How are your fingernails going?
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Still intact, but every night I fear they won’t be there in the morning
sarcasm
So it’s not Foot & Mouth?
It’s not, and I’m really happy about that
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Got to the gym for the first time in a long time.
I decided to try my 1RMs on the close-grip bench, front squat and deadlift, and also my max number of dead-hang chin-ups before diving into the program, just to see how much I can progress in one cycle
I’ve not done any of these movements (apart from chin ups and a couple of sessions with CGBP) in half a year, and I expected to see some loss in strength. And I did, although much less than I expected.
Front squat had dropped 12.5kgs/27lbs from my all-time best
CGBP and deadlift Dropped 10kgs/22lbs
And I got 12 dead-hang chin-ups (that was really surprising as I did 18 just before I got the fever, go figure)
So really, apart from the chin ups, surprisingly little strength was lost (realistically I could tie/pass my old PRs in a couple of weeks if I focused on only doing that for a while but honestly I don’t care)
After testing those I did some light assistance to get the blood flowing (my hips and hamstrings have been feeling pretty damn bad after not being able to train, being in the start position of deadlift was really painful)
I did low short-stride walking lunges paired with kettlebell swings and hanging leg raises for the lower body (felt really good) low lunges practically mean that you don’t go all the way up at any point, this keeps the tension going really well and results in a great pump.
For upper body I did bent-arm pullovers paired with lateral raises for “torso” I haven’t done lateral raises in probably a year, and pairing them with pullovers felt surprisingly good. (A tip for the lateral raise; keep your abs flexed, lean forward a bit and lead with the pinky finger, done this way you hit your side delts much harder than when you do it conventionally)
For arms I did forward leaning hammer curls and skullcrushers in a superset fashion. Doing these with slow, smooth transitions between the positive and negative portions of the lifts, controlled negatives and perfect form resulted in quite a pump. I like to do hammer curls with a bit of forward lean - leaning forward from the hips and keeping your upper arm perpendicular to the floor feels a lot better than when you stand up straight.
Now you may be wondering when I picked up this yoga bullshit, where are the extremely intense sets of compounds, where is the obvious lack of isolation exercises?
This workout was mainly done in order to get blood flowing, to get some motion going on. My joints are really feeling the effects of not training for a while and I feel like going all-out would be pretty dangerous. Today was meant to wake up the body and the next session will be the first “real” session after the training break.
Oh, and if anyone of you is wondering wether the break resulted in muscle loss, I’d say, it really didn’t. I may have lost a bit of leg size, but that’ll come back in matter of days. My weight stayed the same and my belt fits just like it did before the break so I’m happy.
That’s all for now
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I don’t know if I’ve ever written about this, but here goes:
When I was in school I was actually known for making people strong - which is an odd thing, usually people are known in schools for being players or doing something stupid. But I was just the guy who would take you to the gym, shout at you for 90 minutes, give a couple of hints and then train you for a while (until you could do it yourself)
I was also known for doing something seemingly weird stuff (which actually was pretty weird, now that I think about it)
For example, I always had meat, green tea and vegetables with me wherever I went. There were also only a couple of days during the week when I would sit down for the lessons, as I didn’t sit during a couple of days before heavy squats or deads. Why? Sitting down weakens your lower back for a couple of days. Say what you want, but my squat and deadlift definitely improved when I started to avoid sitting. I told this to guys who trained with me as well, some tried it and saw good results, most of them thought it would be too weird.
Regarding training, I always had a very simple approach. If you want tobe good at squatting, squat. The only other leg exercises would be a hamstring curl and a spesific leg press. (It was a bit crooked so you couldn’t fully extend you legs, I used it with some of the guys who told me that being in the hole was scary - for most I would use pause squats though)
Most of my training partners told me that just me being there would raise their numbers by a lot - and I get it. I’m really very enthusiastic about training people and seeing my trainees accomplish something. I’m a lot louder when someone I’m training is hitting a PR than when I’m doing so myself (of course only when the guy doesn’t get distracted by it)
I’m really just rambling here because I’m feeling a bit down again and writing makes me happy.
Here is my school-time squat “manual” - this was surprisingly effective
- If you want to be a strong squatter, squat more
- If you can’t hit depth, incorporate pauses in the hole
- If you fall forward, do box squats (box should be anywhere below knee level)
- Don’t major in the minor
- Always do reverse hypers and hanging leg raises after squats
- Avoid sitting before heavy squat sessions
- Eat and sleep a lot
- Energy and enthusiasm are important for both the trainer and trainee
Man, I really want to squat now
And I want to coach people. Gotta take someone to the gym this week.
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Today at the gym I saw a guy struggling with overhead press
I went over and asked him what was the problem and he told me that his wrists hurt when he presses. So I decided to be a good guy and I taught him how to grip the bar and press it correctly.
Dude hit a 15kg/33lbs PR in matter of ten minutes. Man, it felt good seeing his genuine happiness.
If you can help someone out in the gym and they look like they want advice but don’t want to ask for it, by all means go ahead. But do not be a dick about it.
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I trained two guys today - one shoulders/arms session and one leg session
Sweat and tears were shed in both occasions - understand that these guys just wanted to see what they could do, how far they could be pushed.
For the shoulder/arm guy we did the following:
-
Seated rear delta flies (dumbbells)
3 sets to failure - beginning the set in a very controlled manner, slow negatives and holds at top, progressively making the reps easier as we went closer to failure (everything was still under control to the very end). Every set was probably about 20 reps long. -
Standing dumbbell overhead presses, pausing for a 3-count on forehead level. 3 sets, every set was first performed to failure with pause, the we dropped the pause off and when that wasn’t enough we did forced reps - always with controlled negatives.
-
Side lateral top partials - one pyramid set, finished with no weight, just me pushing down on the trainees arms as he held it and did reps as commanded. - We did probably a hundred reps in one set.
shoulder stretch
-
Standing dumbbell Scott curls - first with rotation - going from neutral to supinated, when we got close to failure we dropped the rotation out and only did supinated reps - holds, forced reps and pushing down on the dumbbell was included. We did 2 sets per arm.
-
Dirty 30s - this is a Westside special. Only we did it with a twist. The basic version is 10 skullcrushers, 10 bent-arm pullovers and 10 close grip-presses. We did everything beyond failure - forced reps, holds and so on. 1 set was all that he needed.
With the second guy we were pressed for time - so we only did two sets for the legs as a whole.
One set of lying leg curls, with forced reps, holds and partials.
And then - one of my most evil tricks. The hack squat machine pyramid.
No racking, no locking of the knees. Deep controlled reps with smooth transitions between the negative and the positive. Every seven reps we add 5 kilos of weight. When the dude fails to get seven reps we do a couple of negatives with me pressing him down and then helping him back up. Drop 10kgs, 6 reps in a row (help I’d needed) put 5kgs back, 3 reps in a row (again, help if needed) drop 10 again, 6 reps, add 5, 3 reps and so on until the machine is empty. (Of course whenever I saw that he could do more I pushed him - maybe he did 10 reps instead of 3 somewhere in there…) Then we did somewhere between 10-15 reps with the empty machine with randomly called holds where I’d push down on the weight.
After the set I told him to do a jump squat and he just got stuck in the hole and fell over.
For anyone wondering, the set was anywhere from 150-200 reps in total, with practically no rest (that’s about 8-10 minutes of time under tension, which is fucking insane)
Nice set.
Next time we’ll do 3 of them.
But really, I’m kinda concerned - he sleeps in the top bunk.
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Old mate won’t be able to walk today, and the other guy won’t be able to pick up his gun… I hope you guys don’t get called out to war 
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We’ll never get to the battlefield at the pace that he’ll be able to walk tomorrow - I followed him around for two hours just to be sure that he doesn’t pass out and die.
As I trained those two guys I remembered how much I love training people - really I like it even more than training myself. It’s just so great to push people to break their limits. Both of the guys loved their sessions and asked me to train them more often, which I’ll gladly do. Both of them also told me that my passion for coaching really shows. That’s the stuff that makes me really happy.
Today was a good day
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I’m home for a 10 day vacation - no need to go back to the barracks before January 1st. Oh yeah.
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Time to relax a bit haha.
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Yeah, I don’t intend to do any of those 48 hours of being awake with no food - type of workouts
Although I may or may not have played Modern Warfare 2 for five hours straight last night. (My girl got it for me yesterday, the last time I’ve played the game was like three years ago)
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Ya please dont lol
On PC?
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Yeah, I have a pretty good PC from the times I used to play more, nowadays my girlfriend uses it probably three times as much as I do - she loves video games
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I trained traps for the first time in probably two years a week ago - originally I had trouble getting my delts to grow because I didn’t really get them to activate as my traps were hogging all the work so I stopped training the upper traps directly.
All I did for traps was one dropset (I’ll open it up in a minute) and honestly, my traps grew unbelievably lot from just that. (Really, they are visually much larger than a week ago, or as my girl put it “what the fuck?”)
They say everyone has a muscle or two that grow fast as hell - the standout bodyparts. For me it’s definitely traps.
Here’s the dropset I performed (and an example of what it would look like with 495 as a starting weight)
All - and that mean all - sets were performed to the absolute failure (no forced reps though) there was no rest in between sets, I had spotters drop the weight. I stayed strapped and belted up the whole time
First I did a set of rack pulls with a weight I knew I would get over 10 reps with (I got 15 if I remember correctly)
Then I dropped the weight by about 20% and did powershrugs immediately followed by rack pulls
I dropped the weight again and performed shrugs followed by powershrugs followed by rack pulls
I dropped the weight one more time and did shrugs with a pause followed by shrugs, power shrugs and rack pulls.
Then I stretched the traps
So essentially with every drop I included a new movement into the mix and went from harder to easier variation with the same weight
So with 495 it would look like this:
I’m just writing the name of the exercise and the weight used, see below:
Back to back, one set of each exercise, every set is performed to failure
Rack pull 495lbs
Power shrug 405lbs
Rack pull 405lbs
Shrug 315lbs
Power shrug 315lbs
Rack pull 315lbs
Paused shrug 225lbs
Shrug 225lbs
Power shrug 225lbs
Rack pull 225lbs
stretch
So, this is the “guaranteed trap doms and misery” - dropset, feel free to try it (if course with scaled weight)
Merry Christmas everyone!
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Merry Christmas!
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Update on my girlfriend - the bulk is strong
Well, my girl weighted in at 69kgs/152lbs today. Impressive, I must say. She has three or so weeks of this bulk left, so I believe she’ll get north of 70kgs/154lbs before we begin to cut. Her strength is improving at a great rate, at the moment she’s doing sets of five with weights that were her 1RMs just a couple of months ago.
She’s looking more jacked than any dude of her age that I’ve seen live, and she’s putting all of those guys to shame with her numbers as well. (Kinda sad really)
I’ve had to give her some leeway with her training and it seems to work. She’s getting bigger, stronger and she isn’t bored even though the program, at it’s core is very simple.
It goes like this
Upper body:
A push for 3 sets of 3-5 (barbell) or 3 sets of 6-10 (dumbbells)
She chooses two pushing movements does one of them each workout, alternating. (at the moment that would be CGBB and Incline dumbbell bench)
Whatever assistance she chooses
Lower body:
A squat for 3 sets of 3-6
A deadlift for 1 set of 3-6
Again, she chooses 2 variations for both and does one per training session. (Alternating)
assistance
You see, it’s simple. Very, very simple.
Have you ever wondered why I don’t write out programs with pre-chosen exercises, why I only give templates to you? (And some ideas and examples, of course)
That’s because everyone is different. Writing out cookie-cutter programs with 3x8 bench followed by 3x12 incline bench and chest flies is for someone who wants the easy way out. And following those programs is for lazy trainees who don’t want to put their mind into it. How could you ever get optimal results if the guy who wrote your program doesn’t even know you exist?
Templates. Examples. The trainee putting in work.
That’s what makes the program fit. I love DC because it’s not a program, it’s a template that’s well written and explained. Dante tells you how to use it and you do the rest. That’s why it works so damn well!
But back to the subject, 70kgs is coming. After that, we’ll see if it’s time to cut, or maybe we’ll push for 75.
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General life update
My girlfriend reached the 70kg/154lbs mark before expected, but that’s okay, she’s still looking good.
I stepped on the scale for the first time in weeks today and weighted in at 97kgs/214lbs (in the morning)
Weight-wise it’s like I’ve only lost a couple of pounds during my military service, but in reality I’ve actually gained some upper-body thickness (nice) and lost A LOT of lower-body thickness (not nice) but on the other hand, that makes my upper body look even bigger (not sure if nice)
That lost muscle will come back quickly when I get back to my regular schedule. My prediction would be that at the time I’ve got my leg mass back I’ll be hovering around 105kgs/231lbs - and at that point I’m probably going to really start pushing it to the limit. Wouldn’t be surprised if I broke the 120kg/264lbs barrier in late 2018/early 2019.
Training - wise, after the 3-week break I went into a phase where I only did a handful of exercises on a 2 day 2 on - 1 off schedule and I may have lost myself there.
Yeah, let’s be honest here. The program I was working on - it was great. I was improving at a really fast rate and I enjoyed the workouts. But as a whole I hated it. It didn’t feel like a program of mine. Too much exercises, too much stuff. It was not really complicated but it felt like that.
But the thing I’m doing now - it feels good. It’s very simple, there’s no rush and everything is done with intention.
You can call me a program jumper if you want (and you’ll be totally right) but you know what? When you give all you’ve got every single time you step inntt the gym it doesn’t really matter what you do. You’re going to get better. I’m not saying that you should ditch your routine and just do random stuff, no. I’m saying you should work hard as hell and stop worrying about what’s goog to happen if you switch out hammer curls for reverse curls and just work hard.
I can lay it out on another post if someone is interested.
Happy New Year everyone!
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