@DJoftheJungle1 and @s.gentz thank you for checking in and the questions! I think it’s a little tough to put tangible numbers on everything in terms of %es. I think generally what we’re looking at as a baseline is 6-8 sets of 12-15 reps with approximately My 20 rep max. Weights are indeed in pounds. Rest time between sets is 30 seconds for most movements and sometimes I’ll take a minute on the final sets of leg compounds. My aim isn’t necessarily to train to failure, but sometimes it happens. The first few sets are fairly easy, almost like warm up sets and by the time you get to the last few, they are very difficult and pushing to or close to failure. I really try to focus on Perfect reps and phenomenal mind-muscle connection.
Progression is handled fairly intuitively. It’s not necessarily like, okay once I can get 12 reps on all of my sets, I’m ready to move up. I feel like I like to build confidence with a weight before increasing. Sometimes I’m just feeling strong and want to push things a little harder, like you’ll see on the chest and quad day I’ll post shortly. My chest was feeling nice and recovered and I felt like I could really push things so I went for 205 and 165 on Bench and incline respectively, when I had been doing 185 and 155 in recent weeks. I didn’t get all of my reps on that last set of bench, so I know I’ve got room to improve there.
Honestly, I use a ton of feel and auto regulation, as well as things I observed in the previous session to help me determine my weights as well as exercise selection. I’m not afraid to mix things up, but I may not touch stuff if I feel like my training is really in a flow state and I’m getting a lot out of my current exercises and exercise sequence. Like my arms and chest feel like they’ve been growing phenomenally well on my upper body and ditto for my quads. I usually only like to barbell squat once a week so I use a fair bit of variation on quad days.
I’m greatly inspired by Serge Nubret and his training style. These videos are a really great starting point to get a little more into the roots of my current training philosophy.
And I’m with you, it’s felt great to be able to train like this and push hard with very minimal wear and tear impact on my joints. Just sore muscles!
@davemccright
Thanks for the insight. Looking over your training book this was kind of the answer I expected.
I have 4 more weeks after this week of heavy lifting and then i’ll be moving toward a program that more resembles what you are currently doing.
I used to love American Muscle Magazine on ESPN. I would stay up all night on the weekends to try to catch it. That was when ESPN (in my opinion) was at its best. You could catch a racquet ball tournament, a Jai alai match from Miami, then finally American Muscle Magazine.
Bodybuilding really got awesome exposure Back then it seems like. I see clips from Frank Zane, Lee Priest and Shawn Ray together demonstrating exercises pretty often! I can’t even imagine something like that today.
Had some rough sleep this week, finally cleaned it up last night and am feeling World’s better. Last night’s back and ham session was a wake-up call. I just completely ran out of gas by the end. I also did it later in the day than usual and only had one meal at that point plus my intra. Lessons learned. Today’s shoulder and arm session was perfect. I had tons of energy and the pump was just next level. Hope my next Back day is my best Back day.
Chest and quads today and boy oh boy was the decision to squat after chest a brutal one! I felt good and focused on my chest movements but I was really huffing and puffing on the squats today. I came home and crashed on the bed. That was some damn work! 8 sets of squats in about 10 minutes. Really good day in the gym. Looking forward to hitting some back next.
Yes sir! I’ve just been not keeping up with website or log at all lately. Just been lacking motivation in the logging department.
I got hit with a sickness that really only affected me for a day last Weekend. I took 20 grams of Glutamine and was ready to rock the next day. Everything has been really on point since then. I feel like uploading every single session since last Tuesday would be overkill, so I’ll just upload my two from this week. I screwed up and wrote September 21st on one of them for some reason, even though it was yesterday, December 22nd.
Got my best back day in a few weeks today! Just been really connecting like a beast on pull-ups lately! The one arm Cable high rows were sweet too. Everything was really good but those two exercises really stood out. Also tried Landmine RDLs for the first time today and used a big internal rotation focus. My glutes and hams got lit up like a Christmas tree. I’ll add more sets to it in the weeks to come.
Also Steelers won this weekend in a big game over the Lions and I’m still flying high from that!
