I confess I’m jealous of your shoulder veins.
You’ve been doing some really nice work in here, too!
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@Koestrizer thanks, not my primary objective but not going to lie its always nice to look like you actually lift!
@SvenG thanks as well, I think the shoulder veins are primarily from trt, can’t say I remember having them prior (but I’ve got a crap memory) I’m also closing the heaviest I’ve ever been (217 and a bit fatter) so that’s going to help.
T&T w3 d2 weight 213
Wgpu: 10 X 4 sets 2 mins rest
Straight through regular reps, all done with no rest pausing but still not easy, mind you I’m 3lb heavier than when I started, so completing it whilst gaining weight is a win.
BB rows: 60kg X 8, 70kg X 8, 80kg X 8 x 4 - 2 mins rest
Straps for working sets.
DB rows (bent over bench): 27.5kg X 12 X 3 - 90 secs rest
S/s
Lying leg raises: 8 x 3 sets
Seated cable row: 80kg X 20 X 4 sets - 45 secs rest
S/s
Cable crunch: 80kg X 12 X 3 sets
Felt like throwing up after this. Been flat out with jobs (so many call outs, so little sleep) sick baby (also so many night time wake ups and so little sleep, exhausted), and preaching Sunday (usually speak for about 25-30 mins which takes quite a bit of prep). This session was supposed to be a Tuesday session, ah well only Friday…
Weight still trending upwards, not feeling super fat yet!
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Looking really jacked!
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I always get a boner coming into this log, and that is before we take into account the topless pics.
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11 days after my last shoulder/tri session…
Ohp- 40, 50, 60kg X some 65kg X 5 X 4 sets
2 mins rest
Lat raises: 10kg X 12 X 4 set
90 secs rest
Arnold press: 20g X 10, 10, 7
45 secs rest
Torture.
Dips: 10kg X 10 X 4 sets
90 secs rest
Cable rope overhead ext: 40kg X 12 X 3 sets
90 sec rest
S/s
Dec crunches: 10 X 3 sets
Cable pushdown: 40kg X 12 X 3 sets
45 secs rest
+1 s/s Dec crunches X 10
This was supposed to be last week’s, but last week went crazy. This week I’m going to try and catch up and do this week’s work, only because I’m not going to train at all next week, so can dig myself into a little hole! Funny I went back to last shoulder session to check what I’d done and had forgotten about this comment:
Exactly the same today!
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T&T w3 d4
Belt squat: 70kg X 12 X 4 sets
90 secs rest
Something felt bad enough to make me yelp during one set, wish this knee would hurry up and heal itself.
SSB: 110kg X 8 x 5 sets
2 mins rest - except the last set which was 4 mins because my right leg was absolutely ruined (subconsciously over compensated for left knee being off), last set was more even, vmo on the right leg is lit right up, DOMs is going to suck tomorrow!
RDL: 80kg X 10 X 4 sets
S/s
SSB calf raises: 110kg X 15 X 4 sets
90 secs rest
Lying hamstring curl: 40kg X 15 X
90 sec rest
Went rdl instead of sldl and went lighter the SSB squats made my back tight, obviously another area making up for my knees! Went for some hammy curls theres a uniquely unpleasant exercise. Called it here, honestly I don’t care for calf work.
Legitimately can barely lift my feet more than half an inch off the floor steps down from the garage were problematic, absolutely ruined.
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W4 D1
Poundstones: 20kg axle X 100
Bench: 60, 70, 80, 95 X some, 105kg X 5 X 5 sets
S/s
Ez curls: 28, 38, 43, 48kg X some, 50.5kg X 5 X 4 sets
Rest 2 mins
Inc BB: 80g X 10 X 3 sets
S/s
Straight bar narrow grip cable curls: 40kg X 12 X 4 sets
90 secs rest
Dips: 15 X 4 sets
S/s
Ez Preachers: 18kg X 15, 15, 15
45 sec rest.
Finally hit every blooming rep on those preachers! Bench was good, ez curls were solid, switched out the alt db curls and love the variety I switched for, the Inc went better this week, might give it a small bump next time, we’ll see. Actually a session I didn’t hate, dare I say I might actually have enjoyed it a little bit, unexpected as I am, as always, very tired, which is a result of poor sleep, but maybe also a compounding factor…
I had my annual trt blood test, my ferritin is below normal and my mcv is above normal, which I believe means an iron, b12 and folic acid deficiencies, plus maybe some hyperglycaemia - my hbac1 is close to top range and my diet is rueful, my Triglycerides and LDL are decent, HDL is 0.9 where greater than 1.1 is the goal.
One other area of slight concern is my kidneys, creatinine was 124 (top range 104) and my eGFR 60 (absolute bottom of the range) - but my understanding is that eGFR means it’s estimated and that using the creatinine level, meaning that because I carry more muscle, train (reasonably) hard and supplement creatine it’s probably higher but doesn’t indicate issues.
Might post this in the trt section and follow up with drs.
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Yeah follow it up of course but welcome to the club. Most lifters I know have creatinine come up as above range. Including your’s truly.
I have learned creatinine isn’t a flawless indicator of kidney health because of a) false positives for highly active/ muscular population, b) false negative for highly sedentary population, c) blind spot window in case of acute kidney failure (not our concern here but I had to memorize a lot of stuff for internal medicine, haha).
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Cheers @Koestrizer - my creatinine has been high for years and as per your post it doesnt bother me as I knew that was par for the course, but wasn’t so sure about eGFR.
I’ll follow up with the Drs just to be doubly sure, and have some changes to make based on the other blood results but just want to make sure I’m not ignoring a problem!
Thanks again.
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Ah that’s what I get for skim reading, I just saw the creatinine. Hopefully it’s of similar origin but you’re definitely right about not ignoring potential problems!
This shouldn’t be an issue given your muscle mass + high protein intake + doesn’t seem that you took a day off of training before the test
eGFR is a very noisy and unreliable measure if you aren’t an average sedentary person who eats low protein
Follow up is a good idea, but I wouldn’t freak out if I were you
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Awesome thanks Anna, I forgot you have personal experience here, I didn’t think it was a major issue but the blood test provider phoned me about it, to make sure I was following up on it, freaked me out a bit haha.
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Dude you are JACKED. Great photo. The shoulders have shoulders.
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Haha thanks dude, no clavicle lengthening surgery involved either!
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Please tell me that’s not a thing.
Mine is the same, I cut red meat and added some fish for 2 months and it fixed it. If you are supplementing with creatine this could definitly impact the result.
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No I think its a long running Tnation joke, if you Google it you end up with Tnation members pictures and not surgery pics, fortunately.
@simo74 thanks, recently started the creatine again, so that’s a factor I don’t eat huge amounts of red meat, I’ll follow up with Drs and improve the diet and retest soon, not massively concerned but good to keep these things monitored.
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This again, since the week off (holiday) put me a whole week out of action no point starting on day 2, might as well hit chest and bis again…think I’m getting this BBing thing, chest and bis on repeat!
Poundstones: suck as always, but medicine for my elbows, bitter medicine!
Ss1: Bench felt good, curls a bit heavy, will hold them at this weight until there’s a real controlled mastery of the weight - probably be a good few sessions.
Ss2: think I inadvertently went lower incline on the bench…didn’t make it easier! Cable curls continue to feel awesome, hope that translates to arm growth!
Ss3: changed out dips for cables, felt it in the chest a lot better than dips, still keeping dips on tri day, but want some more isolation for the chest.
Weight steady at 212. Not looking to gain anymore for the time being, general plan looks like: hold weight and improve health (lipids, hbac1 and haematocrit) hbac1 is a 3 month marker, so no plans to gain weight before then. Which takes me to Jan, hopefully weighing the same but looking a bit better with improved health markers - the mythical recomp. Will re-evaluate in Jan.
I’ve got a thing about wanting to bulk 24/7 because of my skinny kid background but I’ve got a cruise booked end of May and it would be nice to see my abs so just continue to attempt to recomp.
On the health and recomp note - I was up early this morning, went shopping, got food prep on the agenda for today to cover the week. Main focus will be cutting out sugar and minimising processed foods.
I’ve also realised I am actually addicted to my phone, which is killing my drive, so on a mental health/physical health side of things that is being cut as far as reasonably practicable. This will stop my main form procrastination and hopefully increase productivity - which I’m going to focus some of on conditioning, because yet again the moment it’s dropped from my mandatory programming it’s nonexistent, I need better CV health and work capacity for my fire fighting, no excuse to be poor at it.
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T&T w4 d2
Sweeping deadlifts (red band pulling horizontally so that you have to keep lats more engaged): 60, 100, 120kg X some, 140kg X 6 X 4 sets - 3 mins rest
BB rows: 60, 70, 80 X some 90kg X 8 x 3 sets - 2 mins rest
Straps for working sets.
Lat pulldown 100kg X 12 X 3 - 90 secs rest
S/s
Lying leg raises: 8 x 3 sets
Seated cable row: 100kg X 15 X 4 sets - 45 secs rest
S/s
Banded crunches: purple X 20 X 3 sets
Some tweaks to the exercises, threw in sweeping deads, I’d been resisting deads as they’re not a back exercise for me, thought I’d give these a try, slightly more lat involvement but need to try again with the next band up, they all moved explosively thought so that’s a good thing, upped the rest to reflect the exercise fatigue, programme allows 2-4 mins and I’ve been taking min, so happy to keep it to 3.
Rows - the programme has 3/4 sets and because of deads I went for 3 lower the impact on lower back (and because deads took more time).
Switched out db rows for lat pull down, just to see if I can get more MMC and feel it more in the lats, db rows don’t get me a great feeling or pump, too heavy really, probably go for 80 or 90 next week.
Seated cable row: as above 90kg next week, crunches were banded instead of cable just because I didn’t fancy 100kg crunches!
General info dump:
3 days sugar free, 2 days low phone usage (noticeable impact immediately) 2 days of delaying caffeine intake in the mornings by 2 hours from waking (don’t generally consume from 1400 onwards so this means my window for consuming is shortened a fair bit and my overalls consumption has dropped, not necessarily the purpose but probably a beneficial collateral. Meal prep is working well, taking more effort but hopefully the impact will be positive on the next blood test, my general health, energy and body comp! 3 days without bread (not being a zealot here just want more nutritious foods and minimal processed stuff). Taking iron and b12, need to do another blood test ASAP on these.
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Been crazy busy, not much time on line or in the gym, still about zero desire to train…but that doesn’t stop me dropping hundreds on new gear! Saw bumper plates at a stupidly low price (Cerberus), wanted some since I set up my gym, but never really able to justify cost/benefit, but these plates were the same price as every other main UK supplier…but BoGoF! Couldn’t resist.
In other news making good food choices is going great, apart from a brief sabotage by my wife - pizza, which I ate, but did gently remind her that I was trying to improve my diet for health reasons, so all good, not going to go full orthorexic but want to keep pretty strict for a few months to check the impact on blood tests, will then re-evaluate.
The side effect of clean eating is weight loss, despite eating calorie dense food as much as possible, it’s dropped rapidly (4-5lbs this week), which was not the goal, I was hoping to maintain, but on the flip side, I’ve got high protein, so it won’t be muscle loss, which makes me think I’ll just keep it as it is and see where it plateaus, it’s not the worse thing to happen, just reminds me of a) how much my body hates gaining and keeping weight (if I ate instinctively I’d be 150lb again) and b) how much junk food played a part in my diet. There are no macro restrictions at all in my diet, just no sugar minimal processed food (outside of the pizza I’ve not eaten bread this week). Also using ACV before meals and cinnamon in oats (which I eat for breakfast most days), hoping for some improvement in hbac1 by Jan.
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