Should I change / adapt my workout?

[Heathwood]

Hi folks,

Following about a year of rather half hearted weight training, I did some research and started training properly 3 months ago. As an ectomorph needing to build a solid foundation and to add a little mass, I started doing a full body workout 3 to 4 times a week. Workouts focus on compound moves and weight is increased during every session. Typically, a weekly workout would look something like the following:

5 x 5 day:
Cleans
Flat bench
Barbell B/O row
Seated press
1 or 2 isolation moves

8 x 4 day:
Squats
Incline bench (wide grip)
Barbell B/O row
Standing shoulder press
1 or 2 isolation exercises

3 x 12 day:
Deads
Decline bench (dumbells)
B/O Dumbell row
Shrugs
1 or 2 isolation exercises

I have seen some decent improvements in strength, with modest increase in weight / muscle. All in all, it's going quite well.

However, given that I've been doing this for 3 months now, should I be looking to change my workout and do something different? There's a fair amount of variation in my training, but I'm not sure if my body might still welcome a change. Also, I am starting to get a little bored and I can sense my motivation isn't quite what it was.

I would like to stick with full body workouts, rather than splits etc. I also want to stick largely to compound moves. Is there anything else worth trying I.e. pyramid training, GVT etc?

Sorry for the long post; thanks for any advice

[Hoofy]

Don't see anything wrong with changing stuff if you're getting bored but I would keep the following and make sure you're doing 5x5 or 3x6 ie low rep, high weight:
Flat bench
Barbell B/O row
Squats
Standing shoulder press
Deads

Also as an ecto, perhaps consider eating over 3000 kcals a day including at least 150g of protein.

The other stuff you can mix and match experimenting as you go.

Could try 3x15 adding these in on various days:
One hand dumbbell shoulder press
DB push press
One hand DB bench press
DB front raises
Pull ups (wide, narrow and clap)
Flies
DB side raises
BB upright rows
Also try stuff from beastskills.com

Edited by Hoofy on Tuesday 6th August 20:52

[Ordinary_Chap]

You need more than 3 months to build a strength base.

I did strength training for 2 years and then started moving to high intensity/high reps and grew like a mad man for 3 months at a time cycling between strength and high reps/high intensity. I think this only worked because I spent time focusing on strength.

The truth is high reps/intensity is often the choice of bodybuilders but I personally think you need to keep increasing strength to keep progressing (these are just my own subjective experiences).

I'd recommend you keep strength training for at least a year and focus on nutrition because nutrition will have a huge effect on your size/shape & body composition.

Lee

[Hoofy]

That's something I've come to realise over time. You do high reps to build size but you need the strength to be able to high rep something that's actually bloody heavy to a novice.

[Heathwood]

Ok, thanks for the advice guys. Sounds like I'm probably on the right track.