Bloods came back.
Free test was 630 roughly, the reference range was 196-636, total test 960, bioavailable test was the interesting one, it was 14.8, the reference range was 3-11, which got flagged as “serious/abnormally high”
I have slight deficiency in creatinine (66, referrence range 67-140).
Shit man. Can’t blame genetics anymore! Those are some fine numbers. Keep pumping that clean food and killing it in the gym and reap the rewards of those prime bloodzzz
Well don’t let the good news get you down. 
Celebrate with deadlifts and steak!
Great! You have industrial quantities of test! There isn’t such a thing called deficiency of creatinine. If anything your kidneys are as healthy as they could/should be. Now, keep your concistency. Don’t overthink - just do it!
You mean cramping?
Nah, I legit hurt my lower abs badly, recovering now
I am thinking of working with a proper coach for the next few months and follow exactly what they say for body recomposition
Are online coaches any good? Any idea how to spot a good one? I don’t know how much they cost but how much would you expect to pay for a good one?
What will an online coach provide that you don’t already have? Is it that you need to spend money to keep yourself accountable to sticking to an already designed plan? What do you expect to receive from a “good one”?
I’d say a good one would be one that isn’t interested in working with you for just a short amount of time. If they just want to tag along for 6-8 weeks or whatever, that sounds like they have a cookie cutter program and are okay to field questions regarding that program (and possible diet). If they actually want to coach you, then they’d want to invest time in figuring out who you are, what makes you tick, and then adjust something they know works to suit your idiosyncrasies.
A good one probably already has a full stable of clients, and would maybe have a queue.
I’m pretty sure this advice still applies to be honest,
I don’t know extreme amounts about online coaching, I do know there are a lot lot lot of scammers out there pledging 4 week, 6 week transformations which ya know…
I do think there may be some value in working with someone for several months/year(s) and someone who can update programs/diet on week-to-week basis and help with a full body recomp esp when you are say stuck on an exercise, techniques/diet-adjustments to break through the plateau and general support, but like you said finding someone like this could be difficult and if they have a lot of clients then the genuine-ness starts to fade away somewhat and you start having cookie cutter.
Finding a good coach doesn’t seem easy though and the influencer ones are too big to provide any meaningful real coaching.
There is one guy at my gym whose performance has been fascinating for me to see, he follows some program by a site called penandpaperstrength and it involves benching like 4x per week and it is an intense program. His bench seems to have flown from 185 to 245 for reps in a couple weeks. I don’t know enough about if he could already do 245 in the past or not but the progress seemed unreal to say the least.
Hey man, take a step back and think about how many things you’ve changed in the past month. New diet, new program, calorie restriction, attempted calorie surplus, an injury, some PRs… All of that in 5 weeks.
You were basically right on track for this before you stopped logging. Eat to maintain and recover, work hard. Being consistent is a huge part of recomp.
Have you continued with the program you are running? How has your bench been doing? How has diet been the past week?
Oh yes, I have not quit whatsoever,
I benched today 155, 3x5 with 4-5 min rest between sets but definitely RPE 10 in all of those and I did have to pull my butt up just slightly in the last 1-2 reps. In any case I’ll try 160 next but not optimistic about linearly progressing 3x5, maybe 1x5 and then rest of 2 sets with 155 or 150.
My BW has been consistent or slightly dropping, weighed in at 77.7kg (171 lb) today; I was at 3200-3300 last week, I’m at 3400 calories now as I am looking to gain 1-1.5kg p/m.
It is a bit weird that I changed barbells (from a thinner women’s barbell to a proper 20kg eleiko male olympic barbell) and now I couldn’t do 160. I suspect I actually never hit 160 before but that women’s barbell might not have weighed how much I thought it weighed or the thin grip helped me out. 
I think you’d get more mileage out of paying @jskrabac for the plan and diet he offered to customize for you and then adhere to it. I know you said that you couldn’t accept it when it was free, and now you’re talking about getting an online coach that doesn’t know you at all. Meanwhile he’s interacted with you plenty.
Please don’t do this. Now is not the time for you to start learning bad habits.
I think he’d get more mileage out of coming to terms with himself that he just likes to be in the gym and chasing progress isn’t his main concern lol
I think there are a couple things happening and I think even though this is slow progress it is better than nothing.
Technically when I first started here I was weighing 82.5kg and my 1RM was 155, I am now 78kg (down 10 lb almost) and doing 155 for 3 sets of 5 with the proper men’s barbell.
In reality I do think I just need to pack on some proper muscle to get much better in these lifts. These numbers aren’t amazing but at least novice level (and way better than when I started).
Another thing is (which is the more important part) that I need more realistic expectations of the process (As someone said my understanding of the process is ‘poor’), I can’t expect myself to bench 225 4 weeks after starting while being 170 lb at 6 foot and while having dropped 7-8 lbs in the last 1.5 months. What would be considered a good progression for instance? Can you really keep getting 5 lbs on bench while dropping BW if you are not completely new to training stimulus?
Damn. Checking back here because I can’t stay away from it. Agreed with @flipcollar what an incredible amount of traffic on this log, what an incredible amount of support, and what an incredible amount of…
Well I’m gonna stay positive. You can do great things. We all can. You have the recipe perfect already, seems you want to change things again but - remember this - anytime you start to think “this is a good idea”, do the opposite? so:
Thinking “I need to change things and hire a coach”?
do: “I need to change nothing, keep doing the work with my head down, NOT THINK!!!, and reassess in 6 months”.
Best of luck!
FTR that offer is 100% off the table, no matter how much he pays me. I’m not equipped to deal with this level of neuroticism. The key here is adherence, and that doesn’t seem possible.
Completely understandable (sorry?)
That “offer” was never on the table, I would not pay or take it for free from him and I never considered it. I don’t know why @Voxel keeps suggesting it in any case, did you think I would take it or even ask him?
I’m still positive I’ll make progress longer term, this is just training, it’s not rocket science, just takes time, patience and consistency, diet etc.
I’ve done things significantly more difficult such as studying things like Galois theory, I just have an issue of second guessing myself from time to time but again, this is just training.