Can't seem to make any progress.. need some help

[dark skies]

Hi everyone. I'm a new member but I've been lifting for years and I can't seem to find a system that works.

For the past 3 months I've been doing the following routine:

Monday:

Squats (3 sets of 8)
Overhead Presses (3 sets of 8)
Weighted Chinups (3 sets of 8)
Triceps Extensions (2 sets of 8)
Wrist Curls (2 sets of 8)

Wednesday:

Bench Presses (3 sets of 8)
Biceps Curls (2 sets of 8)
Deadlifts (3 sets of 8)
Shrugs (1 set of 8)
Crunches (2 sets of 12)

Then I just repeat those two workouts, taking one day to rest between each work day. In the past I would train until muscle failure but recently (during the last 3 months) I have been stopping before reaching the point of failure.

My problem is that I have made little to no progress in the amount of weight I can use for these lifts. Whenever I reach a challenging amount of weight for a particular lift, I seem to be unable to conquer that weight.

I feel that my diet is fine. I eat as much as I possibly can, mostly high quality foods, supplementing with a weightgainer powder to fill in any gaps. I have been eating so much recently that I've developed a bit of a gut, so I know a lack of calories probably isn't my problem.

Can anyone give me a few hints or tips or even a total routine makeover that would help me to make progress with my lifts? I'm baffled as to why I'm not making progress. Should I go back to going to failure?

Thanks for any help,
DS

 

[Micker]

There are a bunch of things wrong with what you are doing. That routine is just a very basic workout that a new lifter might do. You can gain doing basically anything when you first start working out. After a few months(longer for others) your body starts to get used to the new stress you put on it and stops responding. You need to up it a notch by adding weight and/or volume to your routine. Changing exercises also adds new stress to your body and triggers it to continue to grow to deal with the new demands on it.

1. Don't get locked into a rep range. I see you like the number 8 for some reason. Usually its 10 that I see people lock into the most. If you want to gain strength, you need to lift HEAVY!! I am not saying you need to max out often, but you have to hit the 3-5 rep range a lot. Some people like to rotate rep ranges. You could do a 8-12 one week, then 6-10, then 3-6 or something like that. There are a million ways to do it, but don't do the same amount of sets and the same reps all the time.

2. Your exercises are kinda all over the place. You are doing wrist curls and chin ups on one day and two days later working biceps. You are basically doing biceps in both workouts. If you are going to split your workouts you can split them by body part. Doing a day for triceps/biceps/back and another could be chest/shoulders/legs. If you work a body part too much, you will overtrain it and growth won't happen. Try to group your exercises better, and you might want to even split your workouts into 3 different days.

3. You have to train hard. Not going to failure ever is a sure way of not progressing. Some programs are designed for volume and you won't go to failure as much with these, but a split body workout like you are doing, you should be going to failure often. Hell people even love to do forced reps that allow you to train PAST failure. The speed of your reps are important also, the faster you push a weight up, the more power it takes.

I think you should do a single factor program like the one I linked below. Don't do the dual factor, that is a bit advanced for you right now probably. It takes basic heavy exercises like bench press, squat, deadlifts which would be great for you to gain strength. You throw in a couple random exercises eash workout with them and you have one hell of a workout.

http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4497774&postcount=15

 

[Guinness5.0]

http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4497774&postcount=15

Bro your gonna love this link (yes it's the same one Micker posted). You are right about getting the gut being an indication that diet isn't the issue- the problem is your training stimulus. Read that link and check out some of the 5x5 single factor journals and I'd imaging you'll be very glad you did.

Also, here is a link with an abundance of info that you may find helpful:
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215

 

[dark skies]

Thanks for the advice and links, guys. I'll check them out and make some changes.

 

[anotherbutters]

Damn, micker beat me to it!

I was going to make a single factor convert of you too