Back
Pullups: bwx14,8,6,5,5
Rows: 80kgx7, 70kgx8x2
Mag bar pulldowns: 110lbsx10x3
DB csr: 16kgx10x3
DL 170kgx5x3 Not "too hard" even doing it last

I can't do pullups as first lift every week. elbow pain crept in. I'll maybe row first or csr first or something. I'm not sure about the bb rows either, didn't quite feel right on the left side erector.

14 at your bodyweight is beastly. To me doing sets of pull ups are all about leaving plenty in the tank on the 1st set. Even then I have a really hard time getting more than 3 quality sets in during a session. At some point I lose the mind muscle connection in the last and grinding out sets torches my elbows. I pretty much just do straight sets with slightly decreasing RiR and it seems to be leading to progression and doesn’t smoke me for the rest of my back work.

At one point I did 20 or 21 NG pullups around this bw. I believe I was 99kg and it was a few weeks post show around october last year. That probably translates to 17 or so regular pullups.

I like smoking my lats with the pullups out of the gate tbh. My mind muscle connection tends to get better in subsequent sets, as does elbow pain.


I'm rescheduling my split and doing back on Tuesdays so next tuesday I'll do almost no vertical pulling and some fairly moderate horizontal pulling, then the tuesday after that I'll start with a row and do pullup straight sets not to failure across as second lift.

Also hooked up with a local coach. Same Chinese ifbb pro who helped me with posing last year. Protocol is nothing fancy for offseason (test, eq, mk677). But he says we gotta end this minicut nonsense and get up to 110kg and hold it there for 1-2 months before the diet starts. Not paying him, he just volunteered. Wants me to do a shoulder day and do cardio post workout every session during offseason. He's onboard with the low volume approach because of my ectomorphic body type but has almost everyone else on a super high volume 20 sets per workout kind of program. Also tried to sell me super overpriced imported thai gear and was utterly shocked that I know how to homebrew and asked me to teach him which is kinda cute. Guess I'll have a 45 year old Chinese countryside man over at my house to learn some 7th grade chemistry!

I said hell naw to that shoulder day, don't think my elbows could take another big pressing motion if it were worth basing a day around. Did add in some lip service to overhead pressing.

Chest+shoulders
Incline BB: 87.5kgx6,6,6,11
Flat db: 34kgx20, 15 long rests because I was coaching somebody squatting
Machine press: 3x10
Side raises: 5 sets each side
rear raises: 3x10
Machine shoulder press: 3 sets whatever weight pump burn.

I don't like how the rest times and feel of the incline bb sets are going. I'll hit 90 for 9-11 reps then do some kind of deload, drop back down to 80 and set rep prs at 82.5, 85, 87.5, and 90.

It's past time I started logging session RPEs and session durations so I can be cool like bbm. But seriously I think they're onto something with logging session RPE to mitigate injury risk.

Back
BB rows: 90kgx10, 80kgx10,6 figured out it was the belt bothering my left erector. Dropped it after last warmup.
NG pullups: bwx8,5,5
DB CSR: 16kgx10x3
Mag bar pulldowns: 95x12,, 115x8, 95x10

RPE 5. 31 minutes

No cardio. Will do some after last meal of the day.

We'll call last chest day a 7.25.

plan for inclines will be 6 weeks of 2.5kg jumps, then deload, then subtract 10kg and do 6 more weeks of 2.5kg jumps setting rep prs on that amrap. I think this will be sustainable, but maybe it'll end up being 5 weeks and deducting 7.5kg, I haven't yet decided.

arms

hammer curls: 16kgx12x4
Single arm cable kickbacks: weightx12-15x4
EZ curls: weightx10x4 higher weight than last time
V pushdowns: weightsx20x4
Cable curls: weightsx10-20
Rope overhead extensions: weightx20x4

I will do 18kgx10x4 on hammers next time. Feels like I'm stagnating on 12s.

Hamstrings+abs

Ham curls: 60x10x4, 50x10
Paused SLDL: 60kgx10x3
Hyper extensions: 3x10
Some abs (srs)

RPE 3.5. Breathing slightly hard on the sldls. Yesterday RPE about a 3.5 as well and it was all the hammers, nothing else was hard.

I'm thinking squats won't be back until September. I tried some light reps with the bar and still didn't quite feel pain free, although it was far from bad pain.

Awful workout. Should have just deloaded this week.

Incline: 90x6, 4 lmao
flat db: 28kgx10x3
Cable crossovers 18kgx10x3
cable side raises 5 sets
rear delt prone raises: 3 sets
machine shoulder press: 20,11,8

26 minutes RPE 5

20 mins bike

I've had workouts like this where I say "I'm gonna count this as a deload" and that turns out poorly. I'll do a formal deload next week and the week after that I'll start back from 80. Maybe next week just do 80kgx6x2, 2 sets flat, and a bunch of really light cable crossovers for teh pmp

I think barbell medicine bros greatly underestimate how long it might take (my) connective tissue to recover, even if CNS and muscular tissue is going to be "ready" next week. But I really don't actually know... slow, safe, and steady has been the name of the game and has been a great plan thus far.

Deadlift: 190kgx5x3
NG pullups: bwx11,8,5
BB rows: 50kgx10x3
Plate loaded pulldown: 3 sets 1.5pps
Cable rows: 2 sets

70 minutes. sRPE 9. Last set DLs definitely a 10 rpe, gotta not do that too often. It's a pr though! Last time best effort was 187.5x5x2 and gave up on 3rd set.

I've definitely become a much more efficient deadlifter. In the past, I could do like 87% of my 1rm for a 5x3, now this is probably like well under 85%.

Hammer curls: 18kgx10x4
Cable kickbacks: 18kgx15,15,10,9
Ez curls: weightx12x4
kb kickbacks: 15lbsx10x2
Cable curls: 23kgx12,12,10
V pushdowns: weightx10-20x4
Overhead rope extensions: 2 sets of 15

under 30 minutes. SRPE 5. I felt tired because of heat today.

My appetite is finally back up. I have a short Chinese study semester that just started Monday and just being active and having somewhere to show up at 8:30 seems to help me with eating more than if I'm just sitting around the house like a stupid idiot.

Skipped legs obv b/c of hard dls last week lol evgoodlife. Got sick over the weekend with a minor cold. Felt VERY weak despite not a lot of symptoms today. It's okay because this was a deload afterall. Let's smash an 80kg amrap next week!

Incline: up to 80kgx3, 60kgx10
flat 22kgx10x2
machine press 3 sets

Great back sesh today, until the last few minutes. Brought out the stopwatch and did strict 2 min rests on some exercises. I decided I'll also do ramping sets on rows with only as much rest as is needed to change plates + about 30 seconds. I'm not sure what other exercises might get this treatment. Perhaps squats when they return? DLs and incline bench presses will always be sets across, however.

Pullups: bwx 16, 8, 5,4,5 feel like I should have lost more when limiting rest. I guess that rest was largely pointless except in the case of going from set 1 to set 2.
Rows: 60kgx10, 70kgx10, 80kgx6
MAG bar pulldowns: 115x10x3
CSR: 20kg dbsx10x2
DL up to 160kgx5

Didn't finish DLs because trainer told me to put my shoes back on. I made a big fuss about it because I've gotten so used to DLing in socks and had a long ordeal trying to get them to either refund my membership so I can just go somewhere else or relax this rule since I only DL for about 20 minutes at a time. For context, I had just renewed my membership by signing a 2 year contract only ~40 minutes before I began DLing and I've been training at this chain for 3 years with nobody complaining about shoeless DLs so it's a bit ridiculous because if I'd known about this "rule" I wouldn't have signed the contract at all. It escalated to them calling the management after I demanded a full refund instead of a 70% refund and the manager was totally chill and said "wtf who gives a **** about this dumb rule, nobody told him about it for 3 years because it's stupid and nobody gives a ****. Don't throw away money by bothering this guy, you idiots".

All done in Chinese btw so this was a huge workout for 2nd language skills.

Next back day I'll just DL first and go only as hard as I can with strict 3 minute rests and last set RPE no more than 8. If that means dropping weight, so be it. Planning to start somewhere between 165-175; I'm unsure how limiting rest that much will impact performance. Doesn't matter, just hit the hardest set RPE at an 8 or lower.

I've found personally that for the DL it's best to ramp up to a top set or top single and then take a lot of weight off for backoff work. That way I felt like I accomplished something and still was able to get in some decent tonnage. Sets across on DL always felt really grindey, mentally and physically.

obv machines and lighter db work are like 30-60 sec rests. Getting all EV up in this ***** tracking rest times. I think we all collectively don't give this guy enough credit tbh.

Yeah I don't mind that idea; KC and the BBM crew do a single @8 followed with 4s-6s. I tend to underestimate my RPEs on lower rep sets though and think it might be too easy to burn myself out. OTOH I did a heavy single+tens on squats and made some truly ridiculous progress around a year ago... but lol that's exactly what made it easy to injure my knees.

It's all small details. DL every week. DL like a bodybuilder and not a powerlifter; slow negatives higher TUT, lats should be pumped afterword. Don't make it so hard it causes my max pullups to drop by more than 3 or 4. Don't make it so hard that I can't lift the same weight at a marginally lower RPE or a higher weight at a similar RPE. Do reasonable total volume and not facking 6x6@70+%.

It was actually a BBM program where I discovered I hated DL sets across. It would tell me to do sets of 5 @6, @7, @8, then two more sets with the last weight. Basically for me a set of 5 @7 would be fatiguing enough that I wouldn't really be able to add weight for the third set, then I'd almost never get through the 3x5 without reducing the weight or overshooting RPE, even with 5-6 minute rests. So I ended up adjusting by doing 5 @4, 5 @6, 5 @8, then maybe one more set at the same weight, then a 10% backoff weight to finish up.

Yeah I'm sure I was (and am) just out of shape endurance wise and others might have different results.

I'm not done ranting incoherently. This is prompted by the fact that my latest log entries have been more about how to stay healthy and how to consciously limit my effort/duration in the gym because I've been prone to taking things too far. that's really weird at first glance, but I'd speculate among internet logging lifters, more people don't get the results they want because of doing too much or going too hard rather than the opposite.

I hate how people in strength sports/bodybuilding talk about "training hard" as some kind of badge of honor and giving 100% always, taking every set to failure, always maxing out and all that kind of nonsense to sound more hardcore. Just like my rant from like 6 weeks ago, this is honestly harmful advice to new guys. When you're new, you can get away with this because everything works, but once you're strong this is going to **** you hard. I'm remembering some of my old back workouts in mid 2015 that were about 120 minutes long. It'd start with an AMRAP DL set, then 7-9 minutes rest, drop down about 20-30% weight, then a second AMRAP DL set. Then I'd take 10 minutes rest and hit 5 sets of pullups to failure. Then finally I'd spend another good 45-60 minutes doing practically every machine for lats and top it off with some curls. Completely ****ing ridiculous. The leg workouts were similarly ******ed, hbbs 5,5,5+ going until the last rep is accompanied by childbirth sounds, then ****ing 5 sets of 10 FS with ridiculously high %s and long ass rests where my HR is probably 160 while resting? looool gtfo.

Same damn **** when I was olytarding. Hitting 90%+ weights way too often with immature technique, never wanted to do anything sub RPE 8.5ish, always wanted to be adding weight to the bar even when it degraded technique or greatly increased the probability of missing. Attempting maxes more than twice. All a bunch of horse****.

I kinda chose this thread to resurrect as my log because I mostly came full circle. Max-OT was the first organized training program I read and, although it's far from optimal, it put so much emphasis on recovery, doing only what's useful for your goals, and progressing by NOT overtraining/injuring yourself. There was primitive fatigue management built into the program. Some of the volume, set/rep ranges, and exercises selection protocols were really bad, but it was unique in that it told readers "if you wanna go hard, don't go hard for more than about 45 minutes or you will just **** yourself long term".

I don't regret my time doing general strength training (well... the late stage rippetarding was a huge waste of time) or olytarding, but man there's so much I wanna go back to tell my 19 year old self. I don't think I would tell my 19 year old self to drop that **** and just bodybuild, I actually do cherish the memory of the rippetard years and the olytard years. I can only wonder what kind of results I could have gotten if I'd not been such a hardheaded moron constantly spending 2 ****ing hours grinding myself down in the gym. Some sort of super simple program of singles on the minute 3x/wk and then about 20 minutes of squats changing rep ranges every month and accessories with no more than 90 minutes per session would have probably worked a ****ton better than whatever nonsense I did. It also sucks when this becomes a big part of your life in late teens early 20s because that's when your identity is really being formed and of course you want to spend a lot of time in the gym and put in excessive effort because that's becoming an important part of that identity and sense of self.

I think part of the problem is that as beginners we get ingrained into the thought process of "increased weight on the bar=progress, and that's the only way!". Yeah, that's the most direct and best way to progress, but the perhaps unwritten part of that is that when rest times/RPE are held roughly constant, more weight on the bar=progress. And then they say "oh, as an intermediate we'll do weekly progression", which I think is just a gross oversimplification and most intermediate programs should probably be more individualized than the popular ones of the early 2010s were. I just don't believe it's as simple as 'before I added weight each session, but now I add weight every week!'. For general strength, powerlifting, and for olytard I reckon technical optimization, working on individual weaknesses, general hypertrophy, and a fairly wide variety of rep ranges ideally *should* be part of "cookie cutter" programs and I don't think that's FPS.


It's a bit of a mind**** because I have no idea what aspect of training 35 year old Evoken will look back at 30 year old Evoken was doing and say "that was stupid, you should have done this instead". The only thing I can be sure about is that very slow but injury free and consistent progress is definitely preferred to perhaps faster but inconsistent progress punctuated by frequent illness or injury.

TLDR: Try softer is good advice.

Most people early on have no idea what it means to do something that is truly hard though. So I think doing an LP initially has some merit to get through to those people. The problem is that it gets taken too far. People who aren't the quintessential Rippetoean 6'2" 150lb 19-year-old think they're gonna get to a 405 squat on their LP and that they should grind it out for 9 months or until they do.

I definitely understand what you're saying though. I used to think it made no sense to come into the gym on Monday and do the same sets, reps, and weight that I did last Monday. These days I do that on a regular basis, trusting the process, slowly making gains, and never getting hurt.

I've read a lot of SS logs. Don't think I've seen somebody follow the novice or advanced novice protocol up to 405. Justin L doesn't count, he was already hbbsing in the low 400s before he started his LP with rip and reached 500. The big success case that Rip rolls out was the 19 year old 6'2 150lb guy who got up to 335 weighing like 220 or 230, which despite the fat gain I think is actually pretty good in retrospect. Get that guy on some test+tren+mast+clen+t3+winny and 12-16 weeks on a bro split and he'd look like a real bodybuilder despite doing only rip training up until then. Get him on a proper powerlifting program after that LP and he'd be competitive pretty quickly too, Rip did a good job with that guy. Wonder what happened to him... got a ton of **** talk on the internet.

Health update and maybe a bit of PED talk:

I don't think I can do a proper offseason growth phase or compete in the show next summer. I've started accutane approximately 7 weeks ago. My appetite has been extremely low and heartburn has come back despite never using and orals/tren and I finally realized it was the accutane doing it. Given the digestive problems its causing me and the fact that it's taxing my liver even if bloodwork doesn't show it much, I don't think it'd be wise to do a prep on the heels of or during accutane. Me and the doc are using a more conservative protocol with 20mg/day for a longer duration instead of 50mg/day for 5 months which is standard. There's a few pubmed papers you can read if you'd like that show less side effects and lower relapse doing it this way, but it also means I can't really be cleaned out. mg per mg, accutane probably nearly as hepatoxic as superdrol, so basically it's like you're on superdrol for 8-12 months. The exact protocol will be 20mg/day for as long as it takes for all acne to disappear, then an additional 3 months at 10mg, but no more than 12 months total. I don't know if I want to run my body through a prep during or right after that since accutane lingers in your system for many months after stopping. Furthermore, a real offseason cycle while on accutane just seems like a bad idea, but "bodybuilder trt", which means 300-500mg/wk of test plus peptides or gh, is probably fine. I may even try proper trt test and like 200ish mg of trenbolone. When I dropped test pre-show last year, my acne was the best it's ever been almost. I still had tren in there and that seems to not negatively impact my acne. Deca was by far the worst though, first time I took that my acne was just explosive.

Right now my face acne is basically gone but there's scarring. My shoulders have a lot and my back has a little bit.

hamstrings+arms

ham curls: 4 sets
kb swings: 24kgx20x6 30 sec rests. Loved these, GLUTE PUMP afterword. If anything is going to slow the loss of my squatting strength and endurance, this plus deadlifts will probably do the trick. I can do these every time I go to this particular gym. 24kg is the biggest, but maybe I could just use 2?

Reduced arm volume for this time, might keep the volume lower too
Hammer curls: 18kgx10x3
single arm kickbacks: 18kgx20,12,10
ez curls: 20,10,11
rope overhead extensions: 30kgx20,10,9
Cable curls: 3 sets
V pushdowns: 30kgx20,11,9

Praying monday's incline bench workouts go well, even last week's deload felt like a ton of bricks.

Jordan Peters and Mike Isratael discussing programming. They are both high frequency guys who make **** tons of money selling a paysite and programming templates. Both very highly reviewed and JP is a very accomplished bber himself with 3 IFBB pro UK guys he coaches, Sasan Harati, Luke Sandoe, and James Hollingshead.


This kind of training just doesn't work great for me in terms of staying healthy and I generally need a lot longer between sessions to recover. I'm going to stick with this Palumbo style medium-high intensity medium-low volume and low frequency style training indefinitely; this is the best I've felt in a while.

Obv I’m a bit of an Israetel fanboy but I think you train at higher intensities and with higher fatiguing exercises than he does. He basically trains like Meadows without as much FPS stuff in terms of drop/monster sets from what I can pick up. Of course they’ve both amassed a certain bass level of strength over decades of lifting super heavy.

The other dudes methods seem absurd for someone not on gear. Idk how reasonable they are for someone running PED’s but man operating at 0 RIR year round is bonkers to me.

0 reps in the tank all the time and training each muscle group 2x/wk is stupid and almost nobody can handle it. Even among those who can, it'll lead to much shorter careers even if it leads to faster gains.

Having experience on both sides, I don't think gear is a big factor in why JP was able to train that hard without many huge injuries or burnout. No, he can train at 0 RIR because he has like 8.5 inch wrists at 5'6. Put a guy with a skeletal frame like Flex Wheeler's (even if he's very genetically gifted and taking tons of gear, like wheeler), he'll tear something in 3 weeks on this kind of style. I also doubt that JP or anyone training this style will be competing at 40 unless they start cutting down the intensity/volume/both. Funnily, after this show, JP announced he was transitioning toward a RIR periodization style.

I can't train JP style even if I took 5g of gear. If you listen to the whole thing, nearly everyone who's trained with him, even guys with great genetics on a **** ton of gear, got similarly burned out. He shares an antecdote about Sasan Harati requiring 6 months off after training with JP for 12 weeks. It's certainly true that enhanced can trainer harder to an extent, but more with regard to insulin/gh than the anabolics and it's to a far lesser extent than factors like rest, age, the structure of your skeleton, and accumulated stress on tendons/joint.

One notable thing about internet sperglords who have a tendency to overdo things, especially on big lifts. (Go crazy with myoreps which are basically pre-exhausted RPE10 sets with short rest.) But a lot of stuff like SS isn't geared for some dude who has been training for a decade (as in actual training). Its for that dude who has been going to the gym for a decade, still looks the same and has been doing the same circuit training program with the same weights for the last five years. Aside from the fact its a 3-9m program. I generally stick people on a single reset then move them off. (Squat that is, everything else gets reset whenever.) Most people struggle with procioception/depth/etc which makes other programs kinda impossible, since you need some technical mastery and some idea of how hard something is to even consider an RPE program. I also don't really like AMRAP LP programs for actual beginners. But I don't think we disagreed on this ever. Mostly the 18 resets to hit 405+ or whatever idiocy that community has gone into.

The other point is that as you progress as a lifter you'll need to start shifting a substantial amount of your lifts from compound movements to isolation, which most of us are reticent to do since isolation work is horrible and not based. Look at Cha's log and the number of reps he does versus isolation work. He did an entire workout of just sled based side work (I guess lumping this in with isolation is fine for the purposes since pageantry and strength sports are different.) Regardless, looking over your logs and seeing how you feel and blah blah blah is prob the easiest way.