Missteps

So after spending 3 months dropping fat like it was hot, and building strength, I found myself wanting to switch programs. I was tired of doing rinky dinky stuff like “scapula raises” and “seated rows to neck,” and wanted to do a complete barbell routine with bench presses and squats and deadlifts, oh my. I also wanted to start building muscle more quickly.

When beginners take up weight-lifting, they experience an effect known affectionately as “noob gains,” in which one gets a bunch stronger in a hurry, even while cutting fat. Some folks feel you’re adding muscle mass at this time, although personally I think you’re just learning how to use more of your central nervous system to transfer signals to the muscles, and aren’t really getting any “bigger.” After a few months, though, if you aren’t eating enough, your muscles can’t grow, and you can’t get any stronger or bigger. My noob gains period, I guessed, had run its course.

I was also tired of not being able to eat mashed potatoes and pie. You can see how this is a serious concern, particularly as it was around the holidays.

So I googled around a bit looking for a “hypertrophy” workout that I could fit into my schedule, and found the “Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy Plan” by Chad Waterbury. It had everything I wanted: barbell exercises, and 4 relatively short workouts a week, divided into what’s known as an “upper/lower” split: upper body one day, and lower the next. I was well on my way to super-jacked gunz, son!

Except: I wasn’t. I kept running into problems, like the fact that I was having trouble getting all the reps at the prescribed weights (which were determined by a certain percentage of “1RM,” or one-rep-max, the maximum amount you can lift one time in an exercise). I was trying to do 3 sets of 10 deadlifts at 60% of 1RM, and was hitting something like 8 reps, then 5, then 4. My bench press wasn’t anywhere it was supposed to be, either, and I was having a lot of difficulty knocking out anything CLOSE to the chinup and dip numbers I was supposed to (even using an “assistance” machine, which helps by supporting some of your weight as you move).

Also, since I was supposed to be “bulking,” I was eating like a pig. No real veggies, lots of fat and protein and schleck. As a result I gained back a fair percentage of the weight I’d lost from careful dieting, and if my arms and chest were getting bigger, I didn’t much notice it, seeing as they were covered up in delicious, succulent fat.

After posting a few queries at the Men’s Health forums, and doing some more research, I concluded that doing a hypertrophy plan was a stupid idea for anyone as new to lifting as I was. Strength was what I needed, and a lot of it. On the advice of knowledgeable folks, I started eating properly and doing a program called “Starting Strength,” which is both a book and a very informative online wiki. It, once again, had everything I wanted: barbell exercises, a plan for progression (gradual adding of weight as strength improves), and just three workouts a week.

There are a few different programming techniques you can use, but the one I selected features back squats at every workout, bench press and overhead press on alternating workouts, deadlifts once a week, and pullups twice a week. (I like pullups, although at the time I could not do any, so I had to do “negatives,” wherein you use a stool to raise yourself up to the bar and slowly lower yourself down.) Dropping one workout was key, and also I was exercising just about every muscle in my body at every workout, instead of just twice a week. To recap: 25% fewer workouts, 50% more muscles worked.

I made great progress quickly…too quickly. I was adding lots of weight every workout (10-15 pounds to my squat every workout, 20 to the deadlift, 5-10 to the bench and overhead press) and after a couple weeks had quickly stalled out the upper body lifts. I reset (basically went back to the beginning) those, but kept adding to the squat and deadlift, eventually getting the latter up to 335 pounds, and the squat to 265, before a nagging pain in my right hip (I suspected the sartorius muscle) basically shut down all my leg exercises for a couple weeks.

I rested a bit (and was a lot less careful about my diet, unfortunately) and got back to it with more careful progression (no more than 5 pounds per workout to any exercise), but the hip injury kept lingering, and eventually I had to stop for a month. This, of course, was when I outwitted myself yet again, and convinced myself it was time to try another hypertrophy routine…more next week, and be sure to stay tuned for when I blew out my knee because I was stupid!