I've subscribed to a number of workout/fitness channels on youtube, and one of the most common questions that those guys get asked is some version of "I've been working out for 4-6 weeks, where are my gains?"

The youtubers usually say something along the lines of "be patient, it takes at least a year, etc etc."

I disagree.

I've been lifting for 5 months now, and I have made noticeable gains. I know this because I keep a workout log book, and I can look back and see what I was doing at the beginning, and what I am doing now.

Granted, before I started lifting regularly, I was not completely untrained. I did pushups, planks, and body squats on rotating days. But on 1-1-13 I weighed 250 lbs at 6ft. I had spent the holidays generally not giving a fuck and gorging on junk food. Now I am 225lbs, and down to 18.5% bodyfat (god knows what the percentage was before). Obviously I would have lost more weight if I hadn't put on muscle.

I recently looked back through my log and saw that I have in fact added 70lbs to my bench in 4 months: from 135lbs to 205lbs. Now, I never do 1RM sets. The weights I do, I always do for reps.

If you aren't seeing noticeable gains quickly, it is because you

1. Are not eating nearly enough. Forget all that pre- post- workout crap. I work out fasted, because I'm less likely to get all pukey. When I'm done, I eat big, more or less paleo. I often eat 6-10 eggs per day, for example.

2. Aren't lifting enough. One video I saw, the question was "Why doesn't my bench go up? ...I bench once a week..." The answer is obviously to bench way more. More times per week, and more sets.

3. Aren't writing it down. The log book is essential.

I quit writing every workout down long ago. My workouts are just different splits of my pet lifts supersetted with gymnastic movements; two workouts a day, morning is isometric or low intensity and night is generally (at least) two serious barbell movements and a few assistances.
Really if you know exactly what lifts are worth doing, have a one-week (or two-week) sets of guidelines for when to do certain lifts, and work up to a challenging intensity and volume, writing everything down is not terribly important.

My theory is that if you're in the newbie gains stage (i.e; where most people are at for at least six months of lifting) then writing it down is irrelevant because the lifts move up too quickly and can do so on literally any set and rep scheme - how could that be useful whatsoever?
People are also quick to point out that writing down workouts makes everything more efficient - well shit man, if you like doing something and are serious about it then being efficient doesn't matter either, you're going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the "problem" to become elite.

You're talking about visual gains? Or lifting gains?

Noone is going to see visual gains after 4-6 weeks. Things might feel a little tighter but the absolute most you'll put on during that time is about 2lb of lean mass. After 5 months you can see a bit of difference, especially if your diet habits are very stringent.

Lifting gains should skyrocket during the first 6 months. I agree that a log book is fine but not necessary, just keep track of your work weight in your phone or something. Logs are great for monitoring plateaus and adding that extra 5-10lb to your work weight every month to push through the plateau.

I've been lifting just under a year and am starting to hit a major plateau in all lifts. Going to switch to Madcow

I'm a huge advocate of writing stuff down, or keeping a log of some description. It's motivating to see the numbers going up, I'm always trying to beat last sessions records either in reps or weight and if that helps squeeze that extra ounce of effort out of me.

"if you like doing something and are serious about it then being efficient doesn't matter either,"

Why would you deliberately be inefficient? I care about my time in and out of the gym, there's not enough of it in a day to begin with so why unnecessarily waste it spending an extra 5 minutes an exercise finding your working weight every time?

For the newbie lifter, I'd say metalheadatheart is pretty much spot on since any routine with those rules will get you off the ground and that's the quickest way to start learning the basics of training. I would only add a 4th rule of:

Leave your ego at the door, drop the weight and get the form right. (Just don't use that as an excuse not to lift hard.)

I think the point these people make is about visual gains. Most people get into working out to look better rather than lift heavier.

But you may be touching on a point.

To those who are getting into working out and want to see gains, focus on the strength aspect to keep you motivated.

Quote: (10-06-2013 11:45 AM)Lucky Lothario Wrote:  

I'm a huge advocate of writing stuff down, or keeping a log of some description. It's motivating to see the numbers going up, I'm always trying to beat last sessions records either in reps or weight and if that helps squeeze that extra ounce of effort out of me.

"if you like doing something and are serious about it then being efficient doesn't matter either,"

Why would you deliberately be inefficient? I care about my time in and out of the gym, there's not enough of it in a day to begin with so why unnecessarily waste it spending an extra 5 minutes an exercise finding your working weight every time?

I'll just exist as the only counterpoint to the "write stuff down" movement.
Basically my argument is that if your setup is good, your main lifts are relatively few (under six I would say), and you know exactly where you are at at all times because you lift frequently enough to keep those numbers in your head, and understand your basic set and rep schemes, then there's nothing wrong with not writing stuff down. Doing this is unavoidable if you've been lifting long enough.

I'm not saying to be deliberately inefficient by dicking off in the gym, getting a pinkberry with your sassy gay friends, playing around on the nautilus equipment, getting a "leg and core" workout on the airdyne, and spending a lot of time in the can.

No, be deliberately inefficient with respect to volume, when in doubt do more. The SS crowd would probably all shit their pants if they found out that some lifters (yours truly) have done thirty total sets of triples/doubles/singles of 85-90% of 1RM "hand-off" deadlift within two hours, and drunk besides, because those tards think five reps every other week is pushing the limits. Jesus. "Oh no, it takes sooo much out of you!"

Just so you know "hand-off" is a great game, get your lifting friends together and a keg or whatever, everybody drink, and you all take turns hoisting iron with wahtever lift you want.

I mostly do not write anything down because I don't care to. Some day I'll get serious business with lifting and do a smolov routine or something but until then I'm not going to bother.

If you don't see results after 6 weeks..

You are:

Not working out hard enough. (need more intensity, more weight, more power, more explosion)
Have not adjusted your diet enough
Are not getting enough quality sleep
Have shitty form

Or,

You are overworking your muscles and not giving them a chance to grow.

Or,

You have bad genetics for muscle growth.

If you are working out with intensity, 5 days a week, with great form, a great diet, and you are getting good rest. You will see results in a week or less.

No results = not training smart enough!

Agreed with writing things down. I'd hamstring myself in the past by not paying too much attention and therefore I was unknowingly doing the same routines with no added weight or reps. So no gains were inevitable. I've made small, but noticeable gains just in the past two months. Now I need to change my routine again. I need to do a food log too.

Quote: (10-06-2013 02:54 PM)Giovonny Wrote:  

If you don't see results after 6 weeks..

You are:

Not working out hard enough. (need more intensity, more weight, more power, more explosion)
Have not adjusted your diet enough
Are not getting enough quality sleep
Have shitty form

Or,

You are overworking your muscles and not giving them a chance to grow.

If you are working out with intensity, 5 days a week, with great form, a great diet, and you are getting good rest. You will see results in a week or less.

No results = not training smart enough!

Great post.

Things that Gio brings up here that are not mentioned nearly often enough:

Sleep -- if you're not sleeping well you can't grow, period.

The possibility of overtraining. Unless you're a genetic freak or are on steroids, your muscles need to rest and recover for them to grow. Guys think they need to be in the gym all the time and go through the same motions every day -- wrong. There are guys that I see in the fucking gym every single time I go there. They are always milling about, they are overtrained as fuck and in all these years they somehow never get stronger. Instead they just get overuse injuries and stay weak.

(even 5 times a week is too much in my opinion. If you train with real purpose and intensity 3 times a week, that's ideal.)

I'll add one more thing which is related to that. To get the best possible results, you should enjoy weight training. Get into it, crank up some music, sometimes if your schedule allows just do it at a random time when you feel like it. If you're enjoying the fuck out of it, that's when the results will come. One thing about overtraining is that it takes all the joy out of weightlifting. These guys who are always there always going through the motions, they're zombies and sometimes I feel they need to be shot through the head like the zombies they are and put out of their misery

Don't let enthusiasm corrupt your form or make you use weights that you can't handle with perfect form. But otherwise, get into it. Think about weightlifting as being every bit as good as fucking. That's when the results will come bigtime.

Do you mean purely weight gains or strength gains? Right now I'm eating at a slight caloric deficit and losing weight very slowly. I'm glad. I need to lose body fat. Lifts are holding steady or going up just barely in some cases.

So I would add one to that list:

4. You have too much body fat to begin with so you can't see anything happening.

Go 6-8 weeks going heavy weight.
What I do for bench: 7x2 300lbs.


After you begin to plateau, go for more fewer sets and a few more reps for 6-8 more weeks.
Going back to bench: 4x4 280lbs

Make sure you move up in weight after every week or 2 weeks.

About 4 months ago, during heavy weeks, my bench was at 250. On the lighter weeks, it was at 225. This has been working out pretty well for me so I'm sticking with it.

Also do the same kinds of sets and reps for squats. Big increases after each 6-8 week period.

Mark Rippletoe (starting strength author) says you can expect 12-24 lbs of lean muscle the first year as a beginner with solid diet and training. It halves every year after that e.g. 6-12, second year.

It doesnt take a genius to figure out that you will gain more in the first six months than the second six months. In other words gaining 15 lbs of solid muscle in 6 months is completely possible.

For a guy with a low bodyfat %, I'd say tracking and writing your macros is more important than recording your lifts. When I started doing that, I realized I didn't get nearly as many calories as I assumed.

Quote: (10-06-2013 05:52 PM)_DC_ Wrote:  

Mark Rippletoe (starting strength author) says you can expect 12-24 lbs of lean muscle the first year as a beginner with solid diet and training. It halves every year after that e.g. 6-12, second year.

I'd attest to that. I've been doing stronglifts with some added isolation exercises and I've gone from 180 to 208 in 11 months, not completely lean though, at 16.8% right now, was probably around 15 before.

Many great comments.

Just to clarify, I was mainly talking about strength gains, although I have gained visually in the same time frame.

I definitely agree about focusing on good form. Nothing like an injury to talk you out of working out.

My workout week looks something like this:

Monday & Friday - heavy kettlebell swings, for time or until my grip gives out (I've recently upgraded to a 70lb kb). Then either bench/pistol squat ladders (sets of 2-3-5, usually 3 or 4 cycles) or barbell side press and kb goblet squats

Wednesday- KB snatches, 6 sets of 10 per hand, then goblet squats

Simple, but effective. KB snatches are what the Secret Service uses for conditioning. If you haven't tried it, I recommend it.

I usually add heavy farmer carries, depending on whether I'm strapped for time. I haven't deadlifted in a while because I pulled a muscle in my back, but the kb snatches fill in for this to an extent.

I never use the machines. Free weights all the way.

Lets just get the over training thing out of the way, most non high performance athletes will never come close to over training, it's become a buzzword for the lazy, gotta keep my workouts to 40 minutes, 4 x a week or I'll over train, can't train body parts more than once a week, I'll be over trained...most guys who talk about over training should give what they think over training is a chance and watch their progress. Over training was a legitimate issue in the golden era of bb'ing when guys were doing 20+ hrs a week in the gym doing endless sets with little to no time off but guys today rarely get past 20-25 sets in a given workout and are hard pressed to be in there busting ass for an hr, if they are it's cause they've walked around to the water fountain and flexed in the mirror for 20+ minutes of the workout and then took breaks of a minute + between sets on top of it so they only lifted for about 8 minutes of that hour lol...if a guy was legitimately over trained, there is no mistaking it... when I was at training camps to make the national squad we had 2 week invites where we'd do 2 a days, 6hrs on ice, plus gym work 6 days a week and then guys would try to get in extra on their own time, when you're over trained the physical symptoms are so overwhelming you can't workout, you have no motivation, you're a shell, real over training is debilitating...if your gains are non existent but you're able to get in your workouts, you're not over trained, it's something else in the mix that's off.

mikeymike:

the only time i've ever been overtrained was when i was lifting/conditioning 6 days a week and muay thai 6 days a week in evenings.

i'd come home a literally just shake and convulse in the bed.

had to make weight though!

but thats what it takes to over train...literally 12-15 hours per week of insane training




with respect to not tracking: if you don't track, you're losing. anything worth doing is worth doing right, right? track that shit. beat rep PR's every time. make progress. have a plan. stick to it.

^^^^
I've actually stopped SS. I started feeling weird tingles and odd tweaks in my lower back/upper back. Plus my lifts stopped progressing steadily.

Westcoast told me he does a medium-weight, high-rep, high-volume style training. His body speaks for itself. I adopted a variant of that.

Start off w/compounds lifts, then switch over to isolations. IE 10 sets (5 reps each) of deadlifts, then all sorts of isolation work.

Dvy: btw 5 3 1 is doing me right

Quote: (10-06-2013 09:17 PM)metalheadatheart Wrote:  

Many great comments.

Just to clarify, I was mainly talking about strength gains, although I have gained visually in the same time frame.

I definitely agree about focusing on good form. Nothing like an injury to talk you out of working out.

My workout week looks something like this:

Monday & Friday - heavy kettlebell swings, for time or until my grip gives out (I've recently upgraded to a 70lb kb). Then either bench/pistol squat ladders (sets of 2-3-5, usually 3 or 4 cycles) or barbell side press and kb goblet squats

Wednesday- KB snatches, 6 sets of 10 per hand, then goblet squats

Simple, but effective. KB snatches are what the Secret Service uses for conditioning. If you haven't tried it, I recommend it.

I usually add heavy farmer carries, depending on whether I'm strapped for time. I haven't deadlifted in a while because I pulled a muscle in my back, but the kb snatches fill in for this to an extent.

I never use the machines. Free weights all the way.

No wonder you aren't making the gains you want-that's a terrible program. It looks like the crap fitness magazines put out as the latest "amazing workout" or douchy personal trainers have cougar housewives do. At best, it's good for a a variation workout occasionally once someone already has built a good base of muscle

Get on Starting Strength or a good 5X5 program like the Stronglifts one, and add some auxiliary exercises such as dips, pullups, and curls

mikeymike,

It's true the overtraining can be used as an excuse for the lazy, but I disagree that it's never an issue for regular guys. I've rarely if ever experienced it myself but I have absolutely seen guys get overtrained.

It doesn't have to be anything extreme like what you're describing. What happens to guys who have been training too hard too often:

-- guys start having little energy in the gym even after good sleep and decent food
-- don't feel motivated or feel like they're moving through molasses
-- stop making progress or even inexplicably get weaker
-- start getting more tweaks or minor injuries of various kinds on seemingly random unrelated exercises

Then someone with these symptoms would take a week or two off from training completely (if they're smart) and come back completely refreshed and often stronger than they were before taking the break.

All of this is real, and I've seen it happen.

Obvious caveat: the faster your muscles recover from being torn, the more it takes to get overtrained. So if you're very young, or have extremely high test + are sleeping well, or are on steroids, then overtraining is rarely if ever an issue unless you do the extreme things you describe.

But for regular guys who are not super-young, who are not juicing, and who go through periods where they might have higher stress or their sleep might be compromised, but who nevertheless train hard and consistently, overtraining can absolutely happen. Whether or not it's an issue in any given case is a different story.

Quote: (10-07-2013 04:11 PM)MrXY Wrote:  

Quote: (10-06-2013 09:17 PM)metalheadatheart Wrote:  

Many great comments.

Just to clarify, I was mainly talking about strength gains, although I have gained visually in the same time frame.

I definitely agree about focusing on good form. Nothing like an injury to talk you out of working out.

My workout week looks something like this:

Monday & Friday - heavy kettlebell swings, for time or until my grip gives out (I've recently upgraded to a 70lb kb). Then either bench/pistol squat ladders (sets of 2-3-5, usually 3 or 4 cycles) or barbell side press and kb goblet squats

Wednesday- KB snatches, 6 sets of 10 per hand, then goblet squats

Simple, but effective. KB snatches are what the Secret Service uses for conditioning. If you haven't tried it, I recommend it.

I usually add heavy farmer carries, depending on whether I'm strapped for time. I haven't deadlifted in a while because I pulled a muscle in my back, but the kb snatches fill in for this to an extent.

I never use the machines. Free weights all the way.

No wonder you aren't making the gains you want-that's a terrible program. It looks like the crap fitness magazines put out as the latest "amazing workout" or douchy personal trainers have cougar housewives do. At best, it's good for a a variation workout occasionally once someone already has built a good base of muscle

Get on Starting Strength or a good 5X5 program like the Stronglifts one, and add some auxiliary exercises such as dips, pullups, and curls

there is so much good information available even on this website, which isn't about strength and conditioning, that its just too hard to take the time to try and set someone right that clearly is unwilling to listen to others or do the research.

bench and pistols are the only thing in there worth a shit for size and strength.

kb snatches are fun, they are grueling and they work the shit out of your conditioning - but they wont make you much stronger nor bigger

Quote: (10-07-2013 05:02 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

mikeymike,

It's true the overtraining can be used as an excuse for the lazy, but I disagree that it's never an issue for regular guys. I've rarely if ever experienced it myself but I have absolutely seen guys get overtrained.

It doesn't have to be anything extreme like what you're describing. What happens to guys who have been training too hard too often:

-- guys start having little energy in the gym even after good sleep and decent food
-- don't feel motivated or feel like they're moving through molasses
-- stop making progress or even inexplicably get weaker
-- start getting more tweaks or minor injuries of various kinds on seemingly random unrelated exercises

Then someone with these symptoms would take a week or two off from training completely (if they're smart) and come back completely refreshed and often stronger than they were before taking the break.

All of this is real, and I've seen it happen.

Obvious caveat: the faster your muscles recover from being torn, the more it takes to get overtrained. So if you're very young, or have extremely high test + are sleeping well, or are on steroids, then overtraining is rarely if ever an issue unless you do the extreme things you describe.

But for regular guys who are not super-young, who are not juicing, and who go through periods where they might have higher stress or their sleep might be compromised, but who nevertheless train hard and consistently, overtraining can absolutely happen. Whether or not it's an issue in any given case is a different story.

LOZ: Largely, I agree with your characterization of over training, and over training does NOT need to be seriously negative and intense in order to exist but instead signs of over training can be just bad performance in a given work out or sets of work outs.

Sometimes, strength and performance will go up by merely working through it, and sometimes we just have had bad work out days and the next day will be better no matter what we do.

During times that i have sense that I am becoming a little burned out and that I have overdone my workouts, sometimes just taking one or two days off will be sufficient to put me back on track to be stronger and with more energy.

As already discussed, writing down can be helpful when a guy is establishing some various workouts and possibly a routine and to keep track over a longer period of time to see ups, downs and possible plateaus. And, in the beginning we should be assuming that we should be seeing considerable progress for several months, possibly up to 6 months or more.

At the same time, writing down can be fairly time-consuming and interfere with just banging out the workout.. Sometimes, like Hades mentioned above, we may have other things going on in our lives and we just do not want to spend that much time writing down our workouts and instead want to just bang out our workout and get back to whatever other things may be going on in our lives.

Nonetheless, if a guy is serious about keeping track of his own performance, progress or lack thereof over a period of several months, then writing down the workouts is going to be very valuable in measuring the effects of the work out routines on you.

It takes two seconds to jot down lift rep and weights. It can easily be done while resting without extending gym time

Why so complainy?

Quote: (10-06-2013 10:36 PM)mikeymike Wrote:  

most non high performance athletes will never come close to over training

I agree with 90% of your post but I disagree a little about "over training"..

I will try to explain -- I see people at the gym who are tired. They work 9 hours in an office and then they come to the gym because its part of their routine. They think they must come to the gym to "be healthy". They do the same exercise everyday and their body never really changes. They complain of fatigue and aches and pains.

I think these people are "over training". You know what would make these people feel better and healthier? A nap. A good nights sleep. A vacation.

Do they really need to be in the gym 7 days a week?

For a lot of people, I think the answer is no.

Even God said to rest on Sundays, right?

I believe that we must occasionally allow our bodies to return to 100% power. Few people ever do this. They go through life tired. With little nagging injuries. They never allow their body to fully heal. They feel they must workout religiously.

I think this is "over training".

I see people at the gym who have good bodies but they don't look healthy. Girls who starve themselves and do 2 hours of cardio everyday. Guys who force feed themselves and have bigger arms than legs!

I call this "over training". They need to train smarter not longer!

OBVIOUSLY, IT ISN'T THAT WE DISAGREE. WE ARE USING DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF THE WORD "OVER TRAINING".

Also, Everyone's body works differently. Some people need more time to recover. Some people can work 5-7 days in a week and their body will recover well. Other people need more time to fully recover.

If you have great genetics, its hard to over train. If you are young, is hard to over train. If you are on steroids or hgh, its hard to over train. If you are a natural athlete, its hard to over train.

But, for everybody else, I think over training can happen.

If you are always tired, you should consider more hours sleeping and less hours in the gym.

If your body is always in pain, you should consider more time with rest, massage, stretching, etc. and less time putting stress on the same joints, tendons, and ligaments.

Many weight lifters go through periods of shoulder pain. Obviously, this is a good time to train the shoulders less.

Forcing our bodies to work, work, work is not always the best strategy. We all need a break sometimes.

You are talking about pure muscle fiber over training and I am talking about general health and wellness.

Thanks for forcing me to think deeper!

Quote: (10-07-2013 05:02 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

-- start getting more tweaks or minor injuries of various kinds on seemingly random unrelated exercises

Then someone with these symptoms would take a week or two off from training completely (if they're smart) and come back completely refreshed and often stronger than they were before taking the break.

I read your post and I feel like I wrote it myself. Actually, it's better then what I would have said.

We have the same perspective on this.