Nutrition for today:
Breakfast: 100g oats with 1 scoop whey, handful berries, Apple
Lunch: 300g chicken breast (plus flavour), few large handfuls of leafy salad, a few salad veggies
Dinner: cottage pie with sweet potato mash, plus a bag of steamed veggies.
1 piece of chcoclate cake
1 protein shake.
Tuesday:
Oats, as above
2 protein shakes
2 bananas
Cottage pie and veggies, as above
Protein shake with milk post workout
Wednesfay: as Monday
Thursday: as Tuesday, if i don’t lift I’ll remove post workout (obviously)
At one point there was an article with the free workout and an actual program called Simple Guaranteed Strength & Size. You want the article version. The other one is a program that CT sells.
the 2 day layout looks great and very similar to what I ran a while back. I found that with the BBB supplementary work I got the best when I kept the rests short and tried to be explosive. I also used to superset the chins or rows in with the BBB work. Good luck with it I’m sure you will progress nicely on this.
I’ll definitely consider the supersets, and try to incorporate them without losing the equipment. Do you feel like more assistance is helpful? I feel like I’m pushing the envelope pretty far already with 2 BBB lifts every session, it’s already nearly double the work Jim recommends.
What weights did you use for BBB work? 50% seems way, way too light for any kind of training effect to me.
I think assistance is fine, I did rows with bench, just supersets using the same bar and weights and lifted it down and back up between sets. And did pull ups with OH, which meant I put the bar down on each set, used the rack to do pull ups and then cleaned the bar and out it back up.
The only thing that is missing is some single leg work, like bulgarians but you could add them after one cycle if you felt you had time.
The weight on BBB at 50% is a little light, bu that was why i made the comment about exploding with the weight. This will make is get real by the last set.
I also changed the BBB % to match the first set % of the 531 work, which makes it much harder. I would do a couple of cycles at 50% see how you go and then up the % after.
I’ve been using BBB with bench for a while, and settled on almost pausing the reps, bar path and not locking out. I still do them at ~70% though. I think I’ll stick with that for these and squats, and start conservative for press and deadlift, since I don’t know how I’ll go with these. Haven’t deadlifted in 6 months, and over a year since I straight bar lifted.
Nutrition for yesterday: as planned
Work for yesterday: nope
Squat: worked up to 77.5kg x 20
Then: 5 x 10 @ 60kg SS with 5 pull ups
Seated press: some
Notes:
felt absolutely knackered going into this, started to feel pretty shit while doing it, shortness of breath that wouldn’t go, light headed, dizzy, holding back sick. Took me best part of an hour just to get to this point, look halfway through my warm up for seated press and I had to hold on to the bench for a minute or so before I stood up to change the plates. Called it there. Probably rerun workout from scratch next session.
I’m sure he’ll get used to it again. I think I’ll go ahead and do the bench/dead session tonight though, still feeling the soreness. Probably up my post lifting calories too.
Oats (as above)
2 x protein shakes
4 x bananas
Chicken wraps (2 wraps, 300g chicken, vegetation)
Probably a milky protein shake post workout, treat myself.
Slept on the floor last night, youngest is ill so I give my side of the bed up. Lower back is fucked. Good day to restart deadlifts after a year away. With 70+ reps.
I actually have a small mattress set up by the side of the bed for exactly that. Little lady kicks me out of the bed around 5am if I’m not already up anyway, so i just roll off the bed onto that. It only really affects my back if I’m there for the whole night and not even every time then. Last night was just a bad night.
Work for today:
Bench: worked up to 75kg x 12
Then 10 @ 60kg
4 x 10 @ 55kg
Deadlift: worked up to 5 @ 120kg
Then 5 x 10 @ 60kg
Abs: some
Pull ups: some
Notes:
Today was a weak day. Technically a PR on bench, but it was a 2 month old PR and far more grindy than I’d like.
started at 60kg for BBB sets, but decided pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to manage all 5 sets today so backed off to 55kg. I think I’ll probably stay at this weight for the next 6 week’s and keep the reps clean, crisp and explosive.
first deadlift in about a year. Felt embarrassingly weak, but that’s to be expected for lots of reasons. Will probably use the 120kg as a training max. Seems a little low, but info need to break myself back into these slowly.
I can see the workload in these sessions is going to get pretty obnoxious as the weights go up. I can see I’ll be praying for 5’s cycles by the end of the first 6 weeks.
Nutrition for today: as sat/Friday. Plus a leftover kiddy size portion of the missus lasagne as a post workout meal.
Work for today:
Seated press: worked up to 50kg x 5
Then 5 x 10 @ 25kg
Squat: worked up to 82.5kg x 5
Then 5 x 10 @ 60kg
Abs: some
Pull ups: many lots
Notes:
Today sucked a big one. Both of the little ones are ill so I slept very poorly on a cold floor last night. Work was bad, and then I got side swiped by some geriatric driver on the way home causing enough damage to be a nuisance.
lower back was just absolutely destroyed before I started here, hence cutting the squats short.
debating a few options, either restart the whole program from scratch, using the TMs I’ve established for dead and press or finish the cycle as is, increase as planned and just add an extra 5 x 10 cycle in before 5 x 5’s.
Are you feeling beaten up from the training or is it everything else. With a 2 day program there should be heaps of recovery time so it shouldn’t feel this hard. Either your TM’s or % are too high, or you need more sleep or more food ?
I’m pretty confident it’s everything else, life outside of the gym can be fairly high stress, low recovery. I have a full morning off tomorrow, which I intend to use to its fullest by doing absolutely sweet FA.
Pretty sure my TM’s are fine, I have recently done all of them for 5 solid reps at least.
No exercise today, took the first half completely off as a rest and relaxing day. First in about 3 years, so well overdue. Ate what I wanted, had a few cups of tea, then had a morning nap in front of the TV. Absolute heaven.
Nutrition for today:
Breakfast: 8 sliced smoked bacon, 2 eggs, 4 slices toast, liberal ketchup and butter.
Lunch: 2 scoops protein, 2 bananas
Dinner: chicken wrapped in prosciutto, potato bravado, vegetation. (300g chicken, 3 slices prosciutto, 150g white potato, a small portion of chorizo, 500ml passata, flavourings)
No soreness at all today, just pain in lower (/mid) back. Definitely not DOMS, I assume I’ve either picked something up stupidly at work, or slept stupid. Or both. Will move tomorrow’s session to Friday and get some rolling and mobility done to fix it.
Weighed in tonight as slightly less fatty than anticipated. I think I’ve judged calories about right, although I may skim a few more off if I find it as difficult as I imagine to get any conditioning in over the next few weeks.