Nutrition and prolonged plateau

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Sup. Obviously, you guy aren’t my coach, so feel free to pass on this.

I’m a 6ft, 27 year old male who weighs 265 pounds and is attempting a recomp. Right now I’m eating 2,650 cals and 180g of protein a day (I’ve been eating this since I started lifting), and my weight is being maintained. I just wanted to confirm if this amount of protein is fine.

As for the plateau, I WAS running the beginner template but I plateued a month into it at a 165 squat, 135 bench, and 225 deadlift.

13 months later, over the course of the last year, I’ve adjusted variables in the program and monitored their effect to see if they’d work.

I’ve adjusted volume, both reps and sets:
I’ve done as low as 4 sets a week and as high as 16 sets per week per muscle group. Around 16 sets, I regress from the volume. And changing rep ranges had no effect, even going up to 15 rep squat, bench and deadlift set. Since neither had an effect, I defaulted back to the templete’s volume and rep ranges.

I’ve changed exercise selection:
Bench to close grip and pause; deadlift to deficient deadlift and sumo; low bar squat to SSB and high bar.
I will get progress them between 1 to 2 weeks and then plateau. I would imagine those adaptions are neulogical due to it being a new movement. This seems right because my new movement will plateau in relation of weight to the main movement. For example, my pause bench is plateaud at 135 for 5 reps and my main bench is 135 for 8, about a 10% difference.

I’ve done frequency:
Both, going from working at 3 fullbody days to 6 days. This was done for a week. I regressed (unsurprisingly).

I have tried intermediate programing:
I’ve ran Heavy, Medium, Light. It ended the same, that I’d plateau about 2 weeks in and if i kept pushing, I’d just regress. I have not ran any split outside of fullbody, so that is one thing to look at next.

Basically, I just need some variables to adjust next.

2

Snaily,

Thanks for the post. I can imagine that being stuck after a month with little to no improvement through the next year is super frustrating. Hopefully we can get things moving in the right direction.

To begin, with a 2650 Cal energy intake target, you’re about 1000 Calories below maintenance. I would not expect recomp per se’, but rather weight loss. That may be beneficial depending on waist circumference and other factors. For protein intake, we prefer 1.6 g/kg bw/d, which you’re close to (it’s 190/d at your current weight).

Regarding your programming, the report here seems like you ran the first phase of the Beginner Template for a month and then started tweaking things, running some other programming and then quickly training it. I will try and be direct as possible about what you’ve tried:

  1. I would not predict the volume adjustments you made to have worked well- thus your interpretation is likely to be “no effect” despite volume generally having a big effect. It is hard to interpret what happened with your training progress with that much swing in volume, but neither of those volume prescriptions are likely appropriate. You would also not be able to ascertain what happened with volume adjustment in weeks.
  2. I would not predict shifting rep ranges, particularly away from those selecting for maximal strength (e.g. 15 reps) to produce an improvement in maximal strength.
  3. I would not expect that changing priority movements frequently to be beneficial for maximal strength performance. Neurological improvements happen over a career, not only in 2 weeks.
  4. it seems like you give a program or variable 2 weeks to work before changing things. I think this is a bit too quick. I’d consider doubling that time frame at a minimum.
  5. I think the weights you report here also suggest a form check may be beneficial. Overall, I think it might be best to give up the reigns on managing your programming for a bit. I see far too much modification and switching here. I would also recommend following whatever plan you go with next for 6 to 8 weeks as best as you can without changing things. I would also recommend getting adequate quality and quantity of sleep, along with meeting the physical activity guidelines for conditioning.

Programming-wise, I’d recommend doing the beginner template, phase I, but write-in different exercises of the same “type” for exercises 2 and 3 for each day. Run the whole block as it is, then move on to block 2 and see how you do.