Setting this log up to document my training going forward. Previously used a different account but will be sticking with this from here on out.
I’ve always been something of a shadow bodybuilding fan, but have decided to embrace my bro and go all out. I’m not necessarily ensure what that entails yet, but for now it will be hard training and traditional bodybuilding style nutrition. I’m currently running a body part splits based off of Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. The work outs are pure bodybuilding style training and I really dig Tom’s approach.
Martial arts wise - currently training hapkido and working towards my first belt. My footwork needs alot of work, and I’ve been told I need to focus on learning how to drive power from the hips when kicking. I was training about once a week, but will start increasing to 2 x week and working on kicks/punches and stretching on off days. Our gym used to enter competitions, so hoping there might be opportunities down the line. If anyone is / has trained hapkido or other Korean martial arts I’d be very open to advice and pointers.
Short to medium term goals: bench 20510.
DB Shoulder Press the 60s for 10.
Legs: get back to squatting 22520, looking at 275*20 as a medium term goal.
Martial arts: Learn to roundhouse kick to shoulder height.
Pass my first belt test.
Archive the front splits.
Barbell Squats
90kgx10/100kgx10/110kgx8
Squats were tough. My all time pr was 120kg x 9 (275), so have some work to regain strength.
Front squats
50kgx12/70kg x 8/8/8
Front squats were a similar story. Precious one rep max was 120kgs but I injured my lower back doing some shitty paused front squats at 70% of that weight sometime after. Starting back light and building up.
Bulgarian split squats
20x8/8/bw x 18
Also shitty. Forgot how much of a dose bulgarian split squats are.
One set of lunges across gym floor to failure
Leg press three plates and a quarter x 18
Leg curls
36kgx18/10/8
Single leg curls three sets to failure with 18kg
Overall a good session. It was a long day and I was bit burned out going into it. Had a coffee at 8.45pm to compensate, and while it helped, I was still a bit mentally fatigued by that point. I did have a really good stretching session after and have made good progress on my flexibility, so that’s a plus.
Poor day of eating. Had a hot chicken roll from the deli for lunch with a packet of crisps and had to run errands in town after work, so ended up having fried chicken + fries for dinner. Noticing that when I skip breakfast, I tend to binge on bullshit food such as that above.
I actually checked to see if there were any Tang Soo Do trainers in my area, but precious little. Outside of TKD, there seems to be little options in terms of Korean martial arts
Appreciate the tag @burien_top_team ! I also did 8 years of Tae Kwon Do before that. It’s funny: I never intended to study so much Korean martial arts: it just happened. And I ended up marrying a woman that was 1/4 Korean (grandmother was full).
@Kafkatamura As I’m sure you’ve seen, TKD’s biggest issue is quality control. When it became an olympic sport, it got SUPER popular, and with that popularity came too many avenues for McDojangs and glorified babysitting centers. What’s IN the martial art is plenty effective, but how it’s trained is going to be the issue. Which is true of any martial arts. Boxing “works”, but if you sign up for what you think is a boxing gym and it turns out to just be a boxercise center, you’re not going to learn how to fight.
@T3hPwnisher I know exactly what you mean. Thankfully, my current training experience in Hapkido has been the complete opposite. We train on old mats in a former church / now community centre, and strong emphasis is placed on respect and hard work. Would love to give some boxing a go at some point, if for nothing else but to learn what it is like to get punched in the face!
Barbell bench press 80KG x 8/7/6/6
Incline Dumbell Bench Press
27.5KGX8/8/8
Decline Dumbell Bench Press
30KG X 10/10
Flat Dumbell Flies
20KG x 8/8/9
EZ bar curls with 10 kg on either side x 8/8/6+2
DB hammer curls 15 KG X 10/10/10
Good session. Staying in the 6-10 rep range on the main compound movements and generally 8-12 elsewhere. Also ran to the gym (4km-25 minutes) to get some cardio in. I enjoyed running in the autumn with a hoodie up and hat on, listening to the Bodybuilding Legends podcast with John Hansen. Hansen was reading old articles from Flex magazine. One which was particularly striking was about Frank Zane’s decision to call it a day. Zane was a really interesting character and someone I would admire. He managed to strike that balance between physical and intellectual development. I aspire to do the same. I am happy he is in good health today at 80 years of age.
Other random bits of information: Listening to the Misfits “Saturday Night” on repeat while training chest and bis is a good time.
Dinner was air-fried chicken thighs with a peri-peri seasoning, basmati rice from the rice cooker and steamed broccoli. Very tasty. Chilling now with a glass of Powers on the rocks.
Writing to you on a rainy weekend here in the republic of Ireland.
Despite the rain, it has been a beautiful weekend. After reflecting on what I want to achieve over th next few years, one of my goals has been to play music again. I used to love music and played in bands as a teenager, but somewhere along the line I left that behind me. Recently, I’ve really been thinking about the fact that we only have one chance at this thing called life, so we might as well not be afraid to chase our dreams. While you don’t need to have the courage to tell them to the world, you can atleast with telling them to yourself. So with that, I purchased an inexpensive fender squier I can beat around and an amp to go with it to ‘keep the dream alive’ and spent the morning drinking coffee and playing Hendrix. I’m already feeling more positive about myself for having made this investment.
Today was leg day. All in all, it was a tough workout, and the gym was busy so I subbed leg extensions with sissy squats. I think the five sets for each exercise was definitely overkill. After the workout, I had an insatiable craving for steak and sweet potatoes, so steak and sweet potatoes is what I had. I then slept for 45 minutes, woke up and played more guitar. A perfect Sunday.
Legs
Barbell Squats - Parallel squats no lock out
90kgx12/10/10/8/7
Stuff legged deadlifts
90kgx10/10/8/8/8
Lunges
20kg in each arm x 12
27.5kg in each arm /8/8/8/8
Good mornings
50kg x 10/10/10/8/8
Sissy Squats
10/10/8/8/8h
Hammer strength single leg hamstring curls
10kg x 10/10/10/8/8
October flew by and November is likely to do just the same. Time is going by very fast and I’m starting to get the sense that nothing will change if I don’t. Physically, mentally and spiritually. I’m getting my ass in gear and getting my life back in check. One day at a time.
Training Wise - I’m getting on a program and I am going to stick with a program. I came across a post by someone on Instagram the other day who had been celebrating something like 500 weeks on 531. I’ve barely ever been able to stick to a program for more than a week, largely because I’ve lacked patience and opted for short-term progress over long-term consistency. I’d love to find myself writing here 100 weeks from now, having achieved a similar feat. So I will be attempting to do just that, to be consistent. To be disciplined. In every sense.
In order to calculate a training max for the 531 programme, I took 80-85% of my supposed 1RMs and attempted amraps for each weight. The resuts were as follows:
Squat: 120kg x 8
Bench Press: 85kg x 8
Press: 50kg x 7
Deadlift 127.5kg x 8
Pullups: 12
Dips: 18
Based on the above, I will calculate my one rep max and training maxes for the first cycle of programming later today. I will also buy groceries, prepare meals in advance and get a haircut. Getting my shit together and staying sharp is part of that.
I have hapkido training later tonight and my first grading is approximately one month away. Looking forward to this milestone and enjoying having a bit of focus training wise!
Current weight: 84.4 kg (5’8). I think I’m going to go on a short cut to get down to 80KG, as my pullups and dips seem to feel better in that range.
Thanks @T3hPwnisher. Having run through a number of programs in your time, if you have any advice for avoiding the usual program hopping to which I have become accustomed, I am all ears!
@T3hPwnisher Good question! So much so that I had to sleep on it.
To be honest, I think I get easily swayed by the ‘person’ as much as the program. In other words, I align myself with the creator of the program I’m following. So, if something Wendler says something resonates with me, and there are certain ideas about what Wendler stands for (and therefore what the program stands for) and how Wendler lives which I admire, I end up jumping on board with a Wendler program. Subsequently, if another fitness ‘role model’ appears to have other ‘values’, and I respect those traits (say, for example, discipline when it comes to nutrition, finance or certain moral values resonate),I end up jumping onto one of their program the week after.
I’m not sure if this makes sense, but speaking metaphorically, it’s as if by changing the suit (the program), I’m hoping to change the person also. But maybe the program doesn’t make the man. Maybe I need to focus less on emulating others and start by learning to emulate me. Haha, I’m not sure where programming begins in this and self-perception ends! Maybe it’s just training, but for me, sometimes I feel like it’s alot more
Still just plucking around … I’m surprised at how much music there is that I want to play. I started playing in the early 1980s, and the vast majority of the music we played and listened to was from the 1970s. Sadly, by the time grunge and hardcore got going, I’d given up the instrument.
I had another thought about this. Maybe I end up changing programmes because I expect that ONCE I change the program, I’ll get my mindset, nutrition and overall lifestyle in order. I excitedly jump on a new programme, only to find out I have brought many of my pre-existing hangups with it (Binge eating, for example). Having encountered this, perhaps I change program hoping ‘this time’ I’ll do it different, as if it were a clean slate. It’s kind of like moving to a new country with a fresh start, only to find out you bring yourself with you.
I think you may have a chicken and egg thing here. In my experience, it’s not that the programs make the individual, but that the individual makes the program. There are only so many ways to lift weights, and ALL of them work: it’s simply a matter of finding the way that matches with your personality. Some folks really like numbers, charts, facts and figures, so something like RTS really works well for them. Meanwhile, if I have to calculate anything, I don’t want to play. I want to just exist on effort. For me, Deep Water calls to me.
And on the topic of Deep Water: Jon Andersen didn’t FIND that program: he made it. He did sets of 10, and he did 10 of them, because he had a little OCD over the number 10. He was ultimately just looking for a way to manifest the effort he wanted to achieve.
So perhaps this is the introspection you need. It’s not about picking a program because of the effect you think the program will have on you: it’s about picking a program because that particular program calls TO you. If a program excites you, it’s most likely the right program for you, irrespective of what it actually accomplishes. For me, that’s how I know when I’m on the “right” program. I HATE training, but when a program excites me, I’m excited TO train. After reading Super Squats, I was excited. Same with Deep Water. Same with Feast/Famine/Ferocity. Same with Building the Monolith. And same with now the Tactical Barbell Mass protocol. Meanwhile, I’ve read programs that just didn’t interest me at all. I own 5/3/1 Forever, it’s got 50 programs in it, some I go “Hell yeah” and some I go “not for me”.
Some hard hitting advice here. Thanks for taking the time to share some wisdom @T3hPwnisher.
You’re absolutely right - it’s about making the program work for you, and not the other way around. I’d be very curious to give Deep Water a go at some point down the line. For now, I’ve settled on running 5/3/1 as I like that it also incorporates conditioning, which is important to me.
Going off your advice, I chose the program which spoke to me most personally from Wendler’s book and I like the look of Dave Tate’s Periodization Bible Template. First session was today and really enjoyed it!