I know I’m really late to this conversation, but one of the hardest things about being a personal trainer is the stereotype that they are all clueless bc so many of them do dumb stuff. The main problem is the bar to entry is super low and almost anyone could get a PT certification. My advise would be in addition to finding someone who has competed, look for trainers with a CSCS (certified strength and conditioning specialist) and/or education in the field. The CSCS is the gold standard in the field requires a degree and the test is much harder than the PT tests.

After watching some John Jewett videos on the topic of pre-contest dieting and on cardio, I've decided I'm dropping cardio down to 5x30minutes per week and just cranking up steps. 15k step minimum but I could easily be getting up to 20k. Some of this will be post-training as sometimes in the morning I just feel tired and/or scheduling makes it difficult to get it in during the morning. I'm going to put my refeeds on Sundays (off lifting) and do just 30 minutes cardio fasted and 10-12k steps on that day and mostly just chill out and rinse off some fatigue. I'll shoot for "only" 600-700g carbs but go ahead and include a fairly large 1.5k cheat meal at the end of the day. Probably one of those fancy burgers or some sort of pasta dish from Cheesecake factory idk.


Regarding personal training, yeah it's a bitch when you do know what you're doing because of so much information asymmetry between you and the audience. They can't differentiate between good and bad trainers and could easily get turned off just seeing one trainer in your gym doing something that even a more intelligent normal person would realize is stupid.

I'm building up more and more online clients but still not charging anyone anything. I'd really like to get more posing clients as so many people are atrocious posers. I consider myself "above average" but far from good or elite in this respect and I've taught 2 guys how to pose starting from zero and find it a lot of fun. I have huge respect for the posing coaches as that's an exceptionally difficult skill to learn and to teach and really has no ceiling. These two guys are insanely impressive and have clearly spent thousands of hours refining this. https://www.instagram.com/cb317fitness/ https://www.instagram.com/kylianortegaperez/ I plan to hire one or both at some point when I'm offseason and have more time and energy to learn to pose.

Most of my "lifter" clients have preconceived notions about what correct training is and don't want my training recommendations but do want my diet/cardio/supplementation/PED consultations. That's a problem i myself had.. always thinking I knew everything there was to know about optimal training. Getting former powerlifting guys to acknowledge the relatively poor stimulus-to-fatigue ratio of their favorite barbell lifts is an impossible task. I should know because I was one of these anti machine guys having come up through Rippetoe-ism

+1

If they let their cert lapse, they will clearly tell you why they did so.

What do you mean by cardio as opposed to "steps"? From what I gathered, most pre-contest cardio is mostly incline walking at this point? Which weirdly burns an obscene number of calories for the impact. (Kinda like swimming minus the ravenous hunger.)

I'm not too precise with it, but 120+hr = cardio.

sub 100 = walking

100-120 = ???

I am currently transitioning from doing personal training in person to primarily online. Mostly because as a military spouse it sucks having to change jobs every 2-3 years after building up your business. My last job was at a high end gym in VA comparable to a equinox where sessions with me were $130. Convincing those clients to train with me online for a couple hundred bucks instead of paying 1k+ a month was fairly easy, especially after working with most of them for a year or two. I started an LLC since I know train 12-15 of them online.

Seperate from that I’ve also been interviewing with online personal training companies/apps to train people remotely on a bigger scale. Working from home is appealing to me with young kids and the flexibility it allows and if I do that I won’t have to change jobs every time we move. You should def be charging people you are training, not sure why you are doing it for free.

Mostly because my clients are all China foreign expats who make between 40-60k usd/yr. I'm getting my first regular dude outside of China who's 25 and still new to lifting, pretty excited to work with somebody who's starting from scratch again. When people have a little bit of information they can be a lot more difficult to work with than when people are at 0.

Legs
leaning away db curls: 12.5kgx4 sets failure
Hamstring curls: 47.5kgx19, 13, 9
Between hamstring curl sets did 4 sets of leg extensions 20s
Toes elevated SLDL: 110kgx13, 10 now I feel it in my glutes, think I've got this figured out finally
Leg press: 4ppsx20, 15, 12
3 sets calf raises to failure on the leg press afterword

75 minutes
18k steps 0 cardio

Meal 1
250g salmon, a green apple

Meal 2
175g salmon, 200g sweet potato, 100g green beans

Meal 3
175g chicken breast, 200g sweet potato, green apple

Meal 4
80g cream of wheat, 300ml skim milk, 20mg honey, 1.5 scoop whey, banana, 4ius of humalog

Meal 5
175g salon, 200g sweet potato, 200g pineapple 3iu humalog, 10iu gh

Was a little light on veggies b/c I didn't make time to make them.

Oh I got my gh blood test results back from when I was in Thailand. The standard is to pin 10ius IM 3 hours before blood is drawn fasted. ****ing 29ng/dl which is absurdly high. But it's (Chinese) pharmacy grade and not being damaged in shipping because it's cold shipping in less than 48 hours.

Quarter turns and mandatories. Still not sure what I want to do for my favorite classic pose, but probably the twisting back double (colloquially known as the "Arnold" pose). Side tricep or front lat spread (not pictured here) could also be great options for my favorite classic pose. It's okay because I'm bare minimum 16 months out (maybe 20 months).

Front relaxed is all fiecked, forgot to tilt my hips back

looking very good

+1, pretty sick man

One of the things I will be eternally grateful to AA on is that he taught me how to teach myself. His meal plan was rudimentary and advice was such, since lets be frank... I'm not and will never be an elite lifter. I wasn't even the best casual olytard that hit gym I used to frequent RIP tallinna spordihall.

Guy,

Please show the pics. You give an old man with myriad injuries hope for a better day. And I appreciate this log. (Even if we may never see eye to eye on the first 6-9m of nooB training.)

The pics are in spoiler, or maybe you meant "please continue posting the pics" in which case yeah I will.

It's okay, bro. Ultimately the first 6-9 months doesn't matter all that much when you're literally 16 years in like me. It does feel great to have started making real measurable progress again. I started steroids around 10 years ago and so clearly that wasn't the missing ingredient and I was basically the same from 2015-2022 then things started clicking when I discarded old habits. One of the biggest steps forward was outright quitting barbell squatting. I remember my knees just constantly being sore no matter what I did and now even doing this many steps and stairs cardio, I can barely remember the last time my knees were as sore as a typical day when i was 26. Then obviously overhauling my nutrition approach was an even bigger step forward.

I hope I can inspire you just quit oly entirely and maybe give hypertrophy training a go; you don't need to do the posing trunks and ****-eroticism. I'm a fairly feminine metro guy so all the glamour/exhibitionism/looking good/vanity/shaving my bodyhair/buying special jacked guy clothes to look cool in front of 15 year olds is all highly appealing to me, but you can build sum muscles, get stronger, and be healthier by following this training and diet approach minus the PEDs and general extremeness and get that satisfying psychological feeling of progressing your body. Payoffwiz is a great example of this and was also a former olybro. The Renaissance Periodization youtube is a great resource run by a PhD sports scientist you're probably aware of. This style of training and eating is so forgiving compared to oly/pl/strongman and relatively more "functional" modalities.

Push
Machine press: 62.5kgx12,12,12
flat db press: 30kgx15,15,15
Prone raises: 4 sets
Pushdowns: stackx5 sets failure no myo reppin
Cardio: 30 minutes 130 HR
Steps 20k, was up to 18k by the time I started the workout.

I was super tired today and had some minor pec tendon soreness I'm sure I could have trained through but chose to just pull back today. Not a deload session and still got in real stimulus. The pec tendon pain disappeared the next morning (now).

Really depleted. It's fine, refeed + rest sunday. Saturday leg training with the boys at the bbing gym. There's another bbing gym an hour drive away that has a posing room and a ton of competitors. They even have an in-gym restaurant with bbing food. I wish every gym had this. We'll probably make the pilgrimage out there in 2 weeks.

I decided I'm cutting off the diet in 5 weeks. Get some good professional photos done and call it a day, no show. My clen is 120mcg and my yohimbine is 30mgs/morning so I need to taper off or I'll be sleeping 12-14 hours a day if I just cold turkey. I did that in summer 2021 and it was like a solid 2 weeks of spending as many hours of the day asleep as awake. Plan is to slowly reverse diet and even stay on potato/sweet potato/fruit as main carb sources thing for at least the first 2 weeks coming out of the diet and just allow white rice products once a week on refeed days. I'll have at least 2 good cheat meals and drop like $40-60 on each one the two days after I finish the diet/photos.

I will not be bulking the whole way through assuming an end-of-october contest date. I'll be giving a full 24 weeks to contest prep for a national and that gives me just over 10 months of solid offseason where I'll include at least one 6-8 week hard fatloss phase to reset. I might choose March 2026 instead in which case we can probably stick in 2 fat-loss phases along that bulk.

Legs at the other gym
lying hamstring curls: 3 sets failure
Leg extensions: 3 sets failure, terrible designed machine got no real contraction here
Toes elevated PAused SLDL: 110kgx13, 10
Leg press: 170kg (three 25kg plates per side)x20, 15, 12
calf raises

Cardio 35 minutes bicycling each way to the gymnasium

Steps were only 10k.

going to knock out some stairs cardio this morning then refeed with cream of rice, chicken breast, pineapple, and gummy candies with a cheat meal for final meal.

Didn't have any cream of rice, couldn't fit it in. Had just chicken breast+pineapple+basmati rice with gummies for meals 1-4 then a cheesecake factory cheeseburger and fries. In total around 1200g carbs and I think this was exactly the right amount. 800 woulda been too little, 1500 probably too much. Did about 28ius of insulin humalog spaced throughout the day.

https://www.wired.com/story/lookism-...phy-cosmetics/

I think this is an interesting topic...however...is this considered good writing? There is so much completely unnecessary terminology that I eventually just didn't care if I understood or didn't understand what the author was trying to say.

Also, there's a ton of low hanging fruit in regards to attractiveness that doesn't cost any actual $$ and even rich people completely forego. So...well, w/e, I don't really have a cohesive point here.

Aren't you much more ripped than this guy or am I missing something?

Yes you are clearly missing something. He's among the best posers in the world even though he's very mediocre as a bodybuilder. Tons of much bigger and more ripped people are paying him tons of money to teach them. He's also like 21 so he's got a lot of time.

It's poorly written. But important none-the-less. It's wild how much less stigamatized this industry is in China/Thailand relative to the USA. I suspect there's some "mate competition sabotage" effects going on but it's hard to pinpoint or articulate. Same thing as 20 year olds in undergraduate referring to good looking, charismatic, outgoing, and upper-middle class fraternity members as "douchebags".

Botched workout from pec tendon and general fatigue. I had the high day Sunday but it wasn't enough to bring me back to life. I'm deloading upper body this week.

Push
Machine pressed up to 62.5kgx13 and quit immediately b/c the pec tendon getting irritated. I think the cable curls last week ****ed it up again.
Machine incline fly: 20kgx20x3
Pushups: bwx15x4
Pushdowns: stackx14 , 2 more sets that set of 14 was to failure, I was just incredibly weak today
Side raises: whatever

Cardio: 30 minutes AM fasted
Steps: 20k

I think I'm going to cut out all biceps exercises except ez curls and seated hammers for a bit.

Pull, bicep/pec tie-in mysteriously felt a ton better after just 1 day

Rope lat prayers: 17.5kgx19, 10, 9
Machine rows: 62.5kgx20, 14, 12
1 arm lat pulldowns: 2ppsx12, 12, 10
Underhand rows: 60kgx10, 6, 10
EZ curls: 20kgx12x4

Cardio probably going to drop it and do steps only
steps: 20k

Amazing progress. �� ��

+1, insanely impressive

Thanks, fellas.

Legs
Hip thrust: 2ppsx15,12,10
Leg press: 4ppsx21, 16, 13
Calf raise: 4ppsx20x3
Hamstring curls+leg extensions: 3 sets and 5 sets to failure but shorter than usual rests.
63 minutes

Calf raises were surprisingly cardio exhausting and I'm gonna skip them henceforth. I can get this workout down 50-55 minutes. I don't need to train calves if I'm walking 12k+ steps/day

Steps: 22k

After lifting went for a "medical pedicure" idk what to call it. Basically shaved all my calluses off. Hurts like hell the next day but I think it'll help heal so I can get back to it. I might take off steps today and just get 10k and do some cycling.


Plan update: I wanna see exactly how far I can push with conditioning. Diet will end last week of June and then I'll do another diet break/reset and eat prepped clean meals when I'm in Thailand around 300p/500c/40f cheat meals 2x/wk for 5-6 weeks then get right back into another fat loss phase. I had an epiphany that the people who are the leanest on stage are actually not the ones who dieted the hardest, on average. It's actually the people who dieted the "softest" but started the leanest. I suspect in the photo above my bodyfat could be as high as 11%, just my fat storage patterns are such that my lower body disproportionately stores more fat and even though my upper looks like other people's 8%, my lower looks like other people's 15%. I'd also just generally like to be leaner in the offseason for health/aesthetics. I have more than enough size to be winning any amateur classic physique show including pro qualifiers, I just need the conditioning and the easiest way to get that is to be leaner in the offseason.

Macros adjusted to 300/300/20. It feels a bit crazy to be dieting on 300g carbs but if I'm lower than that I just seem to suffer a big performance loss. My daily activity/NEAT is several fold higher than most people even when I'm not actively trying to push step count up where it typically sits around 12k, so when other people talk about dieting on 140g carbs and 1hr/cardio, that doesn't necessarily apply to me as they're dieting on 5k steps very often.

I did bloodwork in Thailand back in October at my fattest and heaviest and then recently this month. Despite being on harsher AAS, my bloodwork while cutting was significantly healthier. 30mg tren ace/day and 50mg anavar/day and my liver enzymes were *almost* in normal range even just 10 hours after a leg workout. By contrast in October they were significantly out of range. Here's my take on what's been happening: My upper body relative leanness has fooled me into taking my bulks way too far. The fatter you are, the more calories you need to add muscle and overeating is generally really bad for your liver. As it turns out from my bloodwork, low AAS+too much overeating is worse than high AAS+hypocaloric diet. Low AAS+small surplus should be the healthiest of all. I need to stay leaner and do relatively shorter bulks where I cut things off at a fairly low bodyfat. Blood glucose was also 105 in October vs 83 now. I wasn't using insulin in October and probably need to do basal 20iu low dose lantus offseason with just a tad of humalog pre and post even when keeping bodyfat low. I also only started taking Metformin regularly in March. My hypothesis is that by maintaining a leaner offseason I'll end up with probably actually better gains from better liver health, better insulin sensitivity, better digestion, and the better nutrient partitioning that accompanies all of that.

Remember my reference point is not natties on this forum. It's not even enhanced gym bros who don't compete or novice competitors, it's now advanced competitors who are 0-3 years away from earning pro cards in men's physique or classic. And in China where people are generally much more conditioned than America, I need to be even leaner on stage. Whiteknuckling through extreme diets isn't for me, I'd rather just have more discipline and controlled weight gain offseason than do some crazy ass DNP, 2hrs cardio, 150g carbs kind of bullshit and be able to diet on 300-400g carbs the whole way through because I started the diet at legit 13% bodyfat.

Lastly, I think its time to ease up on upper body training generally. In particular, I'm going to start taking shorter rests especially on machine presses. I think the 5-7 minute rests with balls out sets to failure in the 12+ range is just too much joint and tendon strain and by reducing rest intervals to 2-3 minutes I'll limit how much stress I can put on the connective tissue/CNS. Pull I've been gradually reducing intensity via exercise selection and ordering; basically go hard on pullups but then take the same approach of limiting rest in order to limit stress on other exercises. Doing long rests sets close to failure on things like barbell rows is a no go, but I think I can keep barbell rowing in if I do it later in the workout and intentionally limit rests. I want to continue training 6x/wk rather than 5 or 3on 1 off but I think this is going to require no more than 60 minute sessions, not 75 minute sessions. Reduce volume/intensity/rests accordingly.

This guy knows his stuff. AJ sims... I've posted a few of his sample protocols over the years in this forum. The initial protocol doesn't matter because the real service is adjusting and modifying based on people's individual variance and response, but it does give a good general overview of his overall approach. There's a little bit of what I like to call "hardcore signalling" in this video, as in any bodybuilding podcast, but also some great information. His rates aren't cheap, I believe it's around 5k usd/yr. If I try another coach (probably not), this guy or Milos Sarcev will be the ones.

He used to work with high level Olympia IFBB pros but gradually got away from this. He didn't name any names, but basically a lot of the top pros are kind of divas and difficult/entitled personalities. Now he's working more with amateur bodybuilders, lower level pros, WWE performer/athletes, and general lifestyle people. Basically nobody got their bodybuilding athletes as conditioned as this guy, and from consuming a lot of his instagram/youtube content and sample protocols, from what I can tell the reason is that he sacrifices muscle building progress in the offseason to keep guys leaner so that when they do diet, they can keep food higher and have less brutal diets and end up just more shredded. Being the biggest at the amateur and even low pro ranks in men's physique and classic physique is so seldom how you win; you win by having good genetics for your shape/insertions/aesthetics and being the leanest and most conditioned. Size starts to matter more when you're far into the pro ranks and I have no desire to ever get to that level anyway. I like being lean much more than looking big in a shirt to mog the 15 year old kids and 45kg 5'1 chinese women I spend most of my waking hours with (at work) harder. I'm definitely going to add more muscle, but I'd be perfectly satisfied if I never grew more muscle tissue and just walked around super lean and in good cardiovascular shape year-round and maybe jumped into a competition with a 12-16 week prep once a year.