Light weight training log

Training Training Logs
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Training log to share results over the upcoming months.

Goals

Previous goals

Current goals

  • keep building lean mass
  • do a power lifting meet along the way to get some “official” strength metrics at lower bodyweight
    • planning to do a small local meet in November 2026 (9 months away)
    • targeting 148lbs weight class & Open bracket for this

History

  • lifted for about 10 years
    • did some PL meets and other competitions at 198 and 220lbs weight classes
    • reached some lifts I was happy with but nothing too out of the ordinary for PL
    • had an injury that was a setback for a while
  • took a 5 year hiatus from lifting
  • [18 months ago] started taking GLP-1 (tirzepatide)
    • bodyweight 207lbs → 127lbs, BMI 30 → 19
  • [6 months ago] started lifting again, hired a coach to do my programming
    • initial focus was on rebuilding lean mass to hit 140lbs bodyweigth for a Dec. 2025 weigh-in

Progress So Far

some notable metrics & milestones

  • July 2025

    • 127lbs, 29" waist, BMI 19
    • struggling to do sets of 3 push ups
    • struggling to do sets of 3 pull ups
    • Deadlift (hex bar) started out on sets of 95lbs x 5

  • Sept. 2025 ; 1 month of self-guided lifting, prior to coaching

    • bw 132lbs, 29" waist
    • Squat 205lbs x1
    • Bench Press 115lbs x 3
    • Deadlift (hex bar) 235lbs x 1

  • Dec. 2025 ; with coach

    • 140lbs, 31" waist ← weigh-in results
    • inverted push ups for sets of up to 15-20
    • pull ups for multiple sets of 10

  • Feb. 2026

    • 133lbs bw, 30" waist, BMI 20
      • weight regression ; difficulty keeping up with food the past two months
    • Deadlift (hex bar) 295lbs x 1
      • a high RPE set where I increased the weight a little too much
    • started adding extra weight to the pull ups

Current State

I’m sticking with my current coach for programming, with the movement selection and rep ranges expected to shift away from general-purpose to powerlifting-focused more as we get closer to the PL meet (9 months out).

I had a regression in bodyweight the past two months due to vacation, work, and simply forgetting to eat. I need to be consistently hitting ~2100+ Calories per day to maintain weight and even that is difficult. If I am not paying attention I end up closer to 1500-1700~ish. I aim for a pretty even macro ratio of roughly 40%/30%/30% carbs/fat/protein ; as described in the previous thread, keeping up the carb intake is essential for any progress and maintenance here. For protein intake it should be in the ballpark of 130-150g/day I think, which ends up being difficult with solid food at times thanks to the GLP-1. I supplement with protein shakes but if I have too many of those in one day it leads to “gastrointestinal distress” hours later…

Since my programming over the last months included a lot of rotation and movement progression I dont have a lot of lifts to do a true 1:1 strength comparison. Best right now are likely my pull ups and deadlift (hex bar so I dont destroy my shins). I’ve been really happy to see my pull ups progress to consistent sets of 10 reps and now adding extra weight (first +10lbs, now +25lbs, hoping eventually to get +45lbs). On Deadlift I got a little carried away chasing attempts at 300 / 315lbs and sneaked in the listed 295x1 attempt on a day when I was supposed to be doing RPE 8.5 for 3-rep. This is after having a hard 1RM of 235lbs five months ago. So I am happy with that but eager to see it keep progressing.

Strength gains are exciting (and likely just neuromuscular re-adaptation right now) but the real goal was to keep putting on lean mass and in that regard its been incredibly difficult to maintain progress. Seeing my weight quickly drop from 140lbs to 135lbs to 133lbs after a few weeks of relaxing on the diet was pretty shocking. I am back to focusing hard on this and I hope that by the time I compete in November I will be able to fill out the 148lbs weight class.

Logging

Since I already double-log my lifts (using my own lift tracker app + app for reporting lifts to the coach) I am not trying to repeat every details of every session here.

I will mostly just update this with any highlights and milestones or other interesting progress points

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From Wednesday

Been working on glute ham raise
Could never do it before
This time started with band assistance, now have decreased the band strength. Making progress. The warm up for this is pretty brutal

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Before I keep forgetting this was from last week

Been working on front squat, never trained it before, took multiple sessions to figure out the best grip.

Also been working on adding weight to pullups

These weren’t as clean as I wanted but still making progress

Testing out different shin guards for deadlift, these are good

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Primary meal most often is some version of pasta + ground beef + chili beans + mixed veg

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New Achievement Unlocked: unassisted Glute Ham Raise

Never been able to do this in my life, just getting to this point here took like over a month of progression from medium band assistance to lighter band to finally no band

My calves started cramping up halfway through had to spend the rest of the reps trying to keep them from cramping again

Close Grip Bench Press looks like this

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Congrats on the GHR dude!

How’s benching on the fat pad? I’ve never had one before: always the opposite. Do you experience any appreciable difference on it?

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I think it’s just a regular Rogue bench

For close Grip bench my elbows are definitely hitting the bench at the bottom but I’m not sure it’s enough to make a difference for the lift

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Deadlift Day today

Here’s a little training recap for DL

  • This was the 1RM I took back in September right before starting with my coach

225 x 1 ; RPE 9.5, I managed 235 right after this but didn’t get the video

(posted this vid in the other thread too)

  • Here was last month, five months later, when I accidentally did a 1RM by mistake ; 295x1 RPE 9.5

(YouTube hates vertical videos you might have to use full screen mode)

  • And here’s today, 225 x 4 RPE 5

Previously I was using the hex bar for DL to save my shins, now switching back to regular DL

So today’s DL was supposed to be 5x4 RPE 7. The first sets at 205lbs felt like shit.

I added in the belt and it got slightly better

Then I remembered that I was still using double overhand grip, and switched back to mixed grip; HUGE difference.

RPE 7 @ 205 suddenly transformed into RPE 5 @ 225

The weight on that last set (in the video) just flew off the floor. I couldn’t believe it, never had such a huge drop in difficulty while increasing weight between sets. I think the mixed grip was essential here.

Also want to give a shout out to those shin guards I posted. These also made a huge difference. Because my first warm up sets I didn’t use them, and it’s like a huge sharp shot of pain dragging the bar up your legs ; once I added them, you can barely even feel the bar scraping your shins. The key part here is that you can maintain focus on the lift 100% without the painful shin scraping distracting you. I’m sure my shins are just sensitive from not having trained DL for five years but still the decrease in distraction while you’re pulling is a significant effect. The downside; as mentioned these shin guards do not breathe and become soaked in sweat which you now have to go out of your way to make sure they air out and dry afterwards. So yet another piece of gear I have to babysit. :thinking:

Recovery is by far the hardest part of training right now. It’s very difficult to eat enough to to hit the calorie requirement just to maintain weight. Both my coach and others in here have suggested I likely need closer to 2500-2700~ish calories, and still it’s a huge amount of work just to hit 2100. And it’s not like I can just eat a giant meal ; the amount I can get down in a single sitting is limited which means I have to spend the entire day, every day, constantly trying to monitor and supplement my food intake. Last night I went to the China Buffet to try to prep for this morning’s session and even there over the span of 1hr+ I could still only get through two plates of food. Once I get past the food challenges, I still need to get sleep, which is also just as inconsistent. So overall, lots of recovery challenges here, moreso than the training in a lot of ways. I only have to hit the gym 3x a week, but I have to keep up with the recovery work the entirety of every day.

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To round out the six-month progress shots

Here’s my 1RM 205 Squat from September

And here’s an easy 185 x5 from this week

Today did bench Press

Here’s a near-1RM at 135 from last September

And here’s an easy 135 x 5 from today

Amazingly, my close grip bench press seems to be not only easier but also stronger, that 135 was an RPE 7 on regular bench but with close grip it was more like RPE 6

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You still around?

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yes lol

not much notable recently

doing a “volume” block of sorts right now which is wrecking me pretty hard. Its not terribly different from the programming I had in prior months, but a lot of 5x5 sets at a given RPE then a back-off set for five more reps at 10% less weight. This is in contrast to the previous months which were all in the ballpark of 3-4 sets and 4-6 reps at varying RPE’s (6 - 8~ish). Its really surprising how such a small programming change (e.g. bumping from 4 sets to 5 sets + back-off set) is having such a huge impact on my recovery. Sessions that would not have been too difficult are leaving me massively sore the next day, and such.

had some back & forth with the coach and we are gonna try to use my “close grip” bench press as my primary bench grip. My regular grip was based on pinky finger on the rings of the bench, and my close grip was measured with the knuckle of my thumb on the inner edge of the knurling (but using false grip for the actual press). The latter will be my new regular grip going forward. Its been really weird how my grip bench press in this close position is only slightly weaker than my regular bench. The bar movement path distance is a lot longer but I have been consistently able to get about 95% as much weight or the same weight minus a single rep at a given RPE in most cases.

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there has been some other minutiae I have been tweaking as well, mostly in my training schedule and in the Zepbound administration scheduling. The Mon/Wed/Fri training schedule was getting awkward with my work schedule so shifted that to Tues/Thurs/Sat.. And shifting training sessions from AM to PM. And have been experimenting with trying to extend the tirzepatide dosing cycle from every 7 days to every 8 days. All these things to try and dial in recovery and time-management better.

The Zepbound in particular has been interesting in this, since its typically dosed every 7 days, but takes approx. 24hr to fully take effect after dosing. So what has been happening is that I would take it Sunday, it would hit me Monday, and so Monday - Tuesday my appetite would be shot and it would be especially hard to hit Calories on those days, with my daily calorie intake slowly rising as the week goes on until Saturday and Sunday when its back pretty strong. This does not always line up well with training if I need to do a hard session on that Monday / Tuesday. Which is actually what happened this week.

I have also experimented with pushing the dosing out to 8-day and 9-day also but conversely my appetite goes so crazy on those extra days that its really unsettling to experience a hard rebound effect like this. So I am prob gonna stick with the 7-day standard cycle for now. I suspect that in the future, daily pill versions such as the upcoming orforglipron might be a better solution so you dont get such wild swings in the GLP-1 effects over the course of a week. Will have to discuss with the Dr. at next visit, etc.

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Ironically the day after I posted that they announced the approval of the new pill LOL what timing

https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fda-approves-lillys-foundayotm-orforglipron-only-glp-1-pill

Anyway here’s this week’s deadlift

I did like four sets of this plus an extra prior set at 245 and a back off set at 225. I was pretty pumped for this session but after these deadlifts I ended up being pretty exhausted so it’s been difficult to keep up the intensity throughout sessions. Because after this DL I also had

Deficit DL
Box Squat
DB incline bench press
DB row
Ab wheel
Prowler push

Bodyweight has been trending back up from ~133 to ~138 over the past weeks

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Here’s some lifts from this week

215 x 5 squats, did a bunch of sets at this weight

Weighted pull ups; first time trying 45lbs

After this I dropped the weight back down and did like 60 total reps across about 10 sets

Here’s some bodyweight updated trends

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So overall still trending upwards slowly. You can see the big weight drop there in January when I came back from vacation and didn’t eat enough and stopped taking creatine.

Also I found out that “creatine gummies” are a thing so now I think I’ll take creatine again. Mostly I was just sick of eating powder every day for little perceivable benefit. But I’m ok with eating candy every day for little perceivable benefit.

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