Quote:
Originally Posted by NotThremp
Has Classic affected the issue with smaller dudes and now we back to the mass monster stage?
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.