Evan's Offseason Training: Road to a Pro Card

Training Training Logs
123

11.22.11

Back Shock

Dante Wide Grip Cable Rows/Nautilus Pulldown
120 x 12/2 pps x 10
190 x 10/3 pps x 10
190 x 12/4 pps x 8
120 x 15/3pps x 10

Kayak Rows/Close Grip T Bars
15/4 plates x 10
15/6 plates x 8
15/7 plates x 8
15/5 x 10

Nautilus Horizontal Row
Dropset
4 pps x 8 to 3 pps x 10 to 2 pps x 10 to 1 pps x 10

Deadlifts
135 x 8
225 x 8
315 x 5
405 x 5
505 x 6 (shit)

Standing Calf Raise/Seated Calf Raise
12/25
12/25
12/25

Amazing overall back day. I was disappointed with the Deadlifts, especially after watching the video and seeing that I could have gotten 2-3 more.

Whatever though, still got a crazy pump and really demolished my back.

Weighed 213 this morning.

124

Sounds like a demolishing pump for sure. I had a great back day today. I love back day.

125

[quote]jake_j_m wrote:
Sounds like a demolishing pump for sure. I had a great back day today. I love back day.[/quote]

Oh it was…love it.

126


Post-Workout Breakfast:
1 Thomas Corn English Muffin + 1.5 tbsp sugar free Smuckers Strawberry Jam
1 Everything Bagel
2 omega 3 eggs
250 grams liquid egg whites
Delicious.

127

Really want to eat bagels and sugarfree jam again now I’ve seen this. How do you rate bagels as a carb source? Presumably post-workout only being as it’s wheat and they are often about 5.4g of sugar p/bagel. I miss bagels a ton more then bread.

128

[quote]jake_j_m wrote:
Really want to eat bagels and sugarfree jam again now I’ve seen this. How do you rate bagels as a carb source? Presumably post-workout only being as it’s wheat and they are often about 5.4g of sugar p/bagel. I miss bagels a ton more then bread.[/quote]

I think that carb sources are overrated in terms of performance.

If you want to have 50 grams of carbs from a bagel vs. 50 grams from sweet potatoes, it really will make little difference physique-wise…health-wise, the sweet potato may be better, but if you are looking solely at performance, a carbs essentially a carb.

So, if you want a bagel, go for it : ).

129

[quote]ebomb5522 wrote:

[quote]jake_j_m wrote:
Really want to eat bagels and sugarfree jam again now I’ve seen this. How do you rate bagels as a carb source? Presumably post-workout only being as it’s wheat and they are often about 5.4g of sugar p/bagel. I miss bagels a ton more then bread.[/quote]

I think that carb sources are overrated in terms of performance.

If you want to have 50 grams of carbs from a bagel vs. 50 grams from sweet potatoes, it really will make little difference physique-wise…health-wise, the sweet potato may be better, but if you are looking solely at performance, a carbs essentially a carb.

So, if you want a bagel, go for it : ).
[/quote]

I tend to agree… if I’m allowing myself pure dextrose peri-workout and am handling it fine, I’m sure my body won’t implode if I feed it some more relatively high gi carbs 30-45 minutes after the workout.

I’d find it hard to force myself to eat a bagel at the last meal of the night… however, insulin response wise, I tend to think that actually having a huge stir fry with lots of rice will still have my insulin spike and I never stop myself from doing that. I’ll change to P&F and P&C meals when my goals change from gaining weight…

130

11.23.11

Cardio + Abs
Max OT Stairmaster
16 minutes

DeclIne Rope Crunch 1 1/2 reps
2 x 6

Superset
Standing Rope Crunch/Dragon Flags
1 x 12/failure
1 x 20/failure

Just some cardio n’ abz.

If you want to demolish your abs in the least amount of time possible, try the decline rope situps with the 1 1/2 rep style, referred to as some maybe as double contraction reps. As always with abs, start every movement by flexing hard, squeeze at the contraction, now lower yourself halfway down, squeeze for a 1 count, explode back up to the full contraction and squeeze for a 1 count, then lower yourself fully. That’s 1 rep. Do them heavy enough and it’s brutal.

131

11.24.11

Cross Body Curls/Rope Pushdown
65 x 6 lr/30
70 x 6 LR/20

Weighted Dips/EZ Bar Reverse Curl
90 x 6/50 x 25
135 x 6/50 x 25

EZ Drag Curl Rest Pause/Rope OH Extension RP
Warmup: 90 + bar x 8/70 x 20
100 + bar x 14, 8, 4/70 x 20, 8

Hammer Strength Dip/Machine Preacher
Warmup
2 pps x 6/90 x 20
4 pps x 10/110 x 10
4 pps x 8/110 x 8
RP Set
3 pps x 25, 10/150 x 12

Rope 2-Arm Cross Body/Reverse EZ Pushdown
10/20
10/20

Front Wrist Curls/3 x10s Plate Pinch/BTB Wrist Curl
95 x failure/hold x failure/95 x failure

Done. Pretty pumped that my weak part came on thanksgiving, so I can REALLY justify stuffing myself later lol.

Shock day for arms was crazy…was pumped from the first set. While I see my arms as a weak point, they must look pretty damn good because people at my gym always comment on how they look. That’s a good sign.

Post workout today I weighed 216 lb which is on my home gym scale, the one I weighed myself with last bulk. The last time I was 216 at this time of the day during my summer bulk of 2010, I wasn’t even close to this lean. Very happy with where I’m at right now.

Shock leg day tomorrow. I hope you all puke just reading what will be done.

Happy Thanksgiving : ).

132

Evan

Happy Thanksginving man.

Concerning your recent sets repts can you explain to me the breakdown of what you did X 8/70 x 20. So did you do 90 x8 reps then 70lbs x20?

Big lifting. I may have missed it have you determined your next contest date yet?

133

[quote]tobelatking wrote:
Evan

Happy Thanksginving man.

Concerning your recent sets repts can you explain to me the breakdown of what you did X 8/70 x 20. So did you do 90 x8 reps then 70lbs x20?

Big lifting. I may have missed it have you determined your next contest date yet?

Everything I did today was a superset…so if I wrote something like: "70 x 8/90x 20 the first exercise was either a triceps or biceps one and the second exercise was the other bodypart.

I don’t have any contests in mind right now, most likely will compete in one either late 2012 or early 2013. I really want to take enough time right now to push my weight up (230-240), create a new ‘set-point’ and hopefully bring my body to a new level. Last ‘offseason,’ I really didn’t hang around at my heaviest to allow for my body to get used to it, so this time around, I want to push up to that heavier weight, and maintain it for a few months, thus allowing me to push strength to new levels, and put on muscle.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too man!

[/quote]

134

Arm day sounds ridicilious pump wise. For me arm day is my favourite right now… mainly because it took me about 2 1/2 years of serious training to finally ‘get it’ when it comes to arms.

Is training your forearms/grip directly something you’ve done before now? As it is I’m doing two hammer movements with heavy dumbbells… and always deadlift stapless but that’s as far as I go grip/forearms wise

135

[quote]jake_j_m wrote:
Arm day sounds ridicilious pump wise. For me arm day is my favourite right now… mainly because it took me about 2 1/2 years of serious training to finally ‘get it’ when it comes to arms.

Is training your forearms/grip directly something you’ve done before now? As it is I’m doing two hammer movements with heavy dumbbells… and always deadlift stapless but that’s as far as I go grip/forearms wise[/quote]

Ya, I’m really excited to see the kind of progress I can make with my arms now that I know so much more about how to activate them.

I haven’t really trained forearms/brachialis in any big way before I discovered John Meadows’ training stuff, but I really want to emphasize it more in my training as I think building both can really help push the arm up and create that peak better for those of us that aren’t blessed with phenomenal arm size.

136

11.25.11

Legs Shock

Leg Extension (strong flex at top)/Back Squat
25/135 x 8
25/225 x 8
25/315 x 8
Worksets (just shy of failure on extensions except final set)
30/405 x 5
30/405 x 8
28/405 x 7

Lying Leg Curls 1 1/2 reps
2 sets to failure same weight
Set 1: 13 reps, S2: 7 reps

Hard Hack Squat 1 1/2 reps
2 pps x 13
3 pps x 7

Glute Ham Raise (2 flex at top)/Standing Single Leg Curl (6 X rep tempo)
Bw x 12/30 x 12 LR
Bw x 10/30 x 10 LR

Short Bar Walking Lunges
90 + bar x failure

Seated Calf Raise (5 neg, 5 hold, 3 flex at top)/Donkey Calf Raise (rapid)
180 x 8/20
180 x failure/Failure

Quad stretches

Dead.

Crazy leg session. The leg extension/squat superset was insane. By the time I got to the 405 worksets, my quads were already burning from the “warnups,” but I pushed through and cranked out some very strong sets with 405.

My hamstrings cramped up on both the worksets for the 1 1/2 rep lying curls…
The 1 1/2 rep hacks were insane…I was screaming by the end of them.

I don’t know what possessed me to do body weight glute ham raises with a hard flex after this , but I did, supersetted with X rep standing single leg curls.
X reps are where I do an explosive concentric, flex hard, and then lower the weight slowly, but pausing for a second at each point and then lowering a bit more…so all in all, I lowered the weight 6 times each rep before it was fully lowered. Idk if that makes any sense, but each eccentric took around 8 seconds to complete…fun.

Lunges to failure are a must on shock week…

The calf sets were much more brutal than they look on paper. Essentially, I did a 10 count from the eccentric through the stretch at the bottom and then flexed for 3 at the top…each set was well over a minute under tension and then jumping right to donkey calf raises with a rapid tempo totally annihilated them.

Body weight was 218 post workout.

137

[quote]ebomb5522 wrote:
11.25.11

Legs Shock

Leg Extension (strong flex at top)/Back Squat
25/135 x 8
25/225 x 8
25/315 x 8
Worksets (just shy of failure on extensions except final set)
30/405 x 5
30/405 x 8
28/405 x 7

Lying Leg Curls 1 1/2 reps
2 sets to failure same weight
Set 1: 13 reps, S2: 7 reps

Hard Hack Squat 1 1/2 reps
2 pps x 13
3 pps x 7

Glute Ham Raise (2 flex at top)/Standing Single Leg Curl (6 X rep tempo)
Bw x 12/30 x 12 LR
Bw x 10/30 x 10 LR

Short Bar Walking Lunges
90 + bar x failure

Seated Calf Raise (5 neg, 5 hold, 3 flex at top)/Donkey Calf Raise (rapid)
180 x 8/20
180 x failure/Failure

Quad stretches

Dead.

Crazy leg session. The leg extension/squat superset was insane. By the time I got to the 405 worksets, my quads were already burning from the “warnups,” but I pushed through and cranked out some very strong sets with 405.

My hamstrings cramped up on both the worksets for the 1 1/2 rep lying curls…
The 1 1/2 rep hacks were insane…I was screaming by the end of them.

I don’t know what possessed me to do body weight glute ham raises with a hard flex after this , but I did, supersetted with X rep standing single leg curls.
X reps are where I do an explosive concentric, flex hard, and then lower the weight slowly, but pausing for a second at each point and then lowering a bit more…so all in all, I lowered the weight 6 times each rep before it was fully lowered. Idk if that makes any sense, but each eccentric took around 8 seconds to complete…fun.

Lunges to failure are a must on shock week…

The calf sets were much more brutal than they look on paper. Essentially, I did a 10 count from the eccentric through the stretch at the bottom and then flexed for 3 at the top…each set was well over a minute under tension and then jumping right to donkey calf raises with a rapid tempo totally annihilated them.

Body weight was 218 post workout. [/quote]

damnn that looked brutal lol, think i will use the extension/squat combo myself in the near future

138

[quote]Blackaggar wrote:

[quote]ebomb5522 wrote:
11.25.11

Legs Shock

Leg Extension (strong flex at top)/Back Squat
25/135 x 8
25/225 x 8
25/315 x 8
Worksets (just shy of failure on extensions except final set)
30/405 x 5
30/405 x 8
28/405 x 7

Lying Leg Curls 1 1/2 reps
2 sets to failure same weight
Set 1: 13 reps, S2: 7 reps

Hard Hack Squat 1 1/2 reps
2 pps x 13
3 pps x 7

Glute Ham Raise (2 flex at top)/Standing Single Leg Curl (6 X rep tempo)
Bw x 12/30 x 12 LR
Bw x 10/30 x 10 LR

Short Bar Walking Lunges
90 + bar x failure

Seated Calf Raise (5 neg, 5 hold, 3 flex at top)/Donkey Calf Raise (rapid)
180 x 8/20
180 x failure/Failure

Quad stretches

Dead.

Crazy leg session. The leg extension/squat superset was insane. By the time I got to the 405 worksets, my quads were already burning from the “warnups,” but I pushed through and cranked out some very strong sets with 405.

My hamstrings cramped up on both the worksets for the 1 1/2 rep lying curls…
The 1 1/2 rep hacks were insane…I was screaming by the end of them.

I don’t know what possessed me to do body weight glute ham raises with a hard flex after this , but I did, supersetted with X rep standing single leg curls.
X reps are where I do an explosive concentric, flex hard, and then lower the weight slowly, but pausing for a second at each point and then lowering a bit more…so all in all, I lowered the weight 6 times each rep before it was fully lowered. Idk if that makes any sense, but each eccentric took around 8 seconds to complete…fun.

Lunges to failure are a must on shock week…

The calf sets were much more brutal than they look on paper. Essentially, I did a 10 count from the eccentric through the stretch at the bottom and then flexed for 3 at the top…each set was well over a minute under tension and then jumping right to donkey calf raises with a rapid tempo totally annihilated them.

Body weight was 218 post workout. [/quote]

damnn that looked brutal lol, think i will use the extension/squat combo myself in the near future [/quote]

Haha ya it was crazy…my goal going into each extension set was to just fatigue my quads as much as possible, and it made squats soo hard lol, but I felt my quads so much throughout.

Definitely humbles you a bit on the weight you can use, but will spark some serious growth.

140

11.27.11

Cardio + Forearms + Abs
Max OT Stairmaster
16 minutes
Calories: 357.8
Distance: 2.75 miles
Avg Steps/Min: 131

Ab Giant Set
Standing Rope Crunch (6 sex ecc)/reverse decline situps/standing rope crunch/jump rope
8/failure/failure/100 skips

X 3
BRUTAL

Hammer Curl RP Set (3 second eccentrics)
40 x 12, 7, 4

Just the usual off day cardio and abs.
I tried something a bit different with abs today by throwing in the high intensity jump rope as a part of the superset. Wheneer I combine sprinting of sorts with ab work, I always feel my abs working a ton more, so I’ll be doing stuff like this more often : ). I have heard/read that high intensity sprinting or cardio work coupled with abdominal exercises can help burn abdominal fat more so than just sprinting or doing cardio alone. While I’m certainly not really trying to maintain a 6 pack now, it would be nice to see how long I can keep my abs…maybe until 225-230!

141

[quote]ebomb5522 wrote:
11.27.11

Cardio + Forearms + Abs
Max OT Stairmaster
16 minutes
Calories: 357.8
Distance: 2.75 miles
Avg Steps/Min: 131

Ab Giant Set
Standing Rope Crunch (6 sex ecc)/reverse decline situps/standing rope crunch/jump rope
8/failure/failure/100 skips

X 3
BRUTAL

Hammer Curl RP Set (3 second eccentrics)
40 x 12, 7, 4

Just the usual off day cardio and abs.
I tried something a bit different with abs today by throwing in the high intensity jump rope as a part of the superset. Wheneer I combine sprinting of sorts with ab work, I always feel my abs working a ton more, so I’ll be doing stuff like this more often : ). I have heard/read that high intensity sprinting or cardio work coupled with abdominal exercises can help burn abdominal fat more so than just sprinting or doing cardio alone. While I’m certainly not really trying to maintain a 6 pack now, it would be nice to see how long I can keep my abs…maybe until 225-230!
[/quote]

Correct me if I’m wrong man, but I thought you were pretty damn lean when you ‘bulked’ last time. I think you were around 220, and still had visible abs, didn’t you??

142

Backs looking sick. Thanks for the tip Evan… I definitely feel it can apply a whole ton, especially for guys who have maybe stagnated in their strength levels for awhile.

Step 1: Get my squat 50+lb higher
Step 2: Then be able to do squats w/ huge eccentrics/TUT focus with still more then I can use for normal tempo now
Step 3: Prosper

143

[quote]Spidey22 wrote:

[quote]ebomb5522 wrote:
11.27.11

Cardio + Forearms + Abs
Max OT Stairmaster
16 minutes
Calories: 357.8
Distance: 2.75 miles
Avg Steps/Min: 131

Ab Giant Set
Standing Rope Crunch (6 sex ecc)/reverse decline situps/standing rope crunch/jump rope
8/failure/failure/100 skips

X 3
BRUTAL

Hammer Curl RP Set (3 second eccentrics)
40 x 12, 7, 4

Just the usual off day cardio and abs.
I tried something a bit different with abs today by throwing in the high intensity jump rope as a part of the superset. Wheneer I combine sprinting of sorts with ab work, I always feel my abs working a ton more, so I’ll be doing stuff like this more often : ). I have heard/read that high intensity sprinting or cardio work coupled with abdominal exercises can help burn abdominal fat more so than just sprinting or doing cardio alone. While I’m certainly not really trying to maintain a 6 pack now, it would be nice to see how long I can keep my abs…maybe until 225-230!
[/quote]

Correct me if I’m wrong man, but I thought you were pretty damn lean when you ‘bulked’ last time. I think you were around 220, and still had visible abs, didn’t you??
[/quote]

If you refer back to the pic I posted a few pages back, that was me around 220 my last ‘offseason’. I still had abs, but I think this time around, I will be even leaner at that weight.