Geschatte leestijd: 3 minuten
No matter how much and how hard you train at the gym, you don’t see the desired results. How can that be, and is there anything you can do about it? You do cardio day in and day out, you train hard with weights, and you eat well. Yet, you don’t see the ideal image you would like in the mirror. Your muscles are barely visible, and your six-pack is nowhere to be found.
What do you do? You train harder, eat more, but the result is still elusive. You’re getting desperate. That’s the dilemma the person asking the question is facing, and he/she can’t figure it out.
“I’ve been training for years but still no results”
I notice that my arms are not hard but they are big, why is that? Probably because I have a lot of fluid in my body. I’m fairly chubby, but I always train really hard, heavy, and intensively.
After a workout, I’m always completely drenched in sweat, but I see little results. I’m really at my wit’s end.
What should I do best: train heavy or light? Or just cardio? At the moment, I do 30 minutes of cardio and then an hour to an hour and a half of intensive strength training.
Sometimes I do five or six tricep exercises and five or six chest exercises (I train chest together with triceps) and five or six bicep exercises and five or six back exercises (I train back together with shoulders, trapezius, triceps, and abs). I don’t see much difference and change in my body.
Help, what should I do?
Answer
As you can understand, these kinds of questions are always difficult to answer without seeing the whole picture. I don’t know how long you’ve been training, how often you train, but especially how intensively.
When you have a lot of mass but don’t see definition (the lines), there is a layer over the muscles preventing you from seeing that definition.
In your email, you mention that you have a lot of fluid in your body, but how do you know for sure that it’s fluid and not fat? Have you ever had your body fat percentage measured properly? Once you know your body fat percentage, you can develop a more targeted battle plan and better measure whether you are making progress or really standing still.
That half hour of cardio before your hour to an hour and a half of weight training is not practical. You’re already burning sugars that you need during your strength training. If you miss these, you will be able to train less intensively and your body may even break down muscle mass to compensate for the carbohydrate deficiency. Cardio after your workout also reduces muscle mass. You’d better do this separately or make sure to focus on fat burning mainly through diet.
If you really want to see a change, you’ll need to approach the nutrition part in a more “scientific” way. It’s a lot of work, but the result is worth it.
Step by step
- Compare your desired diet with your actual diet. For example, use the nutrition calculator on this site. This will give you a good idea of how much and what you should eat and how this actually looks in practice.
- Have your body fat percentage measured properly with a skinfold caliper, so you have a clear starting point from which to work. A sports doctor or a good trainer can help you with this.
- Evaluate the results after about four weeks and adjust your diet if necessary (for example, by reducing your calories or just carbohydrates by 5%).
Improve your training
- Start with your strength training (one hour is enough if you keep going) and then do your cardio. That way, you’re not completely “empty” before you start your weight training and you’ve burned most of the fuel before you start cardio. As mentioned, this is a compromise and it’s even better not to combine them.
- You’re doing way too many exercises per muscle group, especially for your arms. For your chest, back, and shoulders, do a maximum of three exercises. Do a total of 10 to 12 sets per muscle group. For biceps and triceps, do two exercises, maximum eight to ten sets. Your arms need much less than you think.
- Also train your legs!!! If you want to grow, you mainly need to work hard on your large muscles. This has an anabolic effect on your entire body, making your other muscles grow better as well. Additionally, you won’t look ridiculous with untrained legs when you’re in swim trunks.
- Take a training program from the site. For example, a four-day program. That way, you have a complete training program for your whole body and you also have enough rest to let your body recover.
Do you also have problems achieving good results? Share your thoughts below.
