Dt79 Flight from the Abyss 19/9/2022

[dt79]

A warm welcome to everyone who decided to drop by. Friends I’ve made here over the years, enemies, Clown Dicks. You have let me bring honor to my ancestors.

I’m not sure why I set up this log, actually. Anyone who knows me probably knows I don’t even know what I’m going to do at the gym until I’m there. Only plan I have is the bodypart breakdown for each workout, which I’ll describe later.

As for my diet, you aren’t going to see anything special because when I’m gaining or maintaining weight, I just add more meals on top of the 3 meals my wife cooks. They will always be the same. Since I’ve lost 50lbs, I probably won’t be using any protein shakes till later when weight gain starts to stall.

So, gotta warn anyone who’s here to learn something, trust me. You won’t lol.

Well, anyway, after surviving an 8-month shitstorm and feeling emotions I never thought I would feel, I think this is gonna be one of those “keep myself accountable” logs. I’ve been procrastinating for a month, which is something I do not do. So I figured I’d need to do something I’ve never done.

Still only 70% of where I used to be mentally but I’m gradually getting back to equilibrium. I thought it would be logical to finally start a log since I clawed my way out of a mental hell by writing. Just writing.

So, I’m gonna start tonight. It will be a generic session just seeing where I stand at the moment and gauging my level of technique when it comes to compound lifts. I’m not really sure, actually.

Any suggestions?

I think I probably created this log for advice when it comes to lifting again. I’m self-aware enough to know that if I cannot be objective, I’ll defer to advice from others.

I’d really appreciate any input from anyone. I got out of mental hell by doing some kind of CBT variation called Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (confirmed by my shrink). I have no real ego even if I do sound like I do most times. It’s just that I never wrote anything other than formal work stuff and the only forum I ever post on is here.

You wanna talk about that stuff, I’m cool with it. I didn’t want to go into details in another thread, but I believe I can over here.

Just fire away, guys and gals.

[deyan]

I wish you success with your diary and training. Straight forward and up!

[SkyzykS]

Glad to see.

[dt79]

Thanks guys! I have brought honor to my ancestors!

Seriously, I’ll be going down in around 6 hours. Anyone got any advice for me? Any interesting programs? Not talking about optimal or whatever here. Just something that’s interesting lol.

Otherwise I’ll just go do a very light version of what I would normally do with probably half the volume.

Or maybe I’ll go check out one of the new programs that are popular nowadays. I’m free! Like a noob again haha! I can experiment with anything I want!

[SkyzykS]

@dt79

Otherwise I’ll just go do a very light version of what I would normally do with probably half the volume.

This is a very good plan to just bite the doms bullet/first week back into it.

This from someone who gets impatient and says “Let’s test maxes just to get a baseline” within a first week or so back.

[deyan]

Tell us more about you - age, weight, sports experience. I’ve read a lot of your posts, but they’ve been on non-training topics. And what are your goals, if any.
I didn’t read well, or rather I didn’t understand, but you want to train separate muscles on separate days, right? How many days a week do you have to train?

[dt79]

Actually, this is what I’m gonna do for probably Squats and Incline bench lol.

But WHILE I do so, I will consciously note when/how/why my technique breaks down.

My workouts are really pretty simple.

Main Compound Lift
Incline Bench: Something like 531.
If I’m doing this later, it will probably be something like:

Work up to 4-6RM. If I don’t get any indication like some pain in my shoulder, I will go to complete failure. They only have Incline Benches in the Racks area anyway so there’s no possibility of getting pinned.

Then I’ll consider stuff like:

1. Is my technique still there?

2. Have I forgotten certain mental cues or having problems with intermuscular coordination?

3. Did my “form breakdown” occur before technical failure (1-2 reps before it gets completely ugly).

If I think one of the above has happened, I’ll several sets of 5-6 reps @ 50% of the working weight.

If my technique is still solid and I’m just weak, I’ll drop 30% of the weight and max out the next set.

After that, I’ll do whatever I want.

My split will always remain the same if I’m not on any program. And even when I’m using Mountain Dog programs, I change them up to fit my split lol.

Day 1
Heavy Chest
Side Raises, triceps

Day 2
Heavy Squats
If I did Day 6 the previous cycle, I’ll do less hamstring work because when I’m training to gain muscle, I will do deadlifts plus stiff legged deadlifts after that.

Day 3
Heavy Shoulders if I feel like it.
Moderate weight chest
Rear delts

Day 4
Back
Lat focus plus maybe hammer curls thrown in if I did day 6 for the previous cycle. If not, it will be fully back training.

Day 5
Arms.

Day 6 (Optional)
Deadlifts
Mid-back focus

And here’s something y’all please don’t misunderstand. I don’t record my weights. But I have a pretty good memory. Nothing I do is done for the hell of it when I get serious. I more or less know whether I’m getting stronger if I’m doing calf raises lol.

It comes with years of experience. I wouldn’t ever ask anyone new to do the same.

Well, that’s probably gonna be the plan later.

[dt79]

I’m in my early 40s. Lost 50lbs and had a complete hiatus from the gym for 6 months and sporadically turned up for 6 months prior to that. I am hypothetically not natty.

I was underweight - 49kg @ 1.77m (5’9) when I started lifting. Gained around 100lbs over several years. I had already gained around 70lbs IIRC before I hypothetically started using lol.

[dt79]

@deyan

I didn’t read well, or rather I didn’t understand, but you want to train separate muscles on separate days, right? How many days a week do you have to train?

Ok, see, the way I do stuff will have a certain structure like what I wrote above. The rest will be dynamic. And when I tweak things, I do so based on results, so I do not have a fixed plan.

I also have options when it comes to working out on a certain day from the set up. So basically, almost everything is dynamic.

The only thing I keep constant will be the progression model for some main lifts if I’m using 531.

You can think of it as some kind of “Westside” kind of mindset, with the other exercises being done to bring up a weakness I think I may have, but I wouldn’t know the weakness before I actually start any “program”.

Hope this kinda explains how I approach things.

[SkyzykS]

@dt79

I don’t record my weights. But I have a pretty good memory.

I can relate. I’ve never tracked religiously, but I know what I did last week, so its like a rolling reference point.

That, and I havent been in a legit gaining phase in years. Mostly just maintenance, and in recent years less loss and basic habit.

[dt79]

Note that I am using the term “technique” and not “form”.

“Technique” is a gauge of whether both intra and intermuscular coordination are up to standard. @T3hPwnisher has been saying this a lot when dumbasses give him shit about his deadlifts lol.

“Form” is just visual thing and only really experienced coaches will be able to tell if there’s anything wrong with it.

I’ll give you an example. When you see someone’s, ass rise first during a deadlift, how many possible reasons would there be? If it’s a deadlift bar, this will happen when you’re loading your hamstrings and you don’t really care for “pulling the slack” out of the bar. Good lifters use the “wrong form” to their advantage. You wanna go tell that Magnussen dude his “form” is wrong lol?

It can also indicate that bar is too far away from you since the bar will only leave the ground when you’re in your strongest position and it will only travel in a straight line. You’ll see videos of the bar rolling backwards before it leaves the ground when some noobs ask for a form check. Sometimes this happens without them being “pulled forward”(the ass rising) at the same time so there’s no indication of any problems unless you look at it in slow-mo. “Form” may look good, but the technique is wrong.

And even if the “form” looks wrong, WHY is it wrong? Is it the inability to optimally activating the hips? That’s an intramuscular coordination problem, which is part of “technique”. Going by just how the wrong form looks normally just involves looking at the intermuscular portion.

Just a few examples to explain my thought process.

[SkyzykS]

Thats a good way of looking at it. An old lifting buddy was a 700+ puller & 6-700 squat with a cat back on his dl.

I’m not telling him anything. That dude has it figured out just fine.

[anna_5588]

Welcome to the training logs!

I’m interested to learn about your training

[dt79]

Glad you dropped by.

[dt79]

Well, my esteemed guests and friends, here’s what happens when you get fucked in the head for the first time in your life and develop OCD.

I did not go to the gym last night. This is not me. I have never been this way before…

Will expand later. Yes, I know the irony but believe me this part is not intentional.

[dt79]

Ok, I guess I owe everyone an explanation. Including myself.

I wrote a couple of things down while getting ideas and coming up with objectives and rationales.

And then I realized I was in denial. I got it ass backwards. And then a mental storm hit me hard again. FUCK.

So here’s the issue. I write A LOT. I capture every single idea I have in my head and write it down. For fellow IT nerds whom are all much more knowledgeable than me or WILL BE, I modelled it like a cloud data pipeline with the concept of “separating compute and storage”. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Onenote quick notes pinned to the side of my PC or laptops for ideas. It’s the perfect app notebook for a Zettelkastern nerd but:

1. I do not want to process them there. I hate the UI lol. So it’s for fleeting notes which I use to create literature notes in another notebook. But I set up some automation stuff to store processed notes back in Onenote while keeping ones I find useful now or will potentially need to use in my “Slip-box” which is in my main notebook, which I also back up in the cloud, when I’m done. You see what I mean when I say I “separate compute from storage”?

• In Zettelkastern terms, and please, PLEASE understand that I’m following it as a CONCEPT so I am not doing the same thing as others, just like articles I’ve read about the usage explain it differently from me as well as the recommended ways to use it.

• The Slip-box is used for what are called “permanent notes”. I’m bringing this up first because I the notes I store there aren’t permanent lol.

• Atomic ideas and stuff which are captured are “fleeting notes” or “entry notes”.

• Ideas you get while reading stuff, not just something pops up in your mind, are placed in a database that’s like a “reference box”, in which you write small chunks of stuff and store the article or whatever you’ve been reading as the source.

• All these go into the Reference Box. You MUST link the source or at least download it with google keep or notion’s webclipper.

• From these references, you write short notes AND keep them to 1 or 2 topics per note. These are called “literature notes”. And you find connections link them when you find connections.

• From these notes, you write “permanent notes”, which is a compilation of all these literature notes. That’s it in a nutshell. It’s not the notes. It’s the process of discovery and finding connections. That’s the benefits you derive from it. If you are studying, it’s especially useful because you are actively looking for connections and exploring further stuff, which is why you need to keep the REFERENCES even if you only understand half of them so you can explore them in further detail when you have more understanding of the topic.

• Note: This is just the concept. I do not apply what I’m written above the same way.

2. So, if you get the concept in point 1, you’ll get that I have a lot of “entry notes” using different apps. Microsoft todo for atomic tasks, which are derived from problems I need to solve really fast. After I’m done, I evaluate them in my main notebook, which is Notion, and store it under “archives” in another database in it based on its purpose.

• Remember, this is for TASKS. The notes associated with such tasks are stored in a way that I can makes sense of them even if I don’t know what the full process of the problem I was solving was. But do understand that this is the main goal, not the optimal way of storage. You wanna store logs for all components of the problem somewhere at least.

• The reason why I stated the first part as the priority (which is not optimal) is because all these components are for future use/reference because most solutions are pretty similar if you look at the root of the problems. It’s the same thing when you google for code. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when there’s already a solution available. But it has to be easily retrievable, so I store it in a separate database in the same notebook.

• Entry notes and ideas can be stored in places less accessible cross platform. I may browse through them from time to time to see whether I can get new ideas. This is why they are stored in OneNote. The tiny, small chunks plus the auto link generation if I copy and paste some text from something I’m reading online. These provide me with things like tracing the lineage of the processed stuff I have in my main notebook, for example. If I have some ideas that can come into fruition from the one or more small chunks I have there, I can also do more exploratory stuff to collect more data from the source.

So I have different databases in different places that aren’t limited to the ones I’ve mentioned but they’re all connected and designed in a way that curation and stuff can be done easily. But processing, as in notes for brain storming, problem solving and coming up with solutions for projects are retrieved from a database that’s accessible easily and placed in relevant databases for processing along with new data generated. When they are used, I move them to another one for storage depending on the re-usability.

This is just a very brief breakdown of my system. It is complex, but it wasn’t built in a day. It was slowly put together over 7 months and I’m still improving it. Don’t try emulating this shit in one shot. Remember I took MONTHS and when I added stuff, it was based on need for more organization and finding new apps for inputs, not designed beforehand, which is why I said I only based it on a CONCEPT.

Here’s the problem. I was writing something that went too close to CBT area and then I realized that I was still not myself. I used to be someone who got things done by habit and responsibility, with the primary driver being fear of guilt for not doing shit to the best of my abilities. I am more productive. But I’m not me.

This shit is dangerous if you’re not being guided by a trained psychologist. But I’m not experimenting with shit again. I’m just going to stop the dialectic shit for some time.

Here’s more irony to add to yesterday’s post. @T3hPwnisher You know what subject I hated most in uni? Jurisprudence. I HATED IT LMAO. Now I’m doing something similar to get myself out of the rut CBT put me in. Dammit lol.

But at least I know the root issue. Or I THINK I DO.

[dt79]

Ok, so I was still doing some research on how to further “catify” the house. And I ALWAYS stress that one must define objectives and provide valid rationales - past experience, historical “evidence”, reliable sources etc.

PLEASE do not get me wrong. I AM NOT AN OVERTHINKER. I state goals, define the process and gather data to meet them. Such data must be valid.

So, in the process, I had a discovery that the advice for creating more vertical space wasn’t the ROOT of the issue when it comes to territory. The real question is “Why would any human, animal, etc want more territory?”.

It’s about resources. Then I recalled I’d watched a YouTube video where that Galaxy fellow was saying “cats need more stuff” and I got it. The issue to address first, if it’s a territorial one, is to give them more stuff to claim ownership over. And I realized there was a little less fighting when I bought a couple of cheap ottomans and some scratch boards.

Which is why I always thought the home catification products like floating shelves and shit for increasing vertical space was rubbish but I didn’t know why. It made no sense unless these are used for hiding from other cats, which does not solve the root of the problem.

Again, don’t get me wrong, of course you wanna give them more vertical space when you can. I just needed to know WHY, which would affect HOW I do it.

So I checked some shit out and yeah, it’s OWNERSHIP that’s the root of it. More territory means more resources (instinctually). More resources do not equal more territory.

Then I had a fucking realization about myself and realized I was also approaching my own “Flight from the Abyss” ass backwards. And then I stopped functioning.

That’s what happens. I’m fine now. It will happen again. Which is why I have my stuff organized in a way in which I can basically operate on auto pilot as long as I don’t have to do any physical tasks.

[dt79]

Alright so I showed up. Oh boy was I disappointed but at least I got my ass back there.

My weight now is 145lbs or something like that.

And here’s what I’ve been saying to noobs many times since I’ve lost over 50lbs (was not due to any emotional issues, just 18 hr work days) and gradually gained it back, which was in 2013 when I started posting here. You will not be able to efficiently recruit muscle fibers without experience and really challenging yourself. It happened to me again.

I took an inventory of the new stuff they have at the gym. Now they a real leg press machine and a vertical rowing machine where your chest is supported.

Cool.

Saw the Incline Bench in the Rack was free and decided I’d do chest and shoulders today.

I tested myself with the bar for 2 sets to see how it felt.
It felt light.
Put on 10kg plates. Felt like I could do like 15+.

Went up by 20kg (10kg each side).
3 reps and that was it.

Did another set and got 2 reps which and I almost didn’t get the 2nd rep, then took the weights off and repped out with only the bar.

Evaluated my technique. It was fine. Based on this, I didn’t bother to do multiple light sets. It was a case of muscles firing, which, IMHO, just needs something challenging and the body will self-regulate.

To be clear, if I thought it was a technical issue as in intermuscular coordination, I would have done several sets of lighter weights. This was just a case of not being able to fully recruit muscle fibers, which just requires the body to “perceive” that I’m going to get killed. So, I went to failure since I prioritize awareness of the target muscles firing for every rep I do.

Did similar stuff with the Seated Bench Machine but cranked the RPE up to 11 plus several partials on the last set.

Did a couple of FST-7 kind of sets on the pec deck just focusing on getting the most tension i could for the pec muscles.

Then went for side raises and rear delts. Same thing. Just focusing on the contraction. Getting the intramuscular stuff was the goal. Failure was a by-product.

That’s it in a nutshell. Got a long way to go but it’s a start.

[dt79]

Gonna head to the gym soon. Damn, now I’m remembering motivational quotes from movies and putting them in my journals.

“Those people in the forest, what did you see on them?

Fear.
Deep rotting fear.
They were infected by it. Did you see?

Fear is a sickness. It will crawl into the soul of anyone who engages it.
It has tainted your peace already. I did not raise you to see you live with fear.
Strike it from your heart. Do not bring it into our village.”

• Apocalypto

I’ve mentioned this before but I’'ll repeat it again here for everyone. When I was a little kid, my Dad used to smack me whenever I felt anxious, which led to somehow NOT being able to feel anxiety since I was around 6.

He had the idea. Didn’t do it in an acceptable nor appropriate manner. But it worked. So who gives a fuck?

Is this the reason why I’m so fucked in the head now?

Come the fuck on. I’ve lived probably 60% of my life functionally and brought value to people whom I’ve done business for and with and received reciprocation accordingly.

If that was the cause of my state, I’d tell him not to change anything he did if I could travel back in time.

Ok, so I’ve been cooking the stuff I every single day in Uni and my wife is whining about it but @anna_5588 , you know old school Chinese women. You finish what THEY COOK at the same time and they end up leaving you alone.

It was just a lot of beef, chicken franks with a little pasta and that magnificent pasta sauce from prego.

I have no plans for what I will do tonight. This is the time to explore stuff and get some ideas for increasing MMC. I also wanna go balls to the wall on that rowing machine.

This is me.

I go by objectives, principles and concepts, not with any fixed plan. I evaluate results and keep the stuff that works and drop the stuff that doesn’t.

And here’s the thing. Years ago, I realized I was actually doing some form of periodization by doing this before the Zatororsjk… Zatoichi… the guy who wrote Super Training with Mel Siff thing became a fad.

Yes, that was a time when that pro-Westside site which encouraged fucking TUNA SHAKES was a thing. Can’t remember the site. Can’t forget the taste of fucking tuna shakes.

Huh? You all thought I was a meathead just because I don’t like talking about science and shit? I’ve read the entire fucking book lol. Christian Thibaudeau even motivated me to go take actual Olympic weightlifting lessons at a community fitness center which hired 2nd or 3rd tier China coaches who were LITERALLY earning peanuts during that era.

Which is why I’m been saying this a lot:

1. Rippetoe does not know how do cleans. I mean, sure, you can call them “cleans” if the way he teaches them works for you when it comes to improving the deadlift but I can tell you if you try to deadlift like a real clean, you will be lifting around 70% of your max AT MOST. So, if your goal is to learn the Olympic lifts, don’t listen to him. If not, do whatever gives you results.

2. Your knees at the bottom of a HIGH BAR SQUAT or Front Squats going “inwards” is NATURAL because your quads need to be activated to keep you upright when you’re coming up from the bottom or your ass will pop up first if your hips take over.
   (This will not happen to everyone. It’s pretty individual and dependent on your leverages, i.e, limb bodypart whatever ratio, how your brain (Ha! You thought I was going to say “neuromuscular system” didn’t you?) does shit.)

• I AM NOT SAYING you shouldn’t be utilizing your hip flexors as much as humanly possible. I’m just saying there are no fucking fixed rules.

3. Who the fuck came up with the nonsense about hypertrophy only occurring systemically? If this was the case, I can sit on my recliner chewing gum all day and my quads will grow. As usual, some dumb fuck misread some studies which were probably about the response of the HPTA producing hormones like TESTOSTERONE when the body is put under a certain amount of stress when doing complex movements and somehow thought this equated to muscular growth not being a localized thing.

Will update later.

Mel Gibson really should start making movies again.

[dt79]

Well, I’ve been going to the gym but, as expected (I’ll explain this part later), workouts were just… not sure what word I’d use for it. Stale? Shitty? Boring?

See? Told you that part needed to be explained.

I wasn’t going through the motions.

I had been prepared for this and everything was expected since I had previously stopped working out for several years and then got back all my gainz in 3-4 years after starting again. The last 15lbs I gained in the last laps before I went into maintenance were hypothetically not done naturally.

Let me explain what I mean by “15lbs I gained”, assuming I did gain those 20lbs and this is not a hypothetical scenario, which it is.

It means I hypothetically gained around 25-30lbs in all. This consisted of:

1. Intramuscular fluid retention

• Water retention - Lots of strong guys and gals here, so if you’re natty and take part in powerlifting meets and do some stuff with your bodyweight with sodium and shit, you’ll get what I’m saying.

• Some shit that’s on the label of your multivitamin bottle.

2. A little excess fat because it’s pretty tough to gauge how much LBM (actual muscle, BUT NOT skeletal muscle tissue) vs fat has been gained when they are filled with the aforementioned fluids.

So I’ll try to explain this. It fucking SUCKS to be so fucking weak again. However, I got to build the foundations back.

After the first cycle through each compound exercise for each muscle group, in which I just went to complete failure including deadlifts even though I don’t normally deadlift, I went into MMC mode, which, for compound lifts, means going RPE 8 - 9.5 before technical failure.

What I mean by technical failure is, for example, if you’re grinding a squat and your ass is rising in every rep, that’s a weakness in the chain, i.e, the muscles meant to keep you upright are either not developed enough or not firing optimally, which causes the dominant muscles to take over, which causes a breakdown in technique.

This means, especially for the squat, that I stopped at around an RPE of 7 of my real max.

Which is why I now have to have to keep tabs on myself. What is getting the next rep going to do for me other than and ego boost? Is it worth it in the long run? It’s a simple decision to make. It’s also a tough decision to make lol.

So, like I said, the first cycle -

If you look at the 2nd post or so, you’ll see I go by a framework, not a routine. If I go 6 days a week, each muscle group gets hit twice. If I go 3-4 days a week, each muscle group gets trained around once or twice a week

• was just to get an idea of what I should be working on.

Is it technique?

Am I firing the required muscles?

Are these muscles firing at the right time?

Are these muscles firing together at the time they’re required to?

I had to go to complete failure by fully maxing out reps to determine this. Where are my weak points? Are the required muscles just weaker in proportion to others? What’s going on when I deadlift when I go for a 2-3RM vs an 8-10RM? I wasn’t afraid to do this since I expected that I wouldn’t be able to lift heavy enough than my tendons and shit can handle due to the layoff and other variables.

Because you’re only as strong as your weakest link.

Repeat this before saying Grace every meal and you’ll be breaking records soon lol.

Seriously, what I’m doing now is going close to technical failure and doing 3-4 sets with the same weight while being conscious of the aforementioned stuff during each rep.

I’m getting lots of sets in because I simply ramp up the weights in each set.

Let’s say my last set of squats was 225lbs and I did 6 reps.

It would look like this:

135lbs x 8
Oh bloody hell I’m using the metric system.

Activation Set: 60ks x 8-10
Working Set 1: 80kg x 6-8
Working Set 2: 90kg x 6-8
Working Set 3: 100kg x 6 (average 2 reps before technical failure, which is maybe 4+ reps before complete failure)
Next 3-4 sets: 100kg x 4-6 reps

Note that I’m using certain terms the late but great John Meadows used but these were common stuff old school bodybuilders did, only the terminologies may or may not be different. Fuck it.

We called this pyramiding. While the last 1-2 sets would be done balls to the walls, I’m not gonna do it yet because I’m creating the base for continuous gainz in the mid to long term.

You see? You thought I was bullshitting before when I said I understood periodization before it became a thing? Fuck. I lived in a shithole but there was a small gym with lots of guys who were strong as fuck.

You fellows gotta understand what bodybuilding was like in the 90s especially in Asia. You know one of the reasons why I lost a fuckton of weight when I was working on my career with all the absurd hours spent working and travelling? If you were big, people thought you were stupid. I dunno about the West, but this was the case until the late 2000s here.

Which automatically filtered out the serious lifters from the New Year resolutioners. Almost EVERYONE in the gym I went to was big and strong as fuck and the dude who took me under his wing became the head of the bodybuilding association several years later, which really didn’t mean much since our national bodybuilders sucked and he hypothetically mainly saw an opportunity to sell the “bodybuilding team” roids to make some extra cash since our bodybuilders, whom were pretty big, were not up to standard when it came to aesthetics wrt to muscle insertions, limb proportions etc. Some were but they did not have the genetics to hypothetically leverage the roids to get big enough. Fellow old farts here will probably get what I’m saying.

Here’s an example:

Think about that Kevin Levrone guy. If he claims he uses the same amount of stuff as the average gym go-er who’s half his size, I believe him because I hypothetically helped the dude who mentored me keep records of the dudes in the gym who were purchasing their stash from him lol. Some guys respond well on minimal stuff. Some didn’t even look like they trained on lots of stuff.

Ok, so what the dude thought me in principle was what I did when I started, when I stopped and started again in 2013 and what I’m doing now. OF COURSE I’m not doing the exact same thing lol. Which is why I said “in principle”.

I’m not going anything SPECIAL. Just do something like that 5/3/1 variation where you do 5x5 with the recommended progression model for the main lifts of your choice.

Which is why I’m not even writing my workouts down because they’re boring as fuck.

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. Gainz are slower now. I’m on 1/2 of the prescribed dose of a drug that I’ve read increases prolactin but the reason why I’m able to sleep is because of some other stuff it does to the brain. I KNOW I’m hypothetically very tolerant to stuff like tren but shit that directly or indirectly raises prolactin levels fucks me up really bad. This was confirmed by an endo. Hypersensitivity to prolactin (it isn’t ONLY prolactin, but the WAY prolactin is raised) along with several other stuff with brain chemicals and shit cause me symptoms like sleep paralysis and RLS.

For example, and why I’m pleading with anyone where who’s hypothetically looking through the TRT forum for advice STOP IT, elevated E2 indirectly results in higher prolactin levels but it also causes other stuff to rise or fall at the same time. I am hypothetically VERY tolerant to high E2 so even when I’m on 1g of test, which I’ve never been since this is a fictitious scenario, I don’t need anything for E2 control.

If you’re taking advice from posters in the roid forum, which I’m not gonna comment on other than there’s no real resource in the medical community so it’s necessary evil, PLEASE understand shit by looking up legit medical stuff and acquire the perquisite knowledge like the difference between an aromatase inhibitor and an E2 blocker before you follow anyone’s advice wholesale.

This psycho drug doesn’t do that. It’d still be best to get my annual bloodwork earlier anyway.

I’ll start filling this log with what I do in the gym when I feel the time is right to go batshit lol.