Meditations, Musings & Muscular Contractions

[Ned_Schneebly]

A few workouts to log here. I did my chest, shoulders & arms day on Tuesday, & then did good mornings, shrugs & leg curls in the evening. On Thursday I did my back & legs workout, (not including hamstrings), & today on Saturday, I did chest, shoulders & arms, & also good mornings, ham curls & shrugs afterwards, same session since it’s a weekend day. I won’t bother logging the previous chest, shoulders & arms workout. I’ll log the back & legs session & todays chest, shoulders & arms + good mornings, shrugs & ham curls workout.

Underhand Lat Pulldowns: 100kg 8, 90kg 8

Glad to have added another rep on my top set here! Feeling like I’m building up some really good momentum. 100kg for 8 with two seconds up & down is nothing to scoff at.

Hack Squats: 80kg 7, 105kg 8, 90kg 8
Chest Supported Rows: 75kg 6, 90kg 8, 80kg 8

Managed to improve performance on hack squats, very nice top set with 105kg for 8. Increased weight on rows backoff set, going up to 80kg for 8 here.

Hip Adduction: 50kg 20
Calf Raises: 100kg 10
Shrugs: 100kg 6, 6

Much to say here. First time doing adduction was 45kg for 12, second time I used a different machine. Third time I’m back on the machine I used first time, & I add 5kg to go to 50kg… And get 20 reps. Crazy increase. Alt calf raise machine, finally hitting 10 reps with this weight on this particular machine. Shrugs now with straps, added a rep on both sets.

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Pec Deck: 105kg 9, 100kg 8, 95kg 8
Reverse Pec Deck: 60kg 10, 85kg 7

Fricking awesome, added a rep to my top set on pec deck again, (using 2/2 tempo as well). Reverse pec deck feeling a bit weaker but that happens every now & then due to little shifts resulting in worse leverages in my form so I’m not worried.

Nautilus OHP: 57kg 7, 77kg 7, 50kg 9 (SS)
Dumbbell Incline Skullcrusher: 14kg 8, 18kg 9, 14kg 8

Little PR on OHP machine, very nice. Dumbbell skullcrusher holding as is for now.

Cable Lateral: 5kg 6, 7.5kg 7, 5kg 10
Rope Pushdown: 20kg 10, 25kg 5/7, 22.5kg 5/7

Cable laterals feeling strong. Rope pushdowns too. 5/7 means first 5 reps I spread the rope & last 7 reps I kept my hands together. Potentially quite excited about this one, could turn out to be very productive.

Machine Preacher Curl: 50kg 6, 60kg 8, 50kg 8
Machine Preacher Hammer Curl: 50kg 8, 45kg 7

Sick PR on the hammer curl, hitting 50kg for 8 reps at last. Hell yeah.

Good Morning: 60kg 10, 70kg 10, 77.5kg 12
Shrug: 100kg 8, 8
Lying Leg Curl: 70kg 8, 60kg 8

Ok, added 2.5kg on good mornings, (last time was 75kg for 10), as I didn’t wanna be too ambitious but ended up getting 12 reps, nice. Shrugs, solid PR with the straps. Lying leg curl - last time I was fatigued from good mornings I got 7 reps & today is 8, so I’ll take it!

Quick little rant post today. There both is & isn’t a ‘perfect workout’, depending on what you mean by it. Of course, looking at the idea from the standpoint of there being an EXACT number of reps, sets, exercises, rest periods, etc, on the face of it, is untrue. But I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.

My view is this - there is a range, a window, of reps, sets, exercises, rest periods, which leads to the total training effect. If we assign the training effect with a number, lets say 50 is ‘ideal workout training effect stimulus’. If we then look at training stimulus 49 & 51, 48 & 52, 47 & 53, there’s no discernible difference - it’s close enough so that there’s no real difference. The ball is in the goal, whether it got in the top right pocket or bottom left pocket, it got in the goal. But if we get more than a few steps away from that ‘50’ stimulus, things will eventually suffer - we’ll make less pronounced gains, & then no gains at all.

Secondly, there’s multiple way to get that ideal training effect - this is the most important point. You could do slightly more sets of slightly less effective exercises, slightly fewer sets of slightly more effective exercises, slightly more sets with slightly shorter rest, slightly fewer sets with slightly longer rest, ETC. Basically if you imagine a Dr Seuss style machine with a bunch of levers, if you position the levers, (RPE, load, reps, stretch position tension, rest, sets), a certain way, it produces that ‘50’. You could then move one of the levers up, & as long as you move another one down by a similar margin, you’re still getting ‘50’. If you move a lever up too far, then you can’t make up for it with other levers, but as long as you only move it a certain degree, & move other levers that certain degree in the opposite direction, you’re still on ‘50’. So there’s actually a bunch of ways to have an ‘optimal’ workout. Only problem is we can’t really know if we’re on 50 or 51 or 49 or 48 or 52. We can know we’re on or close to 50 though just through intuition & results.

If you make the decision to train with a certain RPE with certain exercises at a certain frequency, & you’re trying to find your 50, & you modulate number of sets based on whether you’re over/under-recovered, that’s a journey of getting there. Of course it also changes slightly as you get stronger & more developed, so it’s kinda an endless journey. But, you can ‘take naps’ along the way if you’re fairly secure through trial & error & intuition that you’re working in the right place, you’ll probably still be working in the right place next workout & you won’t have to micro-manage every workout. Next year’s workout though, that might be another story.