You should feel improvements also as your visible results become noticeable, maybe even before, if the goal is for muscle size. Your clothes should become a little tighter, like shirts, jackets, etc. Mostly around the shoulders, back, arms, etc. If you button your collar it may seem tighter.The belt notch should be the same size or looser. If you wear jeans, than the legs may feel fuller in them. And if your one of the luckly ones, the calves also. The abs should feel drawn in and tighter also. If the waist becomes soft and the start of love handles begins than a adjustment to the diet will need attention. Might try reducing the carbs, at first, to around 200/300 grams daily. You should still make muscular gains at a steady pace, but at a slower rate. The calorie intake will be around or above the mean average of 3000 for an active male. Though some fat gain, for most people, can not be avoid along with a muscle increase. Re-defining the diet after the muscle gain is what most serious BB'ers do.
Usually a good judge of how a exercise program is working is with-in 3 or 4 weeks. Consider the first two weeks as a breaking in period for any program. If after that time, say up to 5- 6 weeks as a fair test period, no results are produced than try another verson(s) of a BB'ing/lifting program. Do not fall under tha false impression that if a workout give you a great pump, that will mean that you are making any lasting muscle gains. It does not. A good pump means that blood is backing up in a certain muscle group, giving a incorrect feeling of lasting fullest and size to that muscle area.
Also increased strength does not always go hand in hand with increased muscle size for a lot of people. Working the heavy compound exercises like the squat, DL, bench, dips, chins, etc will most always insure strength and giving full advantage for your potentional for muscle mass.
If you tend to be an easy, natural gainer who has been given the genetic code for very large muscle mass, than just about any form of exercise can give results. Swinging around a couple of empty milk carton's (the ones with The Pumpsters picture on them) may give good results to this type of biochemical mutation. A couple of guy's have accused me of falling into this class of human.They are wrong, I require my milk carton's to be filled. Good Luck.
