I see you, WL bro. Nice deadlifts.

Thanks

Saturday Dec 26
A2S W11D1

Squat w/belt: 45x10, 135x4, 225x4, 275x4 [PR+5] x5 sets, LS @8 (first set, last set)

Comp Bench: 45x8, 135x4, 155x4, 165x4 x4 sets, LS @9

T = 0:50, RPE 8

***

This one was pretty rough. I've made a lot of squat gains in a short time and now I'm at the point where my subjective fatigue is out running my actual RPE. I can probably grind a bunch of reps on that last set with a gun to my head but I was still feeling pretty gross after that tonnage, to the point that doing even light deadlifts on squat days seems like a lot to ask.

Meanwhile no gains on bench for a while. It just seems like my bench doesn't respond to the same programming as my squat. I was making gains when the weight was lighter and the volume was higher. I probably should just decide to go whole hog on press or bench because making gains on both at the same time has literally never happened for me. Gonna probably put together something custom to start the new year.

Life is otherwise going well. Been crushing at work and got a >10% raise after 5 months without having to ask for it. Also got a bunch of paid time off for the holidays.

Hi dudes.

I've been reflecting about my training over this holiday break. Here's a quick capsule summary of where I am at this point in time:

- Squat is crushing obviously.

- No gains on bench in many weeks. Small progress on overhead press.

- Deadlift is back up to PR territory and my back feels like 98%.

- I got hit with a ton of bricks this week fatigue wise. My theory is that this is what happens when the body gets a break from routines. It just holds back the recovery until there is an open window and then it incapacitates you. I'm more sore now from Saturday's squat day than I have been since I started back lifting, even though I didn't do a crazy amount of volume or %1RM on that day.

- Diet is firmly back in runaway trashfire territory. I'm back in the 160s and feel incredibly fat all the time.


Anyway I've been thinking about all this and I realized that I've never quit a program while ahead. Yeah I could continue to push squat numbers up and hit a 355 or whatever but maybe it's a good idea to pivot and bank that PR for later while I bring up some other lagging areas. I can illustrate my thoughts more clearly with mspaint:

What if I'm here right now?



So I been watching this guy's youtube channel and I bought his programming e-book. It consisted of mostly things I already knew but I like how he talks a lot about building a wider base for a higher peak. This thread hasn't seen much in the way of higher reps so I figure I probably could use that. I'm putting together a program with the following general goals:

- Front squatting as my main squatting movement, twice a week to get more practice. I think this will yield huge gains to me in upper back strength and mobility alone, while reducing my overall training load so I can focus on other areas. I'm going to also be doing HBBS on one day for the same reason. I might belt up at some point but for now will be beltless on everything because I think the belt makes it harder to achieve depth.

- Getting my deadlift up. Programming for DL won't change much but I think I'll have better performance just from the decreased squatting load.

- Overhead press and overhead stability/mobility. Bench press refuses to go up unless I do it 4 days a week so I'm just going to do maintenance bench one day per week and spend the rest of my time and effort improving my overhead press. At least 3 days a week of overhead work, including behind the neck.

- A much higher emphasis on upper back work. I'm going to treat the (eventually weighted) pullup with the same priority as front squat, press, and deadlift, and all 4 training days will include upper back work of some sort. This is going to be extremely challenging to my tendency to not have time to finish workouts so I just need to be more mindful of it. I think getting a stronger upper back will hopefully dovetail with improving my press and deadlift technique as well.

- Gotta lose weight. Just gotta.

, definitely interested in seeing how this goes.

Just a suggestion, but planning and logging your diet with the same depth as your training might help with adherence. (I need to take my own advice here.)

Good luck with it Renton ... change is generally a good thing

Re pressing...I’m also a very hard gainer with press and I’ve made some progress recently at the ripe old age of 49

Part of it is being at the heavier end of my range but the other half I believe has been caused by doing more arm work. Sounds so obvious but building up the arms and the triceps in particular really seems to help

Good luck with the pivot Renton!

I think changing it up will definitely help. Increasing your 10RM squat, front squat, OHP, etc will only lead to more gains and might even be the time efficient way of doing things since you haven't spent much time on them.

Having said that, let's assume your mspaint is true. Don't you think a short deload will push snapcity further out to the right, while also increasing the slope of your gains? One of my regrets is not going for a 3 plate squat before lockdown in March. I'm pretty sure I had it and now who knows.

Switching to new exercises is deload in itself. You just can't push yourself hard enough on stuff you're not strong at. That's how westsiders redline it every week and don't get hurt, cause they're working up to a max triple on something they haven't practiced in weeks.

That said, the first week of the new program will be the lowest stress week, with the volume building back up from there.

I also think a one week deload isn't enough to significantly reduce snapcity risk in a vacuum anyway if nothing else is changing. Snapcity is the result of accumulation of volume in the same movement patterns for months and months.

Fitness on the Y-axis? That's wrong. Should be strength.

There is no snap city on a true graph of fitness vs time. Fitness is defined as a combination of aesthetics, strength, and cardio.

lol, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you haven't compared notes with anyone who's actually trained at westside for a decent amount of time?

And if you look at our differences, we probably don't have much difference in weight moved with lowerbody. And lo and behold, if you were to cut you wouldnt see much differences in our lowerbody. Same with Arjun. Shiet, I won't be surprised if one of you has bigger legs. Doubt glutes, I do a lot of random glute stuff.

But upperbody? Lol. I have moved at least 10x what either of you have moved lifetime. So there is my advice to you. Bench once a week? Lol. I mean it's okay if another day you DB bench and then another day you incline bench, all in the same week.

Well I mean relative to if they did that on the same lift every week

re: bench. I was already benching 3 times a week and making zero gains i.e. wasting my time. So I'm just giving up on bench for the time being. Once a week is enough to keep the movement pattern trained and add a few grams of muscle to my chest while I get my shoulders caught up.

I think that's a pretty big leap.

By fitness I mean like specific to a task. Aptitude at what you're trying to improve with training. I think a similar graph like that exists for any physical task, including endurance or strength. Pushing too hard into diminishing returns without some shift in training modality leads to snapville.

Tuesday Dec 29
Base Phase W1D1

Press: 45x8, 65x8, 80x8, 85x8 x2 sets, LS @8.5

Front Squat: 45x8, 95x8, 135x8, 145x8

Snatch-grip Deadlift: 95x10, 145x10, 185x10, 195x10 @7.5

Iso-lateral Incline Press: 25s x15 x3 sets

DB Laterals: 15s x15 x3 sets

T = 1:00, RPE 7

***

Pretty annoying start. I picked what I thought were conservative training maxes for press and front squat but I'm worse at sets of 8s than I thought. I thought 90 was a safe bet for around RPE 8.

Front squat was fine except that my right inner thigh started hurting during warmup. I'd conservatively planned for 155 for that top set but I cut it by 10lb. 145 was pretty easy but there was slight form breakdown on the last reps.

I almost punted on deadlifts when I could barely reach the bar without pain, but it got better as I got into the sets.

Thursday Dec 31
Base Phase W0D3

Deadlift: 45x8, 155x8, 205x8, 225x8, 235x8 @<7

Press: 45x10, 65x10, 75x10 x2 sets, LS @8.5 the weakness is real

Overhead Squat 15x12 x3 sets

Band Facepull: orange mini x15 x3 sets

Strapped Bar Hang: 30 sec x3 sets

Max-depth Squat: 45lb bar for 30 sec, bodyweight for 90 sec x2 sets

T = 1:10, RPE 7

***

Calling this week 0 because I'm starting it over on Saturday so the schedule will line up correctly. I learned my lesson and programmed the deadlift much lighter than I could have lifted for 8. Got schooled again on press 10s though. My upper back just takes a **** by the 6th rep no matter what weight is on the bar.

After that it was just a mobility suite. A lot of this stuff I can and should just be doing at home.

Saturday Jan 2
Base Phase W1D1

Press: 45x8, 65x8, 75x8, 80x8 @8

Front Squat: 45x8, 95x8, 135x8, 145x8

Snatch-grip Deadlift: 155x10, 175x10, 195x10

DB Incline Press: 30s x 15,15,12

DB Laterals: 10s x15 x3 sets

T = 1:03, RPE 7

***

Had a bad crick since last workout. It went away just in time for this session, but my pressing strength is notably worse. I'm banking on this being one of those aberrations associated with a change in training modality.

I'm doing front squat really strict with a slight pause in the hole and keeping weights fairly light just to get a good groove cemented while I get acclimated to the volume.

Snatch grip DL is stupid. My arm length to height ratio is such that I have to take what seems like a really wide grip on the bar in order to have the bar land in my hip crease at the top. At this grip width it is a huge pain in the ass to get straps tight on the bar. Might punt this exercise in favor of deficit DL so I can do mixed grip. Problem is this is gonna come up if I learn the snatch. I probably need some crossfit straps and to work on wrist mobility or something.

Don't worry, you don't need straps to learn snatch. But yeah understand it sucks to do sets of 10 deadlift without straps

What are crossfit straps, and what are you using now?

You kind of do.

I think I need ones like these:



I have these:

The ones you have might be enough, if you don't use them as intended. But really, most any strap will do.

Sigh. Of course out of all the choices I bought the exact wrong ones. I didn't know you weren't supposed to loop it.


So elephant in the room in this log needs to be addressed. I'm fat as ****. 163lb. Loco has called me a master cutter more than once, but I think I'm more of a has been at this point. I lost like 45lb in 2016, and every cut I've attempted since then has been an abject failure.

So the lowest/leanest I've ever been was 123lb. That was back at the start of resistance training, so I've added a good amount of strength (and, god willing, muscle) since that point. I'm not sure what it would take to get to that level of leanness at this point in my life. I'd like to hope that I'd be there at 145ish, but with the bitter medicine of natty realities it wouldn't surprise me at all to get down to 135 and still have weight to lose.

I meal prepped for the week last night. Plan is to have two prepped lunches/dinners a day that are <500cals and >40 grams of protein, a lean breakfast that is under 400 cals and over 30g protein, and a scoop of whey in water thrown in there somewhere. That will result in a range of 1400-1550 calories and at least 140g of protein. In a perfect world I'd like to maximize carbs within those parameters but right now all I care about are cals and protein.

For accountability's sake I'm going to post daily in this log with a calorie count, weight, and 7 day moving average of each. Once I have two weeks I'm going compare moving average for consecutive weeks and make calorie adjustments if the difference falls under 1lb. A pound a week should be doable IMO at least until I get to 150lb.

edit: Oh also, I'm not shaving until I get below 143.

I’m new around here - how tall are you?

good luck with the cut

Dude, you've done it before. Just copy what worked in the past to a t. I mean even to the point of using the same exact recipes for your meal prepping. Fatties don't get to be creative when they already know what has worked in the past.