Progress Update – I’ve decided to terminate my 16 week bulk

14 weeks have gone by fast and I’ve decided to terminate my bulk cycle early. My injuries were not progressing fast enough to resume the type of work out intensity I would have liked. Additionally I’ve been struggling with maintaining proper nutrition with my hectic school schedule so this is the right time to stop and reassesses my goals.

I probably should have terminated the cycle and focused on recovering a lot sooner but I’m a suborn mule sometimes.

Some major obstacles I had to face during this bulk was:

• Finding Time to Eat While at School
• Overcoming my Injuries
• Getting 6-8 hours of sleep
• Keeping Stress Levels Down
• Consistently going to the gym

So as you can see I had a slew of problems that I’m going to address in the upcoming weeks but the majority of these problems were caused due to my various untimely injures.
 

The Injuries

Going into this bulk I was in the middle of dealing with my triceps tendonitis. I was working with various athletic trainers to try to rid myself of this chronic injury but I was not being honest with myself or my trainers. 

I had a problem with my left shoulder that I did not have checked out for at least a couple of years. It turns out that I did some damage to it and there was a significant amount of scar tissue around my upper biceps tendon. This resulted in my having an impinged left shoulder.

Having an impinged shoulder on one side of my body and triceps tendonitis on the other side has led to several muscle imbalances in my upper and lower body.

This leads to my next injury…

I was having serious muscle imbalances due to the above injuries and this lead to my overcompensating with the right side of my body. During several lifts I strained my left Rhomboid/Trapezius. I didn’t see this injury as a problem until one day when doing a close grip pull down I felt a sharp pain that felt like someone poured acid down my back. What started out as a strain ended up being a minor tear that still hasn’t healed (but its close)

Lastly I had a short bout of Sciatia after a mishap while deadlifting. Without getting into that too much it has affected my lower leg power. Currently I’m working regaining strength in both my legs.

Nutrition

3000 calories is the daily caloric goal that I’ve set for myself but it has been a struggle to eat like this while at school. I’ve been doing some research and I’m going to be making revisions to how I eat. I think I’ve finally found the right formula that will give me the ultimate amount of success.

Getting Proper Sleep

I need to find a way to get more sleep. There are weeks where I’ve consistently gotten 3 – 4 hours of sleep each night. I need to find different strategies to find more sleep during the week.

Consistency in the gym

When I first initially got hurt I needed to take some time off to let my body heal. After that short break it was hard to motivate myself to get into the gym because I had upper and lower body injuries so I was really limited as to what I could do. So I just opted to focus on eating which eventually didn’t workout.

My Never Dying Stress Levels

I live quite a hectic lifestyle. With School, Work, and my family life always being my number one priorities I never find time to unwined and relax. I’m going to find more time to get out and enjoy myself because high stress levels are going to negatively impact my gains. 

Time for Accountability

I’m going to use the month of April to jump start my way into a new phase of training that will focus on getting myself back into the right habits for weight gain while focusing on getting healthy.

Stay tuned for updates as I try to get myself back on track and back to adding muscle to my frame.