November update
Numbers
Started the month at 179lbs, aiming to end the month at 180 or 181, maybe 182. I ended the month at 180! Not bad. That feels like a huge success for my approach to this slow bulk. (My big goal, to reiterate, was to put on weight without gaining too quickly - which seems to be succeeding so far.) Hopefully over the next five months I can put on a decent amount of muscle and minimal fat; then in my next fat loss phase I can aim to get down to lower levels of body fat that I haven’t seen before. That would be pretty cool.
The first week of the month I didn’t reach quite the volume of resistance training I was shooting for, since I ended up getting my flu and Covid shots a day earlier than anticipated (I was scheduled for Thursday, but when I brought my family for their shots on Wednesday the nurse said they’d just do mine at the same time), and it took my body a few days to recover fully and be less sore and achy, but I still got a decent effort in (more like fifteen sets per privileged muscle group rather than the twenty I was shooting for). I tried to make up for it the following week by doing closer to thirty sets per privileged muscle, and I found it so enjoyable and attainable that I’m thinking maybe I should shoot for that as my new normal. I did the same thing again the third week of the month with the 30ish sets, and then for the fourth week I did a planned deload where I moved down to seven sets per exercise. I like that higher amount of exercise - but going forward I think I’ll cap it there. No plans to add further volume in, since I should already be approaching the point of seriously diminishing returns.
I went to BJJ every week, as planned.
I went to BJJ every week, as planned.
Reflections
Every week I’m tweaking my resistance training program a little bit, adding something in that seems to be lacking, taking something out that seems superfluous in order to simplify my training and save myself as much time as possible. Early this month (in the second week) I decided to make a fairly big modification. I removed most of the dynamic work so that the vast majority of my time is devoted to isometrics. The only dynamic movements I’ve preserved are a few big compound ones I like that I can’t easily reproduce with isometrics - dips, pullups, weighted squats, and my rdl variation (and even these are done as lengthened partials). All the other dynamic exercises were rendered redundant by the isometrics I’ve added to the program, and so I felt I could remove them from my week. That redundancy was intentional, of course, a way to hedge against the fear that isometrics might be ineffective or useless. But I think I’ve set that fear aside now. I’m ready to commit to isometrics to see what dividends they will pay. I find them much more convenient and considerably easier to recover from; if they are comparable to dynamic sets for hypertrophy (not to mention the possibility that they might be even more effective), simplifying my workout plan in this direction should only improve my results and my adherence.
I really think I’m already seeing the effects of my high volume isometrics strategy. My muscles seem to be growing pretty quickly, and others seem to have noticed as well even without my telling them about what I’m doing, so it’s not purely my imagination, at the very least. It’s not surprising that I should be able to see some effects at this stage; even experienced lifters can manage to eke out measurable hypertrophy in six or eight weeks, and I am certainly not yet someone who could be called an experienced lifter. I am surprised at the apparent magnitude of the changes though. So that’s encouraging, and that’s part of what gave me the confidence to try switching to doing the vast majority of my exercises as isometrics.
Previously I was thinking that I might want to do a “minicut” in January, but at this point I don’t feel like it should be necessary, and it feels like it would be kind of pointless - I’ve put on weight slowly enough, so far at least, that I don’t feel like I’ve probably put on enough fat to justify taking time away from gaining. Depending how my muscles and joints are feeling I might take a bit of a longer deload in December or January, maybe two or three weeks of lower volume at maintenance calories with a less ambitious protein goal, if I think I need it, but for now that seems like it will be as much as I should require. Currently I’m thinking I will try to keep gaining weight and focusing on high volume resistance training until the end of April, at which point I might be around 190 or 195 if all goes to plan, and then I’ll try to lose weight for a couple months (hopefully back down to around 170 or 175?) before beginning my next phase of lean bulking around July. I’m very excited to see how much progress I’ll have made by summer.
I have to say, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing this slow bulk for two months already. High training volume takes a toll (though less so, with these isometrics!), but I find it way more tolerable than a lengthy calorie deficit with a lower training volume. I have a feeling the next five months should fly by, compared to the past year. A calorie surplus is just where a human body generally wants to be, I think - especially after a previous twelve months that involved as much deficit and weight loss as mine did.
I had a couple weeks at BJJ this month where I found that a white belt who started after me and weighs quite a bit less than I do (but who is able to train multiple times per week, and who’s also working with a much younger body than I have) seems to be surpassing me already, which was a bit discouraging in a way, even as in other respects I felt like I was making good progress. That discouragement was helpful in a way too, though. I realized that I probably need to approach BJJ as like a beer league sports activity that I’m involved in. That’s how I’ve decided to look at it. I get some exercise, get to hang out with some cool guys, get to be competitive and try to do well, but I won’t feel like I have to be the best or be transforming into a deadly fighter overnight. I’ll just keep going and enjoying myself, and slowly improving, and at some point in the future maybe I’ll be able to commit more time to it and take it more seriously and when that time comes I’ll be glad for the months of patient training I’ll already have invested before that point. I think that’s a healthy shift of perspective for me.
I haven’t come back to the shadow boxing idea, probably in no small part because the increase in resistance training volume means I don’t have so many days in a row when I feel like I’m not working on anything. Maybe that idea will be one of my experiments that doesn’t go anywhere, which would be okay. But we’ll see; I’ll keep an eye on it and see if it comes back in any form over the next couple months.
I’ve been so pleased with my hypertrophy/bulking progress and experiments and successes, and so excited to contemplate where continued progress will lead in the next half a year, that my BJJ activity has been taking up much less of my attention and imagination between classes, even as I’ve continued to attend classes as faithfully as ever. It was weird to realize all of a sudden this week that I’ve been learning BJJ for five months now. It doesn’t feel that long. I’m sure my focus will shift back to it at some point, and back away from it and back to it again as time goes on, and that’s exactly how the setup is supposed to work (my mind can whittle away at whichever challenge is more intriguing to it in the moment without feeling like it’s spinning its wheels because it can always switch back to what it was ignoring previously to tackle a new problem). But definitely for now it’s been a muscle focus, and that’s been a lot of fun this month.
I really think I’m already seeing the effects of my high volume isometrics strategy. My muscles seem to be growing pretty quickly, and others seem to have noticed as well even without my telling them about what I’m doing, so it’s not purely my imagination, at the very least. It’s not surprising that I should be able to see some effects at this stage; even experienced lifters can manage to eke out measurable hypertrophy in six or eight weeks, and I am certainly not yet someone who could be called an experienced lifter. I am surprised at the apparent magnitude of the changes though. So that’s encouraging, and that’s part of what gave me the confidence to try switching to doing the vast majority of my exercises as isometrics.
Previously I was thinking that I might want to do a “minicut” in January, but at this point I don’t feel like it should be necessary, and it feels like it would be kind of pointless - I’ve put on weight slowly enough, so far at least, that I don’t feel like I’ve probably put on enough fat to justify taking time away from gaining. Depending how my muscles and joints are feeling I might take a bit of a longer deload in December or January, maybe two or three weeks of lower volume at maintenance calories with a less ambitious protein goal, if I think I need it, but for now that seems like it will be as much as I should require. Currently I’m thinking I will try to keep gaining weight and focusing on high volume resistance training until the end of April, at which point I might be around 190 or 195 if all goes to plan, and then I’ll try to lose weight for a couple months (hopefully back down to around 170 or 175?) before beginning my next phase of lean bulking around July. I’m very excited to see how much progress I’ll have made by summer.
I have to say, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing this slow bulk for two months already. High training volume takes a toll (though less so, with these isometrics!), but I find it way more tolerable than a lengthy calorie deficit with a lower training volume. I have a feeling the next five months should fly by, compared to the past year. A calorie surplus is just where a human body generally wants to be, I think - especially after a previous twelve months that involved as much deficit and weight loss as mine did.
I had a couple weeks at BJJ this month where I found that a white belt who started after me and weighs quite a bit less than I do (but who is able to train multiple times per week, and who’s also working with a much younger body than I have) seems to be surpassing me already, which was a bit discouraging in a way, even as in other respects I felt like I was making good progress. That discouragement was helpful in a way too, though. I realized that I probably need to approach BJJ as like a beer league sports activity that I’m involved in. That’s how I’ve decided to look at it. I get some exercise, get to hang out with some cool guys, get to be competitive and try to do well, but I won’t feel like I have to be the best or be transforming into a deadly fighter overnight. I’ll just keep going and enjoying myself, and slowly improving, and at some point in the future maybe I’ll be able to commit more time to it and take it more seriously and when that time comes I’ll be glad for the months of patient training I’ll already have invested before that point. I think that’s a healthy shift of perspective for me.
I haven’t come back to the shadow boxing idea, probably in no small part because the increase in resistance training volume means I don’t have so many days in a row when I feel like I’m not working on anything. Maybe that idea will be one of my experiments that doesn’t go anywhere, which would be okay. But we’ll see; I’ll keep an eye on it and see if it comes back in any form over the next couple months.
I’ve been so pleased with my hypertrophy/bulking progress and experiments and successes, and so excited to contemplate where continued progress will lead in the next half a year, that my BJJ activity has been taking up much less of my attention and imagination between classes, even as I’ve continued to attend classes as faithfully as ever. It was weird to realize all of a sudden this week that I’ve been learning BJJ for five months now. It doesn’t feel that long. I’m sure my focus will shift back to it at some point, and back away from it and back to it again as time goes on, and that’s exactly how the setup is supposed to work (my mind can whittle away at whichever challenge is more intriguing to it in the moment without feeling like it’s spinning its wheels because it can always switch back to what it was ignoring previously to tackle a new problem). But definitely for now it’s been a muscle focus, and that’s been a lot of fun this month.
Predictions
Well, I’m at 180 lbs now so we’ll say what you’ve probably come to expect at this point: I’ll shoot for 181 or 182, will be happy if I accidentally end up at 180 or 183 instead, and will be less excited if I lose weight, or if I end up somewhere north of 183.
I think for resistance exercise I’ll aim to keep my current rather high volume approach (all added up I’m doing more than 250 total “sets” per week, which by conventional standards is kind of crazy) as long as my body continues to handle it well, and will do a deload week for the last week of December, or for longer than a week if I feel like I need longer there at the mid-point of my bulk.
And for BJJ, I’ll aim to keep going once a week as long as I don’t get hurt. (Probably including the last couple weeks of the month during the holidays? But I guess we’ll see.)
Wish me luck! See you next month, for a recap of December, and also, I think, of 2025 as a whole.
I think for resistance exercise I’ll aim to keep my current rather high volume approach (all added up I’m doing more than 250 total “sets” per week, which by conventional standards is kind of crazy) as long as my body continues to handle it well, and will do a deload week for the last week of December, or for longer than a week if I feel like I need longer there at the mid-point of my bulk.
And for BJJ, I’ll aim to keep going once a week as long as I don’t get hurt. (Probably including the last couple weeks of the month during the holidays? But I guess we’ll see.)
Wish me luck! See you next month, for a recap of December, and also, I think, of 2025 as a whole.
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