I watched a few and the all seem right about as intense as I was pushing with my regular rest-pause method, only with less reps. Going too heavy makes me lose mind-muscle connection for specific muscles intended to be targetted, but doing 2x6-12 yesterday felt good. doing a single set of 6-12 feels that it is leaving too much on the table.
I intend to keep as much of the program as written as possible, I meant that I will be doing most every loading exercise with 2-3 sets. I will be keeping pump work as 1 set and muscle rounds as typical 6x4.
Counter to my intent of ‘keeping the program as written’, I want to keep my exercise selection as similar as possible until I stop progressing with that movement. At this point, I intend to swap just that exercise out for an alternative. I don’t see a good way of documenting progress while running a 4x/week program with A/B/C exercise selections… I like excel sheets for ease of analysis and I’d rather not need 12 sheets to keep up with this program.
I try not to modify someone else’s program when I can avoid it.
Planned to lift today but got caught off guard bringing my daughter to gymnastics. Was even more caught off guard when they advanced her in classes, and even more off guard when the class extended another 30 mins.
Good news: daughter is kicking ass in gymnastics
Bad news: it made me miss the gym today
Finally got that fried chicken I’d been wanting yesterday… was a bit underwhelmed. Interesting that abstaining from cravings makes some of those foods taste less tasty than I remembered - I am coming to realize that “dieting” is more a struggle of mind over hunger for me.
1 more week of maintenance eating (much appreciated since I’m starting up Fortitude Training), and I’m back to the cut!
Whole session felt great, minus the searing pain of loaded/extreme stretches. Will have to lower weight on Lat Pulldown but otherwise this was a productive session.
Missed T2D4W1 over the weekend - was overloaded with schoolwork and didn’t have time. Was quite disappointed honestly.
3/7/22 - Fortitude T2D1W2 Slept better than i have the last week or so, but still relatively poor sleep quality. Was very unmotivated to lift (wife problems) but pulled it together anyways.
Went up in reps on squats, from 8>9 per set. Went up in reps for everything else, but i switched to single leg romanian deadlift because i was disproportionately sore when doing bilateral work. Tired, ready to sleep.*
3/9/22 - Fortitude T2D2W2 Slept poorly again, sleep tracker said ANS recovery was good (I don’t trust it) - was tired all day. Excited to lift; lets do this.
Lifts went well, struggled to increase weight where it mattered, but I still did it. Skipped ham curls because RDLs have been destroying my hammies and was still too sore for what I needed them to do.
I’ve been diagnosed with mild OBS (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) and hypersomnia (just being tired all the time). I have a CPAP and I’ve been using it for the last ~18 months or so, still having trouble with wanting to use it all night though… I’m a stomach/side sleeper so the masks always feel like they’re in the way a bit.
I recently changed from the dreamwear mouth/nose mask:
This set up is great. Just nose pillows and most will keep their mouths closed because your getting the air directly up the nose. It’s very comfortable and with the hose connected on top you wont get then pulling of the mask effect. Hope this helps…
I’ll probably have to go out and get one on my own because the VA is pretty bad at this stuff, but this is much more like what I was hoping for when I said “nose only” over the phone lol.
3/11/22 - Fortitude T2D3W2 Lets hit it Muscle rounds for RDL and Front Squats are fucking brutal, but i nailed it. Session felt a bit masochistic so i know i did well. Should be hitting Day 4 tomorrow but I’ll have to see how bad my weekly school-fucking is.
At any rate, cutting phase kicks in starting Monday. Excited to be making progress again.
Weekend Update:
Have to call off the 4th day of training; between OT, meal prep, and school (which has been a total time suck), I didn’t have the time to get that 4th workout in.
To correct this repeating issue, I will be doing my training Monday, Tuesday, weds off, Thurs, Fri, sat sun off. If I have the time, I will try to get in some light pump work or cardio on the weekends so I don’t go 2 days off in a row, but this is being optimistic considering how time-consuming school has been.
3/14/22 - Fortitude T2D1W3 Started diet today, 2,000cal daily goal for the next 2 weeks. Macro goals as follows: [200g protein | 55g fat | 175g carbs]
Single Leg DB Romanian Deadlift (loading) 10x70 (potentiate)
8x140 (each leg)
8x140 (each leg)
Lower back was cramping so badly I had to end the session. I was unable to do: Hip Thrust, Cable Flyes, Cable Rows, Lateral Raise, Hammer Curl and CG Bench.
I will need to change my exercise selection for Loading Sets, Squats and SS RDL are too much for my lower back to handle. Might replace back squats with heavy front squats, and use either leg press or hack squat for my T2D3 Quad Muscle Rounds.
