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.
