Nothing wrong with a little running, if you added 3 x 15-20 min runs to you week, you would be surprised at the results. If you build slowly it shouldn’t effect the gym work. Another good alternative is to get a weight vest and just walk for 20 mins a few times a week.
Running really isn’t a goal for me. I could certainly stand to increase work capacity and plain old aerobic fitness though.
In fact, since another goal is to help me deal with depression, maybe more aerobic work should be more of a priority. Definitely something to consider when the calories start coming back.
I find a I simple walk where you have time to think and escape all the grey noise of life helps with both aerobic capacity and just clearing my head.
Oh and happy cake day.
It’s not actually my birthday for a month, I really don’t know what the cakes for, other than to taunt me.
I’m working on time for myself, had a pretty rough spell early in the year where a few years worth of shit caught up on me and part of my plan to get out of that was more (read “some”) time for myself. It’s still a balance I’m struggling with, and time is definitely at a massive, massive premium.
In terms of walking, my phone thinks I average about 15000 steps a day, so I’m not really short on that. Even if I never trained again, I’d stay “for enough” for everyday life easily.
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Slice of cake is to celebrate your yearly anniversary of being on TN.
A full cake is for your birthday if you added your dates in your profile.
My 5 year anniversary apparently. Should have brought some flowers.
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So, after running everyday above, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m trying to be too clever and since the purpose of the challenge is to avoid that, I’ve tried to simplify in the hope that will make it better.
Day 1:
Plyo push ups
Bench 531/FSL AMRAP
Incline bench, Smith machine
Lateral/rear delt work
Squat 8 x 3 @ TM
Cable rows
Day 2:
Jumps
Squat 531 5s PRO and 5 x 5 paused FSL
Pull downs
Bench 8 x 3
Press 8 x 3 (?)
Day 3:
Powerclean and press: double progression
Seated press 531, drop sets after
Wendler rows
Chest pump work
Squat: high rep, light weight.
It’s basically bench, press, squat every session in a heavy, medium, light pattern, plus back work and some limited explosive work. I’ve tried to minimise triceps overtraining, but I’m still thinking of options for heavy pressing on day 2. Any thoughts welcome. @simo74 @Frank_C @jackolee
Yes, it is still trying to be too clever, but going full boring flat out won’t keep me motivated.
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Work for today:
Clean and Press: 5 singles at 60kg
Seated Press: worked up to a top set of 45kg x 12
Then 3 drop sets of:
45kg to failure
40kg to failure
30kg to failure
20kg to failure
Wendler Rows: 3 x 20 @ full stack
5 rounds of:
12 cable flys
Push ups to failure
30 squats @ 40kg
Notes:
- I really enjoyed today, felt much better rested, mentally focussed and able to push myself more.
- Seated press equalled a rep PR. Probably easier than last time though, from memory.
- Clean and Press sucked so much more than I thought. Bit of an ego hit here, but also remembered how much they can psyche me up for a session. No explanation for why, but they seem to get the adrenaline flowing more than any other lift.
- Squat session was a bit easy. I’m planning to use the high rep squats progression from Mass Made Simple and I seem to remember it gets not-easy pretty quickly.
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I forgot - are you lifting two or three days per week?
I’d probably pick one of these and replace the other with an isolation movement (lateral raises or fly’s), but that’s because I have the brain of a bodybuilder.
No deadlift? If you’re not doing those then you might sprinkle in some hamstring work. I do RDLs with my cleans to sneak it in.
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Looks like you’re missing hamstrings completely, for heavy pressing I’d think about putting some weighted dips into the mix. As long as you have a couple of days between sessions I think your triceps should recover ok.
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That was the bit I was really unclear on. I didn’t like those two in the same session at all, butninwas completely stumped on heavy delt work that doesn’t involve triceps.
I’ll probably average 2 a week, but sometimes it will be 1, sometimes 3. Got to keep it flexible.
@jackolee Didn’t spot the hamstring gap. Easy fix, as J suggested. Few rdls on day 2.
I’m sure I won’t overtrain them, bad choice of words. I’m more dubious at my ability to do 16 sets of heavy pressing in a single session. No way to find out except do it I guess.
Dips Really bother my shoulders so I’m avoiding them.
Thank you guys.
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Delt work doesn’t have to be heavy. Doing lateral raises with the proper form is actually pretty light work. Here’s the video that was posted in a thread about isolating the delts. It’s actually pretty good.
With this setup you could do the bench and OHP on day 2. If this were a MWF split then I didn’t like it since you were doing so much pressing on Day 1 and then hitting your 5/3/1 OHP stuff on Day 3.
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I’ve also found since finding that video that if you take the time to warm up slow and light and make sure you’re getting a good contraction, you can switch to a heavier normal weight without losing the muscle connection.
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A 3 day week is rare enough for me, I’m not going to concern myself with it too much.
I’m very aware my delts are extremely small, and i’m not sure one session of pressing every 2 weeks is quite going to cut it. I’ve never managed to get much from raises etc, so I’m a bit reluctant to put them on 2/3 days, however I can’t see I’m likely to get much heavy pressing done after 8 sets of bench. I’ll try it and see, if not, a high volume of raises may have to be the answer.
I already have raises scheduled one day anyway, so I’ll definitely have to check that video out. I’m massively, massively trap dominant, which makes my delts look even smaller than they are. Thanks @Frank_C and @wanna_be
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I do lateral raises and reverse fly’s a lot. They’re low impact in terms of stress on the joint and isolate what I want to train. They also reduce the likelihood that other muscles are kicking in (like the traps on a lateral raise). Watch the video and play around with it. You’re never too old to learn new tricks.
There are two ways of thinking about the delts.
- some people just lift heavy things and let the development happen
- others (me) isolate them and do raises more than pressing
One thing with pressing that I’ve noticed is that I really feel the delts when I bring the bar low. Do a set of 21’s style reps with OHP and you’ll feel your delts. Do full reps, then top half, and finish with bottom half. If you selected the correct weight then the final reps are basically a bunch of failed half reps. Your traps can’t really kick in because arms are below parallel with the ground.
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I would like to do both of these things. I’ve always had extremely underwhelming delts, and massively overpowering traps. Probably a result of how I trained for so long. I’m very lucky in that I think I have pretty wide clavicles, and they’re wasted with such pitiful shoulders and love handles.
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That’s an awesome idea! It’s people like you with all this good exercise knowledge that keep making my workouts take longer and longer.
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I know the feeling. It’s hard to do because we want instant results and if these 17 exercises are proven to work then we’re going to do all of them.
You have to learn to substitute things. If you smoke yourself with the 21’s style reps then you won’t need to do lateral raises afterwards. And I recommend using the Smith Machine for those. It allows you to just push when you start to fail.
I’ve been kind of rotating some isolation and supplement stuff around, I think that’s the only way I’ll get to do every thing I want 
.
I don’t have access to a smith machine but I used one for the first time last week and it was really cool!
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I do seated press drop sets, and just keep stripping weight off the bar. Definitely feel it in my delts.
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