Happy Cake Day!!
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Thanks!
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Yesterday was chest and tris. Mentally I wasn’t in a great spot so I just went in and did my thing without recording or writing anything down. Got a nice chest pump, moved some good weight around but my goodness…that was the best tricep pump I’ve had in a long time! I’ll be hitting shoulders tonight, and then resting tomorrow
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Shoulders and calves
Started off with face pulls to warm up, then moved into a seated overhead press for 4 good sets of 6. Then over to the Viking press for another 3 heavy sets of 5. After I got my pressing work in, I moved into the isolation work. Went to the standing side lateral machine first and then over to reverse pec dec. After that I did cable side laterals and rear as well and then I finished with a couple final sets on the seated side lateral machine going to failure. Then I went over to the standing calf to finish things off. Good overall workout, and probably the last one I’ll get in there before I pickup my son on Thursday. I have a side job to finish tomorrow night after work so I don’t really see myself making it to the gym. And then we’ll just carry on with training at home with my son…getting into a really good routine here to be honest.
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Monday-bench failure. So last night I was benching, and I went for a rep that I shouldn’t have. I should know better lol…got pinned of course and with training at home right now I obviously don’t have spotters or anything. And with home being an apartment I didn’t really wanna dump the weights on the floor or anything either…it was stressful because my son was watching all this, and he thought I was gonna get really hurt so he was freaking out and crying (which obviously I felt really about) but I rolled the bar down my stomach and onto my hips so I could stand up with it and put it on the floor. Ended the workout there and comforted my boy…moral of the story is I should have known better and in my home training environment at the moment it’s probably better to do one less rep than one more. Save the “one more!” for when I’m training at iron nation. Today, my belly is quite sore…and so are my glutes but I must have been using them to brace myself I guess 
but we live to lift another day.
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Well I have done that in the past. Fortunately you did not suffocate. You did not panic.
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I had a top 3 ever workout tonight. Literally one of the best gym experiences I have ever had…it was so awesome. I have never had an experience quite like that. So I wanted to try out the belt squat today cause I have never used it before…and these two older guys were just getting on it themselves and they invited me to work in with them. I’ve seen them several times before…both in thier 50’s, jacked, strong…basically what I want to be when I’m that age. They train really hard…I managed to hang with them too. We did two different variations on the belt squat and hit 6 plates per side for 8 reps on both variations. We went back to the first variation and I hit 4 plates per side for 17, and 3 for 23 going right to failure. As awesome as the numbers were, what was even better was the commraderie. Can’t really describe it but it honestly reminded me of the og Ronnie Coleman videos. The energy was super high and it was just so fucking fun. The guy who runs supplement world was there too but not training with us…he runs the store and is in charge of the ambassadors so he’s kinda my boss…he cheered us on during the high rep sets too, tanner (the guy who owns the gym and is a competitive bodybuilder) was there too cheering us on and gave us fist bumps out of respect…it was sick…just such a good energy. I really needed that. The supplement world guy also bought me a shake haha…said I definitely earned it. I wish I could describe it better. But damn…that was a workout I will remember for a long long time.
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Did back and biceps at iron nation. Heavy rows, pulldowns…all the good stuff. Biceps were only ok…I couldn’t get a good feel for them for some reason, and elbows were not the happiest either. The one I wound up landing on was thumbless reverse grip curls with the thick handled ez bars. Didn’t really record anything, just wanted to get in and lift.
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Had a good push session last night. That standing press has become one of my favourite tools for pressing to be honest. Not sure what kind of carry over it would have to benching, but I do like it quite a bit. With 3 plates and a quarter I got 2 top sets of 5…so I’ll keep chipping away at it. My relatively soonish goal is to hit 4 plates on there. It was my first main exercise. After that I did some incline pressing and finished chest with pec Dec. Moved right into reverse pec Dec, then some seated overhead press, side raises, and then some more rear delts for a couple sets. After that I finished with triceps. Maxed out the seated dip for one set after pyramiding my way up a bit, then some heavy tricep push downs and then finished with light tricep extensions. Overall it was a really good push session, and it’s my final workout until Monday probably. I pickup my son tonight, and then tomorrow I’m taking him camping over the weekend for his last little outing before he goes back to school on Tuesday. I’m very much looking forward to this weekend too…I need it.
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I hope you guys had an awesome trip!
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We did thanks. It was a great trip…went to a rodeo on Saturday and then a big provincial park on Sunday before we came home…along with other shenanigans too lol
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Monday - legs home gym
Main work was squatting, reverse lunges and good mornings. Got in a couple top sets at 315 for squatting, then moved into reverse lunges and good mornings. Did a couple other accessories but it was a little bit of a rushed session…however it was a good one nonetheless
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Tuesday - benching
Didn’t get into until later at night. Ideally this would have been a full push session, but I just didn’t have the time last night.
Bench - 4x5 slingshot
Close grip 2x8
Pushups drop set 2 x failure
So with my pushups, basically I started with them being banded, then as I was approaching failure i dropped the band and kept going, then dropped to my knees to finish. Overall, a very abbreviated session but still got in some decent benching and hit some close grip for a couple sets too. Not much, but a whole lot better than nothing. I’ll take today as a rest day…but I did buy my son a t-ball set up last night too so we’ll mess around with that after work and then tomorrow he goes back to his moms so I’ll hit up iron nation with a nice pull session.
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Friday night - legs at iron nation
Had a shorter session because my ex asked me to pickup my son…originally I was gonna pickup on Saturday morning. She has a day course for Saturday so I have an extra day with my son. My leg session was quad focused and I’ll catch up with some hams on Sunday night.
The main work was on the belt squat, hit 6 plates and a quarter for 5/4/1. On that last set where I got 1, I tried to go for 2 but failed on the second rep. Then I went down to 5 plates for 2x7 and then 3 plates for 23 reps. Moved over to my favourite leg press and did 3 working sets, and one more burnout set. Then I finished up on leg extension with the time I had left. Definitely smoked the quads and got some solid squatting for sure.
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I also learned that there’s an arm wrestling club here…so I’m gonna look into that
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Still can’t pose for shit hah. But…gains are coming for sure. Shoulders are popping a tad more, strength is going up…can’t complain! Push session tonight. My big pressing movement at iron nation is still the standing chest press and I’m definitely noticing that I have more power off my chest now when I bench at home…aside from when I get pinned of course 
. After that I did some incline pressing, pec dec and then dips. Dips are my transitionary movement as I’m going from more chest focus to tricep. Good way to kill the chest too. Heavy tricep push downs, machine dips for triceps and then a cable movement that I don’t know the name of but it gives a hell of a contraction. While I was at that cable I did some rear delt work before I went back to pec Dec to hit the reverse version. Then I finished off with some side delt work. I’m currently not doing a lot of overhead pressing…I think it’s a great movement but right now it’s not a priority for me. It’ll come back eventually though.
. After that I did some incline pressing, pec dec and then dips. Dips are my transitionary movement as I’m going from more chest focus to tricep. Good way to kill the chest too. Heavy tricep push downs, machine dips for triceps and then a cable movement that I don’t know the name of but it gives a hell of a contraction. While I was at that cable I did some rear delt work before I went back to pec Dec to hit the reverse version. Then I finished off with some side delt work. I’m currently not doing a lot of overhead pressing…I think it’s a great movement but right now it’s not a priority for me. It’ll come back eventually though.
Earlier today I also did an ab routine and I hit up some cardio too on my bike.
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So I decided to start a YouTube channel along with having my instagram. Not sure if anyone is interested but I’ll try to provide a link or whatever to either one if anyone wants. The YouTube thing for me is gonna be interesting…I’ve always wanted to do that but I never pulled the trigger on it.
Tonight is my last pull session at iron nation before I go back to my home gym, and I’m going to reintroduce deadlifts. Particularly I’m gonna do trap bar is what I’m thinking. I had been doing a bro split, but I very recently switched back to push pull legs. I’ll explain more on that later.
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Saturday - push
Bench 4x4
Close grip (no legs) 4x6
Push press 3x4
Bodyweight tri extension 2 x fail
Ext rom pushups superset with side raises x 3 sets
Core circuit to finish
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So for a while there leading up to sept I’ve been doing the bro split thing, especially with joining iron nation. It’s been fun for sure…definitely have had more of a focus on bodybuilding style training. That said, earlier in sept I decided to make the switch back to push pull legs again and shift my focus more to strength training with some bodybuilding/hypertrophy stuff in the background still…and this is what I’ll finish off the year with. So…
Thursday - pull
Deadlifts - 315 3x3 This felt very awkward and unfamiliar. More below.
Reverse hyper - 3 sets
Heavy one arm row - 3 sets
Lat pull down - 3 sets
Lying hamstring curl - 2 sets I wanted to do Nordic curls, but the rig was out of order
Back ext machine - 2 sets I view this as essentially a machine version of a seated good morning. Works well.
Pullovers (light) - 2 sets Just to stretch and round things off before bicep and forearm work.
For biceps I did some cable and preacher curl stuff. Two exercises, nothing fancy. For forearms I used the grip machine and did a bunch of “crush” reps and then finished with some wrist curls just to get a nice little pump.
Overall this push session wasn’t bad…but deadlifts just felt weird. It’s been a quite a while since I have done much for regular deadlifts…yes I have been doing rdl, good mornings and Nordic curls…but not regular deadlifts, conventional or sumo. It felt very unfamiliar and awkward so I didn’t go past 315…it didn’t feel like it was too heavy, but my gut told me that going heavier might not be a good idea. Obviously deadlifts in this manner will only be at iron nation…can’t do this at my home gym all that easily but I will experiment and see what I can come up with.
So in this strength focused phase that I’m in now, not only am I gonna put some more emphasis on deadlifts, but I’m also gonna put more emphasis on overhead press. For quite some time now I’ve been focused on bench, and I haven’t done a lot in the way of ohp…and I feel weak on ohp now as a result. So I want to bring that up obviously…my push days will still have some chest work of course but it’ll be secondary to overhead for a while.
Also I started a YouTube, I only have 2 videos but here’s the link https://youtube.com/@bluecollarviking
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@T3hPwnisher how do I put a YouTube video on here like you guys all do?