gaining weight and muscle, scale

gaining weight and muscle, scale

Today I got to my parent’s house. I live far away from them, so visit just a few times a year. The scale at my house is broken, so I wasn’t really aware of my weight. I thought I had actually lost weight, as I had not really been eating right and my working out routine has been severely limited due to the fact that I am still trying to strengthen up my knee after the ACL operation I had in the fall of last year. My focus this year has been recovering from my ACL injury and not gaining weight and muscle.

So today for the first time I had access to a functioning scale. Imagine my surprise when the scale showed 86 kilograms! That basically equals my all time high weight ever. And I had actually thought I had lost weight and was probably howering somewhere around 80 kilograms.

That’s great news, since not only am I close to my biggest weight ever, my abs are showing as well, and all this after not even trying to eat properly. ๐Ÿ™‚

What can I thank this to? I think it’s due to my routine now heavily relying on pullups and deadlifts.

This is what my routine consisted of:

I would go to the gym after work and started off with some light stretching, usually of the chest. Then I would do 5 to 10 riding on a stationary bike (sometimes stretched out to 20 minutes). After that I would go over to the pullup bar and do 4 sets of 10 reps of pullups. My most frequent grip was the wide grip, but sometimes I would vary the grip.

Then I would go down and do stuff focused on the legs (with some back work thrown in). Since my gym has no squat rack, I can’t really go too heavy on the squats, so I would always squat with 10 kilogram weights on each side of the barbell (so 20kg in total). I would usually do 4 sets of either 10 or 20 squats. Sometimes I would do the full squat, but sometimes a 1/4 squat, depending on how my left knee felt. I am recovering from an ACL injury and I still don’t feel really secure with my knee and sometimes feel things moving around in there. That’s why I am a bit afraid of doing squats.

After the squats would come the deadlifts. I started off with using the same weight as for the squats for 4 series of 10 repetitions. I should also add that these are stiff-legged deadlifts that I was doing. However over time, I started putting on more and more weight and at the end I was doing 4 series of about 8 repetitions of 80 kilogram deadlifts. After the deadlifts, I would do 3 series of barbell bend over rows. Sometimes I would finish off this part of the routine with very light-weight overhead squats.

Then I would move upstairs and do some work on a bosu ball or with some other types of exercise balls. Remember I am still trying to rehab from my ACL injury, so I am doing these exercises as well. After this when I still had power, I would go do some dumbbell bendover rows. I would finish off the routine by doing anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour on those stationary skiing elliptical machines.

Even with all this cardio work, I still blew up to my biggest weight ever without even trying. Remember that all this what I am telling you is bro science, meaning my observations after having followed a certain workout routine. All fitness advice is basically bro science and so you might or might not get the same results.

Even my eating routine wasn’t really something that I was paying attention to. I would usually eat a sandwich and an orange juice for breakfast. Then have a big lunch of whatever was being served in the cafeteria. A few hours before training, I would eat a chocolate bar. After coming back home after training, I would eat some yoghurts. Sometimes I would skip dinner, but sometimes I would have a steak with some vegetables, and sometimes I would just have hard-boiled eggs.

My explanation of this phenomenon is that I was probably getting enough nutrients in order to have proper muscle growth. My breakfast and lunch were big enough to sustain my body and the chocolate bar a few hours before training provided some
needed sugars in order to train hard. The Greek yoghurts after training, then gave me some good protein. Whatever I ate for dinner after just added to this. Also a lot of times, I had steak, which includes things which are precursors to testosterone.

Also a big role in all this played the fact that big compound lifts are good at releasing things like testosterone, HGH and other good things in large numbers, leading to your body swolling up and getting huge.

image 1

2 thoughts on “How A Routine Of Deadlifts And Pullups Made Me Blow Up To My Biggest Weight Ever”

    1. ๐Ÿ˜› Wow, we have an internet “hero”. Insulting people.

      80 kg not as a max, but for 4 series of 8 reps of 80 kg. That was about 4 years ago, when I was coming off an ACL injury. So that was my routine a few months after I had my surgery. You start off with the muscles on your leg basically dying off and you barely being able to even walk in the weeks after surgery. Everyone who has had this surgery knows how frustrating it can be. Whatever gains you had before are gone and you have to start from zero.

      The point there was to show how effective multi-joint exercises like the deadlifts are. Even when you are not in your peak condition or eating properly, you can get great results from them.

      Now I do around 120 kg or 140 kg (depending on how I feel after work) for 4 x 10 reps. I am not a powerlifter, so don’t want to do more.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.