Making It Up As I Go Log...

Training Logs
1

EDIT: Name change as teh “elite level strong” goals are not my main focus at the moment.

My attempt at a good thread.

Others, as well as I, noticed that Meats Riding the Line thread was getting a little cluttered with me posting in there as well. So, here is my attempt at a good bodybuilding/strength training thread. My general goals are to get large and strong. In this vien, I have decided to see how many of the Jim Wendler/RealPC “elite level strong” numbers I can hit, while still getting bigger/stonger overall.

Feel free to post questions/comments/concerns/your own videos or what not. I just ask that this thread stay focused on ACTUAL training that is done and not a bunch of random bull shit. With that, here is what I have done the past several days:

5/7/10 Squat night.

Went like this:

BarX10
135X10
225X5
315X5
405X4
500X3 for 4 sets
405X10

I feel like I need to get more consistant with my depth. Some of my reps felt, and looked, deeper than others. I also felt like I let the bar get too far forward after my first rep on all of the 500 sets. In short, most of my form needs a lot of work I think. I am taking the weight down in future sessions and working on this. Vidoes are here.

5/9/10 Millitary press night.

BarX15
95X10
135X5
185X3
225X3
245X3
295X1
140+50LB chains X8
140+80LB chains X7

Again, tips welcome here. Not sure if this one was strict enough or not.

Tri chain press.

4X15

High pulls.
110X10 for 3 sets.

Cardio: same as last time.

5/10/10

Box pulls.
135X10
225X5
315X3
405X3
545X3
600X1
600+40LBs chain X1

Pullups.

BDWX8
X5
BDW+25LBsX4 we shall say, for 2 sets.
BDWX8

These are going to need some practice.

I intend to post updates on my training fairly regularly.

2

I’ll be following, you’re a god damn beast.

3

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I’ll be following, you’re a god damn beast.

[/quote]

Thanks man.

4

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I’ll be following, you’re a god damn beast.

[/quote]

x2! What do you weigh?

5

Whup, 285-290. Depends on the day really.

6

If I could shake this damn head cold I would be doing ok. Seriously, its May in central Texas. WTF gives?

Ok, enough of my bitching. It was bench, dip, curl night. My training buddy had shit to do tonight, so barbell benching was out of the equation. Insert DB bench and I roll on.

DB bench:

50sX15
75sX8
100sX8
125sX5
140sX8
161.2sX6
171.2sX4
181.2sX1

Despite not being able to make my nose function, this went rather well. My sets with the 161.2s and 171.2s both tied old PRs, and I had never attempted 181.2s before. If my training buddy keeps having shit to do on bench night, I will see how I can do on the 181.2s when I’m a little fresher.

Dips:
BDWx15
+40LBs of chain X10
+80Lbs of chain X10
+80LBs of chain X9
BDWx12

These felt ok. I am pleasently suprised by not having shoulder pain from these at all. I need to get my reps and weight up on them though.

Curls.

BarX10
95X10
135X5

The 135 set was a rather large pain on my wrists. Next time I am going to try casting them with my wraps. If this does not help, well, we shall see what happens.

7

I will be MIA for the next few days. I have to travel cross state, and will be back Sunday night/Monday morning. Night all.

8

Hey man, nice training. I noticed you use the plastic collars, see if you can find the metal spring like ones for the db rows next time, they tend to hold better. Just in my experience.

9

So, I have been MIA for a few days. Drove from Bryan/College Station to Lubbok for my little sisters graduation. 8 1/2 hours in a car one way blows. Anyway, training did not happen for several days, and I came back to it feeling less than well rested we shall say. The past few days went down like this:

5/16/10

Standing millitary:
BarX15
95X10
135X5
225X5
245X5
255X4
190+ all my chains(somewhere around 80LBs) X2

I tried to grind out a third rep, and damn near fell over due to lack of oxygen. I was pretty dizzy for a few seconds after that set.

Seated DB millitary:
100X15 R.P. X4

I seem to have problems going for reps with heavyish weights on the standing presses. I always come close to running out of air. I think I will do my high(er) rep work seated for the time being.

Rear delt fly:

75X10
100X5
100X8

I prefer to do these single arm. 3 rep PR with this weight.

PJR:
75X10 for 3 sets

I think this is what is known as a PJR. I was really just playing around with tricep movements at this point. I think I will keep this one in for a while and see what I can do with it.

5/18/10
Squat:
BarX10
135X8
225X5
315X5
405X10
455X3
455X5
475X2

Once I got to 405, I did reps with it until I felt my arch start to fail. I worked on keeping my elbows forward and under the bar as well as hitting depth. A weird thing is that my elbows hit my quads on a few of the reps. This happened a little bit on my 405 set, but not so much on the latter ones. First rep with 475 felt light and fairly fast. I let the bar get infront of me on the second rep and turned the damn thing into a good morning half way up. Something to work on.

Leg press:

I don’t know what the sled weighs, so I am only counting the plates used.

1000X5 for 2 sets
1180X5
1270X3
1270X5
1000X5 paused at the bottom.

I have never taken a video of these before, and was suprised by how much my hips/ass moved at the bottom. I have for the most part always done leg presses this way and just never noticed.

Light band good mornings and V-ups for sets of 10 done in 2 circuts to finnish things.

5/19/10

Bench night.

My training buddy was MIA again, so dumbbells were the order of the night:

50sX10
75sX10
100sX8
125sX8
140sX8
161.2sX6
181.2sX2 1 rep PR here
161.2sX5
140sX10

I seriously think I will buy some caution tape to put around my camera and myself so folks quit walking in the way of things. I did not mind this fellow so much because he kind of knows what he’s doing in the gym. I have a couple of funny vids of slackjawed mouth breathers being stupid in front of my camera. I will post those in a bit. At any rate, this went ok. 1 more rep with the 181.2s than last week.

Dips:
BDWx10
+100X7
+100X5
+80X8 drop to BDW X6

After 2 sets of my geometry challenged self trying to figure out the damn dip belt chain loop, I just said fuck it and threw on all my chains.

Curls:
BarX10
95X5
135X4

The wrist wraps helped some. I am going to slug this movement out for a bit longer. If my other lifts start to suffer due to wrist pain though, I am ditching the damn things. Plenty of things to work on going forward.

10

[quote]Heracles_rocks wrote:
Hey man, nice training. I noticed you use the plastic collars, see if you can find the metal spring like ones for the db rows next time, they tend to hold better. Just in my experience. [/quote]

Thanks bud. I will give them a shot. I tried them when I was using 25LB plates, and the metal spring collars at my gym had this bad habbit of stabbing me in the chest at the top. I will give them a shot on my next back day though, as I have not tried them with the 35LB plates.

11

Dumbasses in a golds gym you say??? I have seen a few. Anyway here is one that I did not even notice until I got home to watch the film I may start actively looking for these slack jawed mouth breathers between sets and submit them to team awful:

12

Hey congrats to your lil sis. Dude keep it up, you have some real strong lifts.

13

5/21/10

Been rather busy of late, which is actually a little suprising given the time of year. Anyway, outside of the gym stressors not withstanding, here are a string of updates.

5/21/10
deadlift its auxillaries session:

135X10
225X5
315X5
405X3
455X2
500X6 I went touch and go here, and it proved to be a mistake. Could not keep a proper bar path, and my form went to shit. I will be sticking to 1 rep, pause, another rep from now on.
500X5 pauses between reps this time.
550X1

Felt rather crappy about this on the whole. I was really pissed with myself for trying the touch and go thing, as it did me no good. Ah well, live and learn as they say.

Barbell low rows(yates rows I think they are called?)
225X12
315X10
365X8
405X5

First time I have attempted the low-rowing thing. Felt rather different. I will rotate these in on occasion and see how they go.

pull-ups
BDWx5 for 3 sets

After all that, I wasa stilled pretty pissed about my lackluster deadlift performance, and not doing very well on the low rows, so I went ahead and did some DB rows anyway.

100X10
140X10
291.2X12

I did not rest long enough in between the two sets here and rushed my left arms set. As a result, the set looked like crap when compared to the right arm. Something for me to pay attention to going forward.

14

5/23/10

Overhead press and its auxillaries:

BarX15
95X8
135X8
225X5
255X2
200+80LBs chainX2

DB millitary press:

125sX10 R.P. X4

PJRs
100X10 for 3 sets

Lateral raises
50sX5 for 2 sets
Front raises
50sX5 for 2 sets

This was on the whole a fairly good session.

15

ON that last post. I was toying with the idea of overhead pressing with chains added to see how it felt. It makes you really focus on stability and maintaining core tightness. The chains will also pull you very far out of whack if you allow your bar path to deviate even the slightest. These will be kept in for a while I think.

16

5/24/10

Trap bar deads and some pull up work.

Trap bar deads(elevated)
135X10
225X5
315X5
405X5
495X5
495+80LBs of chain X5

I started playing with the elevation on this movement because my gyms trap bar sucks. It cannot fit any more than 5 plates and a set of collars. 6 plates goes to the edge, but after 1 rep the outer plate bounces off. Another thing, the bar circumference is slightly different than all of the other bars in the gym, so none of the gyms collars will fit on the damn thing. This is not a problem now that I have some specialty chain collars, but its still damn stupid. The safety squat bar in my gym is the same way. I do these from the box in order to make them more difficult and added the chains for extra weight. If anybody has any ideas on adding more weight to this, then I am all ears. I also put this movement in in place of the back squat because my shoulders were still sore as hell from the pressing work the day before.

Pull ups.
a few sets of 5.

Not a very good session on the whole as I ran out of energy. Did some ab work and called it a night.

17

5/26/10

Bench night.

barX20
135X8
225X5
315X3
405X1
315X12

Had this wierd sharp pain in my left front delt and upper bicep area(WTF). Persisted for the much of the benching, but strangely, lessened as I went heavier in weight. The set with the bar hurt the more than any of the others. I was really frustrated with this. So, I figured I would do some incline work and some hammers to get blood into the area.

Incline DB press
140sX8
140sX9

Fat grip hammer curl
50sX5 each arm for 3 sets

The incline presses and hammer curls seemed to work, as the sharp throbbing was almost totally gone. Still, my benching suffered for it I think.

18

5/28/10

Squats:

barX12
135X10
225X10
315X10
405X10
420+80LBs chain X5
460+80LBs chain X1, then fail.

I brought my stance in a little bit, and things felt much better. Getting deep was much easier, and keeping my elbows under the bar was a bit easier as well. Still a bunch to work on, but I was fairly happy with this.

calves
3X10

hack squats: paused at the bottom
+270X5
+360X5
+450X2
+450X3

Band good mornings and V-ups
A few sets of a few.

19

5/30/10

Standing millitary press:
barX12
95X10
135X5
225X5
255X1
220+80LBs of chain X1

Progress, a good thing.

140+ 80LBs chain X9

Seated DB millitary press
125sX10 R.P. X3

Front and side raises
50s some Xsome

hammer curls. I felt like going heavy here.
50sX10
75sX10
110sX5 per arm

Tri push downs
the stack for a few sets of 10.

Its late, and I will post a few more updates in the next day or 2.

On a general note going forward, I have noticed that on the days were a train back to back(2 days in a row) the second session just sucks balls. In an effort to remedy this, I am changing to a 3 way split. It will go like this:

day 1: overhead press and auxillaries
day 2: deadlift and auxillaries
day 3: bench and auxillaries
day 4: squat and auxillaries

I will train Mon. Wend. Fri. and devote Sat. to general cardio conditioning work. This way, I should hit everything every 10-11 days, give or take depending on how things go. Heres hoping that the sled I ordered from that recent EFS sale gets here sooner rather than later.

20

135X8
225X5
315X5
405X2
495X1
545X1
565X1 with a hitch here.

Pullups
someXsome

This session just felt like shit. Hopefully, no longer training on consecutive days will fix this.