Couple of shots from prep. I didn't get the look I wanted. I made a lot of mistakes. To put it shortly, I was 12 weeks out making amazing progress then we had gym closures for 2 weeks. My diet up until then was incredibly simple: chicken breast, sweet potatoes, oatmeal cooked in skim milk with protein powder and blueberries, and then a beef+potato+vegetable dish from a restaurant on training days. I'd add some packs of guacamole to the chicken breast+sweet potato meals when I could "afford' the extra fats and add almond butter to my oats. I panicked and thought I needed to do something drastic so went keto for the rest of the prep and my physique kinda melted. I could have just picked a later show and continued the same diet and had things turn out much better, but I messed up and it was solely my fault.

I have some shots from my 2020 prep which I cut much longer, never took carbs below 250g/day or so, and ended up looking much better. I'll upload those later. In 2020 I was dealing with knee issues and didn't train quads at all so at least my quads looked a lot better this go around.

We'll try again next spring but probably won't compete unless there's big changes to covid policy. Travelling domestically with covid restrictions as a foreigner is just incredibly stressful. But it's okay because I probably won't have the level of mass I need by then anyway so more likely it'll be a cut/reset just for 16 weeks and "stop" at around 4 weeks out level of leanness.

How do you plan on dealing with weight limit? Or is that so distant that it doesn't even register?

very ****ing distant haha. At my very best I was 88kg with another 3kg I probably needed to lose. Most people who turn pro aren't even at the weight cap and the 4th place olympia last year was a full 7kg off his cap. Even Mr. Olympia classic physique still has a few lbs to fill out the cap and was winning when he was over 10lbs from his cap.

Absolute best case scenario I would get up to around 115 offseason in a couple of years, be "ready" around 96-98, and just water deplete without any pharmaceutical diuretics (I drop a lot just from coffee+vodka+hot showers) to make weight since weigh ins are 36 hours or so.

that's the strange thing about bbing... it's way less related to scale weight than you might think. Phil Heath was obviously a much better bodybuilder than Markhus Ruhl, but he didn't even have close to the amount of bodyweight per height.

Yeah, I know classic is wild in that regard. I guess cbum really is closer to me than the big dudes. smh. BBing.

Judging, placing, and competitions are so arbitrary; I don't think most bodybuilders do it for those reasons and I'm sure the ones that do are very unhappy most of the time. For instance, I think Robert Timms destroys the entire classic physique olympia lineup; the judges put him in tenth. People made a lot of direct comparisons between Fabian Mayr and Urs Kalecinski because they ahd similar physiques and Fabian beat him in nearly every shot, yet finished 8th compared to Urs 4th. Classic is admittedly very arbitrary when you get to the upper echelons since it is subjectively "what is teh most beautiful and mosts proportionate muscular body" rather than "what is the most jacked and shredded physique?".

The whole goal isn't necessarily to place well, but to undergo the whole process of training and dieting. You're trying to create+showcase a piece of "art" you've created with your body itself and enjoy looking at it in the mirror. It sounds weird when I type it out that way but that's my mindset anyway. And I'm 33 and it's pretty certain I will never be at the upper echelons so it's honestly enough for me to walk around looking fairly big+muscular and getting pretty and shredded once per year. I'd also say that a contest prep definitely changes your mindset and makes you generally more mindful and appreciative of your life when you forcibly induce scarcity and difficulty for several months at a time. It's really just a more vain form of fasting+meditation...

Went in for a quick rehab session

Static glute bridge with a 100lb sandbag: 3 rounds of 60 seconds
whole bunch of shoulders/rotator cuffs
paused flat db bench: 30kgx10x2
Plate loaded row machine: 4 sets
Whole bunch of wrist+forearms stuff for elbow health.

8km cycle

This was my extremely unknowledgeable opinion, so it's nice to see it validated.

I think it would be cool if someone did a study where they gave judges some tapes of BBers to judge and then 5 years later gave them the exact same tapes and asked them to judge again. See how much consistency there is from the first to second judging. I'm sure I'd have a good lel. I don't suppose someone has already done this?

Has Classic affected the issue with smaller dudes and now we back to the mass monster stage?

I figured this would be a good place to ask this. I ran across a bro who has competed in a few body building comps that were run by the NGA and he claims that everyone who competes is those is natty? Is he delusional?

I know ~zero about competitive bodybuilding and have no idea what the NGA is. Not even sure what division (or whatever) he competed in.

To some degree, yes. It's some mix of mass, subjective "aesthetics" and leanness. Some of the smaller guys still place better than the mass mosnters, however. Shawn Rhoden won the 2018 Olympia being a lighter dude, Brandon Curry won in 2019, Ramy finally won by actually losing some size and getting leaner+smaller.


Melkerson, I don't know anything about federations other than the Chinese one, the NPC, and the IFBB. Are people in your friend's federation natural? IDK. Peak natural is like 5'10 80kg +-5kg stage lean, but that's like 10 years of dedicated hypertrophy training and neurotic eating. Adjust for height about 3kg per inch. Nobody cares about natural bodybuilding, though generally. Remember I was an oly lifter back when I lived in USA; only really transitioned to bbing in 2018.

Push

Literally 20 minutes of shoulder prehab/rehab focusing mostly on rotator cuff and a bit of side delt
Machine press: up to 50kgx10x2
Smith OHP: 60kgx10x2
Slight incline smith: 80kgx10x2
Pushdowns: 3 sets
Skullcrushers: 3 sets



So one of the things I've done stupidly throughout my career is not taking schedule downtime in a sort of yearly periodization way. Literally every good strength athlete or bber does this; you cannot train at full capacity all year round, especially at 33. You *could* blast gear all year round but it is inadvisable. So I'll be taking this period from 2 weeks ago until mid/late september to be on trt as I stated before but also to train 3x/wk at a fairly low intensity with session RPEs around 3-5, maybe slightly higher for pull workouts since my pulling muscles and joints generally don't get so beat up like my knees, shoulders, and elbows do. That also means not really eating like a bodybuilder; still eating chicken and rice for 2 meals and cream of rice+whey for one meal, but don't try to eat at a surplus or be a weirdo who says he can't go out with his friends to have an "off plan meal". When the offseason officially starts, then it'll be a structured meal plan and eating at a level of surplus that causes slight to moderate but not extreme discomfort. It may include some of the higher protein "junk" in there. We have a meal prep guy who I was using during this rebound phase and I'll probably do that again; it's about ~22 usd for 4 meals per day, then one cream of rice meal and one shake with an occasional added cheat meal instead of one of the cream of rice or shakes.

The typical yearly periodization model for bodybuilders is:

Offseason->quick break/cleanout phase for 6-8 weeks->difficult contest prep which could be 12-24 weeks->rebound for 4-8 weeks->break/cleanout/healing phase->offseason. Might replace the contest prep with an additional offseason training cycle of similar length for somebody like me that still needs to grow a lot for their class.


So yeah my workouts will not be very exciting or heavy for the next several weeks. I will probably add in considerably more cycling and cardio on the stairs of my apartment building once the temperature goes down enough.

Somehow I missed the photo of Syndr0m. Couldn't convince him to come back? Even with n1h?

Also, somewhat curious to me was the fact that there seemed to be no Chinese people in that gym photo. I counted nine people (?) including you and Syn and zero looked Chinese. Seems odd for a gym that is literally in the middle of China.

It was our homie's bday squat challenge and all the Chinese attendees were late. The members at this gym are around 70% Chinese 30% foreign guys. Plus we even have POWERLIFTING CHINESE GIRLS!1! in our gang. Me and Syn are like honorary members who don't train there regularly; it's a hardcore pl gym with a dl bar, stiff bar for squats, hasupower calibrated plates and hasupower benches. Their air conditioning is awful and they have very limited non powerlifting equipment. I like training DL+Back in the winter; I build up so much heat lifting that I don't really mind lifting when it's 40-50f degrees indoor temp, in the 30s is rough though. Back is one of the few muscle groups where just barbells, pullup bar, and dumbbells are enough for me.

He's a new dad and just spending time with the fam rn not focusing on fitness as much. I'm sure he'll be back.

Thanks for the explanation. Another thing I found a bit odd is that no one seemed to raise an eyebrow about you getting photographed doing BB poses in the middle of the gym. I guess if you look like you do, no one is going to want to give you a hard time.

Even at regular commercial gyms, people never give you a hard time about bbing stuff. Quite the opposite, it attracts huge amounts of (positive) attention such that normally I try to find somewhere private where I can just focus. There isn't quite the level of "persecution" of hardcore lifting in China among people that go to the gym, there's even some admiration. My phone got stolen and idk if I can find the pics, but me and my homie did a pose-down mid gym about 4 weeks out. He was the eventual winner of classic physique b group and looked amazing. It was his first show and he is 40 years old. Anyway, we got a crowd of people watching and filming haha. Same sort of amazement when a group of guys are deadlifting in the 4plate+ range or squatting in the 3+ plate range. Half squats exist but are much rarer here.

There's one trainer-girl who's husband is a classic physique superstar and got 2nd place in nationals two years in a row. Can't remember if I already posted this. Cool guy and he's the coach of the 40 year old guy mentioned above. He's offered me coaching and I've considered it, but every Chinese coach is basically copy-pasting Milos Sarcev protocols as their template and adjusting based on results. So it's huge doses of humalog pre+post, 6 days a week training, high time under tension, light weights, about 80-90% machines training style that I enjoy from time to time but wouldn't want to train that way year round. They also tend to want people to run tren+deca together, usually at fairly low doses like 200 acetate and 500 deca, but running two 19-nors together can be side effect city.

Legs
~20 minutes of ankle+hip mobbing
Hamstring curls: 42.5kgx12x3
Paused HBBS: barx10x7, 60kgx10, 80kgx10, 100kgx10, 80kgx10
Leg press: 2ppsx20x3 SS with calf raises

Just a few extra days off and my work capacity is way down. Lungs were gassed out despite my legs not being tired. There's a decent chance i won't have the discipline to only train 3x/wk and will end up with a 4th day.

Nice pics. How does Syndrom deal with being next to a guy that jacked and hot? Was he crying after the picture was taken?

No. He proceeded to squat 100kgx34 and then slam 7 or 8 vodka+gatorades in the middle of the gym, a papa john's pizza, and then attempted a 230kg deadlift at midnight while still drunk. I was in contest prep and left at 9:30pm and went to sleep at 10:30 lol.

I can't do it. Can't stay out of the gym. Gonna brosplit both during this deload and going forward as I start the real offseason. FST-7 Hany Rambod style after a few conversations with that coach and with Justin Harris. I could post a ****ing novel about different bodybuilding training styles, but ultimately hypertrophy is a huge target and it's a hard one to miss. Train the way you want to that minimizes injury risk, go hard but not too hard, and focus on the food (as long as the PEDs are in place).

Shoulders+broceps
15 minutes of rotator cuff+external rotations
Plate loaded ohp: 1.5ppsx12x2, x10x2
DB prone delt raises: 5kgx20,20,12,10
Smith ohp: 60kgx10x4
Pec dec rear delt flies: 5kgx12x7
Cable preacher curl: 4 sets various weights
EZ curls: 4 sets, first 2 regular 2nd two reverse curls.

Ankle mobs+touchdown squats


Chest+light tris
Back
Shoulder+light bis
Legs
Arms
Off
OFF

Maybe I'm just easily impressed but squatting 100kg x 34 after not training for (?) years seems ridiculous. Our boy seems like a natural.

He still trains regularly. Does crossfit like 4-6x/wk. Doing stuff like lunges, kb snatches, swings, and various other movements can definitely preserve squatting strength.

Ahh, I must have missed that. If he does crossfit ~5x/week, that's not nothing.

Legs yesterday

Leg press: 3ppsx20x4
Lunges: 7.5kgdbsx10x2 left 4 sets right
Paused SLDL: 70kgx10x4
Glute machine: 2 sets
Hamstring curls: 20-30kgx12x7 30 second rests.


Arms today
Cable preachers: 7.5-12.5kgx12x7 30 second rests
Pushdowns: 12.5-20kgx12x7 30 second rests

Superset 1
skullcrushers: 7.5kg dbsx20,20,15,10
DB hammer curls: 7.5kgx15,15,12,10

Superset 2
ez curls: 15kgx4 sets failure
Dual rope pushdowns: 10kgx10x4

Superset 3
Reverse Ez curls: 15kgx4 sets failure
V bar pushdowns: 10kgx10x4

Chest+Triceps
About 15 minutes of shoulder prehab/rehab

Incline db press (15 degree paused): up to 35kgx10, 30kgx10x3
Machine press (decline angle): 25kgx12x4
Machine fly: 10kgx12x4 (this machine is very heavy idk)
FST-7 Cable flies: 7.5kgx12x5, 5kgx12, 9 all 20-30 second rests
Pushdowns: 15kgx22, 20, 15, 12
DB skullcrushers: 7.5kgx15, 12, 10, 8

About 30 minutes of ankle and hip mobs+calves


My shoulder felt like maybe a 2/10 pain on incline db press. I'm going to do either smith incline press or machine press at an incline angle first lift next chest session, no free weights for chest next week and possibly week after. Blast starts Sept 11 and I'd love for my shoulder to be at a 0/10 pain by then.

Felt really great and got awesome pumps, despite serum testosterone being in physiological range now. My physique hasn't changed drastically, strength has fallen off but mostly from time off. The biggest changes I'm noticing going down to real trt is much better digestion/no heartburn or gerd and some mood changes. Generally a little less motivated in general, mildly "I don't want to leave the house", exercise feels a bit less pleasurable than before, and weirdly engaging in normie comfort eating which I just never ever used to do. Like when I'm blasting I never crave sugary food; usually just want more chicken and rice, steak, burgers, potatoes, sushi, BBQ, etc. Even sometimes not looking forward to my oatmeal because it's sweet. Suddenly I have a taste for ice cream.

Oh, I decided I can't psychologically quit barbell squatting so easily. It's done a really good job on helping me develop my "outer" quads and they still look really good from the side even if they don't look that great from the front. Spend more time mobbing and squat every other week but still make leg press the main focus and do it every single week. One week leg press first, second week leg press second. If it doesn't work and I get a bunch of pain or whatever, we'll just leg press and lunge/single leg squat.

Yesssssss! Glad to hear that really was Syndrom and not a fake look-a-like.

Back

Pullups: bwx13,9,6,5,6
Rows: 10s up to 90, 70x10
pulldowns: 1.5ppsx10x4
FST-7 machine rows: 27.5x12x7 30 sec rests
FST-7 cable pullovers with rope attachment: variousx12x7 20 second rests

30 minutes of mobbing, prehabbin, rehabbin ankles, hips, shoulders.

Rows were bugging my left shoulder even warming up and I don't know why I continued with them. This gym's equipment sucks just like every gym in China, but they actually do have a great selection of back equipment and I coulda just stopped but I was being an *******... That was really really dumb. These weeks are specifically for deloading and letting those more persistent aches and pains that require more than just a week of to heal to be able to recover.

I already broke my "just train 3x/wk" rule and allowed myself to start a lighter version of my Hany Rambod FST7 split, there is no reason to be training super hard right now. Session RPE no more than 4 except for maybe on arms and the hamstring part of leg days.

I always observe what noobs to competitive lifting endeavors are doing wrong and always reflecting on what I did wrong when I was oly lifting and nearly always its going too hard with too much zeal. Some people are passionate about something and so they just beat themselves into the ground and would have had better progress easing up a little or easing up a lot, especially in the beginning. Had a conversation with a former muay thai athlete who's starting bodybuilding+powerlifting and he's got the same damn problem, too much too soon. This is the time where i should be deliberately slacking off and it takes some discipline to NOT go full bore sometimes... I need to do a better job at exercising that "discipline to half-ass things".


You can most certainly go too hard with the PEDs, but I think the one thing it's actually kinda difficult to go too hard on in bodybuilding is the food. If you're eating "clean" (non-gastric distress causing food with ideal macros, which can vary a lot by person...) 70%+ of the time in offseason, it's honestly pretty difficult to be eating "too much". I think eating "too much" if you're not slamming down burger king and sugary foods is actually incredibly rare and the opposite problem is much more common. That being said, because I know exactly what loco will say, this statement applies to enhanced competitive bodybuilders. Natties can easily go too hard on the food. When you've got growth hormone or peptides, insulin, and 1-3g of total injectables in your system the ratio of muscle to fat gain is going to be favorable enough to where overeating is really difficult except in the case of the extreme naturally fat bodytype guy. Now that I have a lot of internet and in person high level bodybuilding friends I kind of understand... they all take the same stuff PED wise, they are mostly differentiated by optimal dietary habits and genetics rather than programming or training effort.


Cliffs: Soft on training these next 3.5 weeks. Softer on training overall during offseason, general offseason session RPE should be around a 6-7 on big body part days and a 3-6 on arms/delt type days. Keep going "soft' on food the next 3.5 weeks, prepare to ****ing powershove chicken avocado and rice/potato/sweet potato when we kick things back up.

shoulders+biceps

15 minute rotator cuff/upper back rehabs
shoulder press machine: 80kgx10, 100kgx10, 80kgx10x3
Rear delt raises: 5kgx5 sets failure
smith ohp: 60kgx10x2 eh... shoulder didn't feel good so I quit
FST7 side delt dbs: 5kgx12x7

Hammer cur:s 15kgx3 sets
ez curls: 20kgx3 sets

Legs

Shoulder rehab/prehab+ankle+hip mobs literally took half an hour on this.

HBBS: just 80kgx10x3 not paused
Leg press: 2ppsx25,20, 20
Hip thrust machine: 1px10x3
Hamstirng curls: 25kgx12x7

Some more bw glute exercises for about 6-8 minutes.

I might axe biceps from my shoulder day and triceps from my chest day and do an even more convetional split. Shoulder day ends up being very very short this way, but as I begin working again on Aug 26 i think I'll find myself pinched for time on a lot of the rehab/prehab accessories so I can relegate those to shoulder and arm days. I want to put legs in the middle of the week on wednesday so that I can go in and deadlift every other saturday on the weeks I don't squat. but that's hard if I want to hit biceps on shoulder day. I'd love to excuse myself from deadlifting, but I think with hams+glutes being my two week points I don't think I can do that. One of the biggest obstacles with deadlifts is being wrecked afterwork and how they basically kill the rest of my workout. And I don't have enough time to do them at the end of back day because I usually don't set foot in the gym until 7 but I need to be in bed around 9:45 and my HR is too elevated to sleep if I DL. So a reasonable compromise is to deadlift only every other week and do it on it's own day, so I guess technically I am working out 5.5 days per week on average. I have had the most success doing a top set of 6-8 and then a backoff easier set of 10-12 with ~40-65kg less than the top set.


Feeling really good and fresh, it's been hard to train softly but I feel like if I can get into this offseason super fresh and stay on top of my mobility and muscular imbalances such that I can execute my main lifts without pain, this is going to be gains city.

oh, one thing about being in natty test range I'm noticing is a lot more muscular soreness. I trained more for strength and didn't really focus on pump/squeeze/eccentric etc while I was natty so I rarely got sore. It's interesting doing this kind of training when on trt levels. It's already thursday and my chest is still a little bit sore.