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Wellness Wednesday for October 12, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I wrote before on Reddit on the WW threads about negative thoughts and lifting (under a different username). I thought I might continue here.

I have switched to 5/3/1 programming over the past few months. First doing Original, then Forever-style programming last month. I haven't really progressed at all though. It's been very difficult for me to gain weight. Since starting my new job, I have eaten more than ever in my life, but weight gain is still very slow - I have ramped up from eating about 3000 calories a day at the start of June to over 4500 now and only have 2kg to show for it. I still freak out every time my scale gives a lower number, and I am still paranoid about not gaining any muscle. Over the past month I got frustrated with the lack of progress on 5/3/1 and decided to push it a bit further. I am now doing FSL for supplemental work and have cut out rest days nearly entirely so I'm in the gym every day. This is basically the opposite of what Wendler counsels... but I'd rather err on the side of doing too much than doing too little.

You talk about the numbers on the scale, what about the number on the bar? Are they going up?

Also, anecdotally, if weight gain is the goal, I've been running super squats the last few weeks. In six weeks I've put on 12-15lbs, without trying at all. No really serious changes in diet, just lifting different. My weight has held steady between 185 add 195 for years, six weeks of 20 rep squats and heavy pullovers and I'm much bigger.

I'm not sure. My current 5/3/1 template uses 5's Progression, not AMRAP sets. I will start doing AMRAPs again soon when I start the anchor cycle. I have considered Super Squats. Right now I'm avoiding back squats due to lower back pain and doing front squats instead. But I don't know how different it would be. My current program already has me doing FSL Widowmakers, where I use rest-pause to always hit 20 reps, so if this fails I don't really know what to do.

If the numbers on the bar aren't going up, there's something wrong with how you're doing it. Either some form of "overtraining" and lacking adequate recovery or too low intensity/fuckarounditis; or some deeper hormonal/stress/diet.

Well, like I said, I don't know if this current training cycle is working until I finish it. I agree there is something wrong if I do not progress, and that makes me anxious because I don't know what that is. I would assume it's not overtraining but undertraining, and that I just need to add more volume and intensity. I don't know if the problem is fuckarounditis. What would that mean? That I should just continue to do something that doesn't work?

I don't know if the problem is fuckarounditis. What would that mean? That I should just continue to do something that doesn't work?

The opposite. I would define fuckarounditis in themotte-ish terms as getting stuck in a training cul-de-sac where you're working out fairly hard, but the stimuli aren't sufficiently novel and your recovery isn't good enough to progress, so you're just doing the same thing over and over, and it's hard and it feels subjectively like a good workout, but your body isn't replying by building new adaptations to it, so you keep doing the same things a little harder, but never break out of the stimulus-recovery equilibrium you're in. So for me that was the year I was 23, when I'd been lifting a little bit, and I got really into a bastardized version of Bulgarian daily max training advocated by Chris Thibadeau (Sp?). I cringe at myself writing this. I'd go into the gym most days and hit a daily 3rm ramp in the push press or the snatch grip high pull or the power snatch or the front squat, followed by some more rep work, and the smallest amount of assistance. It was SO FUN, because every day I was trying to put a big weight up doing lifts I really loved, but my maxes barely moved for like a year, because the equation of novel stimulus and adequate nutrition and recovery was in a stasis (grad school played a role in the bad nutrition/recovery). I needed something new to break out of it, getting into rock climbing actually increased my deadlift and squat and helped me hit my first bodyweight snatch within a month when I returned to lifting.

I'm about to drop some serious bro-evolutionary-science here, but the way I think about it, if you do a big workout and then you eat a big meal and sit around, your body "interprets" that as killing a big animal in a successful hunt and then hanging around eating it. And your hormonal system says, great lets build muscle so we can do that again but even easier and better, then we'll get to sit around and eat for a bit. So high intensity followed by adequate rest. From a novel stimulus, if you can already do that your body isn't going to respond by building expensive adaptations. Westside does novel stimulus by constantly varying minute styles of three basic lifts, Crossfit does it by constantly varying exercises performed. Rest and recovery you already know what you need.

I have tried different things, and my current training where I train every day is different from what I've done before - before I was training four or five days a week, and now I am doing seven days a week. But I'm also unconvinced. Lots of people go into the gym and progress just by adding weight to the same lifts every week, and progress far beyond where I am now.

Well hope you find a solution, gave my guess

I'm sorry you feel like your advice is wasted. You're probably right. From what I read getting big and strong isn't about finding One Neat Trick, it's about working hard... So if I'm failing it's just because I'm lazy and need to work harder. I do want to do super squats, but I don't know if it will make any difference. What matters is hard work and effort, not programming.

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