I think that a serious consideration is that you’re 6’ tall, a very lean (solid) 170 lbs. in the befores and obviously very dialed in on what works for you.
Not many coaches or anybody elae at any level are going to be able to bang out a generic lifting/eating plan that is going to do better for you than you have already done.
You may be right. Just to me, seems like not enough cals to even maintain. Not that familiar with Plazma, does it contain creatine? Could it be creatine/water gain?
No but they drive water into the muscle similar to how creatine would, so that could potentially be the case, but I also stopped taking them 4 days before the pictures. But perhaps I still had some of that intercellular water.
@SkyzykS thank you sir. I do agree that personal experience does usually step in to help guide me when I’m not trying rigidly follow a pre-made plan. What I see in the mirror and in the logbook are usually how I make adjustments (and of course adjusting nothing when good progress is being made!).
It was though. I think you’ve made smart choices so far here Dave.
Also to add, I love the log title. Though if you ever jump on the juice it would be almost criminal not to change it to ‘Dianabolical Log’.
Thank you very much! And hahaha yes that’s very clever!
Today’s training session rocked even though it was extremely humid and I was sweating like crazy. There were Putting new flooring in the cardio room so the doors were open letting in all the humid air. Today was Muscle Rounds for Legs, Biceps, and Forearms which were a lot of fun! I will likely up the weight next time as I undershot it today. My back was still super tight from the deads on Wednesday but the RDLs seemed to really work out a lot of that tightness. I feel awesome after that session.
Hack Squats 225x4,4,4,4,4,3
Dumbbell Sissy Squat 45x4,4,4,4,4,4
Romanian Deadlifts 225x4,4,4,3 185x4,4
Donkey Calf Raises 175x4,4,4,4,4,11
Preacher Curl 75x4,4,4,4,4,11
Wrist Curl on Preacher Bench 75x4,4,4,4,4,3
Had a nice bowl of Fruity Pebbles with Fruity pebbles protein mixed with skim milk and creatine. Might need a second bowl, I’m starving!
Can you explain how those muscle rounds work?
@hogar It’s 6 sets of 4 with 5 deep breaths( or 10 seconds rest) in between. It’s like a cluster set. You pick a weight that’s about your 15 rep max and you have one failure point in your 4,5, or 6th set and then you drop the weight to a weight that will allow you to finish your sets without hitting failure again. If you haven’t failed by the 6th set, don’t stop at 4 reps and just take that set to failure. This works best on selectorized machines or dumbbells where you can easily lower the weight after your failure point. I’ll include a video by Scott Stevenson explaining and demonstrating it.
Today’s workout was busted out pretty quick but I definitely kicked my butt here. These Upper body muscle rounds were super fun but brutally intense! Got to go to a family cookout afterwards!
T-Bar Row 115x4,4,4,3 90x4,4
Weighted Chins 45x4,4,3 25x4,4,4(need to lower weight)
Cable Chest Press “12”x4,4,4,3 “10”x4,4(need to lower weight)
Machine Overhead Press 150x4,4,4,3 135x4,4
Overhead Cable Tricep Extension 90x4,4,4,4,4,7
Decline Sit Up 45x4,4,4,4,3 unweighted x4
I was completely ready for today’s workout after talking yesterday off. Bumped up a volume tier to Tier II this week. Workout was about an hour and fifteen minutes. This is my big workout of the week and happy to have it knocked out on Mondays that’s for sure haha. Workout was awesome and I felt like I handled it better than last week despite being up a volume tier. 21 work sets to failure is certainly more than what I’m used to but I’m really embracing it and recovering really well! All numbers were way up from last week, which is great. I think I also had my warmup sets (not listed) down to a science today. Great day in the gym!
Lower Load/Upper Pump
Squats 225x6
Leg Extension 180x17
Squats 225x4
Leg Curl 135x10
Side Lunges 45x6(each side)
Standing Calf raise 240x11, 240x13
Seated Calf Raise 140x11,140x11
Flyes 40x37 reps, 60x16
Rack Pull-Ups 21, 16
Lateral Raises 15x20 reps, 10x25 reps
Crunches 56,25
Db Curls 20x25 reps, 20x15 reps
Overhead Db Tricep Extension 40x37 reps, 40x24
Really good workout this morning. Thought about not doing deadlifts and doing a second rowing movement instead, but I decided to man up. Deadlifts actually felt a lot better this week, it felt like the weight went up easy without any big form breakdown. Speaking of form, I decided to reassess the weight and form I was using on overhead Press (as I struggled to get 3 clean reps and not turning it into a push Press) and bench. So I lowered the weight to get into a better hypertrophic rep range, and on bench, I will sub it out for paused bench next week to work on my strength and form in the bottom of the lift. Next week I will probably also try a rowing variation such as the pendlay or Yates Row, because I’m just not feeling the standard bent Over Barbell Row like I want to. Also, I will switch from weighted pull ups to Machine pulldowns next week. This may seem like a lot of tweaks to make, but after two weeks I’m kind of getting a real good feel of what would work better for me and where to put it. Also big reality check hit me today when I realized, at least by the end of the workout, I couldn’t complete any positives on the glute-ham raises, so I really want to work on that. Anyway, here was today’s workout.
Upper Load/Lower Pump
Deadlift 315x6
Weighted Pull Ups 45x9
Barbell Bent Over Row 225x9
Bench 225x11
Incline Flyes 75x9
Overhead Press 135x3, 95x10
Scott Raises 20x13
Nautilus Leg Press “13”x45
Toe Press on Nautilus “19”x37
Glute-Ham Raise 8 negatives
Here’s is a funny/cool thing I just found on scooby1961’s old site where he shared my transformation from 15 to 16 years old. Always loved the hard work!
Dude, I watched a few of that dudes videos when I was 16, haha. YouTube fitness people suck but that guy is quite literally one of the first fitness channels on YT and did nothing but provide solid advice, plus he’s been swole forever. That’s a sweet transformation and a cool story to go along with it.
Thanks man! I agree completely, it was so hard finding good fitness information on the internet back then and most what I learned before then came from Muscle & Fitness, which has a ton of different routines with no real progression scheme, so I felt pulled in a million different directions. Talk about following a routine until the wheels come off, I always got such good results from his “Teen workout”, I did it until I was 22! I mixed in some other stuff every now and then but that was always the routine I came back to. Scooby may be forgotten by many today, but he really helped me and many others from the early days of YouTube fitness. His info really helped my dad put on muscle like he never had before in his 40s too!
Nice to read an honest, detailed appraisal of the 30/10/30 protocol.
I’ve not read of anyone on the forum having anything approaching the success of Dr D’s son, but never expected to. It’s a nice change of pace, brief and easy on the joints and body, but not the game changer some initially believed.
Best,
Ray
Thank you sir! Yes I agree, it was a nice change of pace, but it more or less just kept me in homeostasis. I believe Dr. Darden’s son was probably somewhat de-trained before while at college and rebuilt some old muscle. New Muscle simply can’t grow that quickly. I’m happy to have completed the first full detailed log of the program here in this log section for the forum at large to see(with all due respect to Ricky).
If I revisit the program I think that I’ll tweak some things, such as putting a greater emphasis on progressive overload, including making the middle full reps an evolving rep range and increasing the weight every week, to follow a traditional double progression model. And structure it with A, B, and C workouts that I try to progress on weekly. I would probably also add traditional strength work at the beginning of each workout such as a squat or deadlift with a normal rep cadence for those exercises. And warm up sets with a standard cadence would be used.
That may seem like a lot of changes, but these are some of the changes I would have to make for the program to work more optimally for myself based on my experiences. I could probably come up with a few more changes if I were to really sit and think about it.
Great story Dave!
I also followed scoobys advices and routine (and also personal experience like yours)but I was already in my 30s and never done serious lifting before. He influenced the start of my fitness journey that now many years later I can’t live without.
Crazy to believe this was 10 years ago that the before picture was taken! In some ways it feels like it was last summer and in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. I’m forever grateful for him helping get my head on straight and giving me the info I needed to grow. I think it’s really cool seeing people like you and flappinit on this site that were also influenced by him! I hope he realizes what a positive influence he’s had on so many people’s lives.
I totaly agree.
:).
Fruity pebbles protein? Who puts that out? And… does it taste like fruity pebbles?? What else could you put it in tho?