Hey, my goals are primarily aesthetics. And while perusing that i would like to get somewhat strong. I am not looking to compete but a 3-4 plate deadlift, 2-3 squat and a 2 plate bench are what i would be satisfied with.
I am currently 17, 71,6kg, 173cm and have a 32-33 inch waist. I would really like to build muscle and for that reason i bought the hypertrophy 1 template.
My em1 maxes are Deadlift/Bench are 116kg and 67kg (So i’m still pretty weak) and I have been avoiding squats but i will start doing them next week.
My question is since i never did the Beginner Template and i want to build muscle at the moment , should i do the beginner template first or is it okay to do the Hypertrophy template? I am also eating in about a 250cal surplus if that helps.
The Beginner Template would generally be the recommendation for anyone who is new to training or has been on a significant layoff but if your goals are more hypertrophy focused and you don’t want to buy another template just yet you could either run the free portion of the Beginner Template or Hypertrophy 1 as it probably doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. I would also eat a little more food, probably something closer to 400-500 calorie surplus which would be about a pound a week. Since you are new, it should be the easiest time in your life to put on muscle from a bulk and a pound a week will probably be better for that. To put this in perspective, I ran a rather famous linear progression program with the eat everything you possibly can approach (~4400cal a day) and gained 25lbs(~11kg) in 3 months I was probably about 175cm and 69kg when I started and by the end I definately wasn’t fat but I wasn’t exactly lean either. If I was to do it over I would probably have stayed around the 1lb/.5kg a week rate of weight gain if for no other reason than I absolutely hated eating that much food.