How TF do you bulk up? I'm lifting literally twice as much as a year ago, twice as many reps, and haven't gained even one millimeter in anything. Not that bulk was ever the goal, but this seems wrong.
Discussion
Just eat food. Just kidding I can’t gain weight either
Yeah... I have more fat than a year ago too, but I'm not counting that as bulk
Them dudes buy proteins and make milkshakes with some powder that you can ev3n pronounce
Might as well just eat the 'roids
You have to eat more and you have seriously push yourself in the gym. You should barely be able to finish your sets and they should be taxing you to the point of serious strain, but while you can still maintain form and be able to execute 8-12 form-perfect reps. 3 to 4 sets.
I eat ≈3 lbs of red meat a day and I’ve gained 12 lbs of muscle, have visible abs and have gotten markedly stronger in the past year.
3 lbs !?!? Shit. I don't eat 3 lbs all added together in a day...
i'm about to start putting beef at the top of my meal list right now, got about 4.2kg stacked in the fridge and the kitty absolutely loved the living bejesus out of his diced steak chunks for dinner
3 pounds seems like a lot for someone of average weight of like... well, i'm about 150lb, typical for someone 5'11" i think
my estimate of how much beef steak you need for this weight is around 2lb a day, or near that
keep in mind that a little known phenomenon of eating beef (and to a lesser extent, mutton and old goat) is that it actually makes you feel more satisfied, and your consumption tends to converge on what you actually need
it's been fun to watch this with the kitty
after a few days of beef the kitty had a fast day voluntarily, that was yesterday, it was a bit surprising
This is good advice. Aim for your body weight in lbs to grams of protein. If you weigh 190lbs aim for 190g of protein a day and a calorie excess.
Whoa whoa whoa I didn't sign up for math...
Jk, yeah I need to eat better
Diet is at least 50% of the puzzle.
Certainly.
Muscles are built in the kitchen!
I like exercise, the eating is horribly annoying. Stuffing my face every 4 hours is exhausting.
The standard lifting regime was made popular by men on steroids like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Working out too often actually hurts muscle gain. The fitness industry is a fiat psyop like most other things.
https://video.nostr.build/37224635d9f4882031e90480e597333db760f87c50e95eb6a361ea520aa103e0.mp4
Seems like I just need to go up in weight again. Expensive... Grr.
My sets are currently 20 reps and I do it 3 times usually. Could go 5 times if I'm feeling serious about it. When I started, it was usually failure at 6 reps.
You gotta slow it down. You don’t need to go super heavy. That’s actually dangerous and increases risk for injury. Also bad for your joints. Look up Jay Vincent on YouTube and watch how he does his sets.
I tried the Jay Vincent program back in the day. It’s garbage. Never felt sore and saw absolutely no improvements in muscle mass.
Multiple sets near your max form-correct weight to or near failure is what will bring you to experience improvement in size.
It’s not rocket science, like anything, you get out what you put in. Gaining muscle is a very hard thing for the body to do, it’s unnatural. In nature there is no reason to be muscular and it will never happen over baseline from typical ancestral activities like hunting, running, walking, climbing and various toil. You see old pictures of native people from all over the world and they are all wirey and vascular but almost none of them are muscular especially vs today’s standards.
Most people have to put their muscles under extreme duress over time to build small amounts of additional muscle over their baseline.
I’m sticking with 3 sets
The pump doesn’t really happen until after the second set. Biggest tell. That and having tried 1 beast set in the past I saw no improvements.
Soreness is not a reliable indicator of a good workout. You don’t have to feel sore. It is satisfying af though.
I think everyone is different. Jay Vincent never said that more volume doesn’t create results but I think for some people, less volume will give them better gains. For me, my arms looked more pumped and grew more after I dropped bicep curls and tricep extensions. My back and chest exercises were intense enough to stimulate growth there. The fact that my arms grew after I stopped doing those two exercises says a lot about how much stimulus my body needs. I was overtraining. Op said that no matter how much additional exercise he does, he can’t make any growth. Which makes sense because your muscles have a limit to how much force it can generate. You can do a full speed sprint for only a few seconds or you can do a low intensely slow jog for an hour. Both are forms of exercise that stimulate the same muscles but sprinters and have much more jacked bodies compared to marathon runners. Intensity vs volume. In other words you can train very intensely for a short period of time or you can train for a long period of time at low intensity. As intensity increases, volume must decrease. The problem is that fast twitch muscle fibers are difficult to sufficiently fatigue without going really fucking heavy and risking injury. Or you can train at a moderate weight to failure and reduce risk of injury substantially.
Mike Mentzer trained a lot of normies on high intensity sets to failure and he noticed that when he’d give them more rest, they’d come back stronger.
Here is a good example of the difference in force generated when going slow and controlled to failure compared to fast reps.
https://video.nostr.build/53cc16f1676bf13190f0286ccdde0d93c1cdc4768d0ae78afb56c832d1293b39.mp4
Also you can always do a warmup set before you go to failure. I also like to do drop sets to failure if I feel like I didn’t push to my limits.
You're not eating enough. If you're not gaining fat on top of muscle you're not eating enough. If you don't have excess calories you will not grow. I use this + 1 scoop of regular protein powder. When I'm staring to gain too much fat I cut back on the mass gainer/excess calories and reset my diet.
You will probably pop a good 5-10lbs once you start using the mass gainer because your body is starving for excess calories to build with. This is also supplements on top of a full 3-meal a day diet. 
Ziiiip, that's going in the shopping cart...
I'm about 200lbs and 1 scoop of this is enough for me. It's alot of calories ~700. The bag has a serving at 2 scoops but that's a lot more than I can drink or need. I think if you drink it after/during workouts you will notice a change, either in fat or muscle or both. Have to find the balance that is right for you.
nostr:note18wt94xfa7yfgjt86sl9ju5tjs33krv2qggjpve407pzcr3xex2hqpyj38l
Also worth a read
Huh. Okay. I'm currently basically on a 18/6 intermittent fast schedule - and I'm super skeptical that it does anything. I'm really just not hungry until afternoon. Its past 2 now and I haven't eaten.
Despite this, I have gained fat weight. I know I'm not eating enough meat. But I'm also not eating as many vegetables as I used to - I've found that I feel better without the veggies. I still love broccoli though.
I guess I need to buy heavier weights... Eat ze meat more.
Gym time should be like <1hr. If I'm there longer I'm probably not going hard enough. 3-4 times a week to start. Eat 2-3 hours before the gym and protein shake immediately after.
Once you start getting in stride the eating should be annoying. Like you will be wanting food every 4 hours. I use the mass gainer to supplement when I'm too busy to eat all the time. Eat the protein with a regular meal, not on an empty stomach. Red meat at least once a day. Double shake shack burgers have been my go-to recently.
Just to give you guys my take on what I've learned recently. I've been strict carnivore for over 2 years. Body is fat adapted so runs entirely on fat. I don't get hangry anymore or crave anything and forgotten what carbs, fruit or veg taste like. This has been incredible for tons of small issues on my body which have all resolved and I feel like I'm becoming younger.
I'm 54yo, about 88kgs and 1.84cm (200lbs 6'1"). I've got good genetics as body seems to retain muscle even though cycling has been my sport of choice for my whole life and I haven't worked out much.
Been lifting for a few months now, I also sprint either on my stationary spinning bike or outside in the road. I've stopped doing long bike rides more than a decade ago. Rides are more intense on very technical terrain with a focus on strength for downhill/Enduro racing.
Carnivore basically stripped most of the fat off my 95kg body and I went down to 83kgs. But some muscle left too. So I became defined, with a long, lean muscle athletic look. Was eating just under 2 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass. Early on during carnivore I started doing the 100 push ups per day with some pulls up and squats. When I started lifting I increased to 2.5g protein per kg which is closer to 1g per pound.
Not knowing much about lifting, I started researching and learning from YT experimenting and using what made sense and seems to work for me. I've put on a couple of kgs of muscle these few months doing what ties in with the current discussion here.
The weight lifting format I follow is to do a set to failure with a weight that gets me 10 to 15 reps. Wait only 15 to 20 seconds and then go to failure again. Then another 15 second wait for a final set. Doesn't matter how many reps as long as the muscles are fatigued. Example 10 - 6 - 4. Apparently the term is effective reps. Not a lot of time wasting and it feels like you are continuously in those last few reps right before failure. Intensity is very high but short. I'm now experimenting with having more rest days per week. Possibly only working out twice or 3 times.
So eating more protein and lifting that way has definitely increased muscle in a handful of months. There seems to be a little bit of extra fat but it's mostly muscle as I can still see ab, chest, and shoulder definition.