Adarq.org

Bench
Up to 205 x 1
185 x 3
155 x 10, 8, 7

Chins x a few, a few, a few
Hammer Strength OHP
45+25 x 8
45 x 13, 11

Lateral Raise
20 x 16, 13, 13
10 x lots

Dips
BW x 15, 13, 10

Then did some squats, but kind of a no-go after deadlifts. Dis some curls. Fun workout. Back home Wednesday and looking forward to getting back into swing of things.

Vacation has been nice but exhausting so far. I miss the gym, heh.

What made you stop training before? start uni & those responsibilities for the most part correct? Seems like you're really enjoying training & also realized how much you missed it. Just need to be careful when you start a new/big job, it's easy for training to slip when you're confronted with a whole new set of stressors + that "ego to perform" (work addiction).

As for cutting, that's always a debate. You've found a good rhythm.. One of the hardest things in training, is finding a good rhythm and then riding it out for as long as possible. Either we never find a good rhythm, or we find it and get bored or convince ourselves we need to switch it up. It's almost as if our subconscious is trying to short-circuit our progress in order sabotage our gains & make us quit training so we can go back to lying on the couch. Some of my biggest mistakes in training were finally finding a rhythm but then changing things up way too soon.

That's more related to switching things up drastically though, not cleaning up your diet slightly, eating a little lighter, and staying on basically the same routine. Seems like most people start cutting, their brain starts scrambling, and their routine eventually switches up dramatically.. just becomes a mess.

pC!

A whole host of reasons meant I stopped training. What you say is definitely chief among them. Also being so used to training at home and having now to drag myself to a fairly distant and yet kind of worse gym. Having to spend a lot more energy on schoolwork than I did at HS, too. Mental health wasn't great either, to be honest, though that's in check nowadays.

I think you're totally right about the rhythm thing. However, 85kg at my height and degree of leanness just leaves me feeling quite heavy (physically, not in terms of mental perception, I'm quite happy with my body at the mo), and I would love to get to a good degree of leanness and just feel light. I reckon that 6-8 weeks of lighter eating and regular cardio will do it. To sustain this weight gain I've been eating past fullness regularly, so I think that getting started on a leaning phase would actually be quite easy/pleasant.

Note to self: apparently when cutting a good benchmark for deficit target to maximise fat loss while avoiding muscle loss is: Kcal deficit should not exceed lbs of body fat * 30. In this case assuming I'm ~20% at 85kg I could go as high as an 1100kcal daily deficit at first. That works out to about 2lbs of weight loss/week at first.

This is pretty much in line with the formula Greg Nuckols advocates: "Body fat percentage ÷ 20 = percentage of your current bodyweight you should aim to lose per week." So at 85kg and 20% that's ~1.85lbs/week.

Edit: The mixed units here are hilarious. That so much fitness content is produced by Americans has majorly fucked with my head.

interesting site... I got "proficient" on pretty much all lifts besides an "intermediate" on benchpress and an "advanced" on rows/pullups haha... good job on your progress. You will crush those old PR's of yours in no time! 

Nice pull:push ratio. I bet your shoulders are loving it!

So I've been working consistently for just under 5 months now, so perhaps it's time to take stock of progress.

Starting Stats
BW - 76kg
Squat - 70kg x 4
Front Squat - 50kg x 5
Deadlift - 90kg x 2
Bench - 60kg x 1
OHP - 30kg x 8
Chins - BW x 5

Current Stats
BW - 84kg
Squat - 112.5kg x 3 [done 13-06-17]
Front Squat - 97.5kg x 3
Deadlift - 130kg x 4 [done at RPE~8 most recently]
Bench - 87.5kg x 4
OHP - 57.5kg x 3
Chins - +15kg x 4

So that's 8kg gained in 5 months. Some amount of that is likely due to creatine. I'll measure my waist in the morning, too, to see if that's changed much. https://www.strongerbyscience.com/realistic-training-goals/ suggests 3kg of lean mass in one's first three months as an average: "a “normal” range [for beginners] from .5kg/1lb per month to 2kg/4lbs per month." So I've probably hit the middle of that pretty well, which is pleasing.

Lifts are all near the best they've ever been. I checked back through old logs and my OHP PR is 60kgx1, which I should definitely be able to match or beat. I never repped 100kg on bench, so I reckon I'm at my peak there too. Squats less good, but lower body stuff has been impaired by occasional lower back pain. However, I'm happy with how I'm managing that and expect I will be at lifetime PR levels for that in the near future. I think my FS best was around 110x3, which I'll be at pretty soon.

According to symmetricstrength.com I'm at intermediate ("the lifter has been consistently training, likely for at least a year") on everything and all my lifts are fairly well in line with each other.

I would love to get to "proficient" by the end of the year.

Went through a lot of stress in this period with a horrendously intense final term of university where I had to take 24 hours of exams + job searching and whatnot, so all things considered I think this progress is pretty good going. Mental state-wise I'm having a really great time training and looking forward to sticking with it.

I'm going on a 10ish day holiday soon, retuning early August. I'll be training with a good buddy a few times during that span, maybe trying out maxes on some of the upper body lifts. After I return I think I'll commit to a cut. I'm not substantially fluffier than when I started working out again, but I'm now at a decent level muscularity and strength and think I could feel a lot better getting down to 75-78kg. I've never successfully got particularly lean in the past, but I've grown up rather a lot since previous training periods and the fact that I am a decent cook nowadays will make life a lot easier. I'm actually quite excited to try this out. If I cut at about .75kg/week then it should be about a 10 week cut. I think doing it now makes sense, because I'm probably still at the point where I can cut moderately aggressively and still make decent progress on gym lifts.

Anyway, glad to be back here and back in the gym. 

Quote from: Joe on July 13, 2017, 09:54:58 am

Quote from: acole14 on July 12, 2017, 10:28:07 pm

Devil's advocate: http://www.rdlfitness.com/avoid-face-pulls/

I also prefer heavy seated rows tbh.

This article seems like bunkum to me, to be honest.

"A standard cue for the face pull is to keep the elbows higher than the wrists" -- I have literally never heard this cue for a facepull, that seems to be literally the opposite idea? Also the premiss that all overhead movement is dangerous seems kinda whacko.

The nonsense claims about avoiding the movement since it doesn't use your lats is also way out there? What are they even trying to say? "Imagine that you had to pull something as hard as possible to save the life of a loved one. You would not perform a face pull." This logic rules out like 95% of what people do [safely...] in the gym (and, contrary to their earlier logic, probably brings back in the overhead press..).

There is perhaps more legitimacy to the claim about avoiding loading a muscle near it's end range, but I think in general PTs only are concerned about this when the load only begins when you're in the end rage, rather than moving through a full movement and ending there.

Yeah some of the points are a bit confusing. The 'life depending on it' is irrelevant for sure. But i don't think that negates the other arguments about shoulder impingement. I've had my PT say to avoid that exercise and to do seated row or TRX floor pullups, but my left shoulder gets impinged easily from sprints. I just seemed to recall you also having shoulder issues as well, that's why I mentioned it.

Unrelated, but were you doing the N-Suns 5/3/1 program at some point? I kind of like the look of 5/3/1.

Yeah, my left shoulder sometimes gets a bit funky, but it has actually been totally fine for a long while now.

I've been running N-Suns 5/3/1 since the 31st of March and love it, no intention of stopping any time soon. It's a lot of pressing volume and the workouts can be very tough, but the scope for doing what you like with accessories and the AMRAPs make it loads of fun.

Devil's advocate: http://www.rdlfitness.com/avoid-face-pulls/

I also prefer heavy seated rows tbh.

This article seems like bunkum to me, to be honest.

"A standard cue for the face pull is to keep the elbows higher than the wrists" -- I have literally never heard this cue for a facepull, that seems to be literally the opposite idea? Also the premiss that all overhead movement is dangerous seems kinda whacko.

The nonsense claims about avoiding the movement since it doesn't use your lats is also way out there? What are they even trying to say? "Imagine that you had to pull something as hard as possible to save the life of a loved one. You would not perform a face pull." This logic rules out like 95% of what people do [safely...] in the gym (and, contrary to their earlier logic, probably brings back in the overhead press..).

There is perhaps more legitimacy to the claim about avoiding loading a muscle near it's end range, but I think in general PTs only are concerned about this when the load only begins when you're in the end rage, rather than moving through a full movement and ending there.