Skinny man stalling too early part 79586
Hello,
I am new to the forum so please forgive me if I'm posting this on the wrong board. Also I'm European so forgive me for using the SI.
I'm 27yo, 6'1" (186cm) and I weigh 176 pounds (80 kg). I started SS 6 weeks and a half ago at 167 pounds (76 kg).
I have NO sports or gym background prior to the age of 24 when I started some kind of hybrid bodybuilding-strength split (ugh), when I weighted around 152 pounds (69 kg).
I've tried some badly interpreted versions of the linear progression intermittently over the last two years but was always disappointed by the super early stalls and the incapability of holding up to the increments in weight (I think my best squat was 156 for 5).
I told myself it was the lack of food, meticulous sleep, and training intensity and that this time around would have been different because I've read the book, listened to podcasts, went through the important articles.
It turns out that my progression crashed pretty quickly, for example on the squat:
I started at 132 pounds (60 kg) for 5 and until 154 pounds it was hard but sustainable. That's over the course of 5 workouts with around 5.5 pounds increment, and my gym doesn't really have smaller plates to go any lower on the Olympic bars.
After that everything went down. I started progressing every other workout (159x5x3, then 164 with failed sets, then 164x5x3... you get the idea) and I just now reset the squat from 176 (80 kg) to 160 (72 kg) after failing 3 workouts in a row, but it was never smooth as you can tell.
I warm up with two sets of empty barbell, then 45% x5, 65% x3, 85% x2. No less than 3-4 mins of rest between the hard sets.
Also I noticed I can never really go past my bodyweight. I was squatting 70 kg when I was 70 kg and now I'm failing 80 kg at 80 kg bodyweight, which really made me think that maybe it's not only the food (more on that soon) but other factors that I'm not managing well.
I should mention that I work full time on a very tight schedule and managing to get to the gym 3x week is a hard task itself, I workout at night right before closing time (which is 22:30).
I should also mention that I've been dealing with clinical anxiety for the last 3 years so one workout my focus could be through the roof and just do it, and the other I might feel like the warmup sets are enough for the day because I just can't take the stress any longer. The more I fail sets over the course of weeks the more often the second option happens.
All of this is cascading into less quality of sleep, waking up in the middle of the night for no reason, and so you get how everything just becomes worse.
About food: I eat around 3100-3200 kcal per day with 175 g of protein, which is way less than Mark prescribes in the book, but even with this amount I'm gaining around 1.4 - 1.5 pounds per week which I would not like to exceed because:
1) I worked to 3500 kcal for a couple of weeks and that was absolutely horrible, I had no appetite, I always felt bloated, it made eating a very stressful challenge rather than a moment to enjoy
2) Gaining any more weight, if I'm missing something more important, is probably just getting on my belly without any significant improvement and I'd rather stay away from that.
I've been really invested in studying SS over the last months and I really believe it works if done under the supervision of a professional, however I'm finding myself in a very stressful situation where I just keep failing my expectations.
Also, I started gym as an healthy addition to my life, and this way it's just taking away too much energy and resources.
What would be the things to look at, in order of importance? Should I settle for some easier, slower modifications of the program if I really can't fix the things I'm missing?
I get it that of the "three questions" the only thing off would be the calories, but that's really a path I'd keep as easy as possible because it's very stressful and expensive as it is now (especially if you consider that in the fitness community almost everyone agrees that 500-700 cals per day of surplus should be enough for novice gains and I'm already past that).
I hope I can get some insights on the process.
Thank you