Disaster of a chest workout. I was out and about trying to get a new bank card and the heat wave has been crazy. The gym was even hotter than outdoors by night time and I was drenched just from doing my shoulder warmups. weak and no pumps. I'm gonna blame dehydration. I'm signing up for a new gym that has much better AC and isn't much further. Equipment is slightly better for everything but back training, but back is the body part I get the least grief from conventional free weight movements from. Didn't even want to do my post workout hip mobility stuff. Not even worth logging. RPE10 on surviving heat, RPE 2 on lifting the weights.

I'm sorta blown away because even the other advanced bodybuild in the gym is like only breaking a slight sweat and I'm just soaked from sweat and condensation. Genetic differences between how Chinese and whatever the **** I am process heat and cold. Some of these people are terrified to be outside in 60 degree farenheit weather. I'd say my best workouts are around 58-62 degrees farenheit, but its way more comfortable lifting in 20s or 30s than 80s or 90s. Today was 100s.

changed gyms, had a way better workout with some progress. Pumps are still very poor, which I cna only attribute to natty level hormonal environment not conducive to hypertrophy

We need more emojis. 7 years on wechat and I can't even express myself without wechat emojis. Maybe I developed adult onset autism.

Pullups: bwx14,10, 7, 5, 5
Barbell rows: 80kgx16,11
Pulldowns: 45kgx10x3, x8
FST-7 Cable rows: 20kgx12x7 30 sec rests
FST-7 Cable rope pullovers: ??x12x7 20 second rests

playing around with some machines and equipment at the new gym. I found that barbell incline spoto press was really shoulder friendly. I'll do this as my new main chest movement.

changed days a bit b/c I'm training arms with some homies tomorrow

Legs
Lying hamstring curls: 3 sets failure
Leg press: 3ppsx20 4ppsx20, 3ppsx20, 3ppsx16
Static lunge with dbs: 10kg dbsx10x3 right and 10x2 left (left is strong side obv)
Lying hamstring curls: lighter weight x12x7 30 sec rests

sum calves

New gym's leg press has amazing rom. It feels more hamstring and glute dominant and less quad dominant. This is probably what I need.

Shoulders

Smith ohp: this smith machine sucks and it didn't feel right but did some appreciable work wiht 60-70kg
Machine shoulder press: 50kgx11, 40kgx16,11 this machine felt awesome though
Lateral raise machine: 4 sets of 8-12
DB shoulder press: 20kgx10x4 hard after 2 presses before this but felt really good and 0 irritation of my left shoulder so I can probably push this hard as a first lift!
db rear delt prone raises: 5kgx4 sets failure
Machine shoulder press facing the opposite way: FST-7 weightx12x7 30 second rests. facing opposite way hit my side delts more and front delt less. feels good

squat mobs

I've bee skepitcal about having a shoulder day because it's of course a very small muscle group. But I think there is something to the theory of vertical pressing for shoulder health. 30-45 degree incline just do this. For that reason alone, I think a shoulder day is worthwhile to give vertical pressing sufficient attention; if you throw shoulders at the end of chest it's probably not enough to get this effect. Around this time last year I think I did 35kg db seated shoulder press for top set of 15 then transitioned to shoulders after chest and shortly after that my left shoulder started hurting around last november and is just now feeling better. Maybe dropping the shoulder day/vertical pressing was not a coincidence and contributed to this pain developign.

Here's a BB related question I was thinking about.

When BBers deadlift, what upper body muscles are they trying to improve the aesthetics of? If you could name the individual muscles, that would be even better. Also how much difference does sumo vs conventional make in trying to achieve this goal?

Sumo is a useless meme for hypertrophy. Sure it'll target glutes/hams/quads but it will do so with one of the worst stimulus fatigue ratios possible and over a super shitty ROM. Conventional DLs are subject to a similarly awful SFR, but you might be able to justify them for glutes+lower back. For upper body, basically not much that you couldn't get done through a combination of pullovers, RDLs, rows, and other various exercises. Abs too of course but basically everything is gonna tax your abs.

Will I continue to do them? Possibly because I store so much fat in glutes+hams and therefore having more glute+ham muscle will help them look more defined and get a shredded appearance at higher bf%. Possibly not. I'm gonna try twice a month/every other week on it's own day and see how I feel when I'm back to work. If I feel buried and tired, just drop them it's not a huge deal. But my lower back/erectors are massively overdeveloped and it might be with my anatomy that I won't get much glute development out of DLing anyway and my main gym has 2 great glute machines and the new gym's legpress is super glute+ham dominant.


Even on AAS you only have so many "recovery credits" and when you're starting DLing is of course a good useage for them, even if you are training for hypertrophy. Later on... not necessarily.

Squatting on the other hand... it's hard for me to completely remove the squats because I built up so much skill in this exercise over the years and it's SFR is a bit more favorable. If i had a huge array of leg machines like at an American gym, I could toss out squats. But in China equipment is really limited even at the best gyms so I'll probably never end up getting rid of them unless I find the perfect hack squat machine.


okay after writing all that out I realize that was not your question LOL. They're trying to work their lower back (still part of the upper body), traps, and lats. Very few of the best bbers dl. blah blah blah ronnie did it therefore its correct stfu. Mostly we're trying to work our egos and overall body strength when we do deadlifts.

Thanks. I actually enjoyed reading the whole first part before you got to the answer.

One of the reasons why I was asking is that I remember on more than one occasion in H&F, when someone asks, "How do I get a bigger back?". The number one answer is "Deadlifts". But it seems to me (and if I understand you correctly) and also to you, that DL is not really an efficient way to get a bigger back. I see all sorts of clowns who never even leg day, and their backs look decent and it's not just because they are on top of a pair of chopstick legs.

I wouldn't say it's an inefficient way of getting a bigger back; it's inefficient for advanced lifters trying to train their lats (typically what most but not all bbers have difficulty with). If somebody somehow had less developed erectors and traps, it would be a very efficient way of getting a "bigger back" even for an advanced lifter who is going to have higher difficulty recovering from deadlifts just because they are moving heavier loads. These muscles are similarly very well developed for me due to my start in lifting being in olytard. If I didn't have that olytard background, I very well might need some work on lower back+traps and DL inclusion might be more justified.

If you're not easily able to deadlift 315x10 or some arbitrary low standard like that as a 190lb 5'10 male, then deadlifts are going to be very efficient since the recovery demand won't be as severe at lower poundages.

And of course for some anatomies you'll get really great glute and hamstring engagement and these tend to be show winning muscles in bbing. Lower back thickness doesn't tend to get as much love in bbing judging.


Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, for some trainees in some circumstances they're definitely worth doing. It depends on training age, anatomy, individual biofeedback, absolute age and accompanying lifestyle, and what the goals of doing the exercise are. 33 year old with a 50 hour workweek at a physically active job on his feet all day and overdeveloped lower erectors and training specifically for competitive enhanced bodybuilder= probably not worth doing deadlifts. Guy in his 40s with a similar 50 hour workweek but not the same level of overall muscular development who just needs more mass everywhere to look bigger and more musclar = go ahead and deadlift. 22 year old guy in the last year of undergraduate = regardless of traiing age/level of advancement or goals = stfu and do your deadlifts, kid.

Thanks again for the response. This is all very interesting to me.

On a related note what are your thoughts on beginning BBers. It seems to me that the best thing to do at the start is almost forget about bodybuilding to just do more PL and oly type stuff and then once you have a good base, then you transition over to BBing. Is that the general advice for someone who is just starting out (or maybe not exactly that, but something along those lines). Or is there a more efficient way to get there if you are starting from ground zero and are only interested in BBing.

I'm assuming natty here, even though I realize that assumption doesn't have a lot of applicability to most serious BBers.

I would certainly not do oly stuff; the way you lift weights in oly is literally the opposite of how you lift weights in bb. You're trying to minimize tension on the muscles and move the weight from A to B with as little strain and tension as possible. Flip that around for bb, you actually want to be "inefficient' and 'make the weight feel hard' by putting your muscles under high levels of tension to move the weight. Coming from oly set me up with a **** ton of bad habits for bodybuilding in those first years. I really did not utilize my eccentrics and was still just "point A to point B and add weight" in how I tried to train and progress.

PL stuff for a good base.... Partially agree. But that doesn't mean it should come at the expense of the small pretty muscles.

I wish I could be more speciifc, but again the answer is "it depends".


If you wanted me to give a blanket recommendation that's likely to work the best for the greatest number of people starting off, it'd probably be a Jordan Peters style upper/low or full body 3x/wk split. If they are like literally less than ~6 months in the gym, I'd start off with much higher volume and much lower intensity than that program recommends, however. You're going to need more reps to refine technique adequately.

(but once again, it depends... a younger guy could probably handle 4x/wk instead of 3 and both more volume and more intensity)


But at the end of the first ~5 years of training it probably won't make an enormous difference if the person started "optimally" or just hopped into a bro split like mine from day 1. The eating and out-of-gym recovery habits will be more important.

I'm waiting for us to go full circle to speculating on what programs for actual athletes look like instead of male models or strength athletes.

I definitely wouldn't know anything about that. Do you consider 100/200m and T+F throwing as actual sports or strength sports? I'd put them as strength sports but I can see an argument either way.

Either way, I have a feeling the degree of programming optimization, training effort, and the complexity of their periodization is much more complex than lol bodybuilding which really only needs to periodize the diet and nothing else.


Chest+tris
Incline bb: 70kgx10, 60kgx10x4, 40kgx10x4 practicing. Haven't done it since February
Machien press: 30kgx10x4
Machine flies: 10kgx10x4
Cable incline flies:; ???x12x7 30 second rests

Pushdowns: 4 sets
DB skullcrushers: 5-7.5kg dbsx12x7 30 second rests


Covid cases exploded up to 300 since 4 days ago. Gym closures. Possible city wide lockdown. Crying. Losing Hoap.


HK, Malaysia, or Thailand next year I think almost certainly unless there are big changes to covid policy. Most likely HK because I've become such a risk averse little beotch.

I'd consider them actual sports. I think the main differentiating aspect would be the meaningful change during the season in how you lift, which requires a slightly more complex periodization than Neanderthal levels.

The actual lifting is pretty whatever, although I think most people do some really dumb stuff (IE Power snatching near max). Its like having throwers run full out sprints... why? What that third pull really get you other than a potential wrist/elbow/shoulder injury?

After following tons of Olympians training, I think the most baffling part is people speculating on how little cardio most people do. I routinely followed a speed skater who could easily cycle a century at any point in her training cycle. (Routinely did centuries off season.) But I guess when you have a 10min event in your bag, that is necessary. (We all know people training for any jog 1500m+ put in **** tons of cardio.)

I do agree the complexity would be managing high intensity plyo, lifting, any relevant technique work (which frequently needs to have meaningful intensity), and recovery (esp for people who aren't full time).

But bummer on Chi-NA.

ETA: Diets are probably the biggest lolfest for the populations you didn't mention. If you're throwing in 20+ hrs a week of low intensity cardio (but what would be considered advanced/elite for casuals), then diets basically boil down to: 1) Eat a normal healthy diet 2) Get your cals in any way possible. So advising people to never drink anything without calories starts becoming a viable dietary recommendation and sometimes completely necessary. "Better add a few more spoonfuls of sugar to that morning coffee." smh.

still alive. lockdown in chengdu. Cases aren't even a fraction of what they got up to in shanghai. Cruise/Health/recovery phase extended. I am surprisingly not in a rush to get back in the gym; I really want my shoulder to be fully healed and I know that I won't be able to keep myself outta the gym unless I'm forced to by something like this.

NFI what's going on next academic year for me. Looking more and more like covid 0 restrictions might get lifted; when they made the "5+ more years, bitch!" comment that was before looming energy crisis, swine flu, and financial collapse were in full swing. The fact that lockdowns are compounding to this might sway them to open earlier. But with the increasing degree of autocracy and having sometimes literally shot the messanger that many times, it might not. If not, no hard feelings and I'm outta here for a bit/possibly forever.

I'm a 'big deal' as an international school teacher in terms of qualifications, experience, and capacity to adapt to life in new cultures/languages/countries having picked one of the harshest ones on the first go around. But the problem is that nobody wants to leave their job in THailand and there may not be an opening for me there. HK/SG/Malaysia/Vietnam/Turkey (LOL!) are all on the table if nothing with acceptable pay comes up in THailand. And I'm leaning toward HK among those because it'll involve almost no adjustment as far as lifestyle goes. There's even not much language adjustment either since so many people around my age will be first language mandarin mainlanders and not locals. The salary is really high so I can stack sats, eth, and SPY ETFs tryna get un-poor by 40 then start livin the dream assuming I manage to avoid kids/marriage until then.

I'm crossposting this from the EV thread since I thought this was better addressed here:

WTF? You're doing all of this believing that you have a decent chance of reducing your life expectancy 10-15 yrs. I was under the impression that you thought (possibly wrongly) that the reduction in life expectancy was less than that. Like you say, everyone has different priorities, but I have a hard time imagining that.

Well... I think it'll be 0 years or even possibly life extending because of all the good habits that come along with the lifestyle. I'm just throwing out a worst case scenario because nobody really knows. I remember looking at that one study that showed that literal olympia stage ifbb pros on oodles of gear had lower all-cause mortality than typical sedentary American males. Yeah of course you can argue that if they did what they did without the AAS they'd have lived even longer still, but man... I don't know if it's really worth living in fear and not doing what you want to do and being what you want to be to squeeze out some more years.

It's funny you brought this up because I was in the elevator today with a very old woman in a wheelchair and her daughter. She's probably mid 80s or 90 if I had to guess. totally out of it mentally, barely aware of her surroundings, and incapacitated unable to walk. All I could think to myself is that I'd rather just be dead if I was in such a physical state. I realize that does not help dispel the macabre/emo/depressed image I've cultivated here over the years, but in my mind this is actually a very "positive" and affirming thing. Understanding what makes you happy, knowing that there are risks, and just ****ing doing it anyway. A shorter but happier life is greatly preferrable to a longer and unhappy one. Living life the way you want to and being willing to take risks instead of living life on fear mode. I was also driving a motorcycle my last 2 years in Suzhou (I don't need one here because of better urban design and transit) for the same reason. My paternal grandpa even died early in a motorcycle accident but this is what I like to do and I want to live the way I want to instead of being so fearful/panicking/timid.


Seemingly in contradiction, I completely quit alcohol around March and plan to be drinking less than 3 times a year on special occasions. I'd be fine with 0 times ever again though too.

It sounds like what you're saying is that you think that it's probably zero reduction but you would do it even if you knew it were 15. That's better than how I originally interpreted it, but still mind-blowing. 15 years is a lot. And like you say if you were equally diligent about diet and exercise, I doubt there is going to be that much of objective quality of life difference (i.e., your not gonna turn in to wheelchair woman any sooner), but I guess if the difference between looking like you and say looking like loco is worth 15 years of life, I'm not sure I can ever wrap my mind around that.

Healthy years man. Gotta focus on the studies that are healthy years and not extending glorified meatsack stage.

15 years is total exaggeration. He is not taking MrOlympia type dosages. And after 45, he probably only on T and a bit of GH (Sly and Arnold like). These 20 years of moderate use gonna cost him a couple, tops. It sux they don't study this or we can get a better idea, eventually PEDS will make us live longer and higher quality of life. That's what Performance enhancement Drugs should do.

15+ years is what obesity and smoking combined cost you.

But still man, not gonna fack around with unresearched selective androgen modulators and other facking God knows what peptides.

At least with T and GH, we have some data and folks are not dropping like flies.

I met a 60 year old the other day at the bar while my gf and I were eating. He looked 48. He whispered to my ear and said get on T and GH brother, trust me on this one. I said I was waiting, he said I might be too weathered by then.

This guy sounded like he found the Holy Grail, straight out of an Indiana Jones flick. He said, "trust me man, T and GH is the best decision I ever made." Claims he has been on for 15 years.

I think so too. That's not my point. The point is that he would be willing to give up 15 years. That's just incomprehensible. I don't see how natty perfection + 15 years is worse than PED perfection. Again, this is all hypothetical as it seems no one thinks the actual cost is 15 years. But hypothetically, if it were 15 yrs, I just can't fathom being willing to pay that price.

Liike loco said, these are amateur jellydick cycles, which is exactly why I chose classic instead of open, so I'm putting the probability of actually realizing that worst case scenario number (15 years) as ultra-unlikely. I'm really interested in cycling too and plan to make that my main hobby post bbing as a way to be "trt middle aged or old guy fit" rather than "jacked" after around age 45 or so.

If I could go back to 19 I'd definitely have never oly lifted and done at least one natural show prep before hopping on gear though. I think that's an important experience... do at least one huge nattycut down to legit stage lean before hopping on. Having not done that I basically had to do 4 contest prep diets (2 actual shows) before I've basically figured out what to do. AAS will absolutely mask mistakes you make in pre-contest dieting. If you are natty, those mistakes will manifest and you'll be forced to course correct immediately.

The man celebrating in your avatar, while not on gh yet, agrees with this statement. So does his wife

Didn't he have actual jellydick problems? Sounds to me like he was throwing up the hormonal panel of an 80y old man with extra cortisol.

Yes. I'll honor confidentiality and ask what he's okay with me posting exactly, but his last attempts at self medication didn't seem to work so well and this time we see to have things more balanced and working well.