These are some pictures I took a couple days ago as a baseline, a “presummer slim down” kinda thing. These will be the first pictures I’ve put on the site of me, when viewing please keep in mind that when i started all this a year ago I was about 315lbs of fat so a year has brought me a long way…over half way I think.
Please also keep in mind that my goal isn’t to be a bodybuilder, I would just like to try and keep some track of the progress I’ve made and hopefully will continue to make.
I decided to leave out deadlifts today because I’ve been going really heavy lately and didn’t want to over do it. So today was dedicated to the accessory exercises that I do and some that I should do. Started off with bent over barbell rows up to two sets of six at 225, these were definately tough. I super setted the last two sets with hise shrugs up to one set of 315(this was bothering a mole that had almost been ripped off during squats on saturday and I didn’t want to start it bleeding again), I like these and should really try to do them more.
Moved onto close grip, reverse grip lat pulldowns up to one set of six reps at 185, I did sets at 135, 160, and 172.5 before I got to 185. 160 has been where I’ve been working at for quite a while now and I guess it was time to turn these up a notch.
Lower back hypers were last for two sets of ten with a 10kg plate behind my head. This felt good at the time but soon tossed my lower back into spasms and just generally uncomfortable to sit…or stand.
Todays workout is mostly focused on the chest, or had been in the past until Lockouts got moved to today for some reason. Legs Up bench was up first for five sets of five at 240, nothing too terribly hard until the very last rep were I started to lose my balance and had to flail my legs out to keep steady. You can really feel this in the pecs, I’m starting to look forward to this every week.
Incline bench is added to the routine this week, and stays around for a couple weeks. I haven’t done incline press of any kind in a very long time so this proved to be a fun test of stabilizers. After the first set I had the path down again and it was pretty smooth sailing for the three sets of five at 180. The first couple reps I had to fight to keep the path right instead of just pushing it straight out from my chest and losing it in front of me.
Lockouts got moved to today for some reason, I’m semi-confused about because I always thought of Sundays as the “Chest Day” but now there is an obvious tricep workout in it. Anyway, three sets of five at 280 was still way too light and it doesn’t seem like the Lockouts get much harder as the routine progresses.
To finished off the day we had biceps and abs of which I did four sets of each which definitely felt like enough. My biceps do seem to be getting stronger which I suppose is a good thing.
Well my crazy squat routine has been dropped, I’m not really sure what I was thinking when I designed that. I had a world level judge(Jeff Butt) watching me squat today to make sure I was getting depth. He said that I definitely got depth on my first rep of a set but that I generally got higher and higher as the set went on…I can live with that as I’m only doing one rep at a comp.
I worked up to a triple at 455 and a double at 495 with belt and knee wraps. I also got a video of the 495 double that I will put up here later(i just need to encode it to divx). Unfortunately it’s from a REALLY cheap HP digicam and the quality sucks pretty bad.
GHR’s for four sets of six came up next, and by next I mean about 10 minutes later. These are definitely getting easier and I think I’ll shoot for four sets of eight next week maybe.
Last was four sets of weighted ab work to ten reps each. Damn my abs are going to be sore tomorrow :(.
EDIT: Video is up on side(Squat 495×2)
Triceps, triceps, triceps. That’s the name of the game today. Three sets of eight reps at 205 for close grip bench. These were suprisingly hard on the final set, it’s all the volume that makes it difficult.
Lockouts at 275 for two sets of five…I have NO idea what these are supposed to do, this weight is no where near high enough or the reps need to be much higher.
Floor Skull Crushers for three sets of ten, these are quite different and really quite hard at about 75lbs. It’s basically a skull crusher but instead of stopping it before it hits you in the head you let it go all the way back above your head and rest of the floor for half a second before pushing it back up.
Dips for three sets of ten….er eight. It was supposed to be ten but I could only get eights off for each set so I guess I’ll work up to tens 😉 these just kill me.
That’s it that’s all.
The server was being migrated which brought the site down for a while but everything is back up and running now.
I should have taken notes on my workouts so I could post them up here once it was back up. Highlights of the last week have been:
It’s been a good week of hard workouts so far and squats again tomorrow.
On the Suppliment side of things I just got a new order of some At Large Nutrition stuff. I got Nitrean(protein powder), Creatine 500, ETS and Thermocin. I’ve used their protein and ETS before, ETS is a suppliment based on Microlactin which I found to work quite well at aiding recovery. I’ve never used their creatine but I have used creatine before and never found it worked well for me, some people are non-responders to some types of creatine so I guess we’ll see if this stuff helps me. The Thermocin is a thermogenic product that does the whole “more energy, burns fat, reduces appetite, etc”. I do wanna slim down so we’ll see if it works.
Well I don’t have much to say about todays workout, it was limited to nine sets of three reps for speed bench at 165+bands and three sets of five at 310 on three board. Other than that everything was accessory work, including RC work, abs and front raises.
I was able to get through all the exercises today without much of an issue, I guess the energy was on my side.
New Routine in Excel format
This is the easiest way to post it as it’s 12 weeks and 5 days a week, I am only following the bench days though.
On an extremely positive note I quit smoking today. I have been addicted to this horrible drug for far too long and for far too long it has been limiting my progress at the gym. Today I kicked it.
Well today was pretty much a mirror image of last weeks workout except the rack I was using for pulls was being used. So I ended up using a rather cobbled together system which left me unsure as to if I was pulling from lower, higher or the same spot as last week. I again worked up to 455 first for a double with a static hold for as long as possible on the second rep, then for a single with a static hold that seemed to go on forever, perhaps about 10-15 seconds.
I also did bent over rows on the chest supported machine simply because the grips had padding on it ;). I just put plates on unitl it felt like enough, which ended up being 3 45lb plates. I did two sets of five at this weight and it felt pretty close to normal bent overs.
Reverse grip, narrow grip pull downs finished off the workout with two sets of six at 160lbs. Next week I think I’ll go up on this as it is definately getting easier.
So today was the first day of my new bench program and man was the volume daunting. We started off with Leg Up bench press for five sets of five at 225. This didn’t start out very hard but the last set was pretty difficult. Decline bench press was next for three sets of ten at 185lbs. This turned out to be ridiculously hard, my front delts were just destroyed from these. Floor press was next at 210 pounds for three sets of five, nothing too hard here.
We were supposed to do three sets of ten for shoulder press but after one full set and a second set at 7 reps I was done. It was just too much to ask of my already extremely tired anterior delts.
The routine then says to do 8 sets of 10 for biceps and 8 sets of 10(or osmething like that) for abs. Well my abs still hurt from yesterday and I just dont like doing biceps so I ended up doing about 4 or 5 sets of biceps which was enough for me.
Today I decided I was going to start a little program of which I haven’t exactly worked out all the details yet. Week one was like this: I worked up to three sets of eight at 250(50%) plus chains(330 at the top, almost 70%). This proved to be extremely difficult and I was sweating like a…fat guy doing squats? My basic plan, which I haven’t exactly finalized yet, is to do this:
Week 1(this week): 3×8 @ 250(50%) + chains = 330(66%)
Week 2: 2×8 @ 300(60%) + chains = 380(76%)
Week 3: 3×5 @ 350(70%) + chains = 430(86%)
Week 4: 2×5 @ 400(80%) + chains = 480(96%)
Week 5: 1×5 @ 450(90%) + chains = 530 (106%)
Week 6: Max out I think…
I moved onto abs and did 5 sets of 10 reps on the decline at just my body weight. I found the last few reps of the last few sets pretty hard but it definately would have been better to add weight.
Last up was GHRs which I am proud to say I did with zero assistance, I have finally done my bodyweight on these. I did three sets of six which were EXTREMELY hard reps but I some how finished them.
