Stronger Than Whores

Training Training Logs
21

[quote]SouthofHeaven wrote:
Determination pays off big. The reps looked awesome. You did a nice job of getting your chest up and when fatigued and shooting back to the top. Nice work bro.

Out of curiousity though, why the 20 rep sets? Are you trying to work on size? I can definitly say that they worked for me. I used to do sets with 185-225 for 20-25 or even 30 reps if possible and my legs have stayed at about 27-28" for years. I got really good at stamina and recovery, but they did not convert to great strength for me.[/quote]

Thanks for the feedback. For the 20 rep sets, I’m just doing the infamous 20 rep squat routine with the one set of squats and the pullovers afterwards. Look up SuperSquats by Strossen or just google “20 rep squat routine” and that’s pretty much what I’m doing. I was sick of strength training for a while, and I heard this particular routine is excellent for really adding mass so those were my motives in choosing it. I couldn’t imagine doing 30 reps in one set, though. That must be crazy! Ultimately my goals are size oriented, and the only reason I strength trained so much is so I could get a foundation to allow myself a quicker path to this goal. 3/4/5 on the big 3 is really just about as strong as I want to be, but ultimately I wish to focus more on size.

I heard 20 rep squat routine does very little to squatting strength, but we’ll just have to see what happens. I’m not expecting any strength gains, but considering I’ve been doing over 200 without a belt for 20 reps, and the most I’ve ever squatted without a belt is a single of 270, there might be some decent carryover. Won’t expect it, but it would be nice.

22

Day 7 of 20 Rep Squats

Last 50 seconds or so were cut off because my battery died and I forgot to charge it beforehand. The video cuts off after about rep 16, but I painfully got the rest of them.

This weekend killed me I only averaged about 5.5 hours of sleep each night and worked about 42 hours in the span of 3 days and was pretty much on my feet the whole time. Probably ate enough, but my legs were shot Sunday night and I was unsure how well I’d perform in the gym today.

Standing BB OH Press
105 x 12
105 x 12

This was much harder than I thought. I barely got all the reps. When I got into the gym today, there were some gay things going on. Some clown decided to triple super-set upright rows, side raises, and DB curl all in the squat rack. He wouldn’t let me in either so I had to wait about 10 minutes before I could do anything - I didn’t want to waste leg drive power cleaning 105 lbs to do presses so I needed to be in the squat rack, and of course I needed to squat. Also, I think there was less than 100 on the barbell in the squat rack so there are multiple places for someone to do upright rows. Why they needed a squat rack to do DB curls and side raises is beyond me, so naturally I was a little annoyed in the beginning of the workout.

Squat
Bar x 3
155 x 1
210 x 20

Not looking forward to squatting - my mind wasn’t really into it compared to other days. I really wanted to quit around the 10th rep but kept going pretty miserably. Rep 15 was interesting because I almost died when I lost my balance haha. I thought my camera had recorded all of it, but it seems I got cut off in the middle of 16. I estimate that I’m missing about 50 seconds of recording based on what was playing in my I-pod. From the video it seems my form was never great in general, but I couldn’t see/feel any reps that were particularly super ugly. Don’t know how the hell I’ll be able to clear 215 though!

Pullovers
35 lbs x 20

This is about as heavy as i’ll go for this one.

Chin Ups
6,9

Had an easy first set, decided to sand bag the next set. Maybe I need more sets. I barely got that 9th rep and had to kick a little bit to clear that bar.

23

Day 18 of 20 rep Squats

Dips
25 x 10
25 x 10

Not great, but more since last time. Second set in particular was pretty good because I was hitting my chest more.

Squats
Bar x 3
135 x 2
185 x 1
215 x 18

Fuck, failed the 19th rep. There was very little I could do before attempting it. The bar was starting to slip off my back and my hands could barely hold it. Just standing there leaked out any energy I had left. At least the reps counted up pretty high despite everything being so miserable, but it’s almost as if I accomplished nothing.

Pullovers
25 x 20

Back to the naked bar. I feel like I shouldn’t worry about contracting muscles as much as expanding the rib cage, and you don’t need much weight to do that properly. I’ll stick with just the bar.

Pull Ups
6,5,4

I’m going to put the pull ups here and the bb rows on the other day. I’m doing pullups now because the book recommends palms facing away.

24

Day 9 of 20 rep Squats

It seems I’ve lost a bit of weight over the weekend. I was eating a lot, too and even got a decent amount of sleep. Ate a bunch of egg sandwiches that consisted of 3-5 eggs along with other stuff and on Saturday I finally was able to drink a whole gallon of whole milk. And that was just a fraction of everything I ate: in addition I also had weight gainers, small bottles of muscle milk, lunch meat sandwiches, protein bars, and a lot of chicken cutlets with peanut butter smeared on top (yes I’m a weirdo).

But as said, I lost some weight over the weekend. I think it may have been the gallon of whole milk that indirectly led to the weight loss - don’t read on if you are squeamish. I drank a gallon of that on Saturday over about a 14 hour period, just sipping it down in small spurts. But Sunday night, I had horrible diarrhea. I ended up going to the bathroom like 4-5 times in only a 3 hour period. I did drink a lot of water this weekend, too, but I always drink at least a half gallon of that without much sweat.

So I’d have to say it was the milk, because that was really the only area where I seemed to change things a lot. I also got horrible gas the entire weekend. Hopefully I’m not lactose intolerant, but if I was, I think I would vomit it out instead.

I’ve lost some motivation for bulking, in that it seems that the more I eat, the more craps I have to take. Disgusting to talk about, but it seems to be the case. It doesn’t even get stored as fat, just waste and then it gets removed. And I’ve lost some motivation for the routine itself - I didn’t even want to lift today let alone do 20 reps of something considered to be pretty heavy. I half-assed the workout.

Standing BB OH Press
Bar x 5
110 x 12
110 x 12

Pretty good numbers. I barely finished that last rep, so I don’t really know if I’ll be able to get all of 115 next time. Form felt pretty decent, not much back bend as usual and I really felt a new connection with the tops of my shoulders (or, perhaps the front).

Squat
Bar x 3
135 x 2
185 x 1
225 x 11

Here’s where I half-assed the workout. Took me about 70 seconds to do the first 10 reps, held out a bit, then went for the 11th rep. Then I just re-racked. My legs had some trouble handling the weight because there was a sticky point about halfway through the motion. Nothing too bad though. I didn’t even record this because I forgot to bring my camera.

I wonder if it was possible for me to get all 20. I had more reps I could do, but I didn’t feel like doing the last 6 or 7 with horrible form. And I know I didn’t complete 215 last time so why should I make a 10lb increase? 225 is probably the highest i’ll go on this routine so I wanted to give it a shot and see how many can get without feeling dead at the end.

My motivation didn’t want me to do 20 reps of squatting at any weight. Since I had more in me, I’ll try this again Thursday and try to get at least 17 reps, if not, get to 20. I will say this: my form was pretty good on all the reps I did.

Pullovers
Bar x 20

No comments

BB Rows
160 x 12
160 x 12

Bad grip on the first set, but I held out. It wasn’t much better on the next one, and I started slacking on the last 3 reps of that set. Not bad, though. If i do overhand pullups, I ought to do underhand BB rows.

BB Curls
70 x 10

Threw this in randomly because I didn’t care anymore.