Okay, can’t put off leg day any longer. Boy is still not ready to go, bit under the weather. My lower back is still bugging me from that damn 250 set of DLs, but I am not going to go crazy today anyway, so whatever. Also, time to test out the new knee sleeves!
Barbell Squat
40 kg x 5 reps
60 kg x 5 reps
80 kg x 3 reps
100 kg x 3 reps
120 kg x 2 reps
130 kg x 1 reps
140 kg x 1 reps
100 kg x 10 reps
Pull-Up
10 reps
10 reps
Leg Press
60 kg x 5 reps
100 kg x 5 reps
140 kg x 22 reps
140 kg x 18 reps
140 kg x 14 reps
Isolateral Plate Loaded High Row
90 lb x 8 reps
140 lb x 8 reps
180 lb x 8 reps
230 lb x 8 reps
180 lb x 15 reps
140 lb x 15 reps
90 lb x 15 reps
Okay, so I like the sleeves. Feels like I put armor on my knees or something. Now I see why people walk and sit funny when wearing them. To a lesser degree, it has a similar effect as a belt. Better bracing, better confidence. I like.
Finished legs with a 350 set on the leg press (which I rarely do). I continue to love this rep scheme, where’s it been all my life? 140 kilo was hard, but also too easy. Burned like hell, but had no problem getting the reps. MAYBE IT WAS THE SLEEVES.
I just found your log, after refusing to open a thread featuring curling in a squat rack for months. I haven’t read anything yet, but it’s nice that I found it. I like nice things.
After a brief skim read I’d like to let you know that I object to people who drop deadlifts, mix lbs and kgs and who are generally stronger, leaner or better looking than me.
Um, huh. Not sure there is any simple answer to that. It’s probably more than any one thing. Is there something in particular you saw?
If I had to generalize, it is part just natural athleticism and coordination that I have had since I was little. I have always instinctively known how to get it all sorta working together, and I think that is uniquely well suited to bodyweight exercises. I doubt there has every been a point in my life were I couldn’t knock out some pullups or dips or whatever, even untrained.
Secondly, almost my entire mindset in training is one of “compared to bodyweight”. I am not a big dude, nor do I want to get all swole, so no matter what I am doing - be it squats, deads, OHPs, dips, PUs, whatever - I always think of it in terms of my bodyweight. So I guess my mind is geared for it. Ever seen a dude, I don’t know, squat 2 times his bodyweight without being at least a little impressive looking? Not sure it is even possible. And so on.
Lastly, yeah, there are a couple tricks. But that depends on what we’re talking about, exactly.
It was very much a combination of looking at your more traditional lifting weights/sets and thinking “I can ball-park do that kind of thing”, then see you knocking out easy muscle ups and handstand push ups and I can very much not get close to that. It just seemed like something that jumped out at me as either a massive disparity on my part or a disparity on yours. Conceivably both I guess.
Squat is somewhat on the back-burner at the time being. I am just trying to sorta stay within spitting distance of something reasonable until I hit the bottom of this cut and begin to rebound. Hopefully not for too much longer.
It is probably mostly a disparity on my part, would be my guess. I tend to keep mass (fat and muscle both) on my torso more than average. As in, smallish legs and arms, but fairly large torso. At the same time, I have always had naturally strong shoulders, and I would say both those and my lats are strong far out of normal proportions. Nothing like some of the freaks around here, but the combination of these things surely gives me advantage when doing BW exercises. And then you develop a bias towards those things, and as a result do them more frequently…
Speaking of shoulders, it’s that time of the week again.
Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press
16 kg x 5 reps
18 kg x 5 reps
20 kg x 3 reps
28 kg x 5 reps
30 kg x 3 reps
34 kg x 8 reps
Standing Barbell Shoulder Press (OHP)
45 kg x 22 reps
45 kg x 18 reps
45 kg x 12 reps
Preacher Curl
35 lb x 5 reps
45 lb x 24 reps
45 lb x 16 reps
45 lb x 14 reps
8 reps with the 34s was kinda nice, better than expected anyway. Then did some 350 with 45 on the OHP. Tough, but doable. Man, I would love to be able to do this with 50, but it might take a while.
Thanks dude. When I was doing 531 BBB, I was thinking doing the last 5x10 at 45 was pretty good. This has me suddenly thinking it could go to a whole new level.
I rarely find any kind of hypertrophy that I actually like, but I think this 350 might finally be the exception. I EVEN LIKE IT FOR THE PREACHER CURLS, which is, of course, insane.
Woke up today at 79.9 kilo. Part of me annoyed by the stall in the weight loss process, another part of reminding myself to use the mirror. I still think things are heading in the proper direction, so will avoid making any major adjustments at this point. And by that I mean I will continue to eat like shit and drink beer whenever I feel like it. Resting heart rate still averaging at a strangely consistent 50, which is about where I like it (tiny bit lower would be nice, but it probably won’t happen at this BW).
Didn’t do shit yesterday, no lifting, no Bob. Probably will have to lift stuff from the floor today, if I can even manage to get to the gym.