I'm discouraged with 5x5 mad cow. Please help!

[gymrat surfer]

So i've been working out consistently on 5X5 mad cow intermediate for a little under a year and I am starting to stall on a lot of exercises. Worst part is, I have gone through 2 deloading phases and can't break any plateaus. I use fractional plates with minimal increases as well. 1 example of me stalling is I could only bench 280 for 4 reps. can't get that 5th rep in after 2 deluding phases. This is the same case in a lot of other exercises.

So with out getting into specifics about the workout routine. Here is what I think I am lacking... DIET DIET DIET

Reality is, I have a high demanding job as a commodities broker and very hard to commit to eating the way I need to eat. I'll have 2-3 shakes a day, 8 egg whites in morning with 2 trader joe packets of oatmeal. 2 chicken cutlets and a rib eye steak at night. (1 example). I'll have one of those super green food drinks for veggies.

So basically, my guess is that I am probably not taking in the calories that I need which is probably holding me back. I am also on HRT test 250MG per week, and using peptides (ipamorelin / CJC 1295 mod)

So my question is...
If I am not willing to commit to eating tons of food all day due to my high demanding job, am I doing the wrong work out routine and should consider starting a new program?

In a perfect world, i would love to get huge and strong. Being strong is most important to me. But I am not willing to eat 6 full meals a day. No way I could pull it off. I would love to, but bodybuilding won't pay the bills. Only so much time in a day.

I know i'm making excuses but guess we all have priorities in life and have to allocate our time according to what works best for us and whats most important for us.

I train mon/wed/fri

Appreciate and advice you can give me. Thanks for hanging in on this long winded rant...

 

[the.gladiator1987]

Hmm bro, I think maybe eating more would be the key but youre also on HRT.... when you deload do you start back at light weights and work up to your current max at week 4?

 

[Nonstopdrivel]

I have never seen anyone able to complete more than 2 or 3 consecutive cycles of Madcow Intermediate without taking a break. That is a maximum of approximately 30-36 weeks. The weights start to increase too fast for anyone to recover adequately. After start stalling in a cycle, you are supposed to enter your current 5RM into the spreadsheet and start over at Week 1, building up to hit your current 5RM in Week 4. If you are in dire need of recovery, you can delay hitting your 5RM until Week 6, which should help you push through plateaus.

But remember, this is an intermediate program. It will only work as long as you are an intermediate lifter. Eventually you are going to need to move to an advanced program, since you won't be able to recover fast enough. Before jumping to the conclusion that you are an advanced lifter, though, do a Google search for "EXRX weightlifting standards" and make sure you actually are. If you jump to an advanced program too early, you are leaving a lot of potential gains on the table. It is quite possible you jumped to an intermediate program before you were ready, too.

We also need a lot more information in order to give you substantive advice. What are your stats? What is your bodyweight? How much can you squat, deadlift, bench press, press, row? How much sleep do you get a night?

Have you tried incorporating GOMAD (gallon of whole milk a day) into your training regimen? It is impossible for me to eat enough due to certain intestinal issues I have, so I use GOMAD to help me gain mass. I have gained 23 lbs in the last 4 months alone.

 

[_cato_]

So i've been working out consistently on 5X5 mad cow intermediate for a little under a year and I am starting to stall on a lot of exercises. Worst part is, I have gone through 2 deloading phases and can't break any plateaus. I use fractional plates with minimal increases as well. 1 example of me stalling is I could only bench 280 for 4 reps. can't get that 5th rep in after 2 deluding phases. This is the same case in a lot of other exercises.

You're saying on bench you did something very near to:

W1M 245x5
W1F 255x3
W2M 255x5
W2F 265x3
W3M 265x5
W3F 275x3
W4M 275x5
W4F 280x3
W5M 280x4<---FAIL
W5F ??????

And then just immediately restarted and did the exact same thing over a second time, which resulted in the exact same thing? If so, have you tried any other approaches to crossing that plateau? For example, trying 280x5 again for up to two more Mondays in a row?

And all of your lifts are plateaued in the same fashion? If so, that's quite odd. Typically if someone plateaus on everything, there's some other problem/factor at play, regardless what program they are following--so it may be the eating or sleeping or something like that, as you suggested.

Give us a bit more info on how much your lifting, which lifts you're doing, which lifts have plateaued, etc.

Also how is your body generally feeling? Are you constantly run down? Do you start to really drag at the middle/end of your workouts? Anything along those lines? Or are you getting through the workouts no problem, just not hitting your targets?

 

[Judo Tom]

milk + whey protein will help put on mass. you can get some good protein bars as well. you just need to find a way that works for you to get in cals. when i was younger and working in a crazy hectic office we kept really good whole wheat bread around and dipped it in olive oil and then drank protein shakes.. worked for us

there are lots of ways to do it just need to figure out what will work for you.

also i think you should change up your routine a bit or go back down in weight some and get back to where you are now. just some ideas.

 

[ledhead]

Quit your job, training is more important...

 

[stevesmi]

you need protein, carbs, and calories to feed the muscles. all 3 are important. so do not be afraid

I think a great idea would be to add 2 homemade pancakes to your breakfast, some ezekial bread to your lunch, and some more brown rice to your dinners.

 

[gymrat surfer]

Thanks for all the great feed back everyone! So to answer some questions...

Deloading
So after i fail 2 weeks in a row, thats when I begin my deloading, I cut back 15 lbs, then do 2 1/2 lb increases, giving me 6 weeks to catch up. Then, if I fail again after 2 week shot, I cut back 15lbs again giving my self 12 weeks at 1.5 increases.

Lifts still progressing (5 rep max/work set) FYI ( I do the 12.5% increase of 4 sets to work set)
squat - 290 x 5
Rows - 185 x 5 (about to stall, can feel it coming)
Deadlifts - 300 x 5
Skull crushers - 80 x 5

Failed lifts - on work sets
Bench - 280 x 4 (can't get that 5th rep)
Press - 175 x 4
Chins - 50 x 4
Sit-ups - 50 x 10
Biceps - 97 x 6

So overall, I'm about even but some lifts that are still progressing are about to stall within next couple of weeks.

As far as stats, I am 225lbs, 18% body fat, 5'11"
Sleep is pretty good over all, although some nights I don't sleep well if I am stressed over personal issues.

Also, to really open up and be honest, (is this therapy now?, haha) I have been abusing amphetamines (aderall) to allow me to work the crazy hours I do AND DO NOT WANT TO BE DEPENDENT ON THAT. Tried quitting several times, but then I get so groggy and tired that I am not as alert and focused, tired, and workouts are not as effective. Would love advice on how to quit.

Back to eating:
Would love suggestions or a sample of what I should be eating throughout the day. But the key is, it has to be effortless and taste real good. I am so dam picky. I drive my wife nuts, haha. My breakfast is solid and could eat that everyday Infiniti. As for chicken breasts, I gag unless they are breaded with whole wheat crumbs, which I could also eat a ton of those. Don't mind Costco fillets. And if your saying I could drink more shakes with adding milk, maybe have a slice of the eizel bread. I'll might be on to something. So definitely need a better diet plan. Protien I use by the way is Casien by optimum nutrition (at night), then I have pro-max (ON) during day, then after workout I have 2-1-1 recovery with hydro-whey (ON).

As far as my workouts, before I'll take akg-l-Arginine, ctg-6 (creatine,glutimine,taurine) and half a scoop of jacked. I do get tired towards end of workouts ESPECIALLY FRIDAYS with doing 6 sets and more ancillaries.

One more addiction to add
I have my medical card, so I smoke pot almost every night to relax me from stressing myself out through the day. So wonder if that is hurting me too. Also, even though I am on HRT, my recent blood work showed my total test at 458 ng/dl. Estrogen at 34, and free test at 108.5, so thought I would share that to.

Hope that answers all your questions.

And gladiator... You look great! Would love to have a bod like yours one of these days. Haha.

 

[Judo Tom]

well im glad you mentioned the adderall. Bro you need to make it priority #1 to get off that. Cmon you know you have to you just need to figure out a way that will work for you.

Not the biggest fan of pot either but first I would kill the adderall habit.

It is going to be very hard for you to recover from tough taxing workouts if you are taxing your body with adderal and yo-yo ing back and forth with stims and pot. id drop the weight back a lot. focus on getting off the chems and then hit the weights hard.

plenty of people WEAKER than yourself have kicked WORSE habits than this so you can do it. If you can squat 290x5 I know you are tough enough to get off it!

Good Luck!

 

[_cato_]

A few thoughts...

First, as a preliminary matter, your deloads are not sufficiently deloading you in my opinion. The standard deload for the intermediate madcow program is to 90% and other programs often call for an 80% deload. Your deload is only to about 95% of your PRs. It would be better to drop to 90% or even 80% and then work your way back up in larger increments until you get to, or close to, your current maxes. From there its okay to use the fractional plates. This may or may not be "causing" your trouble, but it almost certainly isn't helping.

With any failure to progress there is generally two possibilities: insufficient recovery or insufficient stimulus. As you're probably well aware, your bench is pretty much leagues ahead of certainly all your lower body lifts, but I'd even venture to say all of your other lifts period, with the one exception of the very related overhead press, which is at a commensurate level. As you probably know, as your individual lifts become more advanced, progress becomes harder to come by.

If you had simply told me your lifts, I could've easily guessed which ones would stall first just based on your level of advancement with each of them. The only place I probably would've guessed wrong is with your rows. For some reason your horizontal pressing/pulling is way out of wack. Ideally, you want to be pulling horizontally (rowing) the same, or nearly the same weight as you are benching. It is particularly odd because your vertical pulling is solid and matches your vertical pushing. You are 225 lbs doing 4 chins with 50 pounds strapped to you, which means your lats are actually quite strong. If I had to guess about the cause of the weak rowing, I'd say it probably has to do with lower back strength. I notice that trainees are often limited in the amount they can 90 degree row by how much they can deadlift.

So getting back to the training end of things, there are several possibilities (besides the insufficient deloads). You could be advanced to the point on bench that you simply can't make weekly gains anymore. It could be because you are benching so heavy twice a week that you can't properly recover in time for the following Monday workout. Conversely, and more likely imo, as an advanced bencher, you may require more training stimulus to make gains. It might be worth switching over to doing a advanced 5x5 program for your bench. Examples of this are the madcow advanced or the texas method (very similar). This would be 5x5 straight sets on Monday with about 90% of 275, ie your 5RM, and on Friday building up to a top triple. The other lifts you should carry on as usual if you take this route.

The other main possibility is that your recovery is not good enough. Ideally you should be consuming 3000+ calories a day, with a large (ideally something like 30%+) portion being from protein. You should be getting 8-10 hours of sleep. You should be drinking ~1 gallon of water a day. Any of these things you aren't doing will cut into your recovery ability.

There's something screwy with your test. 250 mg/week is quite high for a TRT dose and your total test should be significantly higher at that dose than what yours currently is (something more like 2-3x as high). Did you just recently start it? Is it pharmaceutical grade or otherwise legit? At the same time both your total and free test are around the mid range so this isn't likely holding you back.

Regarding the adderall, that may or may not be adversely affecting your workouts. Some people say it actually helps, other people say it hurts. The weed? Perhaps it is effecting you, though not likely unless you are smoking before your workout or something else foolish along those lines.

One other question. When you say you keep getting stuck at 280, do you notice yourself getting stronger at all? In other words, do you keep getting closer and closer to repping the 5th rep, but just cant seem to hit it within 2 weeks? Or are you pretty much just BARELY getting the 4th one every time. I ask because it may also just be a mental thing.

I'll leave it at that for now since I just wrote a short novel...