I feel I have done all I can to improve my body. I have listened to people and have tried HST, and different variants of hypertrophy, and have received shit in over 2 years of lifting.
I know too many people in college and high school who were able to achieve the results I want, to look like somebody who work outs, without having to go on strict diets, I diet better than these people. I feel for my goals the diet is fine, I realize that most of you on here want to compete, which is not my goal and likely why you suggest the diet gets changed.
For somebody who is competeing, yes diet is big, but for your regular college student who wants to look strong, if this were true, than most of the people who are strong would not be as they do not eat strict diets as have been told.

I have a friend who will sell me andro. Before I buy, I wanted to post and get a indication if this will do the job that sweating in the gym for over 2 years has failed to. I can not quit, because that would mean all the time I have spent in the gym to date was a waste, and I can not keep having these reuslts, my goal is not hard to attain and this andro is what I see as my only choice.
I can not look this way for one more summer, when I started working out over 2 years ago, I wanted to be in shape for the summer 2 years ago, and having the muscles I have now, this looks as if it's the only way to get it.
I will post pictures of me tonight on here so you can see for yourselves my current body and I'm sure you'll agree something big has to be done.

Jesus H. Go read your NO2 thread and just anytime you read NO2 replace it w/the word Andro and it will save everyone a lot of time. If you don't want to eat well you'll never get big. You have shitty genetics, you need to accept that and learn to diet.

Please knock it off violate. Don't do what you did last year on HST's forms. Flooding it with questions and complaints. Read, read, and read some more material here on Avant. You will learn and hopefully be able to apply it.

Eating under maintenance = lose
Eating maintenance = Maintain <----You are here.
Eating above maintenance = Growth <---- If anything on this board made sense you will be here soon

Hmmm, other useful tips:
Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this, Tell me what happens when you read this.





Did you read every repeat? No, probley not, and thats what everyone is doing when we read your posts, considering you keep repeating the same thing.

Hope this very complex but useful information helps...

im a college student also living on campus you dont think i know what its like to try to keep a strict diet?
if you want something bad enough, you have to be 100% dedicated.....stop wasting your time, in my opinon

i have to agree. if u are training right and you don't have a hormone deficiency problem, you should grow. i see lots of guys at the gym year after year, who train hard, but look the same. i don't know if their goal is to grow, but the fact remains if they were eating to grow, they would. i know that you think you are, but the word DIET is not what i'm talking about. i would chalange you to eat 40 to 50 calories a kilogram and i promise you, if you train hard and get ample rest, you will grow. i know that many will say this is too much, but if you start there you can taper it down to apoint where it works best for you. problem is there's always an excuse why people can't eat enough.

You are a fucking idiot.

Just blow it up on the carbs. Eat 1.5g protein for every lb of bodyweight, and go nuts on carbs. Good carbs though. Oats, BrownRice, etc...lots of veggies. If you have ever really bulked and are a hard gainer the eating is by far the hardest part of the training. Also maybe 3 days a week and allowing more rest time would be beneficial to you. I personally only lift 3-4 days a week when bulking. Sleep and rest is your best friend for muscle growth. Also maybe hst isnt for you. Try the 10-12 rep range, and go to the training forum and check out Teach's thread. It ight help you as far as form and choosing the best exercises.

While you may feel this way, it's not particularly useful information. He is obviously distraught over his shattered image of where he should be after 2 years of work.

Two years is just a starting point, you have many more in front of you to improve, read, learn and apply. Genetically there is little reason why you should not be able to achieve a good physique.

Volatile, you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself.

How can any of you suggest that eating more calories is the answer?
You wonder why I have to repeat myself?
How many times do I have to tell you that last year I bulked, and I gained over 20 pounds, and I was no stronger, and my muslces did not get larger.
Instead, all that weight went to my stomach, so dieting backfied on me.
Yet you keep ignoring me, and telling me to eat.
How can you responsiblly offer that advice?

Did you not see my pictures, I weight 176 pounds, but my stomach is big, I can't see my dick it's so big, and I weigh 176 pounds. Eating more only compounds this, it did before. I am tired of being told to eat more, why don't you listen to me about what happened the last time I ate more calories or look at my pictures and tell me if this really a good idea.

Word!

Get your diet on track and you will gain. End of story.

Well ok after reading this and his other thread you may be correct. But I still can't help but to feel bad for the guy.

He has been going through the same crap for years. He refuses to blame his diet.

i saw your pics earlier this morning. you can't see your dick because you have very poor posture. you stand slouched and pop your belly out like you're trying to emphasize it. if you train hard.. and i mean with real effort, and you're not hypogonadal and you're not eating shit like cheeseburgers and highly refined sugar coated stuff you shouldn't be ending up with fat. so, assuming that you are training hard and the food you are eating is high quality nutrient dense food, and you just get fat around your belly, you could have very high E levels or very low T levels. have you had a hormone level blood test done?

oh, and... if you're frustrated with the suggestions you get when you solicit the members of the forum perhaps you need to look elsewhere. we only know what you choose to tell. you may think you train hard, but don't realy put the kind of effort forth that stimulates muscle growth.

Agreed,

Everything you tell us has reason to make us believe its your diet. Last year maybe that was not your diet, but what exactly were you eating? I believe you said something similar to now.

What style of training are you doing? Are you allowing your body to rest and recoup from workouts with ample sleep? Do you have good pre/post workout meals? How long do your workouts normally last? Are you kidding but your just trying to piss everyone off?

Although this individual strikes me as a bit unstable, and it's difficult to make out what exactly his situation is, I think some of the advice here may be a little misguided.

'Clean' eating, supplements, pre- and post- workout nutrition, etc. are for the most part not going to make or break a bulk. They will certainly limit fat gain, improve P-ratio, and in general enhance the experience, but they will not make te difference between a successful bulk and no muscle gain whatsoever.

If it is true here that volatile ate large quanitites of food for a period of time and gained 20 lbs. of pure fat, with absolutely no muscle gain (realize that strength is not an entirely reliable indicator), then this would seem to suggest a more serious problem than training or diet.

Although a profoundly flawed training program could concievably induce such a lack of results (via overtraining, perhaps), any program resembling HST should be close enough to 'decent' that it would be difficult to achieve a complete lack of muscle and/or strength gains.

In light of this, and assuming volatile is telling the truth (I have not seen his pictures), a hormonal deficiency seems probable. It is remarkably difficult to train with weights in any meaningful way, particularly as a beginner, and see no strength gains. Androgen deficiency would seem likely, given the facts presented here, although other hormonal and/or neurochemical pathologies are not out of the question. OCD seems almost assured.

volatile, how is your libido? Are you fatigued? Have you truly achieved no strength gains in two years of training?

I agree with you, Ex. Looking at his pictures, his hip to shoulder ratio is slightly effeminate. His bitchiness also rubs me as- well, uh, you know...

Volatile, I think you should go to an endocrinologist and find out what's going on. Your test/estrogen levels may be skewed.

I now workout 4 to 5 day a week, sometimes 6.
I do chest and back 1-2 times, shoulders 1-2 times with legs 1, bis and tris 1-2 times.
The workout including abs or obliques takes on average 90 minutes.
I do 3 exercises per muscle, for usually 3 sometimes 4 sets, for 6 reps, at failure. I now changed it to near failure, not at it.

Before this, I would go 3 times a week. I did hypertrophy specific, and hypertrophy. During hypertrophy specific I would mix it with 12, 8, and 6 reps, and with hypertrophy around 6 reps, they would take me in the area of an hour.
Now based on this, what do you think of my training, is it overtraining, is it hard enough for me to gain muscle?
I'll say this too, when I trained until this year, I did it alone. I did not have a spotter, so this meant that for chest, I did dumbell incline. I would rarely do bench, and when I did it was with a dumbbell. I don't know if this could account for less musle, as my chest is my best muscle in my body.
What's interesting is that I probably can do as much or more on incline than I can bench, which I guess is due to me training with it more often.
I did squats about 1 to 2 times a week, and I did straight leg deadlifts while on hypertrophy at least 2 times a week, now though I don't do squats as squats aggrevate my lower back some.

I can post my workouts for the last year, in fact I had a journal here, but that will take a little while to get all the data typed here. Check out the training log section, I have it from the summer there.

When I bulked, I was doing hypertrophy. I did hypertrophy specific in the summer.
I had blood tests last year which said my testastorne was fine, would neurochemical issues cause poor results?
I don't know how my libido is, I have achieved medicore strenght gains, I think 10 pounds on bench in 2 years for somone who works out regularly is not that good an achievement. What do you think I should do with these fact here? If you are saying a hormone issue might be the problem, then wouldn't 1AD be a good idea?

You may want to do some things to cut lt your cortisol/adrenalin, or at least get it checked.

I am not joking with this, but you sound a bit stressed, and that wont be helping your goal aquisition. Meditation or cognitive behaviour interventions may help.

J

I highly doubt stress is what could be causing my muscles not to increase in size. In any case for several months I choose to relax and not worry about weight training, to go into the gym, lift, and not think about or stress on getting large. I did that, and then once I took a few days off, I made little progress, so I to address your point, I did stop stressing, and all that did was allow the bad results to continue. It's not that.

Reducing stress and worry from your life and training are not mutually exclusive - you can do both.
Personally I feel that meditation has got a bit of a 'feminine' rap - that is most unjustified. I have found that it really helps me focus, and improves my performance in the gym. Its free & simple to do too!
J

I never said they were exclusive. I said I didn't stress about training, and it did not add muscle.

for bulking i have always found that more rest is required if you are training to near maximal effort. train only 3 days a week. also i have evolved to a hybrid training protocol where my first movement is a multi joint big movement with low reps followed accessory movements the 12 rep range. the combination hits both fast and slow twitch fibers. i still contend that your t levels are too low or e levels are too high. you say that you had blood work done and your t levels were "fine". what exactly where they? how mahy ng/dl was your total test and how much was free test. what was estradiol and estrogen levels? if you are eating right and training hard and not responding i would tend to believe that your endochrin system is whaked. jmho.

However, in all these posts you seemed extremely stressed. With how you've reacted its hard to believe you were relaxed all through the two year period.

For sake of pointing out...Cortisol is released from adenaline glands for three major purposes.
-Halting of tissue growth
-Reduction of protein synthesis
-Facilitation of protein to glucose

One of the reasons cortisol is released is because of high levels of physical or mental stress.

Not necessarily saying this is your problem, but realize that stressing over this situation is not helping.

Or his CNS is just straight shot.

Are there any blood tests I should get to see if the CNS or T levels are off?

I'm not entirely sure, however, I noticed you were discussing this in another post you made, check those back out. Because someone was asking you questions on the results on your previous blood work, etc.

In response to the title of this thread:

NO

Why not? From what I've read, Andro is going to add muscle mass provided that I eat right, which would not happen as much if I didn't take it.
I would like to know if andro can or will cause psych problems for me. I read that steroids can cause wackiness, and though this is not a steroid, for someone who takes debakote, I want to know if this will cause issues. Thanks.

You know what, after reading the FAQ on this, I'm not sure taking andro is a great idea, moreso than before. If I diet correctly, eat about 500 calories above maintaince, about 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per bodyweight, and have about 70 grams of fat or less a day 5 days a week, will this along with good training and form get me growing, adding muscle mass? How long will this take, a few weeks?

juice it up

Give it about 3 months.

Be patient. And persistant.

Tkardde, and the rest, it would be really helpful that you come onto my training and diet journal and critique how effective my training and diet is. I will go ahead and make a journal for training and diet, but it really would be best if I could get people on there to comment on what I am doing.
From what I have heard, my diet and training might be responsible for my poor muscle growth, but we can not say for sure since this has not been thoroughly looked into.
I had a diet and training journal before, but nobody posted on it, or at least not the smart people such as Tkardde, which really made the whole thing useless to me.
I would like to examine my training and diet to see if the problem with my muscle gorwth is in here, but in order to do this, I need people to go on to the training and diet journal and let me know if I am doing something wrong and how to improve it.
If you could do this, it would help me figure out what to improve directly, and eliminate the need for new topics as this could be addressed on there directly.