Back
NG pullups: bwx 16, 12, 7, 7, 11
Rows: 70kgx11x4
Machine rows: 5 sets of 12

Cut things off right there. The pullups and rows are responsible for 80-90% of the gainz anyway. My bicep/pec tie-in has still been bugging me, so I figured it'd be a bad idea to throw more vertical pulling onto it. I may simple cancel biceps on arm day or train left bicep only even if it looks weird. It just occurred to me I can/should probably do some periodization for back day. If I'm in the last 2 weeks of heavy deadlift days I basically can't be full strength on pullups b/c my lats will still be too fatigued even 2 days off later. Maybe do pullups lighter on those weeks. When the deadlifts are still in the first few heavy weeks it's not a big issue, however.

My numbers went down on pullups but my bw is up 3kg from last week. A whopping 105.8kg in the gym. Mk677 water retention plus eating a lot.

Quads

Leg extensions: 22.5kgx20, 17.5kgx12x6
Leg press: 150kgx21x4
HBBS: 80kgx11x3

This is taking too long and is too taxing. I'm going to try something new and do leg extensions+leg press only. I have two leg days, afterall. I really think just those 2 plus whatever activation I get on deadlift is probably enough. Maybe do 3 sets of leg press and go to failure/very near failure and just add reps/weight every week. Shouldn't take more than 45 minutes. I just have to take so much time to rest and re-do mobility work before I can hbbs after leg pressing and my lungs are so dead after leg pressing.

I still want to do some sort of squatting for lifter's cred. Leg press only is pretty non functional. Maybe on the weeks I DL heavy, just leg extension, leg press, leave. On the weeks I DL light, leg extension, then either back squat or front squat and leave. I like the idea of submax set of 6, submax set of 12, then a gut busting 20+ followed by laying down on the floor for 15 minutes and then go home. DC style. In my OLD AGE I need to spend a lot more time mobbing before I'm ready to squat, so it'll be 10 minutes backward walking on treadmill, then ~12 minutes on leg extensions supersetted with some air squat mobbing, then about ~5-8 minutes with an empty bar, then finally ready to start squatting for realz.


I'll try back squatting a top set of 6 in two weeks at 120kg. Next week leg training I'm obviously going to phone it in hard b/c I gotta do AMRAP DL a week from Thursday. Maybe just leg extensions, leg press 3 playtes for 3 sets of 20, then gtfo.

hahahaha that's good bro

Today very light deload workout. I'm definitely carrying around a whole lot of fatigue. My bicep/pec tie-in still isn't quite as recovered as I hoped so chest might be deloading this coming sesh for 2nd week in a row which sux.

Locke 3
external rotations
Deadlift: sets of 5 warming up to 170x6

Go home.

It blows my mind that as recently as February, 170x5x5 was a very challenging weight. I remember training alongside BGP in Thailand and i pussed out on the 5th set and only did 4 sets. Now? It's literally a deload weight before I go hit a 220kg amrap PR next week. Will it be a 1, 2, or even 3 rep pr? Who knows? Guess we'll find out one week from today. Stuffing myself with chicken rice pineapple and low fat ice cream bars and laying off cardio a bit the next few days. Just walking outdoors instead of 120-140bpm treadmill. Next quad day just leg extensions and leg press like 2plates for a few 20s then go the **** home. Basically ain't doing **** this week.

leg deload

Leg extensions: full bore, 20kgx20, 15kgx12x6
HBBS: 60kgx10, 80kgx10x2

locke 3

go home

Thursday Deadlift 220kgx7. I'm writing it out as 7 because I deeply believe I will set a +2 rep PR because I trained hard as ****, ate right, and pinned nandrolona.

Triceps and some very light forearms

Reverse curl: 20kgx10x4
Pushdowns: 30kgx20,12,12,10,12
Dual rope pushdowns: 10kgx5 sets failure
Db skullcrushers: 7.5kgx12x4


Morning I did about 35 minutes of cardio+20 minutes of shoulder rehabz+10 minutes of squat mobs.


2016 summer holiday: out late exploring on my electric motorcycle, going to bars and clubs meeting new people, banging and dating different chicks, playing dota 2 in filthy internet cafe next to chain smoking 15 year olds, working part time, sleeping from like 3-11. Smashibng pizzas and oily disgusting uhygenically prepared Chinese food like it ain't no thing. Not a care in the world. Listen to young hip cool people music (at the time) like Bones and Xavier wulf.

2023 summer holiday
Sleep from 10:30 to 6:45. Interact with almost nobody outside of the gym. Super lame games for old nostalgic fgts like Octopath Traveller 2 and Dragon Quest 11, morning cardio and old people rehab exercises almost every single morning. Ultra health diet of lean ground meats, fruits, vegetables, salmon, eggs, avocado, rice, potato. Any deviation from this results in massive gastric distress and heartburn. Working part time would result in fines and prompt deportation b/c it's illegal now and actually enforced. No longer owns either an electric or conventional motorcycle b/c he's s scare little Beitch. Unironically listen to Bankless podcast and Robert Breedlove for entertainment. The guy has a several hour long series equating the discovery of the number zero with the invention of bitcoin. I'm not sure anyone with stronger aspergers syndrome exists on the planet.

God I ****ing hope I ain't in a midlife crisis because I had originally planned on living longer than 68-70.

I don't want money. I don't want another girlfriend (kinda, but I don't behave like I do), I don't really care that much about becoming a professional bber and having that be my primary income (but I do care about having a classic physique or men's physique pro level of development and I'm very close/already there). All I want is a time machine to go back and re-live age 26-32 and the accompanying worry-free mindset. The best years are over. It's all downhill from here.

but hey tomorrow's the big day I've been waiting for. Revenge on 220kg amrap dl.

I've been resting upper body becauase of the pec/bicep tie-in thing. I should not have pushed on my most recent back day, especially on pullups. That was a huge mistake that made the issue far worse and probably directly caused 4-8 missed workouts.

I need to go back to chest training with machines as first 1-2 movements. I've come to the conclusion that past a certain wingspan you cannnot bench safely with a barbell, even incline. I mistakenly thought the literal years of shoulder strengthening and stability exercises might have solved issues I've had since literally 2011. I was wrong. I think its just an immutable anatomy issue; I would have found the answer by now if it weren't. It's been 12 years...

Doing the machine press+flies first before going to incline db was working okay. It wasn't as good of pump/growth as starting with a free weight exercise but it got the job done and I largely had no pain anywhere doing things this way. Lots of very good bodybuilders do this; there's no reason I must start with a free weight movement.

When I'm ****ing 40 in 6 years and I'm the only person posting on this abandoned forum, I'll probably be bitching about how much I miss being 34. At 40 I'll be married with a 9 month old and a Chinese wife who thinks only in acquiring more real estate... I'll be the principal of some small international department making a lot more money but somehow having a lot less money fondly remembering being a 34 year old single guy who was able to exercise almost complete control over his own daily routine and wasn't responsible for taking care of anyone else and would seemingly go out of his way to avoid meeting women.

That's life. Hedonic adaptation.

On a more positive note, this is part of why I love super hard contest diets. It's like a "reset" for that sort of hedonic adaptation with respect to food. Just having more chicken breast, green beans, and jasmine rice is like a huge dopamine hit all of the sudden when you've been taking 20k steps a day eating "only" 3000 calories a day (that is very little for me, even though I know its a lot for some of you). I am not sure why bodybuilding is often called an eating disorder; it gets me on a much healthier diet by necessity and also restores a lot of the joy and pleasure you get from food by those resets you do ostensibly every year. It kinda sucked not doing one this year because of zero covid and lockdowns closing down gyms incessently around a year ago this time.

And lifting is always there... i mean except when it wasn't during zero covid. There's no accompanying nostalgia or 'it was better back then'. I'm bigger, leaner, stronger, and in better cardiovascular condition than I've ever been in my life and that feels absolutely great. There's a certain "nourishment' that goes beyond just "pleasure" from going in and banging and clangin and doing a fairly hard gym session and I'm so glad this has been an integral part of my life. Along with the morning cardio, its one of the few times in the day when I can be truly present and enjoying the moment.

I disagree.

How often per week did you bench?

I have longish arms for my height and only barbell bench 1x a week. Anything more builds overuse injuries.

More importantly, I also stopped using leg drive completely as well eliminated touch and go and moved over to spoto / larsen press variation where I don't bounce the bar off my chest and lowered it until t shirt touch only, doing so puts less strain on the shoulder tendons. Slow eccentric is the best for the shoulder joint.

The rest of the week I am doing football bar close grip benching (the best variation of all time for shoulder health) and DB + smith machine pressing.


Also what shoulder joint exercises did you do to strengthen the joint?

Lately it's been 1x/wk. First started having issues with it way back in 2011 doing Texas Method benching 2x/wk and ohping 1x/wk. Then I had some success with incline barbell around 2020 but it would still intermittently start hurting incline benching once per week. So then I went to DB only and I messed myself up again in 2021 which lasted well into 2023 where we are now. Partial ROM definitely does solve the issue, but isn't so great for muscle growth. Close grip sorta helped but not that much. I did 235lbsx11 weighing around 195 in 2013 flat bench and 100kgx10 in 2016 incline.



I think a lot of the different bars could also be helpful, but given my goal is bodybuilding it seems like machines+dbs are the way. One of my favorite stories was Stan Efferding doing machine press first every single chest workout and never going beyond 90lbs dbs on his incline db bench and often just using 60s-70s and doing sets of 20 in the training block before he won his ifbb pro card. He had flat benched well in excess of 500lbs at this point. I think that's the way to go. What i'm going to try when I come back is alternating heavy and "light" weeks. Week 1, start with db incline week 2 do two machine movements before doing dumbbells. Alternatively, maybe try one machine movement very heavy and then db incline as 2nd movement for sets of 12-20.

Big deadlift day.. warmed up and everything after 160 felt like dogshit. 200kgx1 final warmup felt hard but on video was moving fast. 220 I couldn't budge it off the floor. Massively overtrained lol. Even with a 14 day break between sessions it wasn't enough. I blame the fact that I did SLDLs on this training cycle. Last time I just did dl, ham curl, hip thrust, gtfo.

I'm so discouraged by today that I'm going to change training programs and forget about conventional DL for a while. Go all bb or all PL, don't put one foot in both even if its just for one lift. Either stay with the same programming but no conv dl, no hbbs, only sldl/hack squat machine, move up the reps, lower the weight on everything, more machines and bw exercises, almost no barbells and a few db lfits. Or I could do the Dr. Mike RP training. I did that last year around this time prepping for my show and that was the best my joints have ever felt. I've only ever done that style of training while cutting hard, never while bulking. I've got plenty of time, so i'm going to try it out

I'll DL heavy like twice in a row then a deload before the stupid ass halloween event.


I feel tired all the time and brain fog/sleepy and I think the DLs are creating enoguh systematic fatigue to hurt training/recovery for the rest of my bbing training. I give up for now. Maybe i'll do another powerlifting block after the show next year. And if I do, I'll go full powerlifting not half bbing. Obv not for bench press.


New prospective PPL program won't even alternate push or pull workouts, but will have 2 leg workouts

Legs 1
hamstring curl
sldl
leg extension
leg press

Push
delts
machine press
db incline
fly movement of who gives a ****
triceps

Pull
NG pullups
rows
pulldowns
machine rows
hammer curls+ez curls

Legs 2
ham curl
leg extension
leg press
hip thrust

who gives a ****? My dl strength will absolutely go up from doing SLDLs, rows, hamstsring curls, and pullups anyway. It'll just be slower. This program would be 6 days per week or 6 days on 2 days off. Sessions capped at 45 minutes for push and pull and 60 minutes for legs, no exceptions.

Who am I kidding? I'm old AF with an even older training age. I was always really bad at slow strength training. I had some talent for speed strength and technical movements and recently hit a 48 inch box jump untrained in 2020, but I squandered that too by overtraining all the time. I've always had a natural talent for CULTIVATING MASS with froo froo pump work, so I should stick to froo froo pump work because I'm tryna be a bodybuilder. Being in chengdu with that pling squad definitely biased me toward this type of strength based stuff but its just not optimal for what my current short, medium, and long term goals are. 34 years old, diminuative skeleton, frail joints and bones, easily injured, bad response to strength rep ranges for slow lifts... why have I kept doing this again? High probability of busting my **** up and even if I don't the systematic fatigue negatively affects my life and the bbing trainign that actually matters for the comp.

2-3 days completely off including cardio... just go for walks. Start back up again on Sunday or Monday. Legs/push/pull/legs/push/pull off (off) repeat. 4 weeks progress on sets+reps around the same training wegihts, deload, restart with lower volume higher weights and do the same progression on sets/reps.

Conventional Deadlift is good but lots of bodybuilders drop it even though it does wonders for spinal erector mass. However it adds more general systemic fatigue to your system.


I find romanian deadlifts to be so much better. More hypertrophy for glutes and hamstrings while also giving you a hip hinge movement.

Maybe you are already doing this but when I spammed dumbbell external rotations with elbow on the knee and got the weight up to 30 lbs full ROM, my shoulder joint start feeling nearly 100% all the time.

I used to have rotator cuff fatigue but that all went away after bullet proofing my shoulder joint.

My shoulder routine is:

locke 3
DB external rotations on the knee just as you said
DB banded 1 arm bench
some banded external rotations

I've noticed huge benefits for my shoulders, but its done absolutely nothing for the proximal bicep tendon flareing up on the right side. I've also noticed a good pump/hypertrophic effect to where I really don't need to do stuff like rear/side raises. Locke 3 are basically just isometric holds for rear delts+rhomboids+lower traps+side delts.

I'm alive. Still taking time off. My knees are sore AF. I wouldn't be surprised if the heavy ass DLs were exacerbating my quad tendinitis. My bicep/pec tie-in is healing the slowest it pretty much ever has. I will go back to the gym tomorrow and start my program with the hamstring focused leg day. I may leave out quads entirely or train them only extremely light. I'm excited AF to never workout more than an hour and do a 'pure' bodybuilding program with literally 0 heavy lifting and move up my rep ranges even further. I'm formulating my programming/progression based on Stan Efferding+RPE recommendations. More limited exercise selection like Stan Efferding, more straight sets and less RIR stuff. There's some things where I'll just go to absolute failure like cable flies, machine presses, pullups, curls, tricep pushdowns. There are other things I'll kinda do RIR on like SLDLs, rows, leg press. And then there's some things where I can't do anything more than straight sets like lunges or db incline presses because the injury risk/wear and tear is just too high.

another thing I'm excited about is never having so much volume in a single session that i have difficulty sleeping if training at night. This was consistently an issue when I was deadlifting or training high volume quads on one day.

On the deadlift. I just watched this old Jay Cutler vid from 2004 Ripped to Shreds.
https://youtu.be/F10oJBMwXLY

He was precontest and only did some really light dumbell deadlift on leg day. He did literally every leg exercise(leg press, extensions etc)and crazy volume. He started with up and down the rack squats with like 5 seconds rest between sets lol.

Just making you feel better about no or light deadlifts

I remember one of the time periods when I had the most dramatic increase in deadlift was after not deadlifting for around 2 years but doing a lot of SLDL, hbbs, rows, and pullups. I may not do the HBBS anymore (if I do, it'll be ham curl, leg extension, hbbs only, no other lifts on one day), but I think the same logic applies. It was summer 2021 when I first moved to Chengdu... at that time I had set some insane row PR of like 100kgx16 or 17 doing rows before pullups. And my rows are not bullshit powerlifting rows or pointless pendlay rows, fairly strict form. I had just met the powerlifting crew in Chengdu in person for the first time and they basically peer pressured me into doing some deadlifts for a few weeks. I went from like 190x7 to 205x8 in 3 weeks, hit an easy single at 240kg, and then proceeded to have a small tear in my lat pulling 250kg where I would have definitely gotten it if I hadn't gotten hurt. It was the only time I'd ever got hurt deadlifting which is probably because I got strong at the movement insanely fast materializing all that strneght I built from doing other movements.

Deadlifting is very uncommon among top bodybuilders, and the ones that do/did it do it with very low volume usually top set backdown set or even ramping sets of 2-3 without backoffs (Ronnie) and just relying on other movements to drive strength in the movement. SLDL is just a superior movement and it doesn't necessarily have to be "light". I did 120kgx12 at one point after squatting and hamstring curling. If you can deadlift 140kgx10 and barbell row like 90kgx20 after doing pullups, you will definitely deadlift 210x10 or whatever.

Not going to the gym today or tomorrow. I have some former students from Suzhou coming to visit and then tomorrow I'm going to go watch a bbing show. Whatever, I definitely need the time off to heal my pec-bicep tie-in and let me quad tendons heal up slightly.

I'm finally back. Had food poisoning and still have it today but recovered enough to lift.

Mesocycle 1, Week 1, Legs 1
Hamstring curl: 30kgx20, 15
Paused SLDL: 70kgx15, 12 (toes elevated unless always)
leg extensions: 17.5kgx20, 14
Static lunge: 10kgdbsx10x2

I'll probably end up doing 6 weeks on this with the # of sets capping out in week 4. This first week back is basically a deload. It might end up being lighter than the actual post mesocycle deload.

Sadly, my proximal bicep pain is maybe only 90% healed despite all of this unplanned time off.

Not even counting this as a mesocycle. Just the "reload before the mesocycle" phase. I am also going to try to arrange my training such that I don't need to deload more than once per 12-16 weeks while in a surplus. The only things I needed to really deload were deadlift+squat based training because of the CNS strain. When I trained with more machines, I didn't even really need to deload chest.

Today was very rough... I have a feeling this is going to be one of these 10-14 days of break from training where I end up losing about 3-4 months worth of progress. BW down from 104 to 98 during this break period. JFL. I know a lot of that was glycogen/water, but I'm sure I've lost some lean tissue as well.

Push

Locke 3
DB external rotations over the knee
1 arm DB banded bench: 3x10kg each side

Machine press: 25kgx15, 10
DB incline press: 10kgx15x3
Machine incline fly: 2 sets
Tricep pushdowns: 3 sets

Hilariously, my pec/bicep tie-in is still injured so I couldn't do any "real" lifting. I assume there's no way it's healing over night so I won't be able to do any vertical pulling or direct bicep work tomorrow's pull day.

Trained late and didn't have much time

Pull
Plate loaded pulldowns: 70kgx20x2
Barbell rows: 60kgx10x2
Machine rows: 40kgx15,12
EZ curls: 20kgx10x3

That's it.

I think I was sick the past few days like really bad because I finally feel normal/better/full of energy again.

Fairly distracted training chatting with my frenz on my phone like a ****** during training which I never do.

Hip thrust machine: 80kgx12, 10
Hamstring curls: 35kgx17, 12
Leg extension: 20kgx20, 14
Leg press: 100kgx20, 120kgx20x2

Okay this session felt more like a 3.4/10 difficulty. The previous 3 sessions were like a 1.5/10. Next week will be farily light as well and then third week we'll kind of be at "standard" training intensity assuming my biceps are healed up. My left distal bicep tendon is a bit tender and I felt some discomfort during pulling exercises yesterday.

Switched back to gh from mk677 today. Dropped the tren b/c it was wrecking my cholesterol and messing up my cardio. Sleep was finally starting to suffer after a bit. Test+deca+eq with gh and insulin only this offseason. No orals and no toxic compounds until i'm pretty deep into contest prep I reckon.

Yesterday Push

Locke 3
DB external rotations on the knee
Banded external rotation

Machine press: 32.5kgx15, 10, 9
incline db press neutral grip close: 15kgx12x3
Machine incline cable flies: 3x10
Tricep pushdowns
abductor machine

I was travelling for a 3 day conference and missed a ton of training and ate a lot less. They had tons of super high protein food at the hotel though but I have dropped all the way back down to 96kg. I'm much softer too. But I think everything is healed up and my knees are the best they've felt since maybe 2016 or so. Combo of time off+leg extension+backward walking on treadmill.

Pull
NG chins: bwx12, 9
rows: 60kgx14, 10
unilateral pulldowns: 1.5ppsx11, 8
row machine: 40kgx12, 9
EZ curls: 20kgx15, 9, 7
Seated hammer curls: 7.5kgsx?? 3 sets failure didn't track

Work starts monday and I think I should finally be back to a normal routine then. Today's training was around 37 minutes so keeping a normal intense session under 45 won't be possible but under 60 will for sure be possible. I am strongly considering setting a timer and if I get to an hour, just stop what I'm doing and leave to prevent overtraining/burnout/injury/excessive stress on joints and stuff.