Nice! I’m doing 315 for sets of 8 right now. Looks like you’re not far behind.
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Thanks man! I’m loving the “safe” feel of a bit more volume. The CNS devastation is real too. I feel like we’re both back in our element after a bit of exploration. I’ll be back to strength training but I’d like to do some work on my aesthetics for now and get my joints feeling strong again.
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I’m back in my happy place but it’s also for my physique. I’m going to bring one hell of a 2019 T-ransformation. With any luck I’ll build some muscle and get up to 260 lbs by the end of the year. I’ll enjoy my achievement (as best I can because I’ll feel like a fat shit 
) but after leveling out I’ll be cutting back to 235-240 lbs with the hopes of achieving my 220 lb physique at a higher weight.
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Yesterday was shoulders + hams
OHP 115, 125, 135, 135 x8
Lat DB Raise 20s, 25s, 30s, 20s x10
Upright Rows 40, 50, 60x12
Face Pulls 4x15
Seated Ham Curl 4x10
DB SLDLs (always got better ham activation from SLDLs than RDLs) 50s, 55s, 60x10
Single Leg Ham Curl Machine 4x15
Today:
Quads + Abs. OUCH.
Pre-exhaust Leg Extension 3x20 110, 130, 150
Smith Machine Front Squats - heels elevated on a 2x4, ass to fuckin grass
1 plate, 1 plate+25 x10, last set drop set 2 plates x10, 1+25 x8, 1 plate x12, just 25s x8
Hack Squats close stance 2 plates 3x10
Bulgarian Split Squats 3x15 holding the 20s
Abs - rope crunches, decline crunches, leg raises
My poor wife, her and I stayed up late and had a good deal of wine last night and she was outright refusing to go to the gym but I pushed her to come and it ended up being the most brutal day of all, she’s ping ponging off the walls in our house from leg shakiness.
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Also, last night I made a tenderloin roast, medium rare - fell apart with a fork. Seared it then put it in the oven. Had long grain wild rice with it, and finally sautéed bella mushrooms with green beans in butter with garlic, added some heavy cream and simmered it down, and poured that over the steak and the rice. Honestly one of the best fuckin meals I’ve ever had.
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Trying to calculate my diet for the next 30 days. Bro split + bro diet, we’ll see how it goes.
Starting at 2500 cals
1.5 lbs chicken, 2 eggs, granola, low fat yogurt, 2 protein shakes and broccoli/green beans/spinach will make up my protein intake daily - will mix in ground turkey, which I would only need 1 lb of to make up for the 1.5 lbs of chicken.
Carbs will be 2 cups white rice, one baked potato, and oatmeal, plus the occasional serving of pasta.
The diet is low-fat, so the chicken/yogurt/granola/eggs and 2 tablespoons of EVOO will make up the mere 56g of fat I can consume.
220g protein, 280g carbs, 56g fat. I’m sure I’ll have to adjust servings but that’ll be my baseline that I’ll work off of. Starting tomorrow.
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Yesterday was arms day. So glad to gave an arm day again.
CGBP 135, 155, 175, 185, 4x8
BB curl 4x8 70, 80, 80, 60
Skulls on decline bench 3x12 with a 60 ez bar
Cable kickbacks 3x20
Hammer curls 3x12 45s
Concentration curls 3x20 20s
Rest day today. Did calves abs and a 2000m row.
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Today was my rest day too. I ran my ass off, did some light abs, and a foam rolling class.
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This sounds amazing!
Your making me hungry!!!
@flappinit awesome to hear you’re going to be working this program. IMO with exercise rotations at regular intervals, you could train this way for a very, very long time and keep making progress. Looks like your diet is on point as well for a great start!
Should go quite well with consistent execution. You’re extremely detailed in your approach, very much looking forward to your progress and updates.
Thanks man, very happy to have you look over my plan. The program is great so far - covers all rep ranges and rest periods with a virtually unlimited combination of exercises to sub in over time - definitely going minimum 8 weeks at a time with no major substitutions, besides supersetting some of the isolation work when my time is crunched at the gym.
I’ve had a pretty good diet for a while but really tracking macros is not only difficult, but surprising at how short/over you can be without realizing. Even breaching the 200g protein mark takes some planning, not to mention I almost started calculating my fats from scratch before I realized that between my meats/yogurt/eggs and the oil I would use to make them, I’m already there. Biggest thing was convincing my wife how detrimental alcohol is when you’re planning something like this. Totally throws off calories/recovery, etc.
I’ll take some progress pics every 30 days and give you an @ if you don’t mind. Thanks again for the suggestion!
P.S. Quad day is brutal, but I really like splitting quads/hams up and don’t want to go back now.
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You got that right! It was extremely eye opening to me when I started my first prep and everything had to be exact. Incidental fats can make up a large part for sure, something often overlooked. One tip for cooking - olive oil is certainly a great fat source. When on a prep, I preferred to drizzle it over my food to count as a fat, and cooked with chicken broth. Gets the job done and eliminates the cals from oil, and also ensures you’re getting all of the fats on your plan and not losing any that are cooked off.
That is absolutely the truth! There are numerous articles on T-Nation about it. Much better to get the cals from Whole Foods. If you really want a drink, go for something low cal like a vodka and diet soda or something, or a glass of wine, and put it in the plan. I went 2 years without drinking during competing, occasionally now I’ll have one and it doesn’t take much!
Yeah it is, embrace the paaaaain! I always enjoyed splitting up quads and hams as well, and had solid growth after a year of doing that.
Absolutely, please feel free to tag me anytime. I’m home now and be will more active on the forums, always happy to offer any input I can!
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According to one of the studies/articles on here you can consume 0.5-1.0 grams of alcohol per kilogram of body weight without killing your gains. There is 7 calories in a gram of alcohol so it’s easy to figure it out when you track nutrition. I figured out that I could have 5 ounces of rum and stay at the 0.5g/kg mark. That’s enough to take the edge off!
I probably drink too much 
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Appreciate the cooking tip, so you just cook the chicken breasts in a base of chicken stock, and then drizzle it over the chicken afterwards?
If I have that right, it makes sense - fat cooking off and oil evaporating during cooking is kind of hard to measure - this way you can do it by the tablespoon and pretty much factor out the fat from the chicken that ends up in the broth.
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Correct, actually just finished a batch of chicken thighs from the farm. I’ll take a big glass baking dish, half chicken stock and half water at the bottom, about an inch, then put the chicken in, salt liberally, cover with tin foil and pop in the oven for 45min or so. The tin foil helps keep the chicken moist and tender. If olive oil is on the plan, I’ll pour a tablespoon into a measuring spoon, and drizzle over the meal.
When cookings eggs in the morning and such, I’ll put straight chicken stock in the pan, bring to a simmer then put in eggs, veggies, etc.
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Of course some dude was on the decline bench half repping for like an hour. How do you even half rep decline, the ROM is tiny anyway. Oh well. I tried incline smith machine bench, which I’ve never done, and found it to be great for the MMC, safe on my joints, and effective as my heavy lift.
Incline Smith bench
185, 205, 225, 225, 185x5
Low Incline DB pronated at bottom to all the way supinated at top
50s 4x10 really dropping weights and focusing on my chest - all reps with eyes closed and 2-3 sec negatives, no lockout at top
Cable Crossovers 3x12
Pushups 3x15 on knuckles, 3 sec negative. Had to do the last set 3x5 rest pause style
Did calves yesterday so called it a day. This still took me 45 mins with the increased TUT from all the negatives, and lots of discreet non-mirror pec flexing. Isometric contractions, especially with the chest, make such a difference in my pump and overall difficulty of the workout.
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Lat Pulldown 4x10 superset with 5 wide grip slow eccentric pullups
Trap Deads 335 4x6 ouch.
One Arm DB Rows 85, 90, 90, 75 lbs 4x12
Cable Rows 3x12
superset with
Straight Arm Rope Pulls 3x15
HLR, Rope Crunches, Decline Crunches
Added weight to deads, added the 5 pullups superset with the lat pulldown, added weight to my single arm rows (and made them dead stop on the ground), and upped weight on the cable rows while keeping the straight pulls the same. Good lord the pump, I was at work a couple hours later lifting heavy ass bearings that go on the edge of steel cylinders and my entire right side charlie horsed, I had to drop it and find something to hang from immediately.
Food today was:
Glass of low fat milk pre-workout
60g protein shake after workout
2 eggs with hot sauce and a handful of raw green beans an hour later
Low fat plain yogurt and flax seed granola 2 hours later at work
Ground Turkey Meat Sauce in a low-fat, low-sugar marinara with whole wheat pasta
Handful of cucumber slices and more green beans
Water all damn day.
And the wife is gonna have chicken breasts she cooked in chicken broth in the oven (thanks @robstein) with white rice and steamed broccoli when I get home. I’m staying consistently around the 200-220g protein mark, and keeping fats real low. Forgot to try the chicken broth with eggs but am going to delve into that tomorrow. Diet feels great, and though some of it may be water weight, I’m down from 220-216 just in the past week! I drop weight like CRAZY but it stalls out after the first 10 pounds always, at which point I have to start dropping one or two things out of my diet. I do well on a moderate carb intake so being that I’m at 1g of protein per bodyweight and not per LBM I could stand to drop a bit of protein if my fat loss stalls, I think.
I think you might like these:
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Ooooooh, I like - funnily enough, I do my straight arm rope pulls on my knees! I also do tricep rope pushdowns on my knees too. But the additional ‘pull’ and scapular retraction in that j rope pull looks awesome, and I’m absolutely doing it next workout instead of the straight arm pulls - the straight arm pulls can sometimes make my shoulders feel a little unstable.
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