As of the beginning of last week, I’m back bulking; though not in the normal sense of the word. Gone are the days of shovelling any old food down my gullet. Gone are the ridiculously high amounts of calories I was told to eat. Gone are the pints of milk I relied upon to make my calories and protein up. Gone is the ideas of sticking to a rigid program as soon as I stop making progress just because I saw other people ‘claiming’ to have made far better progress than me and I stubbornly thought I could break through it.
God, did I learn some harsh lessons – and truth/reality – last time around.
I’ve made sure that this time around I’m much more strict in what I’m doing. Far better awareness of what I’m doing, diet, exercise selection, tempo of repetitions, strict rest periods in between sets, proper warm ups, etc.
I’m more interested in maximizing my strength for my size (relative strength) than I am about getting stronger through getting far bigger. But, I still desire to gain a reasonable amount of muscle mass along with it. Having done a lot of reading – particularly Charles Poliquin’s work – it would seem to be that I needed slightly more reps and sets to achieve my goals this time. My old set and rep scheme was 5 reps, 3 sets. This time around I’m performing 6 reps, 4 sets. This should give me slightly more size gains through greater volume of work, but still keep me strong pound-for-pound for the size gains I do get.
I will be changing things far more regularly this time around, as well as having a much greater knowledge of assistance exercises to work weak points, helping me achieve better results with compound lifts. That was a major failing the last time. I simply didn’t know enough before starting, and I didn’t do enough things right to achieve the kind of results I could have.
As for helping compound lifts with assistance exercises, something Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell said now resonates strong in my ears: ‘The bench press itself does not stall. When it fails to go up you have a weak point you need to bring up.’ I guess that holds true for most compound lifts, too. So this time around I’m making sure I work my weakest areas that let my big lifts down with assistance exercises, rather than just trying to power through with more effort – even at the cost of good form.
Still, mistakes, misfortunes, regrets, could haves, would haves… that’s in the past.
I live to train another day.
I’ll keep you posted.