School is getting crazy and super stressful. Considering the amount of crap I have been through, it is hard to believe there is still stuff that stresses me put as much as school does. I guess adding that to kids, a wife, job searching, and all the house repairs going on it all kind of adds up. I am trying to make sure I am staying on track with lifting and eating as best I can but I know it is going to be the first thing to go if my schedule just doesn’t allow it. To remedy this and to try to stay on the bbb beefcake program still, I am thinking of maybe dropping to fewer days a week if I have to, maybe two, and just extend the amount of time on the program. Things should die down once I finish my senior design presentation and final projects for my engineering classes which should be next week. So if I can just push through for a little longer though I’ll be good.
16 November 2019
Deadlift
5 x 205 lb
5 x 235 lb
5 x 260 lb
5 sets x 10 reps x 205 lb
Felt crampy in my lower back again today. I can’t seem to find my groove for high rep deadlifts. Skipped assistance today so I can have more time to work on my engineering projects. Workout was ok overall.
Edit: My wife wouldn’t let me skip assistance so here it is. My shoulders felt like boulders after these, like always. I swear I am getting worse at pushups.
Superset
Pushups
5x 20
With
Face pulls
5 x 20
That’s a good wife right there.
Lol yeah. She said we could cut out ten minutes of the end of the day to do them so we did it right before bed.
17 November 2019
Overhead Press
5 x 90 lb
5 x 100 lb
5 x 115 lb
10,10,8,8,7 x 90 lb
Bulgarian Split Squat
15,10 x BW + 25 lb
Bench Grip Rows
5 sets x 10 reps x 165 lb
I ended up deciding to lower my tm to 120 instead of 130 and just ran with the percentages for the third week. This put me at the same weights as last week, but I failed again today on the bbb sets for press. Not without a fight though. A good grind on all the last few reps of every set. I am going to keep the tm at 120 for the next 3 week cycle since I failed reps.
Good idea, but a possibly even better idea is dropping your TM even further.
What would you recommend? @MarkKO
Drop it to 100 lbs. That’ll give you a ton of room. You won’t miss lifts, and that’s key. You shouldn’t EVER miss a lift in training, especially not a supplemental. It might not seem important, but missing lifts becomes a habit. You get accustomed to it, it becomes part of the process. So failure becomes part of the process, as does poor judgement.
The idea is to accumulate fatigue and recover. Manage your fatigue so that it doesn’t become so great you get hurt. If you’re missing lifts, either you have mismanaged your fatigue pretty badly or the weight is too high which means mismanaged fatigue is coming.
If you’re worried that the TM will be too low and be too easy, try this: instead of 20 minutes to complete your BBB sets aim to do them in 10 or 15. Hit ridiculous rep PRs on your top set.
I’ll give it a shot. Did you mean do pr sets now on bbb or do them later when I get off bbb? The general recommendation was 5 PROs with bbb beefcake, so just trying to clarify.
If the program you’re doing says 5s Pro do that. I wasn’t sure.
But yeah, drop your TM way down and if the BBB sets are too easy just reduce the time to do them in.
Thanks man. Appreciate the advice.
Things are not going well at all and the week just started. Teammates on engineering senior design project are not pulling their weight and it is getting really stressful and annoying. Also, my wife tweaked her back and found out that someone close to her as a child died and is having a funeral Thursday. So, I am taking an unplanned deload week for everything except for bench since it only takes 10 minutes anyways and I don’t want to stop midway through the cycle. I’ll resume lifting on the regular schedule on Monday.
That sucks man. What kind of engineering project are you involved in?
Dude, it takes you 10 minutes to bench 8 sets? 60 sec rests?
Process intensification through slug flow kn narrow channel reactors. It deals with mass transfer and some chemistry which is a little out of my wheelhouse since I’m a mechanical engineering student but they assigned it to us bc it uses computational fluid dynamics which is kind of a big field. However I am the only one who has any idea about any of it.
Well now it’s shorter. I am down to 15 sec rest on the next workout but yeah.
That sucks dude.
It’s ok to take deloads when life happens, you won’t get weaker.
Sounds complicated lol
You’re doing beefcake right? Can you complete 10 reps at a time with that short of a rest?
Yeah I figure that much. Especially since in 531 use to be a deload every 4 weeks anyways so I’m sure I’m good.
It’s definitely something I don’t want to be doing but it is a necessary part of my curriculum, so I’m stuck with it.
I am doing beefcake for everything but bench. Bench is a strength program since I don’t really care for more mass on my chest at this point.
19 November 2019
Squats
5 x 195 lb
5 x 225 lb
5 x 260 lb
5 sets x 10 reps x 195 lb
Superset
Pullups
5 sets x 4 reps x BW +15 lb*
With
Pushups
5 x 20
Did 5 reps on each pullup set, but the last rep on each set was ugly so I’m not counting them.
My wife woke up with her back feeling better and decided she didn’t want to do a deload. We will just play this week by ear then. Squats felt as heavy as last week despite being easy lighter. Fatigue is definitely building up. My pulling has only gone up 10 lb on rows and my pullups have gotten worse as well as my pushups and ohp. At this point, I can’t wait for a deload week. Hopefully it all pays off and I see good gains.
Ok, based off of what markko recommended for ohp, I am going to drop the pullups to bodyweight and maybe slowly add reps in. That way I’m not pushing my weights so much and failing reps. It’s only assistance anyways.