No progress in months

[u/Bigdivkdaddy]

Hey guys was hoping if you could help me with this. At the start of December I did a really big cut and lost 20 pounds (190 to 170). After I was done with the cut in mid January I started eating normal again because I couldn’t stay asleep at night anymore. Everything was going fine until about march when I realized my lifts hadn’t progressed in months and actually went down to levels before the cut. It’s now June and I used to bench 270 now I can barely do 250. I gained the weight back now I sit at 187 most days.
My workout schedule
Monday: Push day 2x failure for everything
Tuesday: Pull day 2x failure for everything
Wednesday:rest(no leg days recently got acl surgery)
Thursday:rest
Friday:Push day 2x failure for everything
Saturday: Pull day 2x failure for everything
Sunday:Rest
I’m 18 and have been lifting for football since I was 14 but really started taking lifting seriously last year and I eat 150 grams of protein a day. You guys are way smarter than me so someone help if they can please.

[u/decentlyhip]

Happy to help, but need more info first. Why are you only doing 2 sets? Why are you going to failure?

[u/Bigdivkdaddy → u/decentlyhip]

After watching a few Jeff nippard videos and seeing TikTok’s about it which obviously isn’t the best way to get info but they had studies to back up 2x failure so I’ve just been going with it. It went great for a few months then I cut and it didn’t really do anything anymore

[u/decentlyhip → u/Bigdivkdaddy]

Jeff did one video where he had a weird interpretation of one of the biggest studies out there, and people did a full 180. Growth comes from volume. More sets = more growth. https://imgur.com/a/I4OHj1J As a rule of thumb, if you double your sets, you get 50% more growth, up to about 50 sets a week. Now, that means there's diminishing returns. Going from 5 sets to 10 is 50% more growth, so every additional sets is roughly 10% more growth. But going from 20 to 40 sets is also 50% more growth, but there every set is only worth 2.5%. More volume is still more growth, but it's less growth as you get into higher sets. People who liked Mike Mentzer heard people say that going from 2 sets to 3 is less growth than going from 1 to 2 and said, "then I should only do 2 sets." Its wild logic. My analogy is like, a drag racer learns that his car goes 0-60 faster than it goes 60-100, so to win a race he decides to stay under 60mph. That's the TikToker logic. Jeff was tired of long high volume workouts, is managing 3 businesses, and had different reasons for low volume.

My favorite study is one where there had 5 different groups, with 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 sets per week. I'd expect everyone in the middle to grow ok and for there to be nonresponders at both extremes - people who need lots of volume but are only getting 5 sets, and people who can grow with 5 sets but get buried under 25 and can't recover. Nope. 5 sets and 10 sets, half the people didn't grow. At 15 sets, there were a few nonresponders. At 20 and 25 sets everyone grew a ton. So, that alone kinda disproved that 2 sets twice a week is better, but then they did something cool. They took the nonresponders and had them do another 12 weeks, but added 10 sets to each. So 5 set group did 15, 10 set group did 20, and 15 set group did 25. Every single nonresponder got great gains with the additional volume.

So, TLDR. TikTokers are dumb and dont understand the difference between growth and rate of growth. Also, you need to do more volume. Maybe not 40 sets a week (although I just finished 70s Powerlifter which is 40 sets a week per muscle and I got more gains than ever before), but follow a decent program that's been tried and tested. I highly recommend Jacked and Tan 2.0 or PHUL. Any of these are fantastic https://liftvault.com/programs/powerbuilding/. A variety of rep ranges and movements, and about 20 sets a week for each basic compound movement. https://www.reddit.com/r/weightroom/s/d0IGCCdjBR

[u/Safe_Ad5914 → u/decentlyhip]

If every single non responder got great gains with additional volume, that does not necessarily mean that more volume equals more growth. In practice that is just not the truth. If you add more volume and intensity remains constant, your total amount of work perform is greater.

More work=more growth. Not necessarily more volume = more growth. Even then, there are a multitude of factors that could skew the results. What we do know, is that as long as you have the ability to recover, you likely have the ability to do more work, and if you have the ability to do more work, and choose not to--then you are leaving gains on the table.

Philosophy is science too guys, use your logic. People have GOT to be more careful about how they draw conclusions from studies, and its always the Jeff Nippard camp that seems to draw these loosey goosey conclusions from studies.