Samul's Training and Nutrition Log

Training Training Logs
1469

I did the first drill and thought, “damn, my lats are cramping up! this is working” so I jumped into the session without doing the second because I’m lazy. I’ll be doing both drills next pull workout and see if it makes a difference.

That’s pretty much what I do. I feel it more in my middle back, mostly rhomboids and traps, though.

Another thing that’s always bothered me for rows is this: even if I focus on mmc with my back, if I actually want to take the set to failure, there is necessarily a point where I start using some body English and, inadvertently call in my arms too to keep getting reps. As a result, I inevitably lose some focus on my back. But what’d be the alternative? If I stopped as soon as I can’t get perfect reps in anymore, I’d probably get in less work ultimately.

1 Like
1470

Yeah I get what you say. I don’t use body english but indeed my arms will fail before my back. At some point my rom starts to be incomplete and I don’t really know if I should keep pushing. I guess a little bit of body english won’t kill there. But it would probably be better to stop when reps aren’t proper form anymore

I think I also spent 2 years doing a 2 sec contraction on all my rows. It helps with the lats. But yeah it calls for a heavy RPE 10 and at the same time it is sometimes hard to feel the muscle at that weight. I guess we have to practice more

1 Like
1471

A little update: I’m now at the end of week 4 of the program. I’ve been really busy and had no time to log all the workouts, but I have gotten all of them in and my nutrition has been pretty much completely on point.

I’ve mostly gotten the hang of this program: I’ll do a second run of it after taking a deload week, when I’m done with the current training cycle. I’ll make some modifications, which I’ll address in a post later, based on things I liked, disliked, and that got me borderline injured.

@aldebaran how’s your own training cycle on the program going?

1 Like
1472

Injured? I feel the opposite. I’ve never recovered better from such a heavy pounding. The order of exercises and higher reps makes it so muuuuuch better on my connective tissues. Zero wrist or shoulder pain. Never used my wrist wraps. Only my lower back was a bit strain but that’s from going too heavy or beyond technical failure on deads.

Still loving it very much. Best pump and feelings ever. Arms and legs visibly thickers after 10 days. And I’m getting stronger.

I’ll do it again, this time with a proper nutrition.

1473

Okay maybe I’ve exaggerated it a little bit. There’s one-two specific exercises (that I’d never done before, I feel like I should specify this) that gave me pretty bad joint pain for a short time. Everything else feels good. I’ll go into detail on this in a little.

1474

I mean you’re really just lining it up there.

2 Likes
1475

Getting close to the end of project colossus. Will write a review this weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ll share this gem from today’s session, which I just wrapped up.

3 Likes
1476

I just wrapped up the last leg session of the program, and I’m taking home a nice leg press pr of 570 lb x 10.

Also, the triple leg press dropset is awful. I ended up not racking the weight and letting it drop on the safeties, just a few inches over me, because at the end of the thing I forgot how to use my arms and instead of pulling the levers to rack the weight I pushed them. Made some noise.

Also, this was the first time in a long, long time I felt like I was going to throw up mid session. I’m home now and still don’t feel like eating just yet.

Edit: I’m also laying on my deck right now, wondering when and how I’ll manage to get up and go make dinner

1477

Did this today as well ahahah

Had no idea about which weight to use so I took the 16 kgs for a spin and NOPE. NO WAY.

30 with the 16, then 30 with 10, then 10 with 5. My shoulders never looked so big afterwards

1 Like
1478

I did 10,8,6 kg. I think I’ll try 12 kg for the first 60 reps this Saturday. And yes, my delts swole up like melons afterwards.

Especially considering that afterwards I also did lateral raises and a dropset on the press like the program calls for.

I don’t have a decent rack though, so I’ve been doing Smith machine overhead presses instead of the cage press. Have you been liking that exercise?

1 Like
1479

The cage press? Honestly it’s not bad. I feel more side laterals (but perhaps that’s because of the work did earlier) and you can push way harder the muscles than traditional OHP

1 Like
1480

Yeah the cage press. I think the fact that you can push against the rack can probably help activate the front delts better, strictly speaking from an anatomical perspective. I would like to try it out. If only my gym had a decent rack…

I chose to sub a Smith ohp because I felt you could probably emulate that pushing against the rack thing with it. Maybe it’s the closest alternative. The next run of the program I’ll do, I think I might try behind the neck presses instead, just to play around with the variations

1 Like
1481

Yeha that’s smart.

Behind the neck was always so much front delt for me. I’d advice to stick to smith OHP, but doing them kneeling instead of sitting on an high incline so you can move your body like you would normally do (look at his form) and put your head through when the par passes your chin and finish like a push press / olifter OHP. More overall delt activation.

1 Like
1482

I’ll try that on my deload week and see how it feels!

1483

Okay so let’s do this.

Project Colossus Wrap-Up Review

I have just entered my deload week right after finishing the program. This has been an interesting experience and surely a different training style than the one I’d been used to after doing a year of 5/3/1.

As a reminder, I used this version of the program: pull/push/legs/off/pull (pump)/push (pump)/off/repeat

Overall I liked the program, but let’s get a few sore points out of the way. Not claiming it’s the program’s fault for these.

  • Some exercises just didn’t work for me. I had to stop at the third rep of my first barbell pullover set because I got a searing pain in my elbow and felt like I was going to rupture something any second. The db pullover worked equally as bad for me. Thank God we have the cable pullover. On that, after some form tweaking, I could finally feel my back.

  • I had to do sub some exercises because my gym isn’t that well equipped. Namely, rack pulls were out of question, and so were cage presses.

  • I had troubles with some back days. One arm Bb rows and Meadows rows being the main culprit. With the latter, specifically, I had issues with going heavy enough. How could I go heavy if I wasn’t able to hold it? The part of the barbell you hold for the exercise rotates and is thicker than the barbell. It makes it hard to hold and after a few weeks it started giving me forearm pain.

Everything else was fine: I liked the low volume, I liked pushing my sets, I liked the intensity techniques, I liked working on focusing on the muscle as much as possible.

I got to the end of every session feeling gassed but having gotten in all the work I had to.

One thing I did notice, is that maybe the program puts a little more emphasis on the chest as opposed to the delts, and that’s something I might wanna change moving on.

Initial weight: 76.8 kg (169 lb)
Final weight (6 weeks after): 78.5 kg (173 lb)

Before pic

image
image1667×1885 807 KB

After pic(s)

image
image2439×3016 2.29 MB

image
image2246×3658 2.36 MB

My nutrition has been extremely consistent, close to 100%. I did put on some fat, but I also see some muscle gains there. I’ll let you guys be the judge on that.

Moving on
I’m currently taking a deload week. Physically, I didn’t really feel like I needed it, but psychologically I felt like taking some time off. I figured if I didn’t, I might hit a wall over the next 6 weeks even if right now I’m feeling good, so right as well take a break pre-emptively.

I think I’ll run the program again after this deload week, making some substitutions.

First of all, I’d like most of my chest work to be incline this time. I really feel like my upper chest needs to catch up with the lower chest big time. Second of all, I’d like a little more delt work. If it means taking out a chest exercise, so be it. Thirdly, I’d like to bring up my biceps a little more. I just feel they aren’t impressive at all, and the way they are attached makes it so my triceps look nice and round, and my biceps are just a straight flat line when not flexed. So maybe bring rhem up a bit.

I’ll also start training abs and calves, which I shamelessly skipped so far.

Lemme know what you think.

Some people that might be interested in reading this: @aldebaran @TrainForPain and certainly anyone else.

2 Likes
1484

Great work getting through it and for identifying your own adjustments!

Ideally, focusing on incline for your chest movements should also bring in some lateral delt - two birds.

My arms always responded best when they had their own day. That’s an option to try to squeeze in here at the end of the week. That might be too much stress, though. Something else I’ve seen John recommend is just a quick 6x10 additional biceps work, on whatever exercise you want, at the end of your pull days. I don’t remember this program off the top of my head, but I’d imagine the main pull day has biceps and the secondary one maybe doesn’t - you could throw that 6x10 in that secondary day.

Final thought there, which I think you just came to yourself, is your delts and biceps may just need some volume vs. intensity - easy enough to pump out without impacting recovery as long as you’re not greedy with the weights.

1 Like
1485

Oh, and @ChongLordUno is putting together a team

1 Like
1486

Really? Where?

1 Like
1487

Both pull days have biceps work. The bicep work is actually very intense; I always leave with a huge pump and they’re one of the most painful group to work for me.

I was thinking more along the lines of adding a third bicep exercise for 2 sets to failure on both pull days, adding a total of 4 weekly bicep sets. Theoretically, the biceps recover fast enough that doing some more shouldn’t be a problem. If it had been another muscle group, maybe that could have been different.

I think that, as long as I keep the changes subtle, the best thing might be to add some volume at the same very high intensity level as the other exercises.

What I mean here is, I can’t add intensity (as the goal of the program is already to make those set as hard as possible), but if I just add volume, it’s kinda defeating the purpose of the program, isn’t it?

So maybe adding one exercise, for 2-3 sets at the same degree of intensity is what I need.

For example for delts, some workouts have you do rear delts and lateral raises, others ohp and laterals, and so on. There is hardly ever (save for week 6) three exercises for delts. So maybe a solution is to stick to three exercises for delts per workout: one for rear delts, a variation of lateral raises, and an ohp on the heavy days, or a second lateral delt movement on pump days. That’s kinda what I came up with. Looking at my own physique, I don’t think I need 4 exercises for pecs and only 2 for delts.

A team of what? :rofl:

1 Like
1488

My abs are looking much blurrier, at least in person. Maybe the picture doesn’t show that too much, but thank you for the ego boost either way haha!

1 Like