That quote IMO is some of the best motivation you can give yourself. I know exactly what you mean

And your hair matches your phone

You are pretty lean man. Those are some nice abs. Looking great and keep up the progress man.

Putting on muscle weight must be hard for you right? You look like a hard-gainer type but I might be completely wrong.

thanks for the compliments bro.

Gaining muscle definitely is difficult for me, but I think it's due to my diet, or lack-there-of. Eating some protein, carbs, and veggies every couple hours has by far been my biggest challenge since I started. I'm a picky eater and the only meat I really enjoy eating is chicken or turkey, which gets old real quick eating it a million times a day. I normally eat just 2 meals a day, breakfast and dinner, with some nuts and yogurt mixed in throughout the day. I still take in on average around 2,000 calories a day.

I have been slightly increasing my lifts, tho. Right now I'm benching 145, dead lifting 185, and squatting 205. And I'm sitting at a weight of around 170-172.

you are really lean man!!!! nice abs going on, plus the hair!

Very impressive physical journey

Wow you've done really well. Keep it up.

7/2 back shot


cheeeeesin


relaxed. don't mind the dumb face.


I think I'm about as lean as I'm gonna get at this point. I plan on hopefully starting to bulk in mid august. I really need to sit down and plan out my meals, tho, if I'm gonna actually be able to commit.

Looking awesome man. Amazing what you did. Good luck with bulking researching on how best to do that myself.

nice work man, that is link a new man reborn

So after reading through the Weight Training 101 sticky and the links provided in it for the 100th time, I made a new workout plan. My goal right now is to just gain strength. However, I simply can't seem to bring myself to eat the recommended 4-6 meals a day. After using the suggested math equation, my BMR is around 3k cal a day. I'm probably taking in right around that every day. I still am nervous about seeing the number on the scale go up drastically, I'm not gonna lie...

But on to the workout. After going to the gym for a solid amount of time now and finding out what I do and don't like, I've come up with these to alternate between...

Workout A
squats 4x6
bench press 4x6
bent row 4x6
cable bicep curl 4x6
cable lateral pulldown 4x6
pull ups 3x failure

Workout B
deadlift 4x6
incline bench 4x6
single arm dumbell row 3x6 each arm
military press 4x6
cable fly 4x6
dips 3x failure

On all exercises, I usually do the last set of reps until the point of/close to failure.

Any and all advice/critiquing is welcome and very much appreciated.

I just read through this very quickly so i wont go into much detail, but i would change the order of ur exercises in Workout A. You want to do pull ups before curls and before pull downs imo. you should try to do the compound exercises before the isolation exercises.

Also Pull ups are the same thing as pull downs so u could eliminate the pull downs if you want, but thats up to you.

IRT nutrition. Are you counting your cals??? Cuz if ur not eationg 4-6 meals per day, i doubt you are getting 3000 cals.

thanks for the quick response. I will definitely take your advice on the re-arrangement. I guess I should also change the order of dips, too. And is there another exercise you'd recommend in place of the lat pulldowns?

As far as counting cals, I haven't literallydone so in a long, long time. However, I'm very aware of how many calories are in just about everything I eat. Still, maybe I should start it back up again so I can know for sure and try and make adjustments...

You can keep the dips where they are cuz they are mostly a triceps exercise and you dont want to fatigue the triceps before chest and shoulders.

How many days per week are you going to be doing this??? 3 days per week im guessing???

If i was you i wouldnt do 4 sets of each exercise. Id do 3 and try to push hard on each. I wouldnt replace the pull downs with anything, but you could add in some core work in its place. Also i would get rid of the cable flys and replace them with core work.

So if i was doing it i would do something like this:
Workout A
squats 3x6
bench press 3x6
pull ups 3X fail (just before fail)
bent row 3x6
barbell curl 3x8
chinnies 3x fail



Workout B
deadlift 3x6
incline bench 3x6
single arm dumbell row 3x6 each arm
military press 3x6
dips 3x failure (just before fail)
sit ups 3x fail (or some other core exercise)

OBV there are many ways to do it and this is not set in stone.

What are you doing for conditioning??? (cardio)

The problem with your routine is that it includes a number of redundancies (e.g bench and then incline bench), you can try something like the 5x5 with 8 exercises that hit your body all over. You can also pick an existing routine from the routines sticky.

Thanks again, wes. As for cardio, I don't do much of it right now. I used to run a great deal before working out, but thought it might have been counter productive. The only cardio I really get is I will sometimes go and run a few miles on rest days.

blackbeard, the redundancies are because I was trying to hit a complete full body workout on each day. I tried to pick 4 decent compound exercises in each routine along with a couple isolations I enjoy. Are you saying it'd be beneficial to ditch the incline bench?

Also, how quickly and how much should I be increasing the weight on each lift?