Another volume block coming up. Looking forward to making some gains. Almost a little excited lol. So some random details and thoughts:
Same exercise selection and finally sorted out the quad accessories.
Bumping up the weight on everything and working 8-10 rep range. Similar volume (it’s been tweaked a bit). Adding back in the belt to relevant work (squat stuff mostly)
Planning for PRs this block in main lifts and assistance.
Squat training needed a move away from the high reps just doesn’t work out and I’m more likely to injure myself and accumulate a lot of fatigue from that sloppy work than it’s worth. Clusters seem to be effective but I’ll have to be on point with keeping rest times down.
Bench training going nicely. Close grip and wide grip bench progressing. Switching my comp style to a wider grip still a possibility in future but tbh less sure on that now. Only time and more weight will tell.
Deadlift watch out for some big rep PRs on the deficit sumo. Previous block felt like much more in the tank so will see how the 60-70% 1RM range goes but might be able to hit double digits pretty easy. Conventional Deficit Deadlift is pretty tough but it’s good work for the lower body.
Hauled a bunch of logs over to the saw/splitter today. Not exactly a deloady start to deload week.
Probably hit a light sesh tomorrow and another one or two later this week and take it easy. Short trip to Mornington planned for start of next week so that’ll be nice
What’s your PR on the bench in kgs bud ? Close grip is one of my favs. I like to do half reps, creating more time under tension, then into full reps. The Tris are burning after, it’s great.
It’s always been the lift that lags. I guess I’m on the relatively weak side for this lift all I can do is keep hitting it hard for every little bit of progress I can.
It’s grown my power tits nice enough. I guess the gains are expressed more as muscle. Big numbers not so much.
That’s much stronger than me lol I would rep with about 60-80kgs so I’m guessing I could probably get a 100kg lift. That is about my max, anything more and I feel my tendons about to pop and would need a spotter.
Reading more into people’s logs is making me want to try to raise my strength up a touch. I’ve never really focused on strength, I’ve always kept it minimum 8 rep area. 120kg is good going mate.
There’s a big baldy polish guy in my gym. I seen him benching 160kg for 4 reps. He had to be assisted though on the last rep. Scary looking big dude.
I think for every lifter there can be of some value to pushing the weight/intensity up. Progress is what we are all after at the end of the day.
Safety/sustainability is obviously a concern especially for those with shitty joints or past history of injury. If your technique/form is on point hopefully you can do a cycle of slightly heavier weights.
You have other tools with which to drive progress too like volume and drugs which you’d know more about than me. Am under the impression that on cycle your strength and work capacity jumps up but also I’ve heard your joints and tendon don’t catch up as fast so that’s a good way to get injured.
Sounds to me like conservatively a bit heavier on cycle is a good idea and if you follow it up with heavy off cycle training even if you don’t progress as much as on cycle you can keep more gains
This is me. Strength and performance goes up a good bit, but the tendons can’t hack it. I’ve been looking into how to fix this issue, which lead me to Bruce lees training. He did a lot of Isometrics along with traditional weight lifting.
With proper training and development the tendons develop great elasticity and incredible power. It is the tendon that transmit load from the muscles to the bones and moves the body. And building your muscles too fast - without the training of the tendons, leave you without the full ability to call upon all your strength resources while leaving you susceptible to injury. If you have got 10 mins later you could watch this video
Have you ever thought about coming to the dark side ? The devil offers unrivalled strength gains at a cost of fertility. You just got to inject his toxins. True story bud lol
I’ve always thought that the mind muscle connection, slow eccentric, isolation focus and “intensity” techniques that bodybuilders harp on about is actually pretty conducive to staying joint healthy and maximising metabolic damage on cycle.
Slow eccentric and mind muscle connection limits the weight you use, usually forces better technique or at least more control for going slow and is better for tendon strength. Isolation stuff less likely to fuck your joints up too.
I just meant training and always leaving plenty in the tank. Knowing that the fast gains are large part due to the drugs and that going to 100% is gonna fuck you up. I think one would be fine going at like 75% effort. Never to failure maybe 3 reps in the tank and being conservative with weight on the bar. Perfect technique every rep. Maybe go crazy on isolation exercises. Push volume a smidge using the improved recovery and muscle gaining action.
Powerlifters hop on all the time and plenty do well and stay injury free probably already training safely for strength in their natty days. Pro powerlifters that are pure muscle <15% body fat like Dan green, Kevin Oak or BenPollack maybe cruise albeit low dose but they train even smarter and know their body real well. It’s more the crazy weights and workloads at these world class levels that injure these guys not the juice boost. So there must be ways to do it properly.
For myself I’ll say maybe. I have natty gains to milk and natty goals to hit. My GF is drinks the kool aid and is pretty anti drug. Tbh I’m not ready for them in terms of knowledge of drugs or at a place with my health that I’d go on cycle. If I’m to ever do a cycle I’ll have to be at peak health like cardiovascular and have run all the tests. It would be sick to have cannon ball delts though lol
You are doing excellent without them bud. My advice would be stay clear. I wish I had never took anything, now I’m dependant on it ( TRT ) and have reduced fertility. The hormone swings are terrible. Stick to the king of steaks.
Mayb I underestimate the risks lol. Not any time soon anyways
Interesting perspective that I don’t think is said enough.
These days I see plenty of young guys my age and even younger on gear in the gym. Way too soon if ever. If it’s just to look a bit better is it like really worth it.
If you got some serious aspirations or want serious gains fair enough. But not to be slightly above average and still lose out in size and strength to natty dudes. Just seems like really poor judgement to me and I don’t know shit
It’s poor judgement and a lack of knowledge. If I had of researched the health risks more I’m sure I’d have declined. At the time I was training a couple years just and never even thought about gear. My cousin used them and looked in good shape. He was the devil that convinced me to hop on a cycle, telling me it’s all good nothing can happen. Fast forward to now I’m on TRT.
The take away is always do your research
It’s blast and cruise now for me. If I’m on TRT then I might aswell have some fun in the process lol
If 1 minute seems like too short you can rest longer, that article was just showing how one guy did it. Better to get some decent work in than turn this into some sort of endurance lifting marathon with shit technique, and there is also high rep assistance work to be done after. If I was doing sets of 5 with 70% or so I would probably rest 90 seconds and eventually increase rest periods as the weight goes up. Also, you don’t need to do a ton on cluster sets, 5x5 would be a decent starting point, the idea is to do some technique work in a format that is conducive to hypertrophy. Just make sure you have a clock/watch/phone within view so you can keep track of the time.
That doesn’t sound like a good sales pitch, but it makes me wonder how some guys end up infertile and others still manage to have kids. Like Stan Efferding, he must have been on steroids for 20 years before he had kids. Do these guys have someone else banging their wives or what?
Apparently it actually inhibits connective tissue growth, it grows slower than if you were natural. I notice you don’t seem to have as many muscle tears and acute injuries in general among natural lifters (or at least those who compete in tested federations). Most of the injuries in the IPF seem to be from the spotters letting lifters hit the floor when they fail a squat.
I on the other hand should have just taken them, because I stayed natty and am going to end up on TRT anyway lol. Wife’s pregnant though so I guess the fertility thing was a plus.
Me and my partner are gonna try again this year after my cycle. If it doesn’t happen - sure it was fun trying lol she seriously wants a baby, I might have to honour that and come off for a period, hopefully do the damage then hop back on. It’s hard though when libido is non existent when off test
That’s tough man. Its probably the biggest thing that stopped me cycling whenever I would get the temptation. Now she’s pregnant and Im going to be on TRT anyway its going to be much harder to resist the dark side in future ha.
I don’t train specifically for strength, but my bench drastically increased when I began to focus more energy on support musculature (delts, and lats). Was stuck For over a year at around 285. Did two PR attempts in early 2018 and then again in September 2018 and hit 320 and 335. Both times weight was around 175. I’m very curious what it would be now after cutting weight. Interesting to see how much strength I’ve lost, but worried about injuring myself. Think I’ll wait until I bring the calories back up. Keep up the good work.
I’m def going to incorporate the split squats you filmed for legs this Sunday. Those looked great!
