https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPElsRpFxZE

Here re-uploaded it without audio.

Usually, if music is detected in my vids, they just ban it in Germany and I can't be bothered to fix it for the 0.05 german people who read my log. For some reason this one got banned worldwide.

Interesting. I've had YouTube flag a video but asked me if I intended to monetize it and of course not so they let it slide. Wonder if that's just different with Sony published music?

Yeah it seems to just depend on how much of an IP troll the publisher is. It's a rihanna song in the video.

This developed into full blown stomach flu by that evening. I spent all of yesterday in alternating bouts of shivering and sweating and ate hardly at all. Last night my fever broke and today I'm recuperating and gorging on carbs. I skipped my first workout ever today and I expect I'll be back at 100% by Sunday's workout.

I intended to lift today, but the Cambodian holiday caught me off guard and I discovered my gym was closed. I'm just gonna do Mon/Wed/Fri this week and then back to my Sun/Tue/Thu schedule so essentially no 2-day break this week. I'm also gonna go back to standard GSLP-style programming for my BP/OHP.

I'm fully recovered from the gastroenteritis but yesterday I had the beginnings of a throat infection (probably due to being immune compromised from the bug). I'm tired of being out of commission so I just started a 3 day course of antibiotics (sold OTC here) to knock it out before it gets a foothold. I'm feeling pretty decent going into tomorrow.


Week 25 Diet, Week 10 Cut



Diet unraveled a bit while I was ill, mainly because what little I could keep down was Ritz crackers and rice soup. Friday morning weigh-in was 143.8, so I'm getting pretty close to my all time body weight PR of 141lb. That was set in 2012 when I was lifting/dieting last time. Prior to that, I doubt I ever weighed less than 140 as an adult.

The cut (as scheduled) ends in two more weeks, which coincidentally lines up with my next photo evaluation. Then comes deciding how much longer I want to cut.

Monday, October 3, 2016 Training

Bench Press:

20x8
30x5
40x3
45x2
50x5 @9 - 5' rest
50x5 @9.5

Front Squat:

20x8
30x5
45x3
55x2
62.5x5 - 5' rest
62.5x6 [PR]

DB Bent-over Rows 65# (10/10, 10/10)

***

The bench press is starting to bum me out. It just gets weaker and weaker. My first day back after being sick and missing two workouts, I selected 50kg as a mini-reset, assuming I'd be able to get at least 7 reps. I'm seriously considering switching to a different chest/tri movement for a while just for morale purposes. I seem to be making decent progress on chins/rows by picking one movement to do each day and making weekly progress on each. Maybe I'd have better luck with a similar model for the pressing movements, like doing dips on Sunday, incline press on Tuesday, and OHP on Thursday. Then once the cut is over I can return to the flat bench with a clean mental slate. I'm open to input.

Squats went well. Some of the reps in the top set weren't pretty, but they went up. I made videos of everything as usual but Cambodian internet is preventing them from being uploaded so **** it.

You bench once a week.
You losing weight.

You wonder why your bench sux?!

SS and all the beginning strength routines suck for upperbody. Upperbody can take unlimited punishment without overtraining, even on a diet.


Your bench and chins are weaksauce. I would switch to 2x a week benching ASAP and possibly start a pull-up program.

And by pull-up program I mean 3x or 4x a week. They are all over Google. All 140lbers should be doing 10+ pull-ups.

Yup. Grease the groove on pull-ups. Do them in the gym during your workouts until you can do sets of 6 or so, then add weight. Impossible to do too many (absent Evo/realb elbow tendinitis issues, but that seems unlikely to be an issue for a while).

Yeah, my best bench progress was on 4x a week.

Conversely mine was on once a week. But then I have no brogramming or good diet etc

Aidan went from being a sub-Yugo class bencher to doing (I think?) 300+ paused; the man knows of what he speaks

Sweet jesus, I'm going to will this to be engraved on my headstone

I believe it has been a common theme in Renton's logs for people to suggest he do a lot more upper work. I wish he would as well.

Okay guys, how much pressing volume should I be doing on 1400 calories a day? Anyone want to make me an upper body program?

Jackedness accounts for 70-75% of variation in bench strength, with technique* accounting for the rest, so there's only so much you can do on 1400 calories (despite what loco says). Even adding in a superset of DB flies and DB pullovers/triceps pushdowns might help. Backoff AMRAPs. Varying your rep ranges. Benching more frequently. Just slowly add in more stuff so you can adapt each time. Look at the tier 3 type work in the GZCL method for inspiration.

*and your technique could use improvement too. Your bar path is straight up off your chest often. Fixing this can yield big dividends. I think Nuckolls has posted somewhere that a study found that 99%# of bench gains made by elite benchers was in optimising technique to get the perfect bar path. His guide is here.

Do you track training volume at all? I use liftingcharts.com, but there are all sorts of apps that do it. Total tonnage and total worksets over @8 fatigue are worth tracking, because you want to see them trending upwards over time.

#pulled this figure out of my ass
--

I hope it doesnt feel like we're picking at you here. We all want everyone to make it.

I feel like I've made fine progress on chins and rows with my programming. I went from being able to do no chin-ups to getting 4 reps in like 5 weeks, along with some slow progress on lat pulldown (gaining reps here and there) and very steady gains on dumbbell rows.


I don't feel picked on at all. I asked for input and I'm grateful to receive it.

As for my technique, I don't doubt that having tighter setup and cueing better would improve the issue of pressing off the chest, but the fact is that this is something that happens to me during the last reps of a set. I don't know if it's a specific muscle like delts failing before the others, but this just seems to be how I usually fail reps. I work on it every day, but it seems like I should still at least be getting stronger relative to myself. Problems with my form are universal, i.e. they existed before when I was stronger. I'm just trying to figure out how to stop leaking strength during this cut.

Taking all your suggestions into account, how does this program look for a change?



Benching is 2x a week. The %s are based on a calculated 1rm. The 85% I'll try to make small weekly increases on, while the 75% and assistance stuff I'll just use common sense to increase when appropriate. I added a little extra volume to Thursday to account for the extra day of recovery that comes after.

I'm a little lost on how much pulling volume to add. It's not really that feasible to GTG chins since they're hard enough for me that even a one rep set constitutes actual volume. This seems like a lot of sets as it is.

He has 100 pounds LBM dude. 1400 is actually a surplus for creating muscle. Yes I believe this guy can still build muscle on a deficit, he is enough of a noob.

Nonsense the crap about overtraining while dieting that is spread around this forum. It's bad cardiovascular health 99% of the time.

Renton, you're doing multiple sets of 3 pull-ups. 6-8 singles when you walk through whatever doorway you mount your bar in isn't going to meaningfully affect your recovery.

And you can add a lot more pushing and pulling volume. Dips (weighted eventually), dumbbell flat and incline pressing, closegrip bench, cable tricep work, frequency pushups for pushing. Pullups, chinups (weighted eventually), dumbbell rows, barbell rows, t-bar rows, cable rows, face-pulls for pulling. I'm pretty convinced it's essentially impossible to do too much pulling, especially when (and I place myself in this category too) conditioning precludes you from training long enough and hard enough to adversely affect recovery (as loco alluded to above).

If you're bad at upper body stuff, do more of it. A lot more. Then do more. You can take it. Being an upper body monkey is fun!

Do you really think I'm >30% body fat, or are you humorously underestimating my lbm for effect?

loco pegs everyone higher than they probably are. Thing is none of us have had a test afaik (or did fakeB?) so its all guesswork.

Which reminds me, I just sent an email to find out about the local DEXA scan cost/setup etc.

Dat cranium fat doe

No need. You are 5'9", lifts are shiet and weight 177.


20%

You've jut shifted sets to other rep ranges. Make the main work sets 2x5, 1x5+ plus a back off set, and then your accessories should be 3 sets, and working towards 4.

What do you advise for rest between sets? Both for the main work sets but also the accessories.