Looking at the numbers you put up for maxes, I know that there was more than a little fat added on in the 30 pounds (i.e., I doubt it was noobie gains). If you are very serious about cutting weight (moreso than maintaining the max lifts), focus on that. Clean up your diet and up the cardio progressively. I don't care if you used to run ten miles at a time, you will get hurt if you try to tack on too much too soon. If your cardio is an issue, I'd build up to 2 x easy, medium, and hard runs a week. If you want some advice on structuring runs or a personal running plan, toss me a PM. Strength dissapears much slower than cardio. When I decided I didn't want to try out for football anymore, I was about 230 pounds (6'). I cut my weight to about 200 pounds with a little work, and with negligble strength loss. Within 3-6 months, I was stronger than I'd been at 230. Meanwhile, my strength relative to my bodyweight had gone up a shitload. I went from struggling to bust out more than 40 pushups to having done over 100 in a set. I know it would have taken me a long time to have built up the strength to do that at 230. If you want to focus more on lifting explosively, I'd look into getting coached for olympic lifting. Olympics lifts seem like they'd meet your goals pretty well. What kind of split are you looking for, otherwise? I would definitely make sure that you focus on maintaining a good balance of push and pull lifts to avoid developing imbalances.
I squat every workout, so yes I deadlift on the same day. At first your deadlift will struggle because your legs will be tired, but soon enough they'll adjust and your deadlift won't suffer much for it. Depends on what you're going for though. You can probably deadlift more if you don't squat beforehand (and vice versa). But in the long run I think your legs (and deadlift strength) will only benefit from squatting more, and that includes squatting on deadlift day. Some people will disagree, and I'm not saying this is the "right" way to train (i.e. the only way to train), but my strength exploded across the board as soon as I started doing this. Do some research into Bulgarian weightlifting methods to understand more about this training philosophy.
How often do you workout? I've heard of people squatting three times a week, but I'll be shocked (and impressed) if you say five. I might try three times a week though, I remember when I went from once a week to twice (I'm back to one now since I'm focusing on cardio/weight loss) I saw some serious rapid gains.
Right now I'm working out about 5 times a week and squatting 4 times a week (I usually take one day off for heavy Olympic days). I'm on the 20 rep squat program right now so I probably will have to cut back to 3X a week as the weight gets heavier. I've talked about this before in reference to my bulking diet and what not, but my fastest gains were last year. I squatted 5X/week, working up to my 1RM every time, with huge amounts of volume (20-30 reps in my 5RM to 1RM weight range). My squat went from 135 to 300 in about 5 months. I had stretch marks on my legs from adding muscle so fast.
One major issue I'm having is my gripping strength. I'm finding that doing lifts with dumbbells much easier than using a barbell of the same overall weight, most notably for my deadlifts. Any tips on how to fix this? I heard wrapping towels onto the barbell where I grip it is supposed to help and also work my forearms. That's something else I'd like to work on, the size of my forearms. Right now I'm doing wrist curls and reverse barbell curls which, really are the only isolation exercises in my workout. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I wouldn't really reccomend squatting this many times a week to anyone. Your body can't really recover this fast, and it may catch up with you eventually. It sounds like the huge volume gains were pretty much noobie gains, and less a virtue of the frequent squats. I don't want to sound insulting or anything, but if your squat workouts are easy enough that you can do them so many times a week, maybe you should add more volume on the squat specific days and drop them from others.
Yes, most of it was probably newbie gains. But, still consider value of the Bulgarian method. John Broz talks about this method (he uses it to train the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team) in this interview and also this one. His main point is that you aren't going to be able to hit your true max every day. You're going for your "daily max," i.e. whatever you can manage for that day. At the end of the week, you're moving way more volume than if you let yourself recover between squat sessions. For example, I built my 300 squat without ever going over 245 during my training periods. But squatting 245 when it's your 4th day in a row of squatting translates to being able to go way heavier with just a little rest. (My point is not that 300 is even particularly great, or that it wasn't newbie gains—my point is that Bulgarian lifting let me hit a 55 lbs PR in one day. Take that as you will, like I said there's no "right" way but this one has been effective for world-class lifters.)
I'm not positive if this is the correct place for this as it is more of a nutrition question but I hope someone here can help me. I know that in a very simplified for weight gain = calories in - calories out. (with the understanding that calories out are greatly affected by what type the calories in are) But, where I get a little confused is if you expend 3,000 calories and take in 3,500 calories, and eat a healthy percentage of fats, carbs and proteins how will the extra calories turn into muscle mass. From the little I know of nutrition wouldn't the unused calories eventually be converted to and stored as fats? Or is that completely wrong?
I'm always extremely against advising people to train like pros train. Some people don't realize just how great their genetics are. Look at Hershel Walker. He would be in amazing shape no matter what he did. I worry that pros who advocate training like they do don't understand that not all people physically can. With tons of olympic lifters there's only guesswork as to whether nature or nurture was more responsible for their power. Alternatively, we can listen to the supplement industry. All of the athletes who took certain products got gold! No way in hell the companies would only sponsor great athletes who had no competition though.
Not trying to derail the thread, but this is one of Broz's disciples raw squatting enough weight to cause most of us to fold like lawn chairs.
Purely to gain size and muscle, should I start doing squats 3 days a week or just do them once a week? My workout pattern most of the year has been chest/triceps one day then shoulders/biceps/back the other day. I think going forward to gain size fast I may do squats/chest one day, squats/shoulders another day, then squats/deadlifts/powercleans the other day. Spending about 45-55 minutes in the gym each session. And eat like an animal. I can't do GOMAD, I'm too sensitive to lactose. I drank 16oz a few days ago and it hurt my stomach, so I'm just making sure I'm eating some peanut butter and almonds throughout the day.
I feel like we're getting into theoretical stuff and drifting away from practical advice, but I still disagree. Okay, so your genetics are not the same and you'll never squat 800 lbs. The training concept is still the same though: you train to your personal daily limit, you don't go so heavy that you hurt yourself, and over time you condition your body to handle that level of volume. I used to train 2 days on, 1 day off, and I thought that this was the most I could handle because I always felt sore. Then, I adjusted my training and pushed through the soreness. Here was my workout today: Snatch, clean, bench press, back squat (twice), deadlift. And, I did them all to 1RM. Yesterday was a rest day, the day before that was back squat, deadlift, bench press, and the day before that was back squat and deadlift. My genetics aren't crazy and yeah there's no way I could have done that all off the bat, it takes adjusting to. Obviously, I am not going to hit my back squat PR today but all the volume I've done this week will pay dividends and I'm already feeling much stronger now than I did a couple weeks ago. In the last week I've packed more volume in than I used to do in a month. Anyway, I usually use myself as an example because I am a normal person who doesn't train full-time. I'm not by any means exceptional in terms of strength or talent, and I am still a novice, so I could be wrong about all this. But, I think Bulgarian-style training is worth exploring for people who have the means and interest in something like that. EDIT: Worth specifying that I'm not using specific metrics as a means of arguing one training method over another. Hell, you're stronger than I am in every regard so it's no contest.
To be honest, I think I'll talk to an expert in the program I'm in for this week before responding with an answer. I don't want to take any chances and present something that is disingenuous just for the sake of arguement. Scientifically, though, I think you can adapt to taking less rest like you say. But I still feel like you can't go hard in a workout so many days in a row. The perception will be that its a tough workout, and maybe you'll put up big numbers, I just don't know if it can be sustained healthily. I'll ask about the bulgarian olympian method tomorrow. One of the other attendees of the course I'm at is an olympic decathlete who competed in the 2008 olympics. I think he either placed 14th or 16th. Does anyone have any questions they want me to toss his way? I've picked his brain about his training methods a bit, though my impression is he just follows a program he's handed and has little input. Also, strength is relative. You can kick my ass on shit like pullups, any kind of climbing, and have much stronger shoulder stability than I do. We just have different goals haha.
According to the expert I asked, the Bulgarians would get a giant ass group of people together and put them through their squatting program. Their method was pretty much high intensity low volume. Most of the people could not handle it. From the few who could, though, they got their source of olympians. This, I think, agrees with my first point about being wary about working out this way. If it works for you, cool, but I wouldn't advocate it to others. But, as lhprop said, supplements may have had something to do with it.
I'm 3 weeks back after 3 months of complete rest after spraining the shit out of my ankle. Put up 275 for 3 reps on the back squat today. This was about 90% effort, and after doing high-rep deads two days prior, so I've got a ways to go to find my true max. Excited about this, strength is coming back fast...didn't know where else to share.