Lack of progress in the gym

danielgalway wrote: »

right so i think ill change my workout to that so. Does it matter which version i use? was looking at the pratcical programming (2nd Ed) Novice Program?

If you do go ahead, use your phone to record videos of your sets and watch them with a view to perfecting your form. While the compound lifts are easy to grasp with practice, they have various technical elements that you will want to get on top of from the outset.

You can start a log in the fitness logs section here and put videos there and people are generally kind enough to provide some time with pointers.

did you read the wiki yet?

How long does this workout normally take?Edit

As you progress with your development and you get nearer to your genetic capabilities, your training will, by necessity, become more complex and possibly more lengthy. As a result, your workouts will take longer, because you simply have to do "more stuff"

For the first 3 or 4 workouts including warm-ups, as a novice expect about 30 minutes for Workout A and possibly shorter for Workout B. As you get stronger, you will need longer rest periods. As you add weight to those top 3 work sets, you may need an extra set or 2 per exercise for warmups. Eventually (think months) the workouts will last 1 hour - 1 hour and 15 minutes. Workouts shouldn't ever last more than an hour and a half.

However, for you newbs who do the first few workouts and think "damn, that was easy, I was done in half an hour", don't sweat it, the workout is pretty easy...at first. It WILL catch up to you.

Daniel, the main thing with the eating is to listen to your body. As you gain muscle you will naturally get hungrier, and you will eat enough, so don't get too hung up on it yet. As long as you don't ignore those hunger signals from your stomach/body/brain then you'll be ok.

I think I know the problem you have. From reading about your workouts it seems that you stick quite rigidly to 8 reps per set. Throughout any given workout, you should be doing somewhere between 6 and 16 reps, and here's why: Bodybuilding is all about volume and time under tension. You need to try and keep the muscles under constant tension, to wear them out each session. You need to use an amount of weight that lets you do around 16 reps on the first set (before you can't lift any more). The second set should clock in at around 12 reps, the third set, maybe 6 or 8. That's how it works. Of course, these numbers are not exact, but you get the idea. So it's a mistake to pick an arbitrary number of 8 and just stick to it rigidly. You have to experiment a bit. If you can push out 20 reps on the first set, then you are not using enough weight, and equally, if 8 is your max on the first set, then it's too heavy.

Don't give up- your body will respond over time. And eating healthy food is best, and will becomes habit after 30 days. Don't overeat, just give it time.

Stay away from the scales, because your weight will fluctuate or even stay the same. Body composition is what matters most in the first year. I know it sounds vain, but take some before and after pictures of yourself if you really want to measure progress.

danielgalway wrote: »

And any opinion on how long i should do this for considering ive been in the gym since november? all be it with little results...


Also when i do change my routine in the future, after doing starting strength for a while, what sort of routine should i change to?
is my current routine an option to change to in the future? like doing 2 muslce groups in each gym session?
Would appreciate if someone could give me an example of a routine that i could change to in the future.

Thanks a million to everyone thats helping me out much appreciated!

read the wiki, it has a FAQ