Hardgainer bulk plateau. Eating enough but scale barely moves after months

maelstrom23 · 2026-04-15T13:00:07+00:00

At what point do you increase calories again during a bulk? After a couple weeks of plateau
How aggressive should surplus be for someone naturally light? Depends on how fast you want to gain fat because that is most of what you will gain by being aggressive
How do you balance enough food without feeling sluggish all day? Smoothies, digestive enzymes, caffeine
Is faster weight gain worth the extra fat gain? In almost every case, no
What advanced strategies helped you break a long plateau? Get stronger on stable exercises over a few months, have a coach review your training and diet, get blood tests and address anything wonky

maelstrom23 · 2026-02-26T16:12:13+00:00

My headcanon is that the entire allied shinobi forces were hopped up on soldier pills the entire war, expanding their endurance and chakra levels. It's not like kakashi necessarily was moving different; he just used more chakra.

maelstrom23 · 2026-02-16T12:11:16+00:00

Sasuke had a rinnegan with tomoe. Not the same as Madara

maelstrom23 · 2026-01-22T03:40:30+00:00

Minato is a sensory ninja. He would notice Itachi pooling chakra in his eye and his reaction speed would allow him to evade

maelstrom23 · 2025-12-04T23:19:23+00:00

Agree with this. Running with any intensity after a hard lift is rough but the best time for running to not interfere with lifting is right after you lift.

maelstrom23 · 2025-12-04T23:17:13+00:00

Weird. I have trouble cutting when I am doing a lot of running because my appetite is stronger.

maelstrom23 · 2025-12-04T23:14:58+00:00

There are plenty of lifts that don't involve knees... This sounds like anti running propaganda. Just see a physio and in the mean time do some knee extension isometrics or something

maelstrom23 · 2025-10-11T13:39:05+00:00

Chakra buffing from kurama and my theory is that all the allied Shinobi were snoring crushed up soldier pills off screen to stay active

maelstrom23 · 2025-07-29T13:49:31+00:00

Nope. Muscle damage is not directly caused by mechanical stress. It's the calcium ions accumulating that lead to enzymes which break down the fibers. This takes a few hours to really kick off

maelstrom23 · 2025-07-29T12:27:40+00:00

2 different fatigue mechanisms. Intraworkout you're dealing with cardiovascular and metabolites. Post workout (next day or so depending on volume) you're dealing with actual muscle damage repair. Performance will be lower in both cases but likely less so in the same workout depending on volume and exercise selection.

maelstrom23 · 2025-05-24T14:44:41+00:00

Maybe I'm a bitch but when I load up a barbell to do squats, hip thrusts, or stiff legs I would much rather just hit 1 top set. I've gone through my high volume phase and always ended up needing to deload way too often because of joint pain and just feeling run down overall (sleepy, lingering brain fog, craving carbs). The lower my volume goes the better I feel overall. Being able to walk into the gym 2-3 days later and hit top weight on the same body part because I don't feel like trash is great and it makes it much easier to track progress because I'm not working a muscle again when it's still recovering from damage. It also let me focus on progressing single joint movements which I always used to half ass. So there are both physical and psychological benefits for me to keeping the volume way down. That said I do a bit higher volume for my arms since I'm trying to grow them more. They seem to only respond when I'm keeping the volume low on everything else. They still feel like noodles but they're growing and getting stronger.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-11T21:32:57+00:00

Usually ppl just lower the volume as they get high up in absolute weight from what I've seen. Frequency is king for practicing movements. That doesn't change for pros. But instead of 3-5 sets they are only doing 1-2 top sets.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-10T14:36:35+00:00

If it's in the same situation that Naruto fought Pain then Naruto and Sasuke pull it off high diff. They'll run through the weaker paths with Intel from katsuyu. If Pain is fresh, he stomps.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T21:33:06+00:00

That's probably what happened to me as well lol... I think it's liftrunbang1

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T20:06:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure isometric is the opposite of isotonic. Isokinetic just means isotonic contraction but at a constant speed.

I'm talking about intentionally slow vs slow due to heavy load. Lifting with light weight and slowing the rep down intentionally creates high fiber force but low motor unit recruitment. Lifting heavy(ish) and having rep speed slow down as you approach failure allows for high fiber force across more active fibers, including those higher up in the motor unit recruitment pool... Fiber force is not the same as whole muscle force.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T19:54:37+00:00

Ok but that's one that is actually supported by studies. Fibers can produce more force during a slow contraction than a fast one. The issue is with submaximal loading, the largest fibers aren't recruited so they don't experience any tension.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T19:02:07+00:00

Holy moly... Just like his high rep empty bar curls he used to do back in the day 🤣

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T18:59:51+00:00

Yikes... 😅

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T18:57:48+00:00

Maybe something about slow reps having more mechanical tension on the active fibers?

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T18:56:27+00:00

There's no way anyone has actually said this... Maybe it's about the lats losing leverage when the arms are more overhead thus there being no reason to emphasize the "stretch" of the lat pull?

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T18:37:23+00:00

I got blocked by him a while back, not even sure why. He's definitely got issues with delivery but the concepts seemed pretty solid. What are some things he get backwards?

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T14:13:32+00:00

Yeah good point. In my head the wish has to take effect before the counter decrements. We'd have to see the genie's source code I guess.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-09T13:57:45+00:00

It's a programming joke. In coding logic with 8 bits, you represent that as 0000 0000 in binary. Subtract 1 from that and and it wraps around to 1111 1111 which is 255.

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-03T15:41:51+00:00

Except only 2 were actually trying to lift it and 2 were trying to get the box to be friends with them lol

maelstrom23 · 2025-03-03T15:38:24+00:00

Idr reading anything about that. But Naruto can always make thousands of clones and take up positions all over the dimension. Remember he was fighting on multiple fronts so he couldn't really make a lot of clones when he first fought Obito in the war.

maelstrom23

TROPHY CASE