Why do you train to failure? Very few training programs that I have seen encourage lifters to regularly train to failure. I think westside barbell's program may, but that is for people competing in powerlifting.
Also, it's my understanding that when most people talk about exercising for better sleep they are specifically talking about low intensity steady state cardio exercise.
I am one of those "lucky" ones that have to train extremely hard to see minimal gains. That means Tabata sprints till (almost) vomiting, 3xHIIT in a row, lifting long sets till failure etc. Nothing else works. Look it up, I am not alone. I am very tall, so it is compounded with much stronger lever effects, higher risks of injury if anything in the movement is misaligned, higher risk of splitting/cutting tendons etc. Also requiring Prussian discipline to see any gains and overriding feelings to push forward.
Every person I have met who said they work hard for minimal gains was either not working as hard as they thought or not eating enough. I was one of those people until I started tracking food and workouts.
I tried a lot of different things, went through paleo, high-protein, liquid vegan, standard, high-carb, carb-waves etc. You can't apply your limited experience to everyone else; it's like when I talk to a regularly-sized coach and they just don't get the issues very tall persons have to cope with and most of their advice is either misguided or outright dangerous (but would work wonderfully for their type of person).
You may have tried it/added it in, but a single point of anecdata if I may - try adding in rowing. It's basically squatting a lot if you think about the form used.
You describe almost exactly what I face in training and I've seen substantial improvements in conditioning by adding rowing to my workouts. I actually do 45 minutes at around 19 strokes per minute at a 500m split of (average) 1:45. More recently I've moved to doing 1000 strokes per workout. That's at about 275-325 watts per stroke. I use an adjustable water rower with heart rate around 150-170 average. I get around 15-16km per workout.
The action is essentially resistive aerobic training, not unlike squatting as I mentioned. I can't say it'll work for you but I can say it's helped me find a form of aerobic exercise that maintains strength and conditioning.
Your height will give you a mechanical advantage but a water rower will give a non-linear resistive load so you can adjust it to give you the desired heart rate/wattage to sustain difficult training throughout the workout period.
Rowers are considered to be the absolute top of the pyramid amongst athletes in terms of balancing power/vo2 max/aerobic capacity etc etc.
Thanks for the idea! I've tried rowing very rarely as a rowing machine wasn't a standard piece in gyms I usually went to; I'll try to find one that has it and then try it for ~3 months following your advice!
Based on the diets you listed, you missed my point completely. If you are not getting any gains, you are not eating enough and/or not lifting heavy enough. Track your food. I thought I ate a lot and when I tracked it was clear I was not. I had to set alarms through the day to tell me to snack on the jars on PB I kept at my desk. I was almost never hungry, ate 2 dinners, etc... And it worked. I'm 6'1" (not very tall) and went from a skinny fat 165 to a lean 205.
Lifting heavy is the other part. Everyones biomechanics are different, so you need to adjust to fit your own, but being tall is not something unique. There are plenty of tall athletes who put on lots of lean muscle.
Non of those things are helpful for gaining strength or building muscle. Do a basic barbell program and eat 6000 calories every single day and I guarantee you that you will see results.
I am 6’4 and thought it was impossible for me to gain muscle weight. Turns out I just wasn’t eating enough. Starting Strength + gallon of milk a day, and I have been making really good progress. Eating and sleeping are parts of the difficulty when training.
Your problem is all the anaerobic-lactic work. Anaerobic-lactic training leads to quick gain over the short-term, but after 3-4 weeks you plateau and from then on you burn out if you keep doing that (This is why most competition preparation programs for endurance athletes only have anaerobic work in the last few weeks before the event). [0]
If you don't have a competition coming up (or if you are just training for health), then a mix between aerobic and anaerobic-alactic (strength, explosiveness) is much better.
Check my website [1] for the training methods that I usually recommend. For a non-athlete or someone in off-season I would stick to cardiac output, threshold training 1x per week and strength training.
You will see much better results and you will sleep better if you change your training approach. Hope that helps :)
Sidenote: I would recommend actually reading the tabata study. You can see that they also plateau'd after a few weeks (but the study duration was not long enough to see the long-term effects).
After working out for many years I have come to accept that squeezing out single digit percentage gains is not worth the physical and mental effort required, and that maintenance is sufficiently satisfying. My goals have shifted from bulking up to staying fit. It's one less thing to worry about.
