I’m going to resurrect an old thread, the Scott Report I started years ago when the Levrone Report was going strong. By doing this I’m going to try and put some of my questions or statements forth in this thread instead of just popping them into another non related thread and derailing it as so often happens.
Today’s subject: Tired but good workout. I haven’t been sleeping well again and when I got up I was dragging around and thought maybe I should just skip today’s workout. Well later I did it anyway and low and behold I had one of my better 30 10 30 workouts going up several reps in every exercise but one ! You just never can tell!
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Yeah, one of the skills learned after years and years of training is telling if you’re really tired or just being lazy. I’ve been in the same situation many times ; sitting outside the gym trying to tell myself I need to skip that days workout but go in anyway and almost always end up with a great workout.
Sometimes it isn’t the case , sometimes I’ll start and know it’s not my day and just leave. Not worth an injury in your mind isn’t on it . I have to say that when I finally ditched the full body workouts in favor of split routines, those ‘too tired to train’ days have all but disappeared.
How’d you sleep the night after the good workout?
Unfortunately about the same. Lately I go to bed between 10:30 and 11 and for some reason I wake up around 4 and can’t seem to get back to sleep, at least what I’d call good sleep. When I go to bed I’m out like a light and sleep pretty good until I wake up. I’ve tried Melatonin and other things but nothing seems to help. I can’t recall getting 8 straight hours of sleep. I’m sure if I was to get those extra hours sleep my arms would bloom to the 20 inches they should be, ha ha!!
Over the years I came to understand that how you feel coming into the gym doesn’t necessarily correspond to how well I performed in the gym. (sickness due to flu excepted).
There were days I walked in the gym feeling great and the warmup weights seemed light, only to come to realize I couldn’t handle the weights I expected.
And there were days I felt like skipping the gym and the warmup weights seemed heavy, yet had one of my better days pushing heavy weights.
Maybe you saw it, maybe you didn’t but in another thread someone suggested a delt exercise to get a deeper delt burn. I said I’d try it. I’ve been working pretty continually on this same 30 10 30 Darden workout now for some months and I’m still making progress. I know from the past that when I start changing things around in a routine pretty soon I lose touch with the lifts I was doing and my progress gets messed up. Should I try different things with the chance I could mess up progress or keep doing what I’m doing until I stagnate?
Scott
Wow I wrote something on here not that long ago today and it’s already 13 threads down. Nobody is going to see this unless they are specifically looking for it ?
Often, the people here that have stuff worth reading DO end up having people specifically look for it.
Not a huge deal anymore with the infinite scrolling.
And it gets bumped back up with every new post.
I’ve been looking at some of these other posts here and I figured for those of you that don’t know me I’d give you a short muscle bio.
I’m 68 years old and started lifting at about 15. I trained the Weider way until I found Jones and then did HIT and just about every other routine out there. I even trained next to Mentzer for a brief time. I’ve been lifting off and on all this time and doing triathlons, cycle racing, marathons and HIT training etc all at the same time. I was best at cycling but that ended after several bad bike wrecks. After that I went back to just lifting. About 20 years ago I started collecting Nautilus machines when they got cheap and still have about 10 - 15 that I still use. I’m a Nautilus nut hense I like Darden. I followed Darden to here. I don’t do deadlifts, squats or bench presses. Bad knees from accidents etc won’t let me do weighted squats but I never liked them anyway. I do do free style squats. I never cared what I could bench. My biggest weakness is consistency . I’d workout for a few months and then something would take me away from it for a while and I’d keep starting over again and again but that’s family life. I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs and there’s more to life than weights! I’ve been back at it this time consistently now for about a year and now I’m doing 30 10 30. I’m making good gains so far. I used to be able to do 5-8 chins but now I can’t do one. Getting old sucks, ha ha! I love to talk Nautilus machines!!
Scott
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Nice to meet ya, Scott.
What’s your mobility like? Stiff as a board? Limber? I’m always thinking about what aging is like and how my training might have to change with time. I really only lift and play softball as far as physical activity.
I’m very mobile but at the same time I’m not very flexible , but I never was. As a former wrestler I’m sure you are very flexible . My friends and brother wrestled so I had loads of involvement with wrestling . When In high school they wanted me to wrestle because I looked pretty strong but I didn’t want wrestling to block my way to olympia so I foolishly didn’t wrestle. I’m sure wrestling has given you a great foundation for lifting. I thought it was funny how you were getting grief over being an upper body bro. I see no problem with that. I think too many bodybuilders have huge legs way out of proportion to their upper body. I don’t talk much about legs because my legs , glutes and calves were always way ahead of my upper body and I hated that. It was great though for cycling? Walking around in street clothes not so. I think one of the biggest differences between being 68 and 30 is that I recover much slower and real gains seem non existent these days . My reps and weights go up here and there but visually I don’t see much happening and who cares if the weights go up if I don’t look any better? I still have just about as much energy as I used to but I always had loads of energy. Another drag about getting older is I want to try all these different things but I can only do so much each workout. My workout today was only about half an hour and I’d love to do more but I shouldn’t . I think I’d be happy to just sit there and pound out reps for hours but I know that doesn’t work .
Scott
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Very interesting background! I’d say you’re correct about flexibility, even after being a few years removed from wrestling and carrying about 10 extra pounds of muscle, I’m just as flexible as I was then. I used to find no appeal in training legs because my calves were naturally one of my best body parts even with no training, so I can sympathize. However, not I really have learned to love leg training. I’m curious, are you following the routine from “Extreme HIT”? If not, what does your volume and frequency look like right now and how was it when you were younger?
When I was younger I pretty much did a full body workout 2 times a week. One or two sets to failure something like
Pulldowns
Rows
Double chest
Double shoulder
Curls
Tricep etc
Leg press
I would also swim about a mile run 6 miles and bike around 25 one or two times a week.
Now I do a push /pull split routine
Day one. Pull All 30 10 30
Pullover
Seated row
Rowing torso or pulldown close grip
Curl
Rev curl
Rest a day
—-Push
Double chest press
Laterals
Dumbbell press
Tricep extension
Tricep push down
Sometimes leaning forward laterals
Rest a day and back to pull -repeat
Legs I squeeze in on a rest day but I don’t push it
At least once or twice a week I erg or ride an exercise bike for about 25 minutes
I’ve done this now for about 3 months. I try to emphasize my lats as my lats are my worst body part and before I kick the bucket I’d like to actually see some Lat development , ha ha!
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Wow you’ve really done a lot of cardio in your day! I like your routine, especially leaning forward lateral raises, I just started implementing them and they make a big difference. I’m sure you’ll see those lat gains with the emphasis and focus you’re putting on them. What was Mike Mentzer like?
Mentzer was very down to business but he was very open and helpful. He’d come over and help me force out another rep when he saw I was trying to do more. He liked how I’d go all out. Not many others in the gym would push all out hard. He’d openly talk about the pills he was taking and most of all he was super strong. I’d use about 30 pounds on the rowing torso and he’d easily use the whole stack and more. I mostly just watched him workout from whatever machine I was on and it was only for a few weeks . I thought it was interesting that he was also experimenting with one of those electric muscle stimulators at the time. He talked of taking some kind of pre med classes at the local college and sounded like a pharmacist when talking about all the bottles of something he carried around in his gym bag.
I recall be impressed and motivated being around him but at the same time it was discouraging as I could see I was never going to be able to get anywhere close to what he could accomplish. It’s like standing next to the hulk.
I remember at one of the Mr Olympias before Arnold had won one he was standing out in The street with his suitcase before the contest and my friend and I ran up to him to get his autograph . No one else noticed a big guy just standing there in a suit but I knew that face.
Scott
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Very cool! I wish I could’ve met him, but he died when I was 5. When you witnessed him train did he train in a split routine at the time or whole body and did he train on just machines or also some conventional equipment? Sounds like it was really a sight to behold!
I only ever saw him train on Nautilus. Spartan Gym in MD was one of the first gyms to get Nautilus in our area so that’s why we were there. It was $35 bucks a month. I can’t remember if he did a split? He was sort of inconspicuous and sometimes wore droopy cut off sweaters so he didn’t stand out like some big guys who wear tight tank tops and parade around , etc. I don’t think he wanted to be seen as it would be distracting to him.
Scott
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So does anyone know if the big coaches or trainers on this site ever look at these training logs and comment on them ?
Scott