DL vid, 2nd set at 145lbs:



critique appreciated

My advice: Looks pretty good to me. There are a few things that I don't think are egregious errors but something you might want to work while you're lifting lighter weights. You're not keeping a neutral neck, though it seems like a lot of people around here don't (me included) because it makes it more difficult keep your back in a neutral position. On the way down the bar travels around your knees. Try to bend later at the knees on your way down so that the bar can go the same straight path as on the way up. Try to get into the habit of taking a big deep breath to tighten your core before each rep, it looks on the video as you might not.

My real advice: Listen to someone who knows what he's talking about.

Weight is too light to get any real value in a form check, aside from the neutral head position thing. Deadlift form doesn't really break down til the weight gets difficult.

Agree. Although it looks like there's still some slack in his arms when he starts a few of the reps, which will definitely be a problem when the weight gets higher.

great! thanks for the feedback all, that was super fast. i'll post another DL vid when i'm back up to like 2 plates

eating out alot makes counting hard, sure, but try your best.

sometimes that might mean filling out your spreadsheet with what you know, that way if you're at 2500 calories + a dinner out, you can be pretty sure you're above your 3k for the day.

If your eating out is a habit, look up what you eat often online and use those macros. For example, I do a lot of subway and arby's for lunch. I get the macros online for subway, and on the nutritional menu (that paper they serve the food on) at arbys.

bottom line, do your best to get some actual numbers down on a spreadsheet.

3/3 update:

lifted on sunday, going again today

squat 3x5x135
bench 3x5x105
row 3x8x85
face pull 3x10x45
calf raise 2x15x55 / tricep pushdown 2x10x45 superset

notes

-everything felt fine, no notes

food

stopped being an ******* and downloaded MFP. it's easier to use than i remember. most everything i need is in there somewhere including everything my grocery store has. the tough part is eating out at local places but i generally estimate and try to be conservative (air on the side of fewer cals)

last couple days:

sat: 3009 - 288c/129f/171p
sun: 3061 - 215c/155f/202p
mon: 2612 - 317c/85f/144p

We need some squat and bench videos.

How quickly are you looking to gain weight? You should check out http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/ -- plug in your numbers and see what you should be targeting on your on and off days.

Those fat numbers need to come down by a lot; I'm not a "fat is evil" guy, but getting consistently 100+ is probably too much.

That's more like it!

I'm going to politely disagree with monte in that 100g fat/day is not bad. When I was bulking at around 3000-3200/day, I was getting around 120-125g fat. Now most of that fat was from 2% milk, peanut butter, nuts etc. so I wasn't eating terrible foods. Now granted I didn't mind putting on a few lbs of fat with my muscle.

I think trying for around 300/100/180 is a good goal. But basically as long as you hit 160+ protein per day and are eating in excess, you'll gain weight. The smaller the excess, the more it will be muscle rather than fat, so it's your goals.

And I agree with monte we need some videos.

stuck,

I believe I said "consistently 100+ g", but sure. He's not anything like that 600 lb guy that cooked with pounds of tallow and thought carbs were the reason he was fat, it was more an observation that that much fat is kind of an indicator that he's not controlling his diet very well. I'm generally fine-ish with IIFYM (I just ate a PWO donut with my lunch and I'm very slightly cutting), but I feel like days of 160g of fat means there are some underlying leaks that need plugging.

yea I agree, sorry if it came across differently.

But I see what you mean, he needs consistency. When I got my bulk down to a science, all my macros were probably +/- 10% from day to day.

thanks homies, cool website, i'll play around with it a bit.

i will try to cut some sat fat out of the diet. although i've been under the impression that recent studies show saturated fat isn't as terrible for you as it has been widely considered for the last few decades. even so i always sort of knew in the back of my mind eating a ton of dairy and drinking whole choco milk probably isn't 100% healthy.

my concern in this area would be regarding lipids. disclaimer: i'm not a doctor or a nutritionist but i am fairly well versed in identifying studies that are trustworthy. i would like to raise HDL a little bit since as of july 2014 i was sitting in the lower end of the normal range. idk what my LDL looks like because i didn't get trigs measured. i assume my trigs are fine though because i'm not obese, don't have diabetes, don't drink that much, and lowering high trigs is one of the actual benefits of fish oil (and i think why people mistake it for causing reduction in cardiovascular events/death).

i've read that fat consumption + exercise raises HDL, which is why i haven't shied away from fatty foods like dairy and ****, and as long as i get a comparable amount of fruits/veggies depending on caloric intake i feel fine about it. thoughts?

ya my diet is not super consistent

also don't have any videos, i'll take some more when i hit that weight range of when it feels like i'm struggling a little bit (prob in ~2ish weeks)

Regarding fat intake, I haven't really read a ton on it since I was deciding whether or not to go on my statin, but I agree with the general thought that fat consumption pretty clearly doesn't have as large of a negative health effect as previously thought. Beyond that sort of level 0 amount of nittery, if you're truly interested in a discussion that will make you want to kill yourself, saw's log and/or the HC thread is a good place for that sort of thing.

My main point is that 1) there's probably some point where eating too much fat is suboptimal and 2) 50% of your calories from fat is probably somewhere in the vicinity of that point. But, as I said, saw is a pretty good resource for this sort of thing.

tuesday 3/3 workout B

deadlift 3x5x155
ohp 2x5x65 1x10x65
seated leg curl 3x8x55
assisted pull up 3x8x(-14)
captain's chair leg raises 2x15 / curls 2x10x35 (superset)

notes:

-at some point prob need to drop DL to 1x5 working set. i subbed in DL for RDLs in the program, which were 3x5, idk if when subbed DLs should just be 1x5 or not but if i'm not mistaken novice programs typically just do 1x5 DLs. right now i'm thinking something like 2x5x(75% working set) then 1x5 working set

-assisted pullup still progressing. did the full 3x8x(-14) and the assisted weight feels like basically nothing. might switch to bodyweight and do 3x8 or AMRAP if <8 (as long as >5).

-i'm kind of meh on leg raises. any good alternative ab work that i can superset with curls? doing these because i dont think my gym has an ab wheel which i like and i dont like crunches.

food

2383 cals at 294c/43f/176p

totally inadvertently dropped fat intake yesterday. also didn't quite eat as much as i would have liked (( o well, got dat protein though. it's also not totally accurate since i very roughly estimated dinner (homemade). on the plus side i'm making more **** at home which is p good.

not doing great so far today, at like 1k calories and prob scheduled for a late dinner. might dip into chipotle before it closes and slam a phat bowl which will prob bump me back up.

Buy a scale; weighing stuff at home is stupid easy and is the gateway to discovering how much you're actually eating (or not eating).

More DL reps when you're trying to dial in your form are probably good, but you are correct that eventually you should move to a 1x5 top set, with a few doubles and triples beforehand of weights that are a decent percentage of your work set weight.

Just start doing chins-ups without the assist, who cares how many you can do. Go until you can do 3x8xbw, then gradually add weight. Buy a doorway mounted bar and put it in your (I'm assuming) apartment and do daily frequency chins if you really want to spike your progress there. If you can rep out 8 at most, just randomly do sets of 4 or 5 throughout the day to get extra volume without getting super fatigued. It works.

Ab wheels cost like 12 dollars on Amazon. RKC planks are good too.

Also,

I think some BP and squat videos would be good even though you're not struggling yet. At least ime it's much harder to get rid of bad habits or make adjustments when the weights are heavy.

yea always good to start videos early. Think my first squat videos posted was at 115lb and now I'm squatting twice that

My first squat video was at 90lbs

Now xkf seems to already have some experience and a good idea of what he's doing, but videos are always more fun than no videos

sup bros update:

workout 3/5:

squat 3x5x135
bench 3x5x105
pendlay row 3x8x85
face pulls 3x10x50
smith calf raise 2x15x65 / tricep pushdown 2x10x50

notes:

-increased weight on face pulls, calf raises, pushdowns. increasing squat/bench/row next workout

-rows might have to watch some form vids, i'm not totally feeling it in my back the day after. i try to squeeze my lats at the top and hold it for a sec, but still. also i keep switching up my grip and tend to settle on a very wide grip. problems?

-squat vid!!!!!!!!!! to follow

food

weds 2533 cals -- 220c/95f/158p
thurs 2910 cals -- 334c/117f/134p

still not consistent with food ://///// o well watever. could have had more protein yesterday but didn't get home until like 12:30 and had to go to bed. slammed protein this morning.

squats:



hope the angle is ok? all comments appreciated ty )))

ty all good info

i have an ab wheel and would love to incorporate it into my workout. is it a problem to supplement abs on rest days or a few hours after the gym session? i don't want to mess with my recovery time since i'm on a beginner program.

for bw pullups my experience is that i could almost surely bang out 3x8 full using NEUTRAL GRIP. is this bad? i always sort of assumed a wider grip hits the lats more, which i think is the goal in this program (subbing in pullups for lat pulldowns). but if this isn't the case i would love to just do neutral grips since it's more comfortable for me and i'm better at them.

ty re: f3. that was one of those stupid spots where if i **** it up i will never live it down and if i get it right nobody gives a ****, so i'm glad it worked out. after rereading a little bit it was a pretty easy decision, which was nice.

i'm doin it bros! thanks for the motivation

i'm prob going to be waaaay too embarrassed to post bench videos, but you never know!

Re: squats: you're going too low and it's causing buttwink, so try to cut your depth until you can fix that. Also get tighter -- really tighten up your upper back, and clamp down with your lats/obliques to really make that area tight and immobile. You also need to keep a more neutral neck and not crane it forward/look at yourself in a mirror. And it's hard to tell from the angle, obviously, but you should be shoving your knees out so they track over your toes. Also get some squat shoes.

Other than that looks great.

ZOMG video!

I'll just let someone who knows what he's talking about comment, but my gym plays that song constantly and I have no idea why.

Edit: that was a crosspost with Monte

I prefer chin-ups to pull-ups, but I'm doing neutral grip more as kind of a compromise. Plus I don't have a lot of gun work currently, and chins/ng chins hit the guns a fair bit more than pull-ups, so I feel like it's an acceptable compromise. And there's no rule that says you can't rotate between all of them, btw.

I don't think doing a few extra sets of planks or ab wheel either after a session, during the evenings while watching TV, or on off days is a problem, as long as you don't kill yourself. I was on the "**** doing abs" train for a while because doing abs sucks, and guess what: I have weak and ****ty abs. So adding in 3-4 days a week of ab work isn't a terrible idea. Throw some pallof presses in for some anti-rotational stuff if you get bored.