Work Out help?

[JASPERSVT]

I have been working out for a good 6 months now, ive got to a point where im not gaining any or lifting anything heavier.
Right now im about 6 foot and 175 pounds, very little body fat.
I am trying to eat all the time with big portions, i drink 2 protien shakes a day, i also drink a 18oz of water mixed with N.O-XPLODE. My question is should i lower my reps and increase the weight or lower the weight and increase reps???

These are my maxes.
Bench-250
incline bench 160
db press-95
incline db press-75
curles with db- 60 each
nose breakers-80
you get the drift, what should i try and increase.
Im looking to gain a few more pounds maybe 5 to 10, but ive been stuck at this for allmost a month at least or 2.:shrug:

 

[mineralgrey01gt]

from what i understand to gain strength its more weight less reps, opposite to get cut. Dont know if thats what your looking to hear or not

 

[5spd07gt]

more weight. lift big to get big. find a weight you can do 4-6 reps of

 

[Moparkidd]

you need to change your workout, when you get to that point, start doing different workouts to shock your muscles, if you usually do a bench press, do the decline, incline, or incline or decline with dumbbells.

more weight, less reps, warm up, then lower reps down to maybe just 2-4 reps real heavy weight. we even use boards on the chest to lift more weight on the bench

 

[BigSweezey]

you need to change your workout, when you get to that point, start doing different workouts to shock your muscles, if you usually do a bench press, do the decline, incline, or incline or decline with dumbbells.

^ this. A lot of people forget to change it up.

I personally work out with whatever weight I can push 8-10 times. I've heard 6-8 reps....but most of the time 6 reps isn't enough to get me feeling like I wanna feel. Personal preference more than anything. For what helped me up my bench, I worked really heavy on the shoulders and tri's.

 

[Venomous98Cobra]

When you hit a plateau like this, its good to drop the weight to ~60% of what you can do and do as many reps as you possibly can. Do the same amount of sets but without rep limits. You need to stimulate both twitches of muscles. Just do this for a week on the same exercises that you are doing.

You should also be switching up the exercises that you do every 3 weeks to a month. So if you do DB preacher curls this month, then next month don't do that exercise and instead do DB curls. You hit different parts of the muscles that aren't used to be hitting. Also, if you want size then you need hypertrophy which is doing 10-12 reps at ~80% weight. If you want strength then you want to do 6-8 reps at 100% weight.

Most people will do 8-10 reps which will give you strength and size. It all depends on what your looking for. And eat, eat, eat... That is how your going to get bigger. Feed those muscles.

 

[Moparkidd]

yeah, eat. ALOT. it was crazy how much more i ate when i started working out more. dont forget to eat, and rest plenty too!!

 

[mrmustangman357]

eat a lot.

and where is your squat and deadlift. If you haven't been doing them, DO COMPOUND LIFTS (squat, powerclean, clean and press, deadlift, front squat, kettlebell lifts, jump squat, box jumps) - look up the terms if you don't know them.

Also, I think this needs to be said - don't be that tool at the gym that just does bench and biceps. Look at yourself in the mirror and see what looks off. do your shouldersw slump forward? work out your back. The key is balance, and newbie lifters make this huge mistake by just working out "mirror muscles". your bench is good, but what about your squat?

If you are looking for adding mass, try some BSN TRUE MASS, it should make you bulk up. In addition, working out virgin muscle groups will give you some huge gains.

 

[BreBar21]

How many days a week are you lifting? Maybe you're over training. Could also just be a plateau like some others have mentioned.

 

[piss&vinegar]

Can't say enough about switching it up. If you do the same math problem over and over you will get extremely fast at solving the most complex problems. Same for your muscles.
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[LS2GTO]

and where is your squat and deadlift

+1

If you're not currently doing this or other leg excercises...do them and do them as hard as you can. Working out the leg muscles has a very good effect on the rest of your body.

 

[97desertCobra]

more weight. Lift big to get big. Find a weight you can do 4-6 reps of

+1.

 

[97desertCobra]

from what i understand to gain strength its more weight less reps, opposite to get cut. Dont know if thats what your looking to hear or not

Increasing reps with less weight doesnt get you more cut, its all about your body fat % when it comes to how ripped you are. Less weight and more reps will improve muscular endurance however.

OP how often are you training your muscles? Like BreBar21 said, maybe you are over training? Just to put it into perspective if I work my chest my body needs at least 10 days of recovery before I work my chest again. If I dont get at least 10 days then I cant lift more than last time and I'm not moving forward. As your body gets in better shape and you start to gain more muscle your body needs more time to repair the damaged muscle tissue, so over time your rest periods between workouts will increase.

 

[01svtL]

Change the workout up, and add another 100 to 200 calories to your intake. Gaurantee you break that plateau.

 

[ON D BIT]

As others have said vary your routine. The other item that I would like to point out is correct form and working your muscle/s to exhaustion is more important than weight/reps.

How Many Reps Should I Do and How Much Weight Should I Lift? | buildingmuscleworldwide.com

The first thing that must be mentioned is that each and every time you walk in the gym you need to cause your muscles something called 'microtrauma' which is when your muscle fibers are damaged due to forcing resistance against them.

Growth happens during recovery when the process of protein synthesis occurs to repair those 'micro torn' muscle fibers into a stronger and larger state.

So when you are training for mass gains, strength gains or even fat loss your number 1 priority is to cause as much microtrauma as physically possible before your muscles fatigue and eventually fail.

1. Nutrition and eat regularly: 6/7 meals per day as opposed to 3 big meals.
2. Form and muscle fatigue
3. Work entire body
4. Rest
5. Anaerobic exercise to work your cardiovascular system.

 

[IH8GM]

Besides changing your routine get rid of no-xplode , use some creatine and more protein.

You say you take to shakes a day ? how many servings per shake? what protein?

Point being if you are using whey protein and only doing 1 serving thats only ~25 g of protein. not enough .

Bench 250 is pretty damn good if you do it clean , dont see many that can do it, also i find your db press max kind of weird compared to you bench, that difference seems high to me.

 

[JASPERSVT]

Thanks all, and for the leg work outs i do them, sorry i just left them out. I also try and work out out parts: back, shoulders, abs, calfs ect. I just dont know the names of the work out... I try and hit the gym 5 times a week, i work out for about a hour and a half.
And for the protien shakes they have 62g of protien a shake, i drink 2 of them a day.
Any more questions just ask,

 

[BlueSnake01]

you need to change your workout, when you get to that point, start doing different workouts to shock your muscles, if you usually do a bench press, do the decline, incline, or incline or decline with dumbbells.

more weight, less reps, warm up, then lower reps down to maybe just 2-4 reps real heavy weight. we even use boards on the chest to lift more weight on the bench

+1 Your incline seems a bit low compared to your bench press. When I was benching 245 I was able to incline 205. Do you rest your muscles enough? Keep going up in weight like Mopar said, 2-4 reps and go up at least 15 lbs everytime after each rep.

 

[BreBar21]

Thanks all, and for the leg work outs i do them, sorry i just left them out. I also try and work out out parts: back, shoulders, abs, calfs ect. I just dont know the names of the work out... I try and hit the gym 5 times a week, i work out for about a hour and a half.
And for the protien shakes they have 62g of protien a shake, i drink 2 of them a day.
Any more questions just ask,

I'm not an expert, but I'm thinking your lifting too frequently and not giving your body time to recover. You can lift 5 times a week with the right split, but you shouldn't be having 1.5 hour workouts on a split like that unless you move incredibly slow and/or are including cardio each day. It would be helpful for everyone to see what your split looks like.

 

[KaNolton]

Change you're workouts every 6 weeks, high reps low weight, and don't do too much cardio. (2 times/week max)

goal weight + (workout hours per week + 9.5)= number of calories/day

goal weight = grams of protein/day

goal weight / 2 = grams of fat per day

daily calories - [( protein grams x 4) + ( fat grams x 9)] / 4 = grams of carbs/day

Eat lots of eggs, tuna, fish, red meat, peanut butter and be sure to get alot of sleep.