This is probably the best video I’ve found. You explained it pretty good aha and now it makes sense a bit. Thanks!
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Pretty much yeah
Yes
That’s a good idea, there are a lot of technique wizards around here
Glad to help man!
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Haha technique wizards.
Hows it going now that you’re back home?
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It’s all good, although I don’t really feel like I’m here to stay - it’s weird. I’m kinda waiting for Sunday all the time and then when it comes I realize I don’t have to go back to the barracks anymore.
Definitely have a lot of spare time at the moment. I’m only working with a couple of clients in addition to bouncing, so I’m not really doing anything during the day. If I do get another job that’ll change - I’d be working in a warehouse in the mornings, as a personal trainer in the afternoons and as a bouncer at night. I kinda like the way it is now as I’m able to put really much effort into training myself and others, but the fact is that with three jobs I’ll be able to make a lot more money without losing all that much in the other areas.
Dieting has been good - it’s day five and my quad veins are starting to emerge already. Can’t wait to see what I’ll look like in ten or so weeks.
Now I’m gonna go and take care of two clients
How are you doing?
You’ll get used to it man!
Well at least you can relax for a bit until you get another job. I think you’ve earnt it!
That’s great! Im excited for your bulk.
So by take care you mean killing them in the gym lol
I’m doing alot better than i was on the holidays 2 months ago. (with all the shit that was going on, and nothing to do because no school, i was just procrastinating alot and dwelling on stuff which made it even worse.)
schools going well and I’m getting good grades. Also I’m extremely happy to get back to lifting which will hopefully be on monday. Time to get strong af and massive.
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Yeah, the interviews are in two weeks so I have plenty of time to rest and relax. Maybe even a bit too much
Me too - if it’s a 1.5 year bulk, getting up to 250lbs/111kgs shouldn’t be a problem, and that’s a really good place to start cutting down from.
Taking care of sounds a lot less intimidating - the plan is to take them by surprise
Never procrastinate before you’ve accomplished something that brings you closer to your goal that day, and try to avoid dwelling in the past - just by doing those two things you’ll feel a lot better
That’s great to hear!
With your work ethic you may just become the epitome of what fast progress means
race you 
how did they go, lol?
great advice!
thanks man!
thanks even more!! certainly shall try.
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I’m only giving you the head start because I’m merciful
Went well, as per usual - more reps, more sets, less rest, more weight; do one or two of those every session nn you’ll be all good. Being a trainer is not really as hard as people make it seem like
I’ll ask your clients and see what they say about being merciful haha.
The one thing about becoming a trainer i think that’s one of the hardest parts, is perfecting form for all the lifts and learning them so you can teach them properly. Right now i couldn’t coach anyone on half the lifts. My form is atrocious lol. Especially back squats and deadlifts.
What are some of the hardest things when you’re a trainer?
Ssh, let’s not go into that
It’s good that you realize that. You really need to be proficient with your form not only so you can tell other people how to do it, but also to be able to show what the movement should look like
Definitely people who think they know it all and don’t want to listen, luckily those people rarely come for personal training services.
Apart from that, I’d say being a perfectionist - for me it’s really hard to put a client on a bit yet finished program (as I write everybody’s programs from scratch depending on what it is they need) and also the fact that I’d want to be there for them in every session. If I have free time I sometimes message my clients and ask them if they want me to join them for the session at no cost. That’s because I want to ensure they are not messing things up or slacking off.
Another thing would be accepting that I can only do so much for clients with scoliosis and lordosis (I have one of those with forward head and internally rotated shoulders as well)
So mainly it’s people who don’t listen and my own shortcomings.
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Sounds like snatch grip deadlifts, just not snatch deadlifts. Snatch grips are a very good assistance exercise.
Grip it like a proper snatch though. You might hit yourself in the nuts if you don’t.
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I like the pain
Had a great training session yesterday
At the moment I’m training with my girlfriend as my training partner, and I’ve modified the program a bit so it’s more hypertrophy-oriented while still keeping getting stronger as the main focus.
I’ve shifted from doing one variation of bench, squat and deadlift to doing two variations and I do a wee bit more of assistance work. Also I’ve upped the hard variation volume.
Yesterday I did incline press as my main lift, and as I hadn’t done it in a long time I simply did it RPE based rather than percentage based.
Now I’m a simple guy, so I didn’t start wondering what RPE it would be when I’m supposed to do two triples at 80%, I simply threw a dot in there and voila - two triples at RPE 8. Same with the doubles at 85%, it simply became doubles at 8.5RPE
Now I can do this because I did the amrap after, got an estimated max off of it and I’ll do my work based on that the next time.
Before incline pressing I did a muscle round (6 sets of 4 with 15s rest) on wide grip iverhand pull ups and I did clap push-ups and band pull-aparts as preparatory exercises. The pressing felt quite good and explosive, the push-ups may have played a role in that.
After incline press I did 3 sets of wide grip overhand pull ups with just bodyweight. I’m not in a hurry to add weight to this as I am doing also heavy chin ups on my second upper body day.
After that I did 2" board press. Minimal arch, no leg drive. (Making it hard as hell) 5 sets of 6.
My last “big” exercise was DB seal rows, which I did in a kind of rear lateral/row hybrid way. Essentially you want to flare your elbows a bit more than you normally would and as you row try to do a rear lateral motion at the same time - the motion becomes a bit more circular rather than a straight row. This hits the rear delts and mid traps hard.
Lastly I just did reverse curls, overhead tricep extensions and side lateral for the pump.
For the whole session, all pressing included, I only rested when my girlfriend was doing her sets (and vice versa), so the rest periods were in the 30-60s range for the most part. That didn’t make recovering betweeen sets a problem though, oughta start jumping around during my rests or something to make it a challenge.
But that’s that - the program hypertrophy-adapted. I really like bodybuilding with powerlifting movements like the board, floor and pin presses. Just gotta make the exercise hard as hell by not driving with the legs, lowering under control, maybe even pausing and not having a shitton of an arch. Now don’t get me wrong, my close-grip bench is essentially a decline bench because of my arch and I’m all for arching regularly. Just not when I’m doing my hard variation work. With that stuff it’s just enough arch to keep the shoulders safe and no more.
Today it’ll be legs - front squat and snatch grip deads as main lifts
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General life update
Diet: day 11 (tenth of the way there, yay!)
I’m 9 pounds/4.1kgs down from my starting weight.
Not doing any cardio at the moment - it’s really slippery outside and really, I don’t need to just yet. But as soon as the ice melts I’m gonna bring the sandbag out and start doing stuff with it again.
Training is going well, as it should at this point. I’m using the system I outlined in a post or two above.
On next week’s Saturday we’ll celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday so that’s gonna 've the one day I go off diet in this fat loss phase. I’m gonna eat clean up until the night and then it’s gonna be a freefall from there on. I know that if I eat a slice of pizza I’m gonna devour enough food to put a whole village into a food coma. But I’ll prepare for it, train more and eat less beforehand and get somewhat of a supercompensation effect from there. As I am likely to eat over 10 000 Calories in those 6 or so hours I’m pretty sure training in the next week will go well.
At the moment I’m playing with the thought of cutting calories after the day for the rest of the diet, but if that’s not necessary I won’t do it. In this game the winner is the one who has most cards in his hand at all times, given that we are losing fat.
I also applied for a couple of schools, I’m trying to get into sports biology or physical therapy. Hopefully this time I’ll get in.
As a small update on my girlfriend; she’s been getting lean a lot faster now that I’m here and she’s training and eating every meal with me, weird. It’s probably just because I may have made this dieting thing into a competition.
And our training sessions.
Everything really. Everything is a competition.
That’s it for this update, feels good to get some activity going on in the log
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Sports biology would fit you perfect I think. Good luck!
Haha you guys sound awesome together. Can’t deny that competition breeds more effort and more effort usually equals more success. Keep killing it you pair!
I’m really glad that you have transitioned back to civvy life so well.
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It’s awesome that you and your girlfriend support each other that much! I’m happy your both doing well. Also I hope you get into the physical therapy program and think you would be great at it from the little I know about you. I like the explanations you give on different topics and you seem like you enjoy learning from the information you give. Good luck
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Thanks guys! A fun fact for you; apparently my girlfriend and I even look similar, people always assume that we are twins when they first see us. (And that allows for some next level pranks)
I’m really interested in both of them. Luckily I don’t have the luxury of deciding between the two as both if them are really hard to get into, but I’ll be happy if I get into either one. Physical therapy was the first thing I found interesting when I checked out the schools, (a year ago) and I found out about sports science this year, it seems really interesting as well.
There have been a couple of times where I wake up and wonder why I’m not at the barracks but apart from that, yeah, it’s pretty much business as usual.
I really like learning when the subject is something I care about. I also find movement, anatomy and just the way body works really fascinating. Psychology is also one thing I’m a bit interested in, not enough to go and study it full-time, but a bit.
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How is your strength going on the cut?
Goodluck with the schools man. And your relationship with you and your girlfriend is goals!
Its good to have you back and active on here man
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Strength us good, I hit an incline bench rep PR the other day without even doing any incline work in like half a year (first session back)
Really, I did not notice slowing down of progress/strength loss when I started to diet, but usually those things don’t come into play on the first weeks of a cut, even with a bit more aggressive approach.
Thanks man! I’m sure you’ll get there one day yourself, just pick the right girl and do what you think a man should do, but in your way.
And it feels good to be back. I really like the forum and the people around here, so posting something here and there always feels nice
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I’m gonna make some big changes
Now this may sound a bit foolish to you, but I’ve decided to switch over to powerlifting and I’ll be ending my diet as well.
As I am a person of extremes I’ll go from dieting straight to Dave Tate’s “secret diet” which involves eating hash browns for breakfast, Chinese buffet (I’ll have to substitute to a regular one) for lunch, a large pizza with everything and olive oil on it for dinner and a massive bowl of ice cream as a nighttime snack. Outside that, chocolate bars every hour on the hour are a must. I’m looking to gain 4-5 pounds per week, so in just a couple of months I’ll be nearing 300 pounds.
For training, I decided to go as spesific as possible by training once a week with only the competition lifts. I’ll go for an opener at about 93%, second attempt at 97-98% and then a third attempt will be a new max.
The layout of the program is where it will get interesting - I’ll use a random number generator for both rest between exercises from 30 minutes to 4 hours, with 15 minutes jumps so 30-45-60 etc.
And between attempts from 3-20 minutes with one minute jumps. So the random number generator will give me a completely random rest time between lift a and attempts - some day I may be there for eight hours and do my attempts with 3 minute rests.
Outside gym I’ll be minimizing all activity to avoid development of any unwanted adaptations like walking, because in powerlifting you don’t need to do any walking apart from the walkout of squat and of course walking to the stage. I’m also considering hiring someone to load my weights and yell the calls.
So that’s what I’ll be doing for some time now. Big changes, as said.
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