I owe you a better reply, but the new years celebrations are in full swing, so for now I’ll say I am amazingly excited for you, and always have a room open if your ever in DC. Better reply to follow lol
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Outsourcing W16D3
Bench: 205x6/6
Light Deadlift: 245x6/6
BW Chins: 15, 10
Preacher Curls: 75x8
Lateral Raises: 25x12
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Outsourcing W17D1
Press: 170x6/6
Light Squat: 255x6/6
Machine Row: 205x8/8
Leg Curl: 170x8
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No news from Harvard—next wave of acceptances is 2/10. They routinely accept people in that wave who interviewed in November, so I’m still very much alive. Doubly so since they had their first wave of rejections yesterday, which included some interviewees, and I didn’t get caught.
Admitted at Northwestern just a few minutes ago :] Admittedly, not a super strong school for clerking/gov/DC placement, but I now have multiple acceptances in the top 10, with like seven applications in that range still pending
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Outsourcing W7D2
Bench: 215x6/6
Light DL
Chin: 15/10/5
Lateral Raises: 25x8
Machine Preacher Curls: 80x6
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For anything DOD, look hard at the ivies. A lot of senior people have middling educations, and there’s almost a cult worship of Ivy League education among a decent amount of people at the pentagon.
Outside of DOD, don’t discount going close to DC. Georgetown in particular, or John Hopkins, being close to DC has some serious benefits just in networking ability.
(Also hit me up if you’re in DC. I may of said this before, but still do it)
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If any take me, it’ll be hard to turn down lol. Bama is admittedly not a super prestigious school (outside of the state, at least), so I think that just having one of their names on my resume would be a big help in counterbalancing that. Columbia, Penn, and Harvard are the three I’m still waiting to hear from.
I’ll be back for the summer :] My family has lived just Northwest of the DC border for my whole life, so I spend my breaks there.
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Have a cousin who did Columbia law. Graduated, got picked up by some big firm in the city. Worked 100 hour weeks for like 5 years, literally had a cot in a break room of the office and would just sleep there during the week, then go home to his family on weekends. Then he made an 8 figure payday and never worked another day in law 
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Outsourcing W17D3
Press: 175x4/4
Light Squat: 255x6/6
Machine Row: 210x8/8
Leg Curls: 180x8
Eight or nine more sessions of coaching, then I’m back on my own. It’s been a good learning experience (especially in terms of how to rehab injuries—the pace at which I’m putting weight back on my squat after tweaking my back is annoyingly slow, but my back feels the best it has in a while, so go figure. Ditto for the long-gone shoulder/lat issue that led me to seek out coaching in the first place), but ultimately I like making my own programming decisions.
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Outsourcing W18D1
Bench: 215x4/4
Light Deadlift: 285x6/6
Chins: +10x6/6
Lateral Raises: 25x12
Machine Preacher Curls: +85x5
Kinda bouncing back and forth Re: what program to do next. Will settle on something by the time I have to and then throw myself at it for a few months.
——School Stuff——
13ish weeks left of undergrad, and this looks like it’s going to be my easiest semester yet. I only have MWF classes, and none of them are shaping up to be particularly difficult or workload-heavy. I’m debating the idea of deferring my best law school acceptance/scholarship for a year to get an M.A. in philosophy here, since it would be free (my scholarship covers five years of tuition, grad or undergrad), a brand-new program where I’d be in the first graduating class, and would give me a PhD-application-quality writing sample, if I’m still interested in that path after working off my law school loans.
Barring that, my goals for the semester are:
- Two papers published (I have a few potential routes forwards on this—UA’s in-house undergrad journal for Polisci/policy, UA’s in-house journal for philosophy, and MUW’s Medusa.)
- Departmental award for philosophy
- Negotiate the best law school scholarship(s) I can get
- Win one of UA’s pre-law scholarships for graduating seniors
- Straight A+s (I’ve already all but guaranteed myself a summa cum laude designation, but this would get me two separate awards for a >4.0 and a transcript of all A/A+s)
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Outsourcing W18D2
Press: 175x5/5
Light Squat: 265x6/6
Machine Row: 215x8/8
Leg Curl: 185x8
Outsourcing W18D3
Bench: 215x6/5
Light Deadlift
Chins: +12.5x6/6
Preacher Curls: 85x5
Lateral Raises: 25x12
Left my gym bag in a dining hall that’s closed for the weekend/monday, hopefully nobody took it.
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Outsourcing W18D3
Press: 175x6/6
Light Squat: 270x6/6
Machine Row: 220x8/8
Leg Curls: 190x8
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Outsourcing - The End
Press: 180x4/4
Squat (My Way): Work to an easy 315x3
Machine Row: 220x8/8
Leaned-Forwards Leg Curls: 165x8
That was my last coached session. Didn’t work up even close to failure with that squat set—I’d guess that I had about eight if I wanted that to be a really miserable set. Which isn’t bad, given I haven’t squatted in my preferred style in months now. Building that back up will be fun.
So what’s next?
I am finally giving in to my long-standing curiosity and trying out DC training. I just spent some time throwing together a spreadsheet to plot out the six different sessions it includes. That adds up to thirty different movements (plus stretches) over the course of every two weeks, compared to the nine movements I’ve been doing for several months now—that itself will be interesting to adapt to.
Modifying programs is dumb, but I just spent 18 weeks doing what someone else told me to, so humor me here.
The two things that initially gave me pause about choosing the DC route were that my press 2.0 (admittedly a pet lift by now, and one that I don’t think lends itself to rest-pause) seemed to be responding well to what I’m doing now, and that I want to give some focus to my preferred style of squat (I.e., doing it more than twice a month). Accordingly, I’m going to do one set of pressing while warming up for my A-day, and one set of squatting while warming up for my B-day. Probably in the 3-5 rep range, and deliberately shy of failure, just to keep the movements grooved and make slow progress as I can.
I’m also super indifferent about training my calves (despite the fact that they’re objectively disproportionate and look dumb). Don’t be surprised if that slot mysteriously changes to one for glutes/adductors after a little while.
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Doggrcapp W1D1: A1
Press: 177.5x3
Machine Incline Chest Press: ?x6+3+2
Seated Barbell Press: 145x7+3+1
Skullcrusher: 65x12+8+6
Chins: +25x7+3+2
One-Arm Machine Row: 100x8+5+4
One day in and I’m sold on this program. I haven’t taken anything intentionally to failure in a long time, so really leaning into that gives me a ton of space to progress.
The stretching is sort of a work in progress. Chest and lats are intuitive, triceps and shoulders less so.
(Somehow forgot to record the weight of my first exercise, oops)
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Doggcrapp: W1D2 - B1
Squat: 325x3
Barbell Curls: 85x9+5+3
Reverse Curls: 60x8
Machine Standing Calves: +90 x8 (ouch)
Leaned-Forward Leg Curl: 165x8+4+2
Sled Leg Press: +10pl x7, +6pl x17
That was a fantastic session. Still a ton in the tank on my squats, and I went hard on everything else. I’m really trying to milk the negative/stretch on stuff like the curls and presses, so the numbers there don’t look great, but I’m still getting to failure.
RSVPed yes for UVA’s admitted student weekend. Barring anything unexpected in terms of scholarship/a second-round Harvard acceptance/them refusing my deferral request, that’s where I’ll end up.
Watching all my current law school friends get their 3L federal job offers clawed back has given me some pause on choosing that route lol. There’s always the option of just joining the biggest DC-based firm I can land and riding my 225k + clerkship bonus off into the sunset.
Will most likely spend this weekend in Livingston, AL, so I’m going to do W1D3 tomorrow to get ahead of schedule
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Doggcrapp: W1D3 - A2
Press: 177.5x4
DB Bench: 100x5+4+2
Machine Shoulder Press: 155x6+3+2
Pushdowns: 70x9+5+4
WG Lat Pulldowns: 160x8+4+3
Pause Shrugs: 275x10
Probably a bit too ambitious with the dumbbells—may drop the weight a bit next time and aim for 15-20ish total. All good otherwise.
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Doggcrapp: W2D1 - B2
Squat: 325x4
One-Arm DB Curls: 45x9/3/2+Stretch
One-Arm Hammer Curls: 40x10
Belt Squat Donkey Calf Raises: Machine + 2pl x12
Leaned-Backwards Leg Curl: 205 (Full Stack) x6/3/2, Stretch
Belt Squat: Machine + 8pl x5, +4pl x20, Stretch
UA’s gym added a whole new room without warning—six more racks with landmines and split-squat pads, a couple cable machines, dual kettlebells up to like 40kg, a belt squat machine, and a glute bridge machine. Decided to try out the belt squat machine—I’m a big fan. The heavy reps feel kinda weird (I noticed a tendency to get pulled forwards coming out of the hole and use the hand supports to compensate—no idea if that’s supposed to happen or not, or if it looks bad from a third-person perspective), but the light ones really let me blow up my legs without the full-body-ness of a set of twenty regular squats.
DC calves are miserable. The limiting factor isn’t even the weight, they just plain hurt lol.
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Haha yup, I remember doing them the first time, thinking they were awful, then being told by @T3hPwnisher I wasn’t even doing them right and had an even more miserable time after I re-read the article. Disgusting stuff, and I never even wanted to train calves 
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Doggcrapp W2D2 - A3
Bench: 225x3
Machine Bench Press: +4p x6+4+3, Stretch
Upright Row: 95x9+6+4, Stretch
Ultra-Strict Tricep Dip: 10+7+4+2, Stretch
One-Arm Pulldown: 180x8+4+3, Stretch
CG Cable Row: 165x9.5
Some weird double-pulley magic going on with that lat machine. I can’t pulldown 360 pounds lol.
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Doggcrapp: W2D3 - B3
Squat: 325x5
Preacher Curls: 65x9+4+3, Stretch
DB Preacher Hammer Curl: 30x8
Seated Calves: 2p x9
ATG Smith Squat: 4p50 x5, 2p x18, Stretch
Egging Pulls (Snatch grip deadlift on 45-degree back extension): 155x10, Stretch
That ends the first two-week cycle of DC, so now I have all my numbers set to start beating the logbook (which is something I much prefer to have in my mind going into a set rather than just “do as many as you can.”)
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