Slow and steady
nossmf
Posts: 11,527 Member
For the past four months, I've been restricted from weight lifting due to an elbow tendon injury. (Sure, I could've done legs only, but nah.) During that time I hit the cardio hard, figuring I may as well cut. Dropped 15 pounds in that time. Today were the twin good news of being cleared to reenter the weight room, plus my weight has dropped below 180 for the first time in decades.
Now it's time to reverse gears, from a no-lifting-fast-cut to a lifting-slow-bulk. I started lifting back in 2009 when I was quite overweight, and ever since have been doing more or less a long-term body recomp, naturally swapping fat for muscle over years. These past four months were my first true cut; highly successful, I think. Now, it's time for my first true bulk, though I hesitate to use that term, as I want to retain my leaner state and only look to gain 5-10 pounds of muscle.
Today I bought creatine (5mg powder) for the first time, so that's gonna be a learning curve as I go. Drink LOTS of water I've been told; I already do two liters per day, was told to up it to a gallon. (Not likely to happen, but a few years ago the thought of drinking two liters was impossible to fathom, so who knows.)
Stats:
Male
Age: 45
Ht: 5'9"
Wt: 179.4 lbs
BF: 15%
LBM: 152.5
Waist: 32.5"
Biceps: 14.75"
Chest: 40"
Quads: 24.5"
My plan will be four lifting sessions per week: M legs, T pull, W push, Sa full-body. I will also have two cardio days (W-Th) per week, and rest day Sunday. (This is not a new routine for me.)
My diet will start at 2000 calories per day, eating back all exercise calories. (This is a change from the past four months of 1800 per day and NO exercise eat back.) Daily protein levels will be 150+ on cardio/rest days, 180+ on lifting days. Goal is a super slow gain of only .25-.5 pound per week tops. (I'm fully aware the creatine combined with rising glucose levels from resuming lifting after a layoff is likely to have a significant water weight increase the first few weeks.)
Now it's time to reverse gears, from a no-lifting-fast-cut to a lifting-slow-bulk. I started lifting back in 2009 when I was quite overweight, and ever since have been doing more or less a long-term body recomp, naturally swapping fat for muscle over years. These past four months were my first true cut; highly successful, I think. Now, it's time for my first true bulk, though I hesitate to use that term, as I want to retain my leaner state and only look to gain 5-10 pounds of muscle.
Today I bought creatine (5mg powder) for the first time, so that's gonna be a learning curve as I go. Drink LOTS of water I've been told; I already do two liters per day, was told to up it to a gallon. (Not likely to happen, but a few years ago the thought of drinking two liters was impossible to fathom, so who knows.)
Stats:
Male
Age: 45
Ht: 5'9"
Wt: 179.4 lbs
BF: 15%
LBM: 152.5
Waist: 32.5"
Biceps: 14.75"
Chest: 40"
Quads: 24.5"
My plan will be four lifting sessions per week: M legs, T pull, W push, Sa full-body. I will also have two cardio days (W-Th) per week, and rest day Sunday. (This is not a new routine for me.)
My diet will start at 2000 calories per day, eating back all exercise calories. (This is a change from the past four months of 1800 per day and NO exercise eat back.) Daily protein levels will be 150+ on cardio/rest days, 180+ on lifting days. Goal is a super slow gain of only .25-.5 pound per week tops. (I'm fully aware the creatine combined with rising glucose levels from resuming lifting after a layoff is likely to have a significant water weight increase the first few weeks.)
4
Replies
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Sounds like a good plan.
In case you don't know, you don't need to preload the creatine. After 28 days, you'll have the same amount in your system either way.3 -
I also like to rest BEFORE leg day. Most canned workouts I’ve seen puts the rest day after legs.
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Personally, I like doing legs on Monday after resting Sunday, both because I'm fresh to hit legs with weights which put my upper body to shame, but also on Bench Press Monday all the chest stations are usually full, but there's always at least one squat rack open.0
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Sigh every blasted day is leg day. I dream of just doing one leg day each week! 🤣4
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My legs respond quite impressively, gaining size and strength just by passing within 50 feet of a bar, lol. I actually have to limit how much leg work I do, so my quads don't require bigger jeans.2
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Week one status report:
Weight up 3.0 pounds
Waist unchanged
Mirror image looks fabulous getting back into the weight room. Workouts have been single working sets of five at 50% 1RM, nothing intense yet. But the creatine is definitely working its magic, as no matter how much water I drink I'm still parched, and the man in the mirror is looking fabulous, so I know the weight gain is strictly water weight. I'll accept that...for now.2 -
Week two status report:
Weight up 2.1 pounds
Waist unchanged
So much for slow and steady weight gain, with five pounds in the last three weeks. The fact my waistline hasn't budged and I can still remove my wedding ring (after 15 years of physically being unable to) helps calm me down a tad. But the weights I've been lifting during my slow return to lifting haven't been heavy enough to warrant actual muscle growth, so the extra baggage is still water and maybe some glycogen. But this rapid increase needs to stop soon if I'm going to be able to track actual muscle gain. If I pop up above 190 again, I'll switch back to cutting mode, and this little experiment will be over sooner than hoped.1 -
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kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »
Them Chickens! Jk jk
Here I am dreaming on needing bigger jeans due to quad size0 -
You may envy my leg development, but I envy just about every other lifter's chest development. I can get impressive legs, nicely shaped arms and shoulders, am even starting to develop a shading of a six-pack. Yet I have never been able to develop my chest into looking like I actually lift. I've always been trapped with a Spiderman chest when I really want Captain America.4
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Week 4 status report:
Waist unchanged
Weight down 2.5 lbs
After three weeks of rapid increase as my body flushed with water and glutamine, I finally dropped this week. Could this be a sign I may be stabilizing, and can soon begin gauging progress based off of diet and muscle gain rather than just water fluctuations?2 -
After 8 weeks, thought I'd see how my stats compare to when I started with the creatine:
Stats:
Wt: 179.4 lbs // 188.6
BF: 15% // 15.9%
Waist: 32.5" // unchanged
Biceps: 14.75" // 16"
Chest: 40" // 38.5"
Quads: 24.5" // 24"
Chest is smaller, but I'm unsure how much of that is simply me trying to measure myself rather than somebody else doing it for me. But my arms are bigger, waist is unchanged despite weight going up (which I've kept the same weight two weeks in a row now). Mirror image looks quite nice, if I do say so myself, lol.0 -
Congrats.
Those measurements look very suspect though. I mean you've gained 5% weight, gained body fat, your biceps has gone up a very large amount and your waist is the same... but your chest and quads are much smaller? That doesn't make sense.0 -
I agree, which I attribute to the inherent inaccuracies in self-measurement rather than having somebody else do it for you. But even then, I question measurements by others at times. My last physical back in January, when I was at my lowest weight in decades, she measured me as a 35" waist when my 34" jeans would fall off without a belt? I even got measured as three different heights during my military days.0
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In part due to financial constraints, I'm taking the month of June off from any creatine. Weight is continuing to creep up slowly, with both good and bad effects:
Good:
- love my image in the mirror!
- strength continues to improve on key lifts
Bad:
- can no longer remove my wedding ring from my finger before lifting, have to wear a glove on left hand to protect from scratches
- my favorite work shirt is getting rather tight, may have to stop wearing it if I continue to get bigger across shoulders
- belt starting to feel restrictive again, meaning my gut isn't staying the same size but is also starting to creep up2 -
In part due to financial constraints, I'm taking the month of June off from any creatine. Weight is continuing to creep up slowly, with both good and bad effects:
Good:
- love my image in the mirror!
- strength continues to improve on key lifts
Bad:
- can no longer remove my wedding ring from my finger before lifting, have to wear a glove on left hand to protect from scratches
- my favorite work shirt is getting rather tight, may have to stop wearing it if I continue to get bigger across shoulders
- belt starting to feel restrictive again, meaning my gut isn't staying the same size but is also starting to creep up
I admire your commitment to working out. My weight isn't coming off with just doing housework and gardening I'm going to start weight training again today. I have a bench and free weights in my basement so there's no excuse not to use them except that I'm an expert procrastinator.1 -
People often confuse procrastination with laziness. I'm a serious procrastinator most of the time, pushing off doing chores until the last possible second. Once I do begin a project, though, I power through in impressive style, including working for hours uninterrupted if the work demands it. A lazy person would half-heart things, stopping as soon as possible. A procrastinator can work like a maniac, it just takes time or motivation to overcome the inertia of being idle, but once we do, the inertia of moving definitely takes over.3
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With the start of July, I'm back to taking creatine, and my workouts are going great! I would love to post an updated image of how I look, but unfortunately my selfie skills are seriously underdeveloped, as any image I take seems invariably to look significantly less flattering than what I see in the mirror. I'm guessing it has to do with the camera lens "seeing" through shadows more efficiently than my eye, and without shadows the body looks flatter, less curves in the right places.
(I don't want to ask my wife to snap photos, as she'd probably start asking why I needed said photos, who was I going to show them to, etc. I've never given her cause to think I'd stray, but before she met me she had a series of relationships with guys who cheated, so being suspicious is sometimes a hard habit for her to break.)1 -
People often confuse procrastination with laziness.
I suppose when it comes to working out I'm not that motivated. I'm in decent enough shape to fit into all my clothes even if some are a bit tight. I'm happily married so I'm not looking to attract a mate. I wouldn't say I'm lazy.
However, I did 30 minutes of Barre today using light free-weights and worked in the garden. So, I'll see if I keep it up. Time will tell.
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I'm happily married for 21+ years, my job has me sitting at a desk, I don't play recreational sports. My motivation to continue lifting is a combination of liking the way I look after a lifetime of hating it (scrawny geek in school, borderline obese as an adult), plus protecting my joints to feel better now that I'm age 46 and the body wants to succumb to the arthritis that runs in my family.2
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I'm happily married for 21+ years, my job has me sitting at a desk, I don't play recreational sports. My motivation to continue lifting is a combination of liking the way I look after a lifetime of hating it (scrawny geek in school, borderline obese as an adult), plus protecting my joints to feel better now that I'm age 46 and the body wants to succumb to the arthritis that runs in my family.
It's great you've found something you like doing that's helping you have a better life.0 -
I'm starting to believe the whole "take creatine, eat above maintenance, and workout results will skyrocket" statement. A couple weeks ago I was able to bench press 225 for 5 sets of 5 for the first time ever. Today, on my final set of five, I got a spotter and went for max reps, cranking out 10, a personal best. According to online 1RM calculators, this corresponds to a 299 1RM, which would also be a personal best. (I've officially benched 285 for one rep a few years back.) Obviously I'm not going to try that weight anytime soon, but it's a nice ego boost.
Now's where age and experience kick in. A few years back my bench press numbers started to fly up, and ego-lifting-me just kept pushing the actual single-rep maxes every week, eventually peaking at 285 at BW 190. But that celebratory day was quite fateful, as I felt pain in both shoulders which almost required twin rotator cuff surgery. Managed to avoid surgery and went with physical therapy instead, but it cost me several months in the gym.
Problem then was I wasn't allowing my joints or stabilizing muscles to get stronger along with my primary movers. This time I will keep all my sets at 4+ and take my time actually increasing the weight used. Used to think my days with a shot at a 315 bench were over, but now that dream is starting to peak its head up once more. But IF I get there, it'll be months from now, not trying in the next couple weeks just because a calculator thinks I can.2 -
Outstanding!
I often like to finish with an AMRAP. Aside from being good stimulus, it tells you where your failure actually is.0 -
Last November I hurt my elbow and had to stay out of the weight room for several months. Used that time to do cardio 5-6 days per week, really try to cut fast, and it worked. Once I got clearance to resume lifting and wanted to slow-bulk, I backed off the cardio to a single day per week, getting at least a little bit of heart-healthy work without burning away precious calories meant for muscle-building.
The last couple cardio sessions, however, have started to really feel like I'm slogging through. Pretty sure my cardio-level has been dropping steadily, and it's starting to show. Wonder if I should add a second day of cardio each week. I can easily eat enough calories to offset the burn, but I'm worried more from a fatigue standpoint, since building muscle already requires intense lifting with equally intense recovery. I currently take the dog for occasional walks (when my daughter neglects to do it), as well as long walks each day from parking lot to office, so I don't really consider walking a sufficient cardio activity to maintain my fitness level, but maybe that's just a paradigm I need to shift in my head.0 -
Last November I hurt my elbow and had to stay out of the weight room for several months. Used that time to do cardio 5-6 days per week, really try to cut fast, and it worked. Once I got clearance to resume lifting and wanted to slow-bulk, I backed off the cardio to a single day per week, getting at least a little bit of heart-healthy work without burning away precious calories meant for muscle-building.
The last couple cardio sessions, however, have started to really feel like I'm slogging through. Pretty sure my cardio-level has been dropping steadily, and it's starting to show. Wonder if I should add a second day of cardio each week. I can easily eat enough calories to offset the burn, but I'm worried more from a fatigue standpoint, since building muscle already requires intense lifting with equally intense recovery. I currently take the dog for occasional walks (when my daughter neglects to do it), as well as long walks each day from parking lot to office, so I don't really consider walking a sufficient cardio activity to maintain my fitness level, but maybe that's just a paradigm I need to shift in my head.
I may be stating the obvious here, but if your CV fitness is dropping, and you want to add cardio, it doesn't have to be intense cardio.
I know you like to burn some calories with your cardio, but for general CV fitness, it's good to include a range of intensities, especially if you can time-budget a little more duration on lower-intensity sessions. Different intensities accomplish different things, and higher intensity has disproportionate fatigue/recovery penalties.
I've got to believe there's some logical beneficial intensity between "walk the dog" and your standard fairly-intense cardio workouts.1 -
After that first brush with bulking, I cut for a while again, and am now in my second bulk cycle, just in time for the holidays. I thought I was being clever to allow for guilt-free consumption of sweets, but what's really been happening is at the end of the day when I finalize my food log, I'm barely eating above my "loss" rate, only enough to maintain in most cases. Can I force myself to eat more? Sure, but there are times when it actually feels "forced" rather than "feel free to enjoy".
Whole new respect for Duane Johnson when he was training for his Hercules role and forcing himself to eat these massive meals several times per day. Now I understand his comment that the hardest part of preparing for the role was the eating.0 -
One-year update:
Just passed the 200# mark, which is when I had planned to switch from bulk to cut. However, along with my weight going up, so has my bench press. It's now to the point where I think getting a 315 1RM is within my grasp, but not if I suddenly cut calories and lose energy in the gym. Consequently, I'm going to keep the bulk going until I get that third plate bench, hopefully by my birthday in early June, and THEN I will swap to a cut.2 -
Press on my friend!One-year update:
Just passed the 200# mark, which is when I had planned to switch from bulk to cut. However, along with my weight going up, so has my bench press. It's now to the point where I think getting a 315 1RM is within my grasp, but not if I suddenly cut calories and lose energy in the gym. Consequently, I'm going to keep the bulk going until I get that third plate bench, hopefully by my birthday in early June, and THEN I will swap to a cut.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Congratulations on the great progress, @nossmf . . . and appreciation for your helpful contributions here in the Community (strength training intensity strategies thread, greeting new members, etc.). You're always positive, encouraging, plus so smart about your own program. A good model!
Keep up all the goodness, and we'll look forward to hearing more about your (well-earned) successes!
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Stats:
Male
Age: 45
Ht: 5'9"
Wt: 179.4 lbs
Waist: 32.5"
BF%: 15%
LBM: 152.5
Neck: 14.5"
Chest: 40"
Shoulder: 46.5"
Biceps: 14.75"
Quads: 24.5"
These were my stats on March 24, 2023 when I began a slow, controlled bulk, aiming for a half pound (quarter kilo) per week weight gain that I could sustain for a good, long while. Figured it was time to retake measurements, see what progress has been made in the last 15 months...
Age: 47 (just had my birthday)
Wt: 202.6 (+ 23.8 lbs, averaging out to .37 lb/wk)
Waist: 34.5 (+2")
BF%: 20%
LBM: 162.1 (+9.6lbs)
Neck: 15.5 (+1")
Chest: 42.5 (+2.5")
Shoulder: 48" (+1.5")
Biceps: 17.5 (+2.75")
Quads: 25 (+ .5")
My legs remained largely the same, which I'm fine with since I already had decently large legs for my size. My waist increased by 2", which I'm not thrilled by but is to be expected during a bulk, so I'll learn to live with it. If I had to hazard a guess at BF%, it's probably creeping up to around 20 now, definitely no signs of a six pack to be seen.
What's really made me happy is the increase in upper body, especially my chest, which has always been the bane of my existence. When the shadows fall just right I look pretty darn good in the mirror now, a fact which thrills to me death! Never can get my cell camera to agree with me, but here's a look at how things stand as of today...
As stated previous, will continue the bulk for as long as my bench press numbers continue to climb. Sitting at 295, that magic 315 3-plate bench is so close I can smell it. After that, will probably switch to either maintenance or a slow cut. (My wife has already vetoed the idea of a permanent bulk.)
All in all, I call the past 15 months a resounding success!1
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