What limits you?...

[homonunculus]

Wondering what limits your offseason muscle gains?... What would you say (there needn't be just one, but for the sake of discussion...) is your limiting factor for muscle growth?...

Food consumed?...

Rest and recuperation?...

Training intensity?... (Too much or too little)

Supplements?...

(Genetics is not an option here, for the sake of simplicity - it ultimately limits all of us... )

What's your "root" limitation? If, for instance, you think that training intensity suffers b/c you can't recover enough, then recovery would be your limiting factor (which in turn affects other aspect of your progress). If, on the other hand, you have plenty of time to recover, train like an animal and even have to rein yourself in sometimes, but can't seem to get the food and/or protein in to make optimal gains, then diet would be your limitation.

-R

P.S. If you know your limitation, what are you doing to remedy it?...

[xcelbeyond]

Not avoiding the things I "shouldn't" be doing - like staying up posting instead of going to bed or eating the more than occaisional sweets

xcel

[Dirkmoneyshot]

Food Consumption - My body uses more food than sometimes i feel is possible to consume.

And don't get me wrong I eat a lot. Just a fast metabolism and at 250 lb it goes through a lot of food.

And to be honest i think food comsumption is what limits most people. Everyone in the gym thinks their eating big, but probably only a handful really are.

I don't think people would be in the sport if lack of intensity in training was your problem.

I think rest and recuperation is a little over rated. With plenty of food you'll recoup faster IMO. So it goes back to food.

Don't wanna even talk about supps cause the problems above are far more important.

[wildman536]

i think Its Food for me too. just need to Eat More!!

[Ken Skip Hill]

Mine is training intensity. In retrospect, I was overtrained this past year and really didn't realize it. I love to train so 20 sets of back and 16 sets of quads is fun for me. I enjoy volume workouts.

That is why it is sooooo hard to get used to this DC thing. hehe

Skip

[Kidrok (Hop)]

food. During prer-comp i am meticulous about what and when I eat, tracking my daily intake on a spreadsheet. During off-season it is much more hap-hazard.
To fix it? I got Dante to get on my case if I miss a meal now!

[ncsports]

i am not a competitor by any means (other than with myself)

but my biggest limiting factors are currently:
food consumption (but getting better, thanks to chicken in a food processor)
proper rest ( have a 20mo old daughter and another here in 2 mos)

[SuperSport]

My work gets in the way sometimes. During our peak season it is very common to work 14 hour days in some intense heat....kinda wears me down a little and it seems as though I am not as hungry. I always take shakes to mix up on the job-sometimes I take 4-5 per day just to try to keep the calories up.

[GyM RaT 03]

School is the problem for me. Because it is hard to eat during school and somedays it is difficult to get to the gym when I am supppossed to so I have to switch around workouts sometimes.


GR03

[Creator_11]

I would say, more sleep, its the only factor I just can't fix most of the time. I get 8 hours most nights, but somedays my body wants more, but I can't give it, I have a job, a small business to run, and several other things that need my attension. So its recovery.

[gravityfighter]

Nagging injuries.... I get over one ,then it's something else. Seems like I'm always nursing a injury...funny, did'nt have that problem 20 years ago?
GF

[heavy hitter]

eating enough food and working around a herniated disc. some days i just can't squat or deadlift or...........

[mark mcgwire]

For me it's food. I can't seem to eat enough. I posted a month or so ago about only being able to eat about 2,000 calories each day without eating any junk food.

What have I done about it?....I added steak to my diet for a couple of days and my appetite took off and now I seem to have my appetite back and am hungry every two hours.

The other difficulty with food has been limiting things like pizza, wings, beer. But since the beginning of 2004 I've changed my eating habits to severely limit these things.

[Nferno]

Diet no doubt diet, I just dont eat enough of the things I need to be eating, I have a bad sweet tooth which in tern ends up killing my appetite so I dont eat enough of what I need to.

[Iabadman]

Sure food is a limiting factor my friends . But weights not moving upward is the key . Why don't your weights go up after a period of time . Because as you get closer to genetic strength thresholds [ at the time ] your adrenal systems becomes shot [ from training so hard] . When this occurs , the food gets harder to put down and the weights don't continue to rise. Can you keep this from happening ? Sure .....I played with some of Vince Gironda's ideas as well as Dan Duchane's [ but he stole them from Vince ] .Train 3 weeks on 1 week off .........it works and it is kind of the way Randy diet's [ I think ] ........It is a very effective way to keep things moving foreward in the off season......of course gear and nutrition must be played with and tweaked but this method works my friends......I could explain a bunch of hormonal mumbo jumbo on way training this way is a good idea ......but as Dante and Skip would say keep it simple ....right ?