I know a 12 steps group you can join to help with that.
Matriculation rate is high!
…graduation rate is poor…
6 Likes
The wife had me pick up 2 DOZEN Krispy Kreme donuts today for a meeting at the kids school.
I said I would stay strong.
I’m in line and the “hot and ready” sign is on meaning they are making them fresh, I’m standing next to the conveyor belt where they glaze them
And an employee asks me if I want a FREE DONUT and I stay strong and say no.
Then another one comes up with the donut in her hand and hands it over to me. I broke and took it and bam, down the hatch.
Then of course I had to try their Maple donut becuse that’s my favorite. Then I had to check and see if the cake batter one was as good as I thought it could be (it wasn’t)… already had 2 at that points, what’s the difference now??
Finished up with the half of a chocolate cake glazed a few hours later.
I wouldn’t wait in a line around the block for one, but damn if those aren’t some good donuts.
6 Likes
For some unknown reason my bowel decided that this mornings turd would be more meteor than missile !!! Going to be walking funny for a while !! 
2 Likes
Ill post this in the safety of the FFCT but in reality, I probably deserve a flame (and Ill allow it for this one time) ((and don’t worry, Ive pulled my finger out and flamed myself for it))
I fell completely off the wagon. I honestly felt so banged up, not really having giving myself a rest or break for such a long time, double sessions, heavy training and setting 3 pretty decent goals with weightloss, strength gain and the strongman comp, I had 0% passion for this. Well im dissapointed I did it, and now im back into it, I feel a sense of excitement towards programs I havent felt in a long while.
Im glad to be back, time to bring the shred for the wedding
6 Likes
It’s not about falling off the horse. It’s about falling off and getting right back on to finish off shagging it.
3 Likes
I’ve spent this weekend doped up on Xanax half-bars, weed, and Adderall. Time to go train!
Confession: I’m going to be dieting for 6 weeks starting from tomorrow.
I tried to set myself on keeping to gain weight, I even mentioned it a couple of days ago here, but truth is I’m just not comfortable with this level of bf and summer approaching.
I’ll be strict with my diet for 6 weeks: 2,300 kcal a day, 220 g pro 230 carb 60 fat, I’ll do weighted vest walks 2-4 times a week, and train really hard to push my strength up.
I just wanna do this, get abs and striations and be done with it so I can move on. Today I was at my gf’s place and we basically walked around all the afternoon naked, and every time I walked past a mirror I couldn’t help but look at my love handles. I still have some very blurry abs, but truth is it just bothers me too much to be fat.
@T3hPwnisher I think that right now I’d benefit a whole bunch from a couple of tips about training from you since we talked about this yesterday or so. What 5/3/1 template do you like or have had success with for meeting the guidelines we talked about for training during a fat loss phase? (So less volume and higher intensity)
For just 6 weeks, you’re basically looking at running 2 anchor programs (I feel like you’ve mentioned having a copy of Forever already). Smash some rep PRs on the main work, go for jokers when you feel good, and then keep supplemental work light. FSL 5x5 would work well in that regard. You can push the assistance work stupid hard if you need to.
2 Likes
Yes I have the Forever book but I haven’t really ever implemented the leader-anchor thing yet. When I started with 5/3/1 I really wanted to keep things simple so on Wendler’s forums I asked if it was better to just start with a routine and stick with it without any form of periodization and the guys (including Jim) basically told me yes. So the thing is, I haven’t gotten the hang of the leader/anchor thing just yet.
I also asked about jokers and got a tremendous red light from Jim, literally telling me to forget I ever read about them. I’m not dismissing your advice, just not sure what to do.
Would you keep the volume low on these as well? Like I could do 2 sets of each exercise to failure. Do you feel it’s as important to push the weight up on assistance as well during dieting?
I guess the question I have about assistance is, should I be treating it as I would when trying to gain muscle?
To clarify, this is Jim’s advice, haha. I’m giving you one of his basic anchor programs. You’d only go for jokers when you’re feeling good. Biggest issue is people implement them too often.
For the assistance work, you can pretty much do whatever you want. It’s responsible for very little. I like chasing a pump when I’m losing fat, because it’s easy to recover from and is more activity to help with creating a deficit.
1 Like
@Frank_C thanks for the tag! I agree, 100%, with your statement. It’s a little bit at a time, over long periods of time. Keeping it relatively tight and staying on top of nutrition is the way to do it, the
“bulking” and “cutting” people always talk about is so poorly executed and off track. IMO “bulking” should be a 10-20% surplus, “cutting” should be a 10-20% deficit, you teeter the see-saw back and forth gently without any big dips or swings in either direction.
3 Likes
Gotcha.
I’ll use this setup
5/3/1 pr set
Jokers if feeling good
FSL 5x5
2-4 assistance exercises for 2-3 sets very hard (to failure or about it) in the 6-12 range
Assistance
Press - weighted chins, dips, lateral raises
DL - Rope crunch (or maybe RDL?)
Bench - chest supported db row, machine press (I’m tired af of db presses I want to do something different), curls
Squat - leg press
when trying to go to true failure on smaller exercises, I find that I’m more “comfortable” using slightly lower reps, so 6-8, because I almost almost undershoot the weight if I’m going for 12 or so and I end up doing a ton of reps instead and can’t really reach true failure. Like a lot of times I would pick a weight for lateral raises that I thought I’d go to failure on the 12th rep with, and I ended up doing 25-30 reps because I had overestimated it.
Edit: I just went back to the book and read about this template, and Jim says he recommends the 3/5/1 programing with it. Would you recommend it as well for me or it doesn’t matter?
Anyway, do you personally think that I’m doing the wrong thing by undergoing a fat loss phase now?
1 Like
With 5/3/1, you do push/pull and single leg/core assistance for EVERY training day. Right now you’re only doing some of that every day. If you change that, you’ll get in a lot more helpful volume.
RDLs are a supplemental exercise rather than an assistance one. Check your copy of Forever in the assistance exercise section in part 1. It’s VERY helpful.
3/5/1 is a solid approach. Your 5s week is like a little break to help set up for a huge PR on your 1s week.
I can’t see anything wrong with undergoing a fat loss phase or a weight gain phase whenever a trainee wants to lose fat or gain weight. There’s no real set time to accomplish those goals.
2 Likes
Yeah, I guess maybe I’m just afraid of overshooting the volume. If I do three assistance exercises per session won’t that be too much? Also, would you pick different exercises every time or repeat them throughout the week?
For consecutive cycles I find it handy to run 3/5/1 then 5/3/1 for another break after the heavy 1s week, then a fortnight of going for broke before a deload.
1 Like
Sounds like a good plan since I’ll be going for 6 weeks straight!
I mean absolutely zero condescension when I say that, as a healthy, active, young male, fearing volume is unreasonable. You will most likely never have a better ability to recover from training than you do now, and there are MANY American boys even younger than you that are training 2 a days for football practice living off diets of processed food and marijuana. 3 assistance exercises a day should be more than fine. If it doubt, make them easier assistance exercises (raises instead of dips, curls instead of chins, etc) for that day.
I tend to change assistance exercises for the day, and will also change them based on how I feel ON that day. In proof of concept, assistance exercises are responsible for 20% of the results and get 80% of the discussion, and here we are doing just that, haha. I feel like you honestly can’t do anything wrong with them.
2 Likes
I probably agree with you. In fact, I don’t fear volume. The thing is, we talked about decreasing volume when on a cut. But if I now start doing three assistance exercises per workout, in fact I’ll be doing MORE volume than I was doing previously!
That was just a thought. I’ll follow your advice because I trust your experience (and that’s what Jim says too anyway), and for some reason every time we talk training you get me excited to hit the gym lol, so I’ll push as hard as I can and see if I can bump my strength up and lose fat.
My only real concern is the bench, which was an utter fail last cycle. I got 6 reps on my 5/3/1 day and got stuck under the bar attempting the seventh. I didn’t increase my bench TM for that reason, so maybe the weight will be a little more manageable.
On assistance exercises, sure, but those aren’t taxing. Your volume on supplemental work has dropped, and that’s the stuff that is hard to recover from.
Try an experiment sometime: go in the gym and do 10x10 curls. Then, a week later, go into the gym and do 10x10 deadlifts. See which one is harder to recover from. In fact, I imagine you could do 20x10 curls and STILL find the deads harder to recover from.
And hopefully, when you start using this assistance work paradigm, your general fitness level will adapt and improve as well. Should be a win-win.
I find bench rarely increases when I drop bodyweight. Typically, a decrease occurs. But I’m also not a great bencher.
I’m glad I can motivate you dude. Keep the perspective here too: this is only 6 weeks of training. Not a lot can go wrong in that time. Good learning opportunity if nothing else.
1 Like
Don’t kill me, but I was already doing FSL 5x5 prior to this as my supplemental haha.
Maybe I should consider dropping to 3x5?