You look jacked AF.

this seems like less volume than your usual training protocols - am I wrong or is this intentional?

also, on push day, you obviously feel that you get enough exertion from the bench and machine press exercises to build mass in your shoulders, hence 'only' having prone raises as a shoulder specific lift? I'm working through this myself - for my entire life (or the times when I've been in gym bro mode and not just doing maintenance lifting while playing a sport or doing a lot of cardio) I've separated 'chest' and 'shoulders' onto separate days which has meant I've had a heavy shoulder press of some kind, but in the past month I've moved to push, pull, legs and have been struggling to lift any kind of weight by the time I get to my seated Press

"Weekly" volume total (it's actually every 8 days instead of every 7 but who cares?)

Chest: 18 sets
Back: 18-20 sets
Shoulders: 8 sets
Biceps: About 25 (the myo rep matches are equivalent to around 10 sets)
Triceps: About 18-20 sets

Quads and hams are hard to count because obviously some things activate both but

Quads: 6-12 depending on if I do the leg extensions. In offseason probably almost always.
Hamstrings: 15
Glutes: 12

Calves: 0 baby, we walkin 12k steps on normal work days

These are all on the high end of Mike Isratel recommendations. Average intensity lower than a Dorian/Jordan Peters HIT routine, higher than an FST-7 Hany Rambod style routine.

Overhead pressing is pretty much worthless and redunant for aesthetics. Dr. Mike has a long video going over this. Delts are already a fairly dominant body part for me and i have trouble with over-recruiting them on pulling motions like rows and pullups. I could probably drop even my minimal delt isolation and be fine at this point.

Full shoulder days are mostly pointless. I can maybe see an argument for it if somebody needs more pushing volume in general but has some sort of limitation on the amount of horizontal or inclien pressing they're able to handle due to connective tissue or injury reasons; beyond that nobody should bother. I personally found the best side delt recruitment from 30-45 degree BARBELL incline. DB wasn't quite as good for delts and tris but much better for chest. I might re-include bb incline at some point as my internal rotation has improved a lot lately.

If I wanted to focus on delts, I'd do a delt+arm day and just hit more raise variations. Pec dec reverse flies and cable laterals are both great.

Something like Delts+Arms/Legs/Back+Chest/Off/Repeat would be good. 3 on 1 off is hard with my work schedule and desire for some social life on weekends. But I'm sure there's plenty of ways you could set this up such that back+chest doesn't immediately follow an arm day. Arms following a back and chest day would probably be fine most of the time.

volume makes sense if over a week - I was looking at the pull day and thinking it wasn't as much as I'd assumed. But moving to 2 a week makes it actually quite a lot

re shoulders, that's interesting stuff. I was historically Chest & Arms and then Back & Shoulders as a split and so always had more freshness for shoulder pressing which 'felt' better because I was always training with lower reps and a focus on getting stronger/lifting heavier rather than building muscle. And pressing has always been my weakness from a strength perspective.

I've read and believe your pov on Shoulder Pressing. I've moved away from standing barbell press but am still seated DB pressing as I've yet to find another movement I like. I'm not a huge fan of lat or front raises from a feel perspective but am interested to try the prone ones you're doing.

bb incline for me is no bueno, I have some ac joint instability and I get shooting pains. db incline way better for me.

either way, I appreciate the detail you put into your posts and I'm learning a lot from it and trialling/adapting my own training given I'm more focused on my physique than I have been in the past, basically ever

This is the GOAT lateral raise. I don't do it anymore due to cable machine being the hatchery of zerglings and I need to keep my session lengths under control.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f_OGBg2KxgY

I like to stagger my feet with one foot in front and one foot in back and have the cable running between my legs. Cable behind you is also good.

Here's the positioning I'm talking about with "between the legs"

interesting, thanks. I also avoid cable machines for similar reasons but will find a time to try that

I have the good fortune of having access to one of those cable stacks and basically always do those Nippard lateral raises (and or Y raises/behind the back raises). I like them a lot more than DBs for whatever reason but if I didn't have access to cables, those prone raises are a very good option as well.

Another good option if you don't have cables is leaning against a wall doing unilateral DB raises, so that way you're getting some resistance at the bottom portion of the lift where the muscle is most lengthened.

Push
DB prone raises: 4 sets failure
incline db: 35kgx13, 30kgx15, 12
machine press: 40kgx13, 9, 9
cable crossovers: 3 sets failure
pushdowns: 25kgx21, 3 more sets myo rep match
curls in between

20 minutes cardio incline treadmill 140hr
want to gradually work up to 30min 145hr every non leg day + at least one of the weekends.

The rebound appetite/sleepiness has been much more intense this time compared with previous times, perhaps because of being on low calories for so long cumulatively even with that break in the winter. I've kept the diet super clean and the only off plan meal I had was a chicken breast+mozarrella+peanut sauce sandwhich and some buffalo wings. I also had a pita bread pizza in my air fryer with low fat cheese, pizza sauce from a bottle, and 2 pita breads with 40c/9p. I definitely want to have some massive cheat meal at a buffet but right now my body is probably very prone to storing bodyfat so let's avoid that for now until I've gotten through the rough patch in terms of hunger hormones and stim withdrawal and work my baseline metabolism back up for another 2 weeks or so.

BW was a whopping 97kg this morning but some of this bodyweight gain is from the addition of trestolone (ment) which tends to put a lot of scale weight on people the same way anadrol or dbol does. With a "dry" stack I'd probably be around 93kg morning weight now. Can still see abs through my shirt.

I can't keep doing this when I start the new job. I'm just going to do 16 week bulks followed by 4-8 week minicuts with clen until I'm around ~24 weeks out from Nov 2025 nationals. I'll probably sack up and hire somebody like Chris Tuttle for just the contest prep to have a 2nd set of eyes and to avoid overthinking the process.

The place I've been living the past 3 years is an absolute pile of crap and has very little space. Assuming my next place is more spacious (it appears to be based on pictures but we'll see) I need to get a posing set-up built. An overhead light is around 300RMB tops and then a black curtain background is less than 100RMB. My phone camera is already fine enough and I already have a tripod. If I can do it cheaply I might do some funhouse mirror stuff as well, but at least a front mirror. Just having a consistent professional looking posing setup with good lighting and a consistent background coupled with actually taking check-in photos every week even during the offseason (which also helps getting in practice posing) seems like a really critical part of bodybuilding that I've up until now ignored. I didn't even take check-in photos every single week from the same spot during this dieting phase. I did do pictures every week, but not with consistent pump, time, nutrition, and lighting. This is a big leak I can't allow during contest prep, and probably shouldn't even allow it during offseason. I'm going to try to set a time on at least one morning a week where that's just part of the routine; wake up, hydrate, meal 1, posing+checkin pics, go do my cardio, then come home and continue the rest of my day.

https://www.instagram.com/_jtphysiqu...g_challenged=1

You'll notice this guy did his checkin pics from a similar kind of setup and has most of his clients do the same. He's retired from competing already despite being like 34. He has a very similar physique to mine in terms of bone structure. He made the Olympia in 2022 I think and then gave up to focus on coaching career+kids. He still looks absolutely great and I hope to look as good as he does in retirement at my national show in 2025/2026.

Pull
Pullups: bwx16,13,9, 7 gym bw was around 100
unilateral pulldowns: 2ppsx16, 13, 10
Underhand rows: 60kgx16, 12, 10
EZ curls: 20kgx31, 2 more sets myo rep match

skipped cardio b/c I needed to get a haircut and to pick up my packages before the office closes.


One thing I hadn't considered before is that I could train legs and pull 2x/wk and push only 1x/wk. My delts, triceps, and chest are relatively strong parts and my chest training seems to occasionally provoke bicep tendon pain and right now I really need to bring up glutes, hams, and lats. The hardcore signalling bros would say "deadlifts, bro. Great for pchain". But for my anatomy deadlifts are purely an erectors and abs exercise, I don't feel anything in my glutes or hams. Lats yes but not a very fatigue efficient way of training them.

Had a few conversations with bodybuilding frenz and decided yeah I need to reconstruct pull and leg days.

"Pullups are the kind of lat builders" is basically the same statement as "squats are the king of leg exercises". These things are trivially true for people in their first ~5 years of training with very little muscle, but they are no longer true for advanced bodybuilders trying to bring up lagging bodyparts to win pro cards or pro shows. Almost no high level bodybuilders focus as heavily on pullups as I do. Guys who's backs mog tf out of my back at the same bodyweight probably often time can't do 2/3rds as many max pullups as me. It's the same problem as squatting and deadlifting.. the stabilization requirements are so high that you can't produce adequate force in the targetted muscles.

My plate loaded lat pulldown machine is probably just not great for single arm pullldowns so I'm going to drop those as well. I'm not even totally sure about underhand barbell rows either. I was having great success with the supinated straight bar pulldowns, I should bring those back.

Getting a lot of FPSy equipment might be an unfortunate necessity at this level with my goals. Fortunately I will have space for it at the school gym where I'm going. It seems unlikely that any of the gyms near by will have this kind of equipment, but there's one about 4.5km away that has almost everything I could possibly need. 4.5km doesn't sound like a lot but with traffic that can end up being a very long commute. If they have the rental bikes like we have in my city, a taxi there and then a bicycle ride back basically takes care of my cardio for the week so that's a big plus.

It's kinda useless to plan out what exercises I want to do because I won't know until I get there what I even have access to. All I can do is think about how I'm going to change my training for the next ~3 weeks before I move.

For legs, I'm probably going to need to accept the reality of longer workouts. I'm not going to get everything I need done in 53 minutes anymore. Both leg days are going to be around 30% quad 70% glutes and hams. IDK if I can really keep leg press in there given that its just widening the gap between my glutes and quad development since it only really works the latter. It sucks because I love that exercise for quads. It could very easily come back in if whatever new leg press I end up with has good glute and ham engagement, but given how bad gym equipment in China is in general this is not likely.

I'll try something like this
Abductors->hamstring curls+leg extensions (maybe)->Paused SLDL->FFESS->hip thrust for each workout. It's gonna take 90 minutes probably but these are relatively CNS-lite exercises compared to leg press or squatting exercises so I should be able to keep my heart rate under control and get to sleep afterword.

I've also been doing bodyweight glute exercsies every single morning. I'm on day 4.

I am no longer working out to get an aesthetic body to slay pussy or to mog other men; I am working out to meet the criteria for bodybuilding judges and the body parts that judges care about the most by far are hamstrings and glutes, followed closely by lats. So it makes a lot of sense to do every week 2x pull workouts and 2x leg workouts even if these weren't already lagging areas for me. Do I really need to do push more than 1x/wk? My delts and triceps are amazingly well developed and my chest is pretty damn good too. I find it hard psychologically because my inner powerlifter wants to beat old #s on stuff like incline db and incline bb eventually and my nutrition and programming have improved a lot so I know I can if I train push with higher frequency, but bringing up lagging bodyparts probably means sacrificing recovery resources on bodyparts that are already very good. My delts, tris, and chest probably have such weak #s precisely because they are well developed bodyparts where all the tension is on the muscle and there is much less cheat or momentum to move the weight. My strengths now are erectors (irrelevant in bbing), rear and side delts, triceps, abs, and chest. My weaknesses are lats, glutes, hams, and maybe biceps (I'd say they've caught up a lot the past 7 months despite mostly being in a deficit)

Legs I have an idea of what I'm going to do going forward, but I'm still a bit lost on how i'm going to handle pull workouts. I'll continue doing pullups on one of my weekly pull days, but I may drop it back to only 2 sets or 3 maximum, not 4 like I've been doing. I suppose I'll play around with various cable exercises and various lat pulldown attachments trying to figure out what works best.