Have you tried hip thrusts? (AKA that thing all women do now that no one did 10y ago)

Bret has walked back a lot of his own absurd claims, but depending on your specific build (insertions, limb length, muscle imbalances and personal peculiarities about exercise setup) it may help get the "pump" you are looking for. You also may want to look into split leg squats and isolateral pulling (maybe on a smith machine?) to reduce CNS load but help preserve some of the DL activation. No clue if any of this will work, but worth a shot if you can get the same targeted stim with reduced CNS load.

Yes I've tried both barbell hipthrust and machine hip thrust. My school year is gonna get a bit less busy after nov 18 so another "2 leg day 5 day bro split" might come back where I would go back to having dl+glute kickback+hipthrust+hamstring curls on monday and then squats, hack squat or lunge, and leg press on the other leg day. I gotta be very careful with the loading on the DLs though and consciously don't go too hard.

I liked the machine hip thrust slightly more, also good glute+low back exericse.

That said, China covid cases are at a 6 month high. Although our city's daily cases are still somehow single digits, I'm expecting another lockdown interrupting training. I'll at least have a home pullup bar and some skittleballs. 24 hour mandatory tests are back with less than 30 cases in the city overall, but it sounds like they're being more cautious knowing that we don't want to **** ourselves up like shanghai did or like Guangzhou is doing now.

Nice. Machines and other things that lock in your movement plane are pretty unrated tbh for BBers. Atleast among lay people. If you're squatting 2 wheels, you probably shouldn't look at a Smith machine, but if you're in the end game, everything is back on the table.

Did you try any isolateral variants?

Pullups: bwx18, 10, 7, 5, 6
Underhand rows: 60kgx10x4
Pulldowns unilateral underhand: 1.5ppsx10x3
Machine cable rows: 25-30kgx10x4
Superset with some cable machine weird pulldown I saw some milf doing and then pullovers: 5 sets each


REally prefer the higher volume training style. It worked for Jay and Phil. Phil pre-gut arguably GOAT. Higher intensity guys seem to make gains faster and have shorter careers/get injured more. Decision is obvious for a ****** like my who's constantly hurt/sick. Just gotta intentionally keep intensity low on certain movements if I'm gonna go high volume or I risk snapping my sheit up.

Agree fully. Machines are kinda awesome for BB once you've established some basic barbell strength, competence, and technical skills. Free weights have poor stimulus to fatigue ratio and once you are very strong they tend to just put too big of a strain on recovery; and of course there does seem to be some antecdotal evidence of them causing more wear and tear and chronic pain. It'd be hard to design an externally valid experiment to say that free weights will cause more pains than machines in advanced polypharmaceutical male fetish muscle beauty pageant competitors, unfortunately. My relatively higher use of free weights on chest day is largely due to equipment limitations. There's a real proper bbing gym about 8km from me but a **** ton of traffic. Once I get my 2 early release days per week I'll probably use them on deadlift+chest days monday tuesday and hit the chest workout at a place with the good equipment and only do one free weight dumbbell movement+4 machine movements.


Is there a difference between isolateral and unilateral? I know that's prob a dumb question, but my answer is 'I don't do enough unilateral work and need to do more'. Right now I do my pulldowns single arm always, however. Planning to do lunges/single leg squats in lieu of hack squats henceforth.

They're the same? Atleast I use them in the same way. Maybe I should say unilateral. Not really miffed either way.

I've actually am actively moving into doing more one-side-only lifts due to owie shoulder, which necessitates more machine work since I don't want to injure myself (like hitting myself in the face with a weight) from shoulder having a hissy fit randomly.

But yeah, these were just random ideas I had that may help.

Agree with the thremp. Hip thrusts and rfess. Massive pump, it hurts.

My gf hits glutes hard and they are getting pretty ridiculous. I have to go low reps when she loads two wheels for 12 reppers on the bridges. Still not happy, major dysmorphia. I will post her transformation on my log soon. It's as good as my transformation when i was colored golden.

Basically gains anyone can make in two years, being natty and consistent. Solid but nobody happy. Erryone want to be robriches or jennselter.

Nice dude. I assume this GF is also at least 15 years your junior? killin it. My last gfs have been 8 years older, 6 years younger, and 6 years younger but she looked 6 years older than me and I already look old.

I'm in neighborhood lockdown. Got up to go to work this morning and we're sealed off. Positive case in one of the buildings in our neighborhood. I was finally getting consistent with habits as far as eating/sleep. Sign from the lord it's time to leave.

My buddy just started a family in Chengdu and they're looking to move to Thailand btw. He's been there since the 90s.

Seems like this plan has legs.

wat? There's a decent chance I know your pal. The number of foreigners in Chengdu is really not large anymore.


I feel like I should be more upset about being locked down. But I ain't. Kinda like being upset about being struck by lightining, can't really do anything about it if you were already outside in a storm.

I'm more anxious about not choosing the wrong option going forward next academic year.

So uh... I'm already free because there was a new law passed and impleneted literally yesterday geting rid of the "medium risk zone" designation and moving all existing ones to "low risk". They are no longer cancelling flights, people only need 48 hour test to get on a plane to China, and inbound travellers now only do 5 days of quarantine in a hotel + 3 days at home.

Last night:
HBBS: 60kgx12, 80kgx10, 100kgx3, 120kgx3, 140kgx3, 120kgx3, 140kgx3, 160kgx3, 140kgx3x2 As you can see I was struggling to find the "correct" weight. Original plan was 140kgx3 then dropdowns at 120kg but that was too light.


Everything moving extremely fast and smooth and the 160kg felt like an rpe 8.5 at most. Surprising given how disrupted my training has been and that I don't think I've put more than 90kg on the bar for sets of 10 in the last few months.

Existential anxieties about having to leave China this summer are fading as signs of our opening up are becoming clearer and clearer. So that's a huge relief even if it involves a lot of suffering/chaos/quarantine as we transition back to normal. Health services will be basically unusable as elderly people catch covid and monopolize them (understandably). But there are special english speaking foreigner clinics in every major city... my previous city had 5 and it's population was less than half of Chengdu. I've never been to one such foreigner clinic here but I'm sure those won't be overwhelmed by elderly Chinese people. I might still have to leave if TW escalates so it was perhaps helpful to figure out plans of what to do just in case and maybe DCA into SPY,eth,btc a little less hard and keep more fiat around in case of emergency. I also had holdings on FTX.us and managed to move everything off. The first thing I do when I am able to leave this country just for travel is to get a proper hardware wallet.

One piece of lifting wisdom I wish I would have given myself when I was starting: Focus on perfecting the way a movement looks more-so than trying to add weight. If you are moving barbells efficiently, the weight on the bar will naturally come. This is exactly how I approached the snatch (but not so much my other lifts) and not surprisingly I ended up being a guy who could snatch 85-87% of best clean and jerk and could snatch around 56-58% of best back squat. I should have been approaching everything this way from incline benches to pullups. But alas, when you are a noob you have no idea what efficient movement even looks like and it takes some time to even recognize it. I remember obsessing over adding load between sessions at all costs like gun to your head and thought if you ever lifted the same weight two sessions or two weeks in a row you had 'failed' and that was a sign of no adaptation taking place.

Granted, what is "efficient" movement for bodybuilding and what is "efficient" movement for lifting the most weight possible can diverge.

I'm at the low end of the range you listed, but I think that was because I wasn't strong and my C+J sucked, but that does make sense.

Olytarding is definitely "feel" lifting.

If it makes you feel better, that's not just you. It's everyone who has ever lifted.

haha, everyone on this forum. People are probably sick of me ranting about Rip, but when you look at the broader context of introductory fitness you really can't go all that wrong with SS for the first few months. Definitely going to need to start increasing volume on this type of training though.


Besides one ex-girlfriend, I really haven't gotten my hands on any day 1 lifters and been able to stick with them for multiple years as a coach. But our strategy with her was 5x5 until stalling and then sets of ten on close variants (paused squats, conventional DLs since she pulls sumo, and incline bench) until that stalls out, then back to 5s on comp variations. And of course a lot more accessory lifts like delts/pushdowns/leg press/hamstring curls/RDL etc. Basically the approach outlined from the Chad Wesley Smith books... This approach worked super well and it's what I would have done on myself if I was starting over learning barbell lifting. Probably a similar approach with adjusted rep ranges for olytard... She moved to the UK and dropped pl to start olytarding at age 27 with some of the worst lower body mobility I've ever seen for an asian person so I'm curious to see how it goes. She was able to squat 115kg@56ish at her peak and they have an oly club at her university where she's getting coaching.


So basically wish I woulda listened to CWS and Max Aita after the first ~12 months on SS, but back then they weren't publishing as much info.

I've run SS repeatedly over the years for a variety of reasons. And I'll probably run it again once I figure out why my shoulder hates me. The biggest anti-Rip complaint is people not understanding what the program is and assuming it is some weird cult where people do it forever (some might?).

And that periodization is vaguely similar to how many programs (Smolov, etc) cycle intensity/volume across their blocks or just in different periods. Pretty normal.

Also the mobility thing is pretty weird. Seems p strong tho.

Deadlift: 60x12, 100x5, 140x3, 160x3, 180x3, 195x3, 215x3, 190x3x3
hamstring curls: 3 sets failure at 40kg

Everything was moving very poorly right until the top set which somehow moved great. Then the final backdown set somehow moved better than the two that preceded it. Bar felt weirdly uneven; we have shitty plates and sometimes end up "tilting" if you don't clip exactly right and i'm 99% sure that was the issue.

I will deload next week and just hit 180x3x3 or 4. Then I'll have 2 more hard weeks where I need to hit 220x3 and 225x3 then another deload and then meet.

Squats I'm taking less seriously so I'll prob just take 5kg jumps up until deload week.

So yeah my plan is to go back to the high volume 5 days a week monday through friday hany rambod style training. I'm built well for dls with the long arms and naturally strong lower back muscles so I may do some 5s and 3s deads from the floor sometimes, but I will try to spend most of my time doing lower RPE sets of 10 from a deficit since thats where I really feel good glute+hamstring contraction. The RPE should be kept lower though so I can focus on all the muscle building accessories like hamstring curls, glute machine, and hip thrust machines. I would like to eventually ego-lift 270 or even 300kg dl. I have pulled 245 before...

BEnch is lol. Haven't been able to do the lift pain free since literally 2011. Tried ****ing every rehab protocol under the sun. Just put in some bullshit 120 or 130kg lift or something rpe 6ish and live to lift another day.

Squat only really hoping for 190. 200kg would be pretty hilarious having barely put more than 90kg on the bar up until this peaking block. and I guess 200kg ATG no belt no knee sleeves is a pretty cool milestone.

Things are moving super well as far as diet. Sleep has been utter trash but after adding lantus at 20iu/day dosed at night I'm finding it a little easier to sleep. Daily diet template is:

225g chicken tenderloin rice 175g 80g green beens 20g grass fed butter 3x/day
protein shake 1x/day with skim milk
1 free meal of whatever I'd like and usually some sort of sweets like ice cream or chocolate on top of that.

Prob gonna add a second shake soon and keep the free meal fairly small and less than 1k calories.

My left shoulder still has some pain so I couldn't train hard yet...I have a feeling it might be more like 4+ more weeks before I can really go hard on pressing, but I'm able to do some light work without any real pain. Smith felt really good once I got the grip right. Smith works well with closer grip I find.

Chest (crunched for time so no delts, I'll hit them on arm day)
high incline db: 30kgx10x2, 25kgx10x2
Smith low incline: 60kgx10, 70kgx10, 8, 60kgx13 had to play with different grips and positions but found one I love.
Machine fly: 4x10
Machine press: FST-7 12x7 30 second rests

Daily cases are in the hundreds but gyms haven't closed yet and they normally do if we have 2-3 days in a row of double digit cases. So I might be safe this time. Meet is December 18 and after that I'll move squats back to high reps/low weight and actual accessories. I might stay with 5s for a while on dl and see what I can do.

Looks very smooth.

Lol China. Lol Chinese food (and thremp is wrong, it's one big cuisine, and it's all crap, except general tsos).

General Tsos is delicious. American chinese food is highly underrated hangover food.

Lol General Tso.



Budda delight with a protein or two or GTFO.


Why does Panda Express have teriyaki chicken?

That's what pisses me off about Chinese food, they so tight on the protein (especially authentic). Such nits.

I remember my ex's dad made like 5 plates and put it in the middle. I snatched some weird ass spicy licorice fish right away. My ex gave me a nasty look like wtf was I doing. I was like, I want the fish.

She puts it back and gets me a plate, then with chopsticks she gives me a tiny piece and then a whole mountain of white rice. WTF. I thought I died and went to hell and the devil was trolling. It was 1 ounce of facking fish!!

So you can see my trauma with Chinese food. They got better later, but still only half a fish. Lame.

This is literally poor people everywhere. Along with getting closer and closer to just eating pure sugar for dessert.