Enjoy The Pain's Log

Training Logs
1

So I have finally decided to start a log. First let me say that I’m thankful for every piece of advice I can get, so if you have some constructive criticism, please post right away.

Here’s some information about me. Right now I’m 70 kg @ 172 cm @ 18 years of age, not much BF of course, I’ve already been heavier, but right now I feel my weight is appropriate for my current goals. However, adding some lean mass wouldn’t be bad, either.

My best lifts are:

ATG Back squat: 140 kg
Deadlift: 170 kg
Bench press: 110 kg, although I haven’t benched for some time
Military press: 50 kg x 10, wasn’t to failure, I’m pretty sure I could hit 70 kg (BW), but I’ll test that soon
Pullups: 16 reps
Chins: 5 reps + 25 kgs
Pistol: 32 kg KB
Power snatch: 60 kg (shitty technique at OL)

My nutrition is 100% garbage, basically just lots of nothing + empty calories, no need to flame, I know I gotta eat lol. I plan on starting Precision Nutrition or something similar next week. Nothing special, just lots of clean food.

I’ve recently started to do martial arts again, right now it’s one session of Avci Wing Tsun practise Sundays and Wednesdays, and Shinergy in Vienna Stadlau on Saturdays. Avci Wing Tsun is like normal Wing Tsun but more practicable, Shinergy is a stand-up fighting system, and my impression is that there are some elements of TKD, Kickboxing and Wing Tsun in there. I’ve been there 2 times now and I really enjoy it so far.

My training system has evolved painfully slow through trial and error, talking with strong guys and lots of reading over the last two years, from low intensity, high volume isolation work on machines done to failure, what seems to be what everyone’s doing here in Austria, to heavy, compound exercises done with high frequency for low reps without going to failure.

Right now I’m doing the Doug Hepburn A program for Front squats and Deadlifts. You basically take your 8RM of a compound exercise and do 8x2. Next workout you do 7x2, 1x3, then 6x2, 2x3 until you do 8x3. Then you increase the weight by 5 kg and start over at 8x2.

I do every exercise twice a week. I’ve been doing this for about 6 weeks now. I think this is a very intelligent progression, because you increase the volume in a systematic way, then increase the intensity and drop the volume. I also do some BW and KB work.

I’ve just started a program for flexibility and motor control, and do it each day, every day.

Currently I’m really busy, lots of stuff to do for school, but training is a priority for me. Right now my goals are:

-) Get real flexible, develop great coordination, really improve athleticism
-) Get a helluvalot stronger
-) Improve BW feats and martial arts

So I’ll start reporting my training today and please don’t hesitate to post if you have questions or suggestions!

2

This is my current flexibility & motor control program (each exercise is done for 10 reps):

Dynamic flexibility:

  1. Hip circles

  2. Fire hydrants

  3. Leg swings

  4. Side-to-side leg swings

  5. Split squats

  6. Lateral squats

  7. Rotational squats

  8. Reverse lunge with twists

  9. Crossover reverse lunge

  10. Four-part squat

Then I do some dynamic flexibility work I’ve learned at the Shinergy class. I plan on incorporating some shoulder flexiblity stuff as well. Afterwards comes the motor control stuff:

Motor control:

Scorpions
Hip corrections
Glute bridge
Birddogs

After that, I go to the heavy lifting and other stuff. When I’m done with it, I do some pullups, hanging leg raises and neck bridges for spine decompression. I know there are other exercises specifically for spine decompression, but I like killing two birds with one stone and getting stuff done as efficiently as possible. Then I’ll do 3rd word squats, meaning I spend several minutes “prying” in the squat position. Then I’ll do some foam rolling. That’s it, but I also will incorporate some PNF stretching in the near future.

3

Today’s work was barbell side presses and deadlifts. I’ve just started doing side presses, so I’m still learning the correct technique, it’s a lot more complex than it looks.

Side press:
20 kg (empty bar) 5x3

Deadlift:
60 kg x 5
100 kg x 3
125 kg 6x2, 2x3

I followed Jim Wendlers advice from this weeks article and did my warm up sets with a double overhand grip, because grip is one of my weaknesses due to a) never having trained them and b) having tiny hands and wrists. I really need to work on that more.

Now, off to some flexibility stuff and foam rolling!

4

Yesterday was Shinergy training, here are some conclusions I’ve drawn:

  1. I need to work on footwork
  2. I need to work on correct striking and kicking technique
  3. The more warmed up I am, the easier I find it kicking high with correct technique

So, lots and lots of shadowboxing and padwork for me, until the basic shit is second nature.

I’ve also come up with a list of some general weaknesses of mine:

  1. I’m a walking skeleton
  2. My biceps is terribly weak and underdeveloped
  3. My grip is weak
  4. I need more flexibility for martial arts and maybe OL at some time
  5. My nutrition is bad

Time to do the stuff I suck at!

5

Glad your posting. You should try to educate your self on the nutrition part. You seem to do a lot of research, but how much of that research is on nutrition? The more you know about it the better you’ll be at making sound nutritional choices for your daily life.

Hell, with all this training your nutrition could be “starving” you of potential gains. My suggestion is for people with bad eating habits is to start from the basics. And by basics I mean the food pyramid [you remember that from school I hope]. It’s a good round start for people that are off.

Even a few muscle heads don’t understand the importance of enough grain and veggies in their diets. Once you get accustomed to eating that, then start increasing meal frequency and portion amounts.

As far as grip work, and easy grip exercises would be farmers walk and also to increase bicep strength and size do tons of heavy back work. Why you say? Because the biceps assist the back with pulls. Check out pictures of powerlifters and strongmen. They don’t get big biceps from just curls alone, but from heavy rows, deadlifts, etc.

Take your time and learn your life lessons and you will make astonishing gains.

6

[quote]ransom.holland wrote:
Glad your posting. You should try to educate your self on the nutrition part. You seem to do a lot of research, but how much of that research is on nutrition? The more you know about it the better you’ll be at making sound nutritional choices for your daily life.

Hell, with all this training your nutrition could be “starving” you of potential gains. My suggestion is for people with bad eating habits is to start from the basics. And by basics I mean the food pyramid [you remember that from school I hope]. It’s a good round start for people that are off.

Even a few muscle heads don’t understand the importance of enough grain and veggies in their diets. Once you get accustomed to eating that, then start increasing meal frequency and portion amounts.

As far as grip work, and easy grip exercises would be farmers walk and also to increase bicep strength and size do tons of heavy back work. Why you say? Because the biceps assist the back with pulls. Check out pictures of powerlifters and strongmen. They don’t get big biceps from just curls alone, but from heavy rows, deadlifts, etc.

Take your time and learn your life lessons and you will make astonishing gains.[/quote]

Thanks for your input. You’re right, I’m know quite a bit about strength training (at least the theory, I still need to learn the lessons only years of heavy lifting can teach), but basically nothing about nutrition. While I read every training article on this site, I read almost none of the ones about nutrition. So the plan is to educate myself about this stuff and incorporate everything I learn ASAP. Like you said, the bad eating habits are really hindering my gains.

However, the “do heavy back work, the biceps will take care of itself”-mantra doesn’t quite work for me. I do lots of deadlifts and pullups, however my biceps is underdeveloped compared to my other bodyparts, because I’m pretty back-dominant. I think heavy barbell curls could be the solution, according to Jim Wendler they are even supposed to help the bench press. I will start to treat the curl like my other main exercises and not as an afterthought. I don’t really care about aestethics, but I don’t need any imbalances and elbow pain.

7

So today I went to the gym and it was closed. I’m still pissed. The gym I go to belongs to a former Austrian pro bodybuilder, but nowadays he’s an alcoholic and just sitting in front of his computer and getting drunk all day. I go there because it’s reasonable priced and has good equipment (lots of heavy weight). Additionally, no one there gives me shit for doing stuff like olympic lifts. The downside is that sometimes it’s closed for no reason.

I went home and did the following:

Three 3 minute rounds footwork

Three 1 minute rounds of shadowboxing

KB bottoms-up press 16 kg 3x2

Tactical pullups 20 kg 3x3

(Tactical pullups is a term Pavel coined for thumbless overhand grip pullups with a one second pause on the bottom between reps and the neck or chest touching the bar on the top of each rep.)

I will work the bottoms-up presses hard to strengthen my wrist and grip. I’ll do more of the shadowboxing stuff + padwork whenever I have time.

8

Front squat

40 kg 2x5
50 kg x 3
60 kg x 1
65 kg 5x2, 3x3

Barbell side press 20 kg 3x5

Medium grip chins 3x10

I can feel the front squats getting easier as my flexibility improves. All that dynamic stretching and foam rolling seems to do the trick.

9

I’m now doing 21 dynamic flexiblity exercises if I counted correctly, each for 10 reps. When I went to the gym today, I felt like I had springs in my legs. My legs have never felt so light yet powerful. Nice.

A1) Turkish get-up 16 kg KB 3x3

A2) Wide-grip pullup 10 kg 3x6

B) Overhead squat 40 kg x 5, 45 kg x 3, 50 kg x 3

C) Deadlift 125 kg 5x2, 3x3

Adam T. Glass said that when starting doing TGUs with a 16 kg KB isn’t “Can you do 1 rep?” but “Can you do 1 rep perfectly 30 times non-stop?” and if the answer is “no”, he doesn’t even let his clients touch the heavier bells. So this will be my goal, 16 kg x 30. I mean, this guy can bottoms-up clean and press a 48 kg KB and do a barbell TGU with 185 lbs. I listen to beasts.

10

I meant “the question isn’t”. Fuck it I’m tired.

11

Hepburn is awesome. Have you read the book Strongman?

12

[quote]coffee wrote:
Hepburn is awesome. Have you read the book Strongman?[/quote]

No, but you’re right, he’s awesome. I got the program from this article:

Guy definitely knew what he was doing. I’m a big fan of the old-time strongmen, it’s fascinating how strong they were without today’s supplements or steroids. I particularly like how the program is designed because of the planned progression and the way the volume and intensity are cycled while keeping it as simple as possible. I don’t think I need fancy periodization plans at my stage of training. I plan on sticking with this progression as long as possible and hopefully getting a lot stronger in the process :slight_smile:

13

Front squats again, gotta make up for the unintended off day.

40 kg 2x5
50 kg x 3
60 kg x 1
65 kg 4x2, 4x3

KB one-arm military press

24 kg 3x6

Played around with different explosive pullup variation, like explosively switching between pronated and supinated at the top of each rep. Saw this one in a youtube video of Ross Enamait. Then did a few back levers, holding each for a few seconds. Fun stuff.

Barbell curls

35 kg 6,4,3

I figured half my bodyweight would be a good starting point. Relatively short rest periods, always left a rep or two in the bank. Conclusion: I have the biceps strength of a 10 year old. Gotta work HARD.

14

Strongman is a great book about Hepburns life. If you ever see it you should pick it up. He does talk about his methods in it.

15

[quote]coffee wrote:
Strongman is a great book about Hepburns life. If you ever see it you should pick it up. He does talk about his methods in it.[/quote]

I’ll definitely do that, don’t know if it’s available in Austria though. Anyways, thanks for the tip.

16

Been really busy today, so I skipped the deads, I’ll do them either tomorrow when I come back from Vienna or on Sunday as a last resort.

KB bottoms-up press 16 kg 4x2

One-arm one-leg pushups 3x1

Tactical pullups BWx10

Pistol 16 kg (rack position) 2x5

17

I haven’t found the time to do last weeks DL session, this means I’ll be pulling 3 times this week.

Footwork + slipping + bobbing & weaving: one three-minute round
Shadowboxing: three two-minute rounds

Side press 20 kg 5x5

Deadlift
60 kg x 5
100 kg x 3
125 kg 4x2, 4x3

Tactical pullups
20 kg x 5

Started working on static flexibility today. My goal is to do full splits in 3 months, don’t know if this is realistic but yeah.

18

Felt like shit today because I slept very little last night, so I took it easy on the presses and pullups.

Front squats
40 kg 2x5
50 kg x 3
60 kg x 1
65 kg 3x2, 5x3

KB Clean&Press 24 kg 1x3

Medium-grip pullups BWx10

19

Deadlift
60 kg x 5
100 kg x 3
120 kg x 1
125 kg 3x2, 5x3

KB bottoms-up press 16 kg 2x3

Chin-ups 20 kg 3x3

20

Front squat
40 kg 2x5
50 kg x 3
60 kg x 1
65 kg 2x2, 6x3

KB one-arm military press 24 kg 3x7

Back lever 3x5 seconds