go, just know you will lose muscle mass.

If you are lifting heavy and with low reps, and aren't building muscle (granted this takes awhile without technological enhancements) then look at your diet, because that is also as important if not more, as doing the weightlifting.

[jukka]

Ok, FH, thänks.
Now, sorry for nagging on about this,
I don't mean to sound like we're married via this forum,
but have you tried this high-rep high-set short-rest training yourself?

If yes, then your opinions stem from your own experience and that's definitely good enough for me.

See, the thing is, my girlfriend has the genetics I'd kill for (I don't know how that would work, I'll probably have to make some kind of deal with Satan),
she puts on muscle rather easily, way too easily for her taste,
she is not aspiring to look like Schwarzenegger, neither the current version or the 70's version. For some reason.

To give an example of how easy it is for her, for years she used to do only isolation exercises for her legs:leg extensions, leg curls + yes and no movements (adduction and abduction) + some other form of butt work.
And yet she has muscular thighs.

She of course is after the same thing most women are when they work out,
toned body and lowish bodyfat. Definitely NOT big muscles.
For most women that is not a problem, but she actually has to hold back on her training. Lucky bast....

[jgriffith]

I wouldnt say that 15 reps with short rest periods makes you lose muscle. It certainly would retain the muscle and would most likely increase your muscle mass. Your strength would not increase very much, but I'm not sure thats what your goal is. I'd say in order for strength training to become purely cardiovascular, you'd have to be doing reps in the 50+ range. Any kind of rep range is going to produce strength and muscle tone as long as you're challenging yourself. Of course there is a range for optimal growth. I do agree with Fire in the sense that you need to be doing reps in the 6-10 range, if you'd rather do 10 reps then 1,2,3,4 so be it. But I dont recommend going much higher than that for optimal muscle growth.

[Firehawk]

You have to find what works best for you. Back when I had zero clue about what I was doing, I used to use reps near 15-20 and my muscles shrank, and I got weaker. I think it probably depends on what your body likes, but in my opinion, if you want to retain muscle mass, stay away from 15+ reps.

My body is built for adding muscle. Perhaps yours is built for running, I dont know.

[jukka]

Well what can you possibly know about anything,
you only deadlift 465

Kidding, my best is something like 300 lbs.

I thought that longer sets build some strength,
though nothing like the 4-8 range.

But it's the short pauses in this case that are probably the key,
you cannot challenge yourself strength-wise,
when you only rest 30 secs, the workout is bound to become
an exercise in cardiovascular ability.

But if you start the long sets with, say 15 reps, do those,
then on the next workout, try to get 16 for each set,
do this till you do all your sets till, say 18 reps,
then add weight a bit and start over...some tiny little strength gains should take place.

Sometimes I think about just forgetting about the whole strength thing,
and just start doing more pump sets for my workouts, see what's the result of that, if anything.

See, what always happens is, that I progress for a while like a son of a bitch,
then I hit a wall.

Of course, I've lost all my teenage enthusiasm on weight training years and years ago, and making gains is not the end-all and be-all of everything.

It's still my all-time favourite form of exercise, so I keep going.

[Todd]

Originally Posted by Cort

Eat. Then eat more. If 3000 calories doesn't cut it for you, try 3400, if that doesn't work, try 3600-3800, etc...try to keep it clean and healthy though or you'll be gaining fat.

Do what Cort just said above...I bet you 10-1 that not enough calories is the single biggest reason you are not gaining. Very smart advice Cort!