Well, sickness never came. Turns out the lower back muscle pain ended up spreading throughout the entire backside of my body and quads over the past few days. I have no clue what’s caused this, but my best guess is just overall stress. My traps, down through my entire back, my glute/hips and hamstrings all the way down my calves are giving me a steady, radiating pain.
Weighed 204 yesterday, which is great. I’m up 10lbs since the start of the transformation and I’m feeling as lean, if not leaner than I was at the start. Muscles are seemingly filling back out and possibly even growing again?! Strength has been good, minus this back issue. Squats have been feeling a bit off these past few months, but I’m thinking some form changes should help them to feel better. Might try a bit wider foot spacing.
A couple things I need to work on these next few weeks…
Sleep. I’m not getting enough of it and my body is begging me for more. I’ve been getting as little as 4 and as much as 6.5 hours a night. More often than not, I’m right around 6 hours. The only thing I can do about this is getting to bed earlier.
Try to relax more. I’m still wearing the fit bit, and I’m averaging over ~15k steps a day. Oddly enough, I have substantially more steps during days off than work days. I’ve gotten close to 20k a few times. I’m super active with the little man chasing him around and playing , so there is only so much I can do in that regard. I don’t really have a plan on how to relax, as most of what I do is necessary, but I’m at least aware of it.
Eat more. I’ve been doing pretty good with diet, and there has been a slow and steady weight increase these past few months. I could stand to gain weight a little bit faster. I’ve been fairly consistent with the additional shakes added first and last thing of the day, maybe packing a bit more for lunch and bringing a jar of peanut butter/bag of almonds into the van would be enough.
I need to start thinking about what’s coming after 531+RP. My gut is telling me to continue with a 531 template and ideally it’d be 3day/week. I’ll dig back through the books and see if something jumps out at me. I should be able to get away with continuing with my current TMs given what I’m hitting on my + sets, but week 6 will be a good indication of where I’m at in that regard.
I really want to give DC a shot for an extended amount of time, but I don’t think I have my recovery sorted out well enough to tackle it just yet.
Should be able to shoot for some PRs on pretty much all lifts except squat which I’m excited about. I’ve finally worked back up to just about where I was when my son was born. Squats are still lagging a bit, but they’ll get there. Deadlifts have been surprisingly great. I need to work on getting my upper body lifts up to par with my lower body stuff.
@tlgains here is a snapshot of my day today. Didn’t want to take over your log with my stuff, but this gives you an idea of why I am the way I am.
The majority of this includes carrying a ladder, tool backpack, or sched 40 carbon steel pipe.
That’s almost 20k steps, 102 floors (not quite accurate… but also not that far off…) by 830pm. I just got home from work an hour ago and have more shit to do around the house. I’ll be lifting tomorrow late-morning some time. Shooting for some PRs on deadlifts as my back feels a bit better today!!
Well, today went about as well as I expected it to. Recovery obviously hasn’t been up to par, and I think the main issue here is sleep. Went to bed at 930-945 ish last night, but only ended up getting around 5 broken up hours when all was said and done.
Tried the top deadlift set 3 separate times after taking short rests and I just couldn’t muster the power to get it more than a few inches of the ground. Decided to skip the Widowmaker because my body was just telling me “no”.
I may just swing right into the next 3 week cycle and see what happens. I know I have the strength for this stuff, I just need my body to be ready to do it.
Performed stretches after chest, shoulders and back. Forgot to do them after triceps. I didn’t time them as I spent part of the time trying to find the target muscles. I’ll start timing once I get into a groove.
Weights go up on pulldowns next A1 day.
Well, 6 months of 531 got me back to feeling confident in my lifting. Time to try something fresh and new to make progress on somewhat unfamiliar movements.
@T3hPwnisher yeah man I’m excited to finally give DC a shot. It’s been on my list for quite some time.
@heretolog man I don’t know how I feel about that gif. It’s both unsettling and mesmerizing at the same time, haha.
I wanted to expand a bit on switching to DC. I’ve read and re-read so many articles and forum posts on DC over the past couple years I feel like I’m forgetting more than I am remembering. Luckily @T3hPwnisher@heretolog and @alex_uk log here so I can steal movements/ideas from them. I’ll have to get creative with quad exercises, but I have a couple in mind off the bat that will hopefully fit with the program.
As much as I love 531, it has its time and place in my life. It is an outstanding fallback for me when I just don’t know what to do, but at certain times I feel the urge to commit fully to another program. This isn’t a knock on 531 but for some reason I get to a point, usually after 5-6 months, where I’ve just had enough of it. I didn’t want to continue 531/RP, and I think that last deadlift day kind of was the nail in the coffin. Instead of halfassing my way through the final 3 weeks, I just decided to run DC.
I am SUPER excited to start something new. I really like the framework of this program and the mindset that goes along with it.
I think I just need to dig into it, make some mistakes, eat a ton of meat (and protein shakes) and get stronger.
Lean on @FlatsFarmer here, and, by proxy, Westside Barbell: you can get a TON of variation by just playing around with foot stance and bar height. A close stance high bar squat is a totally different animal from a wide stance low bar squat. Duck foot front squat is different from toes forward front squat. To stay nothing of bands and chains.
My initial thought was to do a close stance heel elevated high bar back squat and keep low bar back squats completely out of the program for the time being- they’ll always be there when I’m ready!
And yes i will absolutely have to ask (beg) @FlatsFarmer for assistance with his encyclopedic knowledge and outside of the box thinking!
The mass focused program I’m following right now says to use heels up high bar, front squats and slow eccentric belt squats for quads. You guys are already (mostly) nailing it!
This picture doesn’t do it justice, but that’s two massive grilled cheese sandwiches.
One is shaved steak, gruyere, french onions (cooked like in french onion soup) and the other is mozzarella, basil, prosciutto, balsamic and some marinara on the side. Both are on thick cut sourdough bread.
After eating half the plate I starting pouring sweat, and then continued until they were gone… and then had to take a cold shower.
Delighted to see you start DC, I’m like you I love 531, such a simple and no nonsense, flexible approach to getting stronger. I feel like once you get your head around a few bits DC is the same, I’m feeling like I could alternate between the two indefinitely, when one gets stale or goals change switch it to the other framework.
How are you finding the stretches? Its a unique torture.
Living like an absolute king, when I do grilled cheese it’s absolute white trash (butter every possible surface of some cheap white bread, load it with cheese and fry that sucker!).
I like this a lot. I truly love 531 but it definitely becomes mentally taxing at a certain point. I like the idea of switching back to 531 after training gets stale.
Yes, this exactly. It feels 100% like torture. I’m still figuring out exactly how to do them, and I think I find the correct positions when it feels like my muscles are about to rip apart, haha.
That’s my go-to as well! My wife wanted to have some that were a little bit more fancy and we both picked a “style” to make.
