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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9776109" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I feel a lot of this.  I had most of my newbie gains between 2020 and 2022, and my actual advances in strength the last three years have been pretty minimal on the major muscle groups.  PT for a couple of injuries has gotten me working a couple of neglected areas which have come up a bit, but between early 2023 (PT in Spring after injuring my back deadlifting in Nov 2022) and early 2025 I was pretty well plateaued, and between stress and some of the worst sleep of my life in 2023-2024, I added some weight and fat without adding much of anything for strength.  Got up to 195 in the first half of 2024 (heaviest I've ever been, after being mostly steady around 180-185 since I started lifting).  This year I've managed to drop down to around 170 while mostly recovering my previous strength peaks, or slightly exceeding them for a few lifts.  My cheap digital scale estimates me around 18% body fat, and I keep waffling on whether I want to do an actual strict and structured cut to try to get genuinely lean, or plan a mild calorie surplus to actively bulk. It also doesn't help that I feel relatively exhausted and take what seems like a lot of time doing a fraction of the sets some of you guys do.  Lately I've been pondering whether I need to add regular cardio not just for heart health, but to increase my stamina for and reduce my rest/recovery time for lifting!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f606.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":LOL:" title="Laugh    :LOL:"  data-smilie="17"data-shortname=":LOL:" /></blockquote>

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