So you are!

They get addicting pretty quickly.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

60 min walk


Thursday, August 11, 2016 Training

Bench Press:

20x5
20x5
30x5
40x3
51.25x5
40x3
51.25x8 [PR]

Front Squat 52.5kg (5, 5) [+1.25kg]

Lat Pulldown 130# (9, 10) [+1 rep]

Superset:
DB External Rotations 10# (20/20, 16/16) [+4 reps]
DB Lateral Raises 15# (14, 14) [+4 reps]

***

Awesome day. It had all the makings of a bad day too. I slept poorly last night, and I got off to a bad start on the bench press, making the same mistakes on the first work set. Then I did some fixing and managed to improve weight or reps on literally every lift. Front squats are getting tricky, though.

Nice one PR's all around, those are the days.

Friday, August 12, 2016

90 min walk


Saturday, August 13, 2016

45 min walk


Sunday, August 14, 2016 Training

Press 32.5kg (5, 8 [PR])

Huge PR here. I only got 5 reps at this weight two weeks ago, and 7 reps last month.

Front Squat 52.5kg (5, 5)

I forgot to bring microplates today so I repeated last session's weight. I'm pretty unhappy with the form on these. I just feel unstable at the bottom. The deeper I go, the more my chest wants to cave; it's the same problem as with my back squat.

DB Bent-over Rows 55# (10/10, 10/10) [+5#]

Facepulls 85# (12, 12)


***


Week 18 Diet, Week 4 Cut



The scale was uncooperative this week, probably due to me eating significantly more carbs than the previous two weeks. I've also been dialing in micronutrients a lot more. I'm now supplementing D3 and calcium (in addition to previously fish oil, multi, and creatine), and making an effort to eat more sodium and potassium-rich foods. That might explain the lack of weight loss this week, as well as the increase in performance.

Your front squats look good in the video. Hard to tell from distance but looks as though you could stop at top and take a much bigger breath (fill belly deep first then up into chest until you feel like you're gonna burst). That can help a lot with chest cave on squats. Again, though, in the video they look solid. I don't even see any rounding.

That's reassuring. Still it seems to me like the first set isn't deep enough. I focused on going deeper in the second set and while those reps were deeper, I felt as if I was about to spill the bar. The weight always felt balanced on my feet, though.

Monday, August 15, 2016

60 min walk


Tuesday, August 16, 2016 Training

Front Squat (light) 42.5kg (5, 5)

Bench Press 52.5kg (5, 6)

Deadlift 95kg (5)

Chin-ups (2, 2, 2, 1.75, 1, 0.5)

***

Plainly my deadlift is regressing. I don't know if it's the cardio I'm doing or what. It seems like my Tuesday workouts are generally weaker, though.

Did I read that right? 85# facepulls? Post 179.

Yeah, but dunno how everyone else does them. I do them like this.

I do it like that too. I'm focused on contraction more than anything, but 85# seems a lot! My pull game sucks I guess.

I'll pay attention to my form next time. Might be I'm cheating, involving too much trap or something.

New nudes:



Measurements:



***

I still resemble Buddha, but I'm starting to look much better in clothes. Differences in measurements are pretty subtle other than around the waist, where I lost a few centimeters. I don't see how cutting to 141 is going to be sufficient. I doubt 10 more pounds is going to put me under 20% BF, so maybe I'll need to extend the cut a few more weeks and get down to 135 or so. We'll have to see when we get there.

The first set was a little shallow. Front squats beg for ATG but just breaking parallel is fine too. Your second set was good regardless.

If I were there with you, I would tell you to add more weight to the bar and want to see you pushing harder with a little more form breakdown on rep 4 and 5. Would not bother me to see you rounding a bit on the ascent because of heavier weight on those reps.

The changes are visible. And you got a haircut!

Posture has also improved a tiny bit. I'd spend more time with that. Literally cable face pulls every day regardless of it being back or shoulder day. Consider rolling your upper t-spine as well.

RE: face pulls - and practically all cable exercise for that matter - are highly dependent on body weight with regard to how much lean is necessary to make the move even possible.

So a heavier person is going to be able to move a heavier cable weight without it affecting position without lean.

Omar is doing those face pulls with a light weight, trust me. Probably no more than 20 or 30lbs at most. Simple physics dictates you HAVE to have lean as the weight approaches a certain percentage of body weight. He has next to no lean - he might as well be doing it with thin bands and not weight.

I used to do face pulls with like 100/120 and realized the amount of lean was dumb and have been doing 80 on my cable machine, and doing them with more control and focusing either on each segment of the pull or contracting the rhomboid and doing rotator cuff only. Occasionally I'll drop the weight to like 40 and pull and just hold with a strong contraction as well. I also rarely do less than 4 sets of at least 12. Its been 14 reps lately.

Unless you have a mirror, you'll not realize just how much you're leaning unless you're REALLY leaning.

It also looks like you have a teensy bit of scoliosis in the lower T-Spine as well or am I seeing things?

Should also state that a lean isn't a bad thing so long as you can keep your body stiff as a board so as to not round any part of your back.

I assumed he was doing well below his normal weight for the purposes of demonstration. As to lean, no doubt there is some. I'll make a vid of how I do them, but tbh the form isn't very strict. I've got enough things to work on, I try to fix only two or three things at a time.


Almost certainly is the camera tilt. Notice how the top of the armoire is slanted. LOL I have enough to worry about with my inferior strength and fat genetics, I don't need a slanted spine to boot.

New noodz look good; nice progress!

Everyone discovers this, fwiw. When I was 230, I figured I'd be pretty ripped at 210, and I finally got pretty close to where I wanted to be leanness-wise at 182ish. G4S I ain't.

Omar does call them out as prehab which does mean it is not meant to be a strength movement but a corrective/warmup exercise.

Is that your opinion of how they should be programmed?

Thus far I've been doing them in the 12-15 rep range to near failure and attempting to make progress. I also do a lot of band pull-aparts to warm up for BP/OHP.

Not really just pointing out what he looks like vs doing it with weight.

Pics are showing some great progress!

Thanks! I've got a long way to go but it's nice to reap the small rewards along the way.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

60 min walk


Thursday, August 18, 2016 Training

Press 33.75kg (5, 6.5 [PR])

Front Squat 55kg (5, 5) [+2.5kg]

Lat Pulldown 130# (9, 8)

Facepulls 85# (12, 12)

***

Another good day. On the press, I barely couldn't lock out the 7th which would have been a huge PR. Six reps were sufficient for a rep PR at least. Front squats were surprisingly easy.

I made a vid of facepulls, doing them how I always do them. Now, comparing them to the Omar Isuf vid, it looks like he's pulling higher toward his forehead and pulling the rope farther apart. I can see how both of those things would increase lever arms and make the lift a lot harder. I'm gonna keep doing them how I do them unless anyone has an objection. My pulling movements have been making solid gains and it looks like my posture and shoulder imbalances are improving.

Anecdotal at this point, but yesterday I ate 1187cal/103c/37f/109p as well as a lot of sodium, and today I had a solid performance. I also gained 2lb on the scale between this morning and yesterday morning. I'm going to start eating higher carbs on days before lifting days, and higher fats on lifting days and Fridays. It might be pure broscience but it's worth a shot right?

Friday, August 19, 2016

40 min walk


Saturday, August 20, 2016

60 min walk


Sunday, August 21, 2016 Training

Bench Press 53.75kg (5 [PR], 2, 5)

Front Squat 57.5kg (5, 5) [+2.5kg]

DB Bent-over Rows 55# (12/12, 10/10) [+2 reps]

Superset:
DB External Rotation 15# (8/8, 7/7) [+5#]
DB Lateral Raise 15# (15, 15) [+2 reps]

***

Another solid day. Bench was a little disappointing. Even though it's a PR, it seems to me that if I could get 51.25x8 two weeks ago then I should've been able to get 6 reps at this weight. The fifth rep of the first set was a grind and a mis-groove besides. I aborted the second set after two reps because my setup felt soft and I was a little psyched out. I rested a little and started the amrap fresh with a stronger setup. That set went well. The first three reps flew up and felt great. Form is ever a struggle, though.

Front squats were pretty tough, but not so bad. I filmed my rows for the first time, and it seems like I'm involving too much trap compared to the way Candito does them. The bench I was using was a problem, though, as there wasn't room for the dumbbell to travel under it. I switched to a better bench for the next set.

Week 19 Diet, Week 5 Cut



A decent week. Weight loss could be happening faster at the tiny amount of calories I'm consuming, but I've been trying to up my water weight on the days before I train. For a small sample of workouts it seems to have dramatically improved my performance.

One more week will conclude Phase 1 of the cut. It would be nice to get into the 140s this week. Then next week I'll spend a week at near maintenance, probably 1800 calories a day. The diet has been feeling pretty grindy lately so I'm looking forward to that. The following week will begin another 6 weeks of cutting before I re-evaluate.

Monday, August 22, 2016

no walk


Tuesday, August 23, 2016 Training

Press 35kg (5, 5) [PR total reps +2]

Deadlift 97.5kg (4)

Chin-ups (2, 2, 2, 2, 1.5, 0)

***

The press continues to go reasonably well. Today I dropped the front squats in hopes of getting a better deadlift performance. That didn't happen. I'm pretty happy with my form on the deadlift, it just seems like I'm not getting stronger. Some decent progress on chin-ups. My plan with those is to drop to 5 sets whenever i can get 5 doubles, then to 4 sets when I can get 4 triples, and so on.

I'm vaguely considering dropping my training frequency to every 3 days whilst cutting. My shoulders and quads were still sore from Sunday's workout, and it seems like I can never get a decent deadlift performance due to it being on the middle day. Thoughts on this are welcome.