Hello,
I warn you in advance this post will surely be a bit disjointed…
Being an assiduous reader of T-Nation for years, I decided after a long reflection to open on this site my training journal.
Summer is coming and as every year depresses me.
Bodybuilding has been part of my life for a few years now, with the good and bad sides generated, this passion I exercise alone in my corner, without sharing it with anyone, it is an integral part of my life.
So coming here could help me share this with other people and be part of a community, I read a few days of training regularly, it’s solid, the level here is high.
I hesitated a long time before I knew how to organize this first post, whether I was getting into the details or not, and then shit…
Personal Background:
I am 28 years old, my name is Louis. I am French.
I work as a salesman in a hardware store, I was recently promoted internally and I have to go on the road as a salesperson, it’s scheduled for this summer, it’s a big change in my life.
Before that I worked as a carpenter with my father, but after a few years I decided to leave, family work is complicated…
I measure 1m65 for currently 79kg (measure in feet 5.41339 and weight in lbs: 174.165) my height is a real problem in my life, a big source of complex for a long time.
I had a happy childhood, the son of a business father and a mother devoted to her children.
For a few years now, let’s say since I was about 22 years old I have experienced some depressive episodes, I am someone with a very low self-esteem (not to say that I hate myself), I would have liked to be someone else simply.
I don’t really know how this all started.
Still today I have moments of intense sadness, it often happens in the summer strangely, sometimes I am so upset that it compresses my chest.
Social side I am appreciated at my work and my friends are all acquaintances of very long time, we are close and solidarity but time passes and everyone must also live his life, some have become parents.
I’m more of a cold, quiet person when I don’t know the people around me, I keep all my feelings to myself.
From the kind who sits in a corner at family meals and who never speaks, I prefer to listen and observe, fortunately my 3-year-old niece brings me bursts of happiness as soon as I see her, her smile and her innocence touch me enormously.
The current world is going too fast for me, I live in a gap, on the margins of everything.
In love I had only one real relationship in my life, it lasted 4 years, before and after I never had anyone, my love journey is chaotic, I am very shy with girls and it blocks me for everything, Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever have a real love relationship with kids and everything.
Sporting background:
Touch small I did several sports, football (soccer), judo then I attacked rugby at the age of 10, I did until last year, 17 years of my life, this beautiful sport brought me lots of positive things, it also destroyed my body (several fractures/sprains, several K.O, fractured teeth, forced to have implants on the front teeth and so on), still today I still have pain in the shoulders, cervical, sometimes capricious knees… I played my entire career in the same club at an intermediate level in the hostile stadiums of South-East France.
Background bodybuilding:
I started this sport at about the age of 15-16, my rugby club had equipment in a shed outside next to the stadium, a bench, bars, dumbbells and weights; then I went to the city hall where we had preferential rates through rugby. For the first few years I did it like that, no food plan, but from the beginning I loved to make muscle plans, by rereading it today I will surely think it was an absolute nullity but I liked it, make plans that are not feasible for hours, realize that it is not going to happen, start over, etc.
The real turning point comes when I registered in a real bodybuilding room held by a couple of former international champions in federations "natural’', everything changed there, I was taught training, the proper execution of movements, learning to eat…
Since I was listening and I was progressing, the manager took me under his wing and taught me a lot of things, later I wanted to be followed more individually, I asked him to follow me but he refused, the coaching of natural people did not really interest him, he sent me to his own coach, someone recognized in this field in France, a very nice meeting, a truly human, humble person, listening to others, he followed me for several years, at which time I decided to train seriously, I progressed at the beginning and then a long stagnation, I even came to doubt him… While the problem surely came from me, but given the lack of results compared to the investment I doubted everything… I started looking for answers on the internet, then I found Christian Thibaudeau and his articles, there many things changed, my vision of this sport has evolved, I found many answers to my questions, I’ve read a ton of his articles on Thibarmy or here on T-Nation… After this discovery I decided to stop with my coach and to fly on my own, I’ve been training on my own for about 3 and a half years now.
I try to apply Christian’s advice for natties, it works pretty well overall, even if I think that anyway I don’t have a good genetics for this sport, that’s not a reason, I will never hide behind it, I try to be brave in the room, to be consistent.
I think I’m more for low volume, my favorite range of repetitions is 6-8 reps, I also like rest-pause or myo reps as an intensive technique. I have been training for 2 years in a commercial room not far from my work, it is a pretty good room but some equipment is missing like a hack squat or an additional rack… I have to bring my own trap bar to do deadlift. I see a lot of people here at home gym, it’s something I would like to do later but for now I don’t have the opportunity to do it. I did the neurotyping test of Thibaudeau 2 years ago, the result is without appeal I am type 3, I must pay attention to my cortisol permanently but it is difficult. On the diet side I finally managed to be disciplined now, I almost never make a deviation, the plan is the plan, I am able to create it, calculate the macros and change them up or down according to the objectives.
On the muscular program side, I have a lot of trouble to follow all the plans, it has always been a problem and maybe that’s why I’m frustrated with my results. In general I create my own programs following the advice read on t-nation, I have several sources of inspiration, Thibaudeau of course, but also Wendler (I will do the 531 one day it is a certainty, I have in my possession the 3 books but I still wait before launching myself in it), I also like the articles of Clay Hyght, Mike Israetel in particular….
I usually train in full body 3 sessions + 1 gap session (gap workout), it can also be a push/pull on 4 days or Upper/Lower 4 days. I have already tried to train for 5-6 days with not convincing results and especially a low morale at the end.
My bodybuilding idols are Dorian Yates, Tom Platz and Lee Priest
To go back a little bit to when I decided to train without coaching.
I did a big dry in the summer of 2020 where I fell to 65kg (143,3 lbs) dry enough, but I ended up in depression with lack of carbohydrates in the end, dizziness, sometimes very dark suicidal thoughts and finally eating disorders that I took months to cure.
Then I had worse times with gaps, evenings, not great food etc…. Note that next to that I have always trained as seriously as possible.
Recently I went back on a diet where I fell to 71kg, and then I just finished a mass take of about 15 weeks where I went from 71 to 79kg (156,528 to 174,165 lbs). It was my first real mass, I did everything to be as clean as possible on the diet, in the end I was around 4000 calories, which is huge for me, my digestive system did not appreciate and I had a lot of diarrhea (I still have some today), I took pre biotics and probiotics but it didn’t help…
Level sleep I go to bed early in general because I get up early in the week as on weekends, the week I am in bed between 8.50 pm and 9.30 pm, up around 4.45 am, on weekends and Friday I go to bed as soon as possible, around 9 pm and I get up between 5:30 and 6:30 I am sensitive to lack of sleep and sleep less than 7 hours a night penalizes me the next day.
In short, now to the regime, I don’t think I will go as low as in 2020.
Just a few weeks of slimming.
Morphological analysis:
So I’m small, legs rather long and upper body rather short, arms long.
At its best I would say gluteal and lumbar, at its weakest point…. Everything else…
My main goal is to try to be happy in life and to be as muscular as possible by remaining natural, I mainly target ischios, biceps and pectoral in big delay I find…
I like the basic exercises like the rear squat, the deadlift trap bar, I also like the machines and the pulleys, I like everything childish, but with time we manage to sort between the exercises that seem to have positive effects and the other exercises.
I am not very strong, my goal is more aesthetic than performance to illustrate this for example I always squat in high bar, I do not optimize in low bar to raise weights.
I’m really frustrated with my physique, it weighs on me all the time…
Bodybuilding has created a lot of complexes for me, it’s never good enough but that’s how it is, despite everything I try to become the best version of myself and drive out my demons.
Sorry for the length of this first post, but as long as you open a journal, you might as well describe what I am in full.
Later, I will explain my food plan and muscle program of the moment.
Thank you for your reading to those who have come to the end.
I also want to tell you that I am open to all kinds of comments and criticisms.
