What to do about below-average gains

[@timgerber5563]

I‘ve always struggled to gain muscle. However, I started lifting in 2005 when there wasn’t that much quality info on the internet yet. In retrospective I would give myself the following advice: - make sure you are in a caloric surplus by weighing yourself every day in the morning, tracking your weight, and calculating a weekly average either by an app or by setting up a spreadsheet and shoot for a weight gain of 2-3 pounds per month when comparing the weekly or monthly averages. - Watch Eric Helms Training Pyramid videos to gain the understanding of what research suggests (what should work on average) and ensure you train every muscle 2-3 times per week with a program that has an inbuilt progression scheme - Take measurements of circumference and pictures every month. - Evaluate success not before 12 weeks and ideally stick with a training scheme for half a year and evaluate then. If these basic principles are in place, there will most likely be 5 to 8 pounds of muscle gain which should be visible. Even though I’ve not adhered to the above, but have lifted continuously in the last 5 years and haven’t chosen the right parents, one can see now that I lift regularly and that’s good enough for me. Also moved from solely hypertrophy oriented training to CrossFit and then to kettlebell training during Covid lockdown adn stuck with it since, I would say I am in good shape for a 35 year old and will want to continue to endurance lift kettlebells and bike for many more years. When you’re an adolescent and up until the mid 20s I think most guys are mainly lifting to look good and to pull girls. But there is so much more to it especially once you find out that there are other ways of training that will give you not only strength and muscle, but also allows you to learn new skills and explore more of the world around you. At least that’s what’s true for me and I appreciate not everyone is like me. Just my 2 cents: find something where you enjoy the journey instead of only chasing after goals

[@theOngman]

Greg called out my first 2 years of training at 26:35 so accurately that I feel personally attacked lol. Like numbers and timescale and everything.

[@TitanFM]

How I feel at 38:30 'some people get big and strong and get bored after like 5 years and then just stop'. 'Yeah then it becomes a fun fact like 'hey I used to be big can you believe it' and then its like a fun fact for them'. I feel so seen lol

[@wavetime3651]

That’s me with my bench lmao

[@DJG1058]

@43:20 That lyrics is from the classic track "Basketball" by Kurtis Blow! Worst factual error on the show since the great Hedberg misattribution.

[@jonathangeorge863]

I'm pretty unsatisfied with this short-form tiktok style content you guys are putting out now. Bring back the 3 hour podcasts.

[@RedState420Esq]

I tried to improve my sleep by cutting out all caffeine about a month and a half ago. I’m not sure how much it really helped my sleep, but what I found is that what I thought was caffeine energy is actually anxiety. Because most of those feelings I thought was from the coffee is actually still there. My guess is if the caffeine contributed to increase anxiety, it may have increased cortisol contributing to less ability to lose body fat (through mechanistic and/or psychological effects), and might have also impacted my ability to gain muscle when I was in a calorie surplus. Thoughts?

[@ddavidjeremy]

That this channel has only 50k subscribers confirms my suspicions. I posit that most people are morons and don't know what's good for them.

[@KenanTurkiye]

Volume! What a strange thing it is. I have body parts that require very little volume, for example I got a 130cm chest yet I do 2-4 sets a week and it grows, I probably got the best calves in the multiverse we live in (yes a 'slight' exaggeration but they are very good), and they only need 1 set a week to grow and yet to grow my arms and rear delts I need at leat 15 sets a week. Yes yes, for those who may mention mental connection, each of the contrasting muscle groups have the same connectivity of 5G, and nutrition and rest wise, I make sure they all get the same treatment. :)

[@KenanTurkiye]

....and don't tell me about exercise selection and application order, It took me 2 years to refine it. Yeah, volume is a strange thing, within the same body!

[@gerym341]

160 Pound mass monsters

[@xX_dash_Xx]

are we sure aerobic fitness is a good proxy for hypertrophy? I think a lot of the studies mentioned around the 5-10min mark rely on aerobic fitness or some other vague sports science term

[@xX_dash_Xx]

ok, I see this concern was at least mentioned. I still don't agree aerobicness can be a proxy for hypertrophy

[@maxskywalkr]

Taking care of a cat 😂 Come on it's not that difficult

[@BonytoBeastly]

Awesome :)

[@makobe584]

Why didn't you mention that some guys may be doing too much; going too close to failure, doing too much hard sets, etc? Even if someone's young, sleeping enough, eating enough, etc, they may still have a low recovery capacity and would better with less. There can be large differences between individuals in muscle and tendon recovery, and some of those at the low end of the spectrum may think there is no way they could be overtraining while doing so little and that they must be doing something else wrong. So they'll either quit lifting or keep banging their head against the wall, stalling, never truly recovering, and perhaps getting overuse injuries or regressing. I missed this discussion in "Train more/harder". I liked the discussion of looking at more variables to improve. I found the section "Measure more variables" a bit lacking, but the last two sections made up for it. I also liked that you mentioned self-selection bias and survivorship bias, which I think is very significant in most gyms (and especially on social media), but usually isn't talked about much. And I also liked that you said that not everyone getting below-average gains is clueless and that not everyone getting good gains knows what they're doing. PS the word "like" was said 305 times according to the closed captions.

[@jon-kd5st]

Bcaa, turkestrone and test boosters work amazingly for hard gainers. Trust me I'm a scientist

[@gerym341]

Fantastic podcast. Thank you gentlemen

[@gamefreak173]

First month I felt my chest sore as hell started at 185lbs bench 5x5 I'm still at the same weight 0 shoulder pain in the beginning. Now I have been experimenting with grip width and bar path and have been getting shoulder pain and have been trying to go back to my original setup where I had a fairly narrow grip and barpath would land barely above the nipple but I still feel shoulder pain but alot less pain. I read into your article and will try to create a better bar path and see how it goes. The weight definitely still feels way lighter when I push from right below the chest but my shoulders feel so bad in that position.

[@latineichon]

Great episode

[@azulsimmons1040]

Basketball is fun. My favorite sport to play.

[@gokukakarot1855]

For the algorithm

[@ew-zd1th]

Are the muscle doms are an indicator for muscle recovery?

[@timgerber5563]

I think it’s more a sign of fatigue and of too much load or volume than you needed to elicit a growth response. This is true when recovery is delayed longer than muscle protein synthesis is elevated for due to doms. Doms that is present for 2 days after training is likely to happen if you are either deconditioned, are switching exercises, load and volume around a lot. Also I think movements that have a stronger focus on the eccentric than on the concentric part of the movement (think deadlift dropping the weight on top vs. RDL/SLDL) can contribute more to doms. But in any of the cases strong doms (2 days of soreness or more) is an indicator that you have overdone it and could have elicited a growth response with less volume or load and you could have made more progress if you had recovered in time for your next training session.

[@bullinvginshop9011]

Lol. Do more. Do better.

[@DarkShadowAy]

Hi Greg, do you still train heavy or have you dialled back?

[@Leon-xj6tl]

Go to the podcast he did with Dave Tate about a month ago, he spoke about that

[@Leon-xj6tl]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpSTpX56aaqZf80

[@DarkShadowAy]

@@Leon-xj6tl Summary?

[@bullinvginshop9011]

Have you tried trying? Lmao

[@anthonini66]

Im 16 years in, train 5-6 days a week. Think it's fair to say I'm a hard gainer. If my frequency/volume is already fairly high, would you still focus on upping that variable before pushing intensity?

[@Mantorok12]

If you do high volume that often, you're eating and sleeping enough, and you aren't getting a response, you probably need to pump intensity a bit. There's gonna be a marginal benefit to adding more sets or reps compared to adding more weight. Something I do for volume assistance exercises is I'll have a rep range, like 12-15. If I can do all my sets at 15 with perfect form, I need to increase weight.

[@kiosunightstep6640]

I'm as big of a hard gainer as there ever was. What I found out was that less volume was good for me. When I just focused on a few lifts, and progressing in strength, that's what I finally saw large changes. For some reason my body only needs like 5-6 sets per week on most muscles to see gains. When I do 10-20 sets like most people do, I get overtrained really quick, feel rundown constantly (no matter how much I eat or sleep), and plateau in all of my lifts.