GIFt us your lifts! (or other achievements!)
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kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »Minion_training_program wrote: »kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »Minion_training_program wrote: »These week will be my 1RM testing week
@KickassAmazon76 thanks again for giving me pointers on how to approach this again.
Yesterday was for my deadlift
I started with around 60% and worked my way up to 100%
After that i started to increase with small steps.
102,3% - Check
105,8% - Check
106,9% - Check
I then decided to try go for that 110% i felt good, and felt like i had it in me
110% - FAIL...darn it
Ok, let's try 1 more time, rested up for 6 minuts and set myself up again
...
Again, failed. I got the bar up to just above my shin, but couldn't push through.
Then decided that i was not going to settle for that 106,9% and and deloaded the bar from 110% to 107,7%
And this was the result:
Definatly not felt like a clean rep (wibbly wobbly on the side)
But i am proud of it, because it's progress. And because i was able to do this with hook grip, which i have been working on this last year. This new 1RM is 130% of my bodyweight, which i know is not a lot for deadlifts, and i have set my goal for next year to be on 175% of y bodyweight.
Decided that i also going to get a belt, because i find it hard to create the intra abdominal pressure on the heavy lifts, and i think that is going to help me.
And maybe straps, altough my grip is not really an issue (yet), but it might help to pull the slack out at the beginning.
If anyone here got experience with straps, advice and experience shared is very much welcome
Wednesday i am going for my 1RM squat
They all look like great lifts Gus!
Aww thanks Chris, but i know you only say this because my chicken legs are even worse than yours 😛🤣
😂 I hear ya Gus. They don’t get worse than mine brother.
pfffft. If my chicken legs had that much meat on them, I'd be happy!1 -
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Happy Halloween all!
4 -
KickassAmazon76 wrote: »kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »Minion_training_program wrote: »kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »Minion_training_program wrote: »These week will be my 1RM testing week
@KickassAmazon76 thanks again for giving me pointers on how to approach this again.
Yesterday was for my deadlift
I started with around 60% and worked my way up to 100%
After that i started to increase with small steps.
102,3% - Check
105,8% - Check
106,9% - Check
I then decided to try go for that 110% i felt good, and felt like i had it in me
110% - FAIL...darn it
Ok, let's try 1 more time, rested up for 6 minuts and set myself up again
...
Again, failed. I got the bar up to just above my shin, but couldn't push through.
Then decided that i was not going to settle for that 106,9% and and deloaded the bar from 110% to 107,7%
And this was the result:
Definatly not felt like a clean rep (wibbly wobbly on the side)
But i am proud of it, because it's progress. And because i was able to do this with hook grip, which i have been working on this last year. This new 1RM is 130% of my bodyweight, which i know is not a lot for deadlifts, and i have set my goal for next year to be on 175% of y bodyweight.
Decided that i also going to get a belt, because i find it hard to create the intra abdominal pressure on the heavy lifts, and i think that is going to help me.
And maybe straps, altough my grip is not really an issue (yet), but it might help to pull the slack out at the beginning.
If anyone here got experience with straps, advice and experience shared is very much welcome
Wednesday i am going for my 1RM squat
They all look like great lifts Gus!
Aww thanks Chris, but i know you only say this because my chicken legs are even worse than yours 😛🤣
😂 I hear ya Gus. They don’t get worse than mine brother.
pfffft. If my chicken legs had that much meat on them, I'd be happy!
You’re sweet. Thank you.1 -
Did my squat 1RM test today
And have to say, i am surprised by how much weight i did.
Increased my total 1RM with 20,9%
And i feel like i might have been able to go heavier, but i was running out of time (i workout in lunchbreak)
Most amazing thing for me, is that this is 1kg under my 1RM for deadlift, but felt less heavy
If i would have to rate the deadlift it would be RPE 10
And this squat probably a RPE 94 -
Whew! Finally finished! I've known about this thread for years, but never opened it until now. Started reading, got 10 pages in and debated jumping ahead to the end, decided instead to read EVERY. SINGLE. POST. Took me two days to do so, since I read it at work and could only get a few pages at a time during breaks between meetings. Very glad I did, as I was able to live the drama of watching progression, the making and breaking of records, the preparation for the strongwoman competition, the very positive vibes from (almost) every poster (compared to the occasionally nasty vibes from some other threads in MFP). The only real irritating part was I couldn't post my two cents at random intervals into conversations which took place months/years ago. Well, now I get to make a few comments, which may seem random but are, in fact, directly associated with one or more moments throughout this thread...
*****
I am solidly in the "up at crack of dawn to lift" camp. As in 4:30 alarm so I can be at the gym when it opens at 5. Part of this is I simply am a morning person (complete opposite of my wife). Part of this is so I can get my workout in before work, as I know after work won't be time between commute, cooking dinner for my family (I'm the chef), helping my wife and daughter with their homework (wife close to completing her college degree), and a little alone time with my wife before bed (watching TV, keep this thread PG-13, lol). Part of the reason is the smaller crowd at that time of day. But I've also kept a journal of every workout I've done for the last 14 years, and have actual proof that I simply perform better in the morning. If I hit the weight room in the afternoon, my weights drop about 5-10% from my morning numbers; if I wait until the evening, it's more like 25%.
*****
Back when I was a powerlifter (I'll talk about me later), I remember ramming straight into a brick wall when trying to squat 315. I could get 310, but something about that third plate per side was just a mental block I could not overcome. So I tried something different...instead of pushing for a 1RM every leg day, I spent three months dropping the weight to 225, and just repping the blazes out of it. I'm talking sets of 10, 15, 20, 25. At the end of that three months I did a set of 100, where I could rest as long as I wanted between reps but couldn't re-rack the weight until I had finished all 100. (Longest 20 minutes of my life, believe you me.) Took a week off, and tried my 1RM again. Turns out, my max had in fact increased, and I was able to hit 315...for 10 reps. Turns out my max had leaped up to 365! Do I recommend doing a set of 100? Only if you're a glutton for punishment like I was, but the point is I gained over 50 pounds on my max without ever actually lifting close to my max, but instead through use of sub-maximal loads.
*****
Speaking of mind-over-lifting, knew a guy at the gym who was equally convinced he could never bench 225. I knew how strong he was, figured he didn't need to wait the 3 months like I did on squat, so I offered to spot for him one workout, but only if he allowed me to do the weight loading during his warmup, he had to just remain lying down the entire time. He looked at me funny, but agreed. He looked at me even funnier when I started loading his bar, not with 25's or 45's, but a whole bunch of 5's and 10's, and not in any particular order, but a random smattering. He completely lost count trying to add it all up, and just accepted my promise he was lifting the right amount. I, of course, had kept very close watch over how much I loaded, and after one set where he banged out 3 very clean reps, I had him stop and do the math with me. This man, convinced he could never do a single rep at 225, had just done 3 reps at 245! He never asked me to spot him again, but I saw him a few years later benching 315, and I just smiled and turned away.
*****
When I first began lifting, not only was I overweight, but I was also clearly the weakest person in the weight room. Not just weakest man, weakest PERSON, as the ladies were all outlifting me, even ones half my size. I was determined not to quit, but I simply knew that I didn't belong lifting. So, I fooled myself. Sounds bloody corny, but I wore sunglasses inside the weight room, cut the sleeves off my shirts into makeshift tanks, loaded my music player with angry heavy-metal music (I'm normally a country guy) and literally looked at this person in the mirror and said (not out loud), "Meet Joe Cool, he loves to lift, he belongs here." Did this for about 3 months, until some combination of losing weight, increasing weights lifted, and simple familiarity with the place allowed me to remove the shades and acknowledge that I was the one standing there, right where I belonged. (Kept the music and the shirts.)
*****
In 14+ years of lifting, I have been injured three times seriously enough to be forced to take time away from lifting. Two of those times were during deadlifts, and both occurred during the initial pull off the floor. I love deadlifts, but at age 46 I have to admit I'm more prone to injury, and the same injury today will take longer to recover than a decade ago. In talking about the situation with a personal trainer buddy, he recommended trying rack pulls, since I could do 90% of the same ROM and avoid entirely the initial floor-break which has been the source of my problems. I have since fallen in love with them, and without that initial break I'm definitely able to load up the weight considerably heavier; the other day I did 5x5 with a weight 40 pounds heavier than the weight which injured my lower back for a single rep the last time I tried deadlifts.
*****
I'm out of time now (time to enter "rush hour" for my hour+ commute home), and this has already grown long enough. But I wanted to say hi, kudos all around, loved the read, I've now added my little contribution to previous conversations, and tomorrow I will do my obligatory "about me" post. All words, no GIFs I'm afraid. My gym has a no-recording rule to respect privacy of others who may not want to be recorded.3 -
Intro time! My name is Mike, and I'm addicted to lifting. (Hi, Mike.) As a kid I was a scrawny, big glasses nerd capable of repelling all females from a dozen yards away. But I could run, and earned my letterman's jacket in both track (100m, 200m, 400m) and cross country (5km).
Fast forward 15 years, I just got kicked out of the military as part of their force-wide down-sizing. Had a wife, 4 kids, a mortgage, and no income, along with being overweight from having worked a desk job for years with little time to exercise. Between my arthritic knees (thanks, mom), extra 60 pounds around the middle (thanks, tater tots and soda), and living at high altitude where the air is thin, a return to running seemed a bad idea. A buddy tried to cheer me up from a growing depression, not through drinks on the town, but by taking me to his gym as a guest to try to find something I could do to get active and take my mind off my problems. Tried a variety of cardio, swimming, basketball, nothing clicked until we went to the weight room. I was highly skeptical, but from the very first set picking up a dumbbell and doing curls, there was no turning back. As I pointed out in my previous post, I didn't feel comfortable surrounded by all these in-shape peeps, and I couldn't afford to buy a home gym setup, but there was no way I was giving up this newfound love. It's just immensely cathartic to look at a cold block of iron and proclaim to the universe, "you will move because I will it to be so." Throwing around iron released so much pent-up angst and anger, my family immediately noted the difference in my attitude upon my return home, so with my wife's agreement I got a membership to the gym so I could keep lifting, even though we were worried about food and mortgage payments. But I got hired to a much better paying job less than a month later, and so life continued.
The nerd in me wanted to learn as much as possible, so I pored through every magazine article and website I could locate. Unfortunately, much of the information I gleaned was later proven wrong, or at least not applicable to an average lifter like me. But over time I learned what tidbits to keep and what to ignore. I also have tried a variety of lifting regimens:
Full body 3x per week
One body part per day, 6 days per week
Wendler 5-3-1
Strong Lifts 5x5
Madcow
PPL (Push, Pull, Legs)
At least a dozen routines straight from a magazine's pages
Most of the routines I tried lasted for 6 months or less, as I kept bouncing from one routine to another, trying to find the one which would help me lift ever heavier. My guess is there was a small part of my brain remembering being a wimp as a kid, so once I started actually having muscles and moving appreciable weight, it became an addiction to somehow snuff out that memory of the old me or something. Point is, while I built up to a decent level of strength (my Big 3 of bench, squat, and deadlift at one point combined to 1185 at a bodyweight of 193), it also left me a tad reckless and vulnerable to injury. Such as when I tried to bench a weight beyond my ability; I finished the lift (285 PR), but tore ligaments in both shoulders, narrowly avoiding surgery and having to swap lifting for rehab for the next 6 months. Or the pair of deadlifts which tweaked my lower back, one of them keeping me bed-ridden for two weeks and heavily modifying my lifting for the next six months to not reaggravate it.
Eventually I migrated into my current routine I built for myself, based off the PHUL (Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower) platform. It goes like this:
Monday - Upper Power
Bench Press 5x5
Cable Row 5x5
DB Press <superset> DB Row 5x5
Seated BB OHP 3x5
Tuesday - Lower Power
Rack Pull 5x5
BB Hip Thrust 5x5
One-Leg Press 5x5
Cable Crunch 4x10
Wednesday - Cardio (one hour elliptical, it's easy on my knees)
Thursday - Upper Hypertrophy
Incline Bench Press 3x10
Machine Fly 3x12
BB Row 3x10
Pulldown 3x10 (one set each of hands facing away, middle, and towards me)
Face Pull 3x10
Machine Lateral Raise 3x12
Machine Curl <superset> Machine Pushdown 3x10
Perloff Press 3x15sec
Friday - Lower Hypertrophy
Squats 4x15
BB Step-Ups 3x12
BB RDL 3x10
Leg Extension 3x12
Seated Leg Curl 3x12
Seated Calves Extend 3x12
Farmer's Carry 3x40s
Saturday & Sunday - Off
This lets me keep lifting relatively heavy (but without pursuing the dangerous 1RM) while hitting all the peripheral muscles each week and keeping each session to an hour or less. Any given day, I can reduce the weight used on any lift by up to 10%, no questions asked: some days, you just don't have it going for you. (If this happens in consecutive weeks, I drop weight permanently and have to "earn" it back.) Other days you feel like a beast, but rather than lift heavier, I do more reps. When I can do a lift for required reps plus two for every set for two consecutive workouts, then and only then do I increase the weight on the third workout.
Feel free to give feedback about my workout plan. The nerd in me is always looking to learn more. (I may no longer look like the scrawny geek I used to be, but I can talk your ear off about Star Wars/Trek, LOTR and Marvel with the best of them, lol.)2 -
1
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KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Happy Halloween all!
Haha how did I miss this. Good lifts 🤗1 -
Whew! Finally finished! I've known about this thread for years, but never opened it until now. Started reading, got 10 pages in and debated jumping ahead to the end, decided instead to read EVERY. SINGLE. POST. Took me two days to do so, since I read it at work and could only get a few pages at a time during breaks between meetings. Very glad I did, as I was able to live the drama of watching progression, the making and breaking of records, the preparation for the strongwoman competition, the very positive vibes from (almost) every poster (compared to the occasionally nasty vibes from some other threads in MFP). The only real irritating part was I couldn't post my two cents at random intervals into conversations which took place months/years ago. Well, now I get to make a few comments, which may seem random but are, in fact, directly associated with one or more moments throughout this thread...
*****
I am solidly in the "up at crack of dawn to lift" camp. As in 4:30 alarm so I can be at the gym when it opens at 5. Part of this is I simply am a morning person (complete opposite of my wife). Part of this is so I can get my workout in before work, as I know after work won't be time between commute, cooking dinner for my family (I'm the chef), helping my wife and daughter with their homework (wife close to completing her college degree), and a little alone time with my wife before bed (watching TV, keep this thread PG-13, lol). Part of the reason is the smaller crowd at that time of day. But I've also kept a journal of every workout I've done for the last 14 years, and have actual proof that I simply perform better in the morning. If I hit the weight room in the afternoon, my weights drop about 5-10% from my morning numbers; if I wait until the evening, it's more like 25%.
*****
Back when I was a powerlifter (I'll talk about me later), I remember ramming straight into a brick wall when trying to squat 315. I could get 310, but something about that third plate per side was just a mental block I could not overcome. So I tried something different...instead of pushing for a 1RM every leg day, I spent three months dropping the weight to 225, and just repping the blazes out of it. I'm talking sets of 10, 15, 20, 25. At the end of that three months I did a set of 100, where I could rest as long as I wanted between reps but couldn't re-rack the weight until I had finished all 100. (Longest 20 minutes of my life, believe you me.) Took a week off, and tried my 1RM again. Turns out, my max had in fact increased, and I was able to hit 315...for 10 reps. Turns out my max had leaped up to 365! Do I recommend doing a set of 100? Only if you're a glutton for punishment like I was, but the point is I gained over 50 pounds on my max without ever actually lifting close to my max, but instead through use of sub-maximal loads.
*****
Speaking of mind-over-lifting, knew a guy at the gym who was equally convinced he could never bench 225. I knew how strong he was, figured he didn't need to wait the 3 months like I did on squat, so I offered to spot for him one workout, but only if he allowed me to do the weight loading during his warmup, he had to just remain lying down the entire time. He looked at me funny, but agreed. He looked at me even funnier when I started loading his bar, not with 25's or 45's, but a whole bunch of 5's and 10's, and not in any particular order, but a random smattering. He completely lost count trying to add it all up, and just accepted my promise he was lifting the right amount. I, of course, had kept very close watch over how much I loaded, and after one set where he banged out 3 very clean reps, I had him stop and do the math with me. This man, convinced he could never do a single rep at 225, had just done 3 reps at 245! He never asked me to spot him again, but I saw him a few years later benching 315, and I just smiled and turned away.
*****
When I first began lifting, not only was I overweight, but I was also clearly the weakest person in the weight room. Not just weakest man, weakest PERSON, as the ladies were all outlifting me, even ones half my size. I was determined not to quit, but I simply knew that I didn't belong lifting. So, I fooled myself. Sounds bloody corny, but I wore sunglasses inside the weight room, cut the sleeves off my shirts into makeshift tanks, loaded my music player with angry heavy-metal music (I'm normally a country guy) and literally looked at this person in the mirror and said (not out loud), "Meet Joe Cool, he loves to lift, he belongs here." Did this for about 3 months, until some combination of losing weight, increasing weights lifted, and simple familiarity with the place allowed me to remove the shades and acknowledge that I was the one standing there, right where I belonged. (Kept the music and the shirts.)
*****
In 14+ years of lifting, I have been injured three times seriously enough to be forced to take time away from lifting. Two of those times were during deadlifts, and both occurred during the initial pull off the floor. I love deadlifts, but at age 46 I have to admit I'm more prone to injury, and the same injury today will take longer to recover than a decade ago. In talking about the situation with a personal trainer buddy, he recommended trying rack pulls, since I could do 90% of the same ROM and avoid entirely the initial floor-break which has been the source of my problems. I have since fallen in love with them, and without that initial break I'm definitely able to load up the weight considerably heavier; the other day I did 5x5 with a weight 40 pounds heavier than the weight which injured my lower back for a single rep the last time I tried deadlifts.
*****
I'm out of time now (time to enter "rush hour" for my hour+ commute home), and this has already grown long enough. But I wanted to say hi, kudos all around, loved the read, I've now added my little contribution to previous conversations, and tomorrow I will do my obligatory "about me" post. All words, no GIFs I'm afraid. My gym has a no-recording rule to respect privacy of others who may not want to be recorded.
Good read. Kudos to you for those early lifting sessions.0 -
Intro time! My name is Mike, and I'm addicted to lifting. (Hi, Mike.) As a kid I was a scrawny, big glasses nerd capable of repelling all females from a dozen yards away. But I could run, and earned my letterman's jacket in both track (100m, 200m, 400m) and cross country (5km).
Fast forward 15 years, I just got kicked out of the military as part of their force-wide down-sizing. Had a wife, 4 kids, a mortgage, and no income, along with being overweight from having worked a desk job for years with little time to exercise. Between my arthritic knees (thanks, mom), extra 60 pounds around the middle (thanks, tater tots and soda), and living at high altitude where the air is thin, a return to running seemed a bad idea. A buddy tried to cheer me up from a growing depression, not through drinks on the town, but by taking me to his gym as a guest to try to find something I could do to get active and take my mind off my problems. Tried a variety of cardio, swimming, basketball, nothing clicked until we went to the weight room. I was highly skeptical, but from the very first set picking up a dumbbell and doing curls, there was no turning back. As I pointed out in my previous post, I didn't feel comfortable surrounded by all these in-shape peeps, and I couldn't afford to buy a home gym setup, but there was no way I was giving up this newfound love. It's just immensely cathartic to look at a cold block of iron and proclaim to the universe, "you will move because I will it to be so." Throwing around iron released so much pent-up angst and anger, my family immediately noted the difference in my attitude upon my return home, so with my wife's agreement I got a membership to the gym so I could keep lifting, even though we were worried about food and mortgage payments. But I got hired to a much better paying job less than a month later, and so life continued.
The nerd in me wanted to learn as much as possible, so I pored through every magazine article and website I could locate. Unfortunately, much of the information I gleaned was later proven wrong, or at least not applicable to an average lifter like me. But over time I learned what tidbits to keep and what to ignore. I also have tried a variety of lifting regimens:
Full body 3x per week
One body part per day, 6 days per week
Wendler 5-3-1
Strong Lifts 5x5
Madcow
PPL (Push, Pull, Legs)
At least a dozen routines straight from a magazine's pages
Most of the routines I tried lasted for 6 months or less, as I kept bouncing from one routine to another, trying to find the one which would help me lift ever heavier. My guess is there was a small part of my brain remembering being a wimp as a kid, so once I started actually having muscles and moving appreciable weight, it became an addiction to somehow snuff out that memory of the old me or something. Point is, while I built up to a decent level of strength (my Big 3 of bench, squat, and deadlift at one point combined to 1185 at a bodyweight of 193), it also left me a tad reckless and vulnerable to injury. Such as when I tried to bench a weight beyond my ability; I finished the lift (285 PR), but tore ligaments in both shoulders, narrowly avoiding surgery and having to swap lifting for rehab for the next 6 months. Or the pair of deadlifts which tweaked my lower back, one of them keeping me bed-ridden for two weeks and heavily modifying my lifting for the next six months to not reaggravate it.
Eventually I migrated into my current routine I built for myself, based off the PHUL (Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower) platform. It goes like this:
Monday - Upper Power
Bench Press 5x5
Cable Row 5x5
DB Press <superset> DB Row 5x5
Seated BB OHP 3x5
Tuesday - Lower Power
Rack Pull 5x5
BB Hip Thrust 5x5
One-Leg Press 5x5
Cable Crunch 4x10
Wednesday - Cardio (one hour elliptical, it's easy on my knees)
Thursday - Upper Hypertrophy
Incline Bench Press 3x10
Machine Fly 3x12
BB Row 3x10
Pulldown 3x10 (one set each of hands facing away, middle, and towards me)
Face Pull 3x10
Machine Lateral Raise 3x12
Machine Curl <superset> Machine Pushdown 3x10
Perloff Press 3x15sec
Friday - Lower Hypertrophy
Squats 4x15
BB Step-Ups 3x12
BB RDL 3x10
Leg Extension 3x12
Seated Leg Curl 3x12
Seated Calves Extend 3x12
Farmer's Carry 3x40s
Saturday & Sunday - Off
This lets me keep lifting relatively heavy (but without pursuing the dangerous 1RM) while hitting all the peripheral muscles each week and keeping each session to an hour or less. Any given day, I can reduce the weight used on any lift by up to 10%, no questions asked: some days, you just don't have it going for you. (If this happens in consecutive weeks, I drop weight permanently and have to "earn" it back.) Other days you feel like a beast, but rather than lift heavier, I do more reps. When I can do a lift for required reps plus two for every set for two consecutive workouts, then and only then do I increase the weight on the third workout.
Feel free to give feedback about my workout plan. The nerd in me is always looking to learn more. (I may no longer look like the scrawny geek I used to be, but I can talk your ear off about Star Wars/Trek, LOTR and Marvel with the best of them, lol.)
Another great post. Lots of information and a lot of real world knowledge that newbs could learn from brother. I like the program you have laid out there and I’ve done very similar formats. Impressive and thanks for taking the time to type that out.1 -
Intro time! My name is Mike, and I'm addicted to lifting. (Hi, Mike.) As a kid I was a scrawny, big glasses nerd capable of repelling all females from a dozen yards away. But I could run, and earned my letterman's jacket in both track (100m, 200m, 400m) and cross country (5km).
Fast forward 15 years, I just got kicked out of the military as part of their force-wide down-sizing. Had a wife, 4 kids, a mortgage, and no income, along with being overweight from having worked a desk job for years with little time to exercise. Between my arthritic knees (thanks, mom), extra 60 pounds around the middle (thanks, tater tots and soda), and living at high altitude where the air is thin, a return to running seemed a bad idea. A buddy tried to cheer me up from a growing depression, not through drinks on the town, but by taking me to his gym as a guest to try to find something I could do to get active and take my mind off my problems. Tried a variety of cardio, swimming, basketball, nothing clicked until we went to the weight room. I was highly skeptical, but from the very first set picking up a dumbbell and doing curls, there was no turning back. As I pointed out in my previous post, I didn't feel comfortable surrounded by all these in-shape peeps, and I couldn't afford to buy a home gym setup, but there was no way I was giving up this newfound love. It's just immensely cathartic to look at a cold block of iron and proclaim to the universe, "you will move because I will it to be so." Throwing around iron released so much pent-up angst and anger, my family immediately noted the difference in my attitude upon my return home, so with my wife's agreement I got a membership to the gym so I could keep lifting, even though we were worried about food and mortgage payments. But I got hired to a much better paying job less than a month later, and so life continued.
The nerd in me wanted to learn as much as possible, so I pored through every magazine article and website I could locate. Unfortunately, much of the information I gleaned was later proven wrong, or at least not applicable to an average lifter like me. But over time I learned what tidbits to keep and what to ignore. I also have tried a variety of lifting regimens:
Full body 3x per week
One body part per day, 6 days per week
Wendler 5-3-1
Strong Lifts 5x5
Madcow
PPL (Push, Pull, Legs)
At least a dozen routines straight from a magazine's pages
Most of the routines I tried lasted for 6 months or less, as I kept bouncing from one routine to another, trying to find the one which would help me lift ever heavier. My guess is there was a small part of my brain remembering being a wimp as a kid, so once I started actually having muscles and moving appreciable weight, it became an addiction to somehow snuff out that memory of the old me or something. Point is, while I built up to a decent level of strength (my Big 3 of bench, squat, and deadlift at one point combined to 1185 at a bodyweight of 193), it also left me a tad reckless and vulnerable to injury. Such as when I tried to bench a weight beyond my ability; I finished the lift (285 PR), but tore ligaments in both shoulders, narrowly avoiding surgery and having to swap lifting for rehab for the next 6 months. Or the pair of deadlifts which tweaked my lower back, one of them keeping me bed-ridden for two weeks and heavily modifying my lifting for the next six months to not reaggravate it.
Eventually I migrated into my current routine I built for myself, based off the PHUL (Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower) platform. It goes like this:
Monday - Upper Power
Bench Press 5x5
Cable Row 5x5
DB Press <superset> DB Row 5x5
Seated BB OHP 3x5
Tuesday - Lower Power
Rack Pull 5x5
BB Hip Thrust 5x5
One-Leg Press 5x5
Cable Crunch 4x10
Wednesday - Cardio (one hour elliptical, it's easy on my knees)
Thursday - Upper Hypertrophy
Incline Bench Press 3x10
Machine Fly 3x12
BB Row 3x10
Pulldown 3x10 (one set each of hands facing away, middle, and towards me)
Face Pull 3x10
Machine Lateral Raise 3x12
Machine Curl <superset> Machine Pushdown 3x10
Perloff Press 3x15sec
Friday - Lower Hypertrophy
Squats 4x15
BB Step-Ups 3x12
BB RDL 3x10
Leg Extension 3x12
Seated Leg Curl 3x12
Seated Calves Extend 3x12
Farmer's Carry 3x40s
Saturday & Sunday - Off
This lets me keep lifting relatively heavy (but without pursuing the dangerous 1RM) while hitting all the peripheral muscles each week and keeping each session to an hour or less. Any given day, I can reduce the weight used on any lift by up to 10%, no questions asked: some days, you just don't have it going for you. (If this happens in consecutive weeks, I drop weight permanently and have to "earn" it back.) Other days you feel like a beast, but rather than lift heavier, I do more reps. When I can do a lift for required reps plus two for every set for two consecutive workouts, then and only then do I increase the weight on the third workout.
Feel free to give feedback about my workout plan. The nerd in me is always looking to learn more. (I may no longer look like the scrawny geek I used to be, but I can talk your ear off about Star Wars/Trek, LOTR and Marvel with the best of them, lol.)
Hello Mike, and thank for this nice read.
I love how you write about the trial and error.
Really like your workout routine, looks pretty solid.
And if you ever wanna discuss about Marvel, i am your guy!~
Big Marvel geek over here
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👋🏻 LOTR! (Hence the user name!)
We need a neat, interesting or cool button for the extra special posts. It’s nice hearing folks’ background.1 -
KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Happy Halloween all!
Gotta ask...did the cape get in the way at all? I would've been hyper-conscious about snagging it, or it getting in the way of my arm motion, or something.0 -
Thanks for the kind comments. I belated thought I probably was too long-winded in my posts, but that's what you get when a wannabe author gets a head of steam going, lol. (Looking for beta-readers for my second fantasy novel, if anybody's interested.)1
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Here's a question members of this thread may have had to learn to deal with: tennis elbow. I don't know if it's because I switched from powerlifting (sets of 1-3) to traditional lifting (sets of 10-12), or my age, or an accumulation of time spent in the weight room, but last November my right elbow grew very painful, I lost 90% of my grip strength, something which developed over the course of about a month. Fortunately I'm ambidextrous so was able to keep doing everyday things like eating, but when it didn't go away after taking a week off from the gym, I did my research, and diagnosed myself as having developed tennis elbow.
All the online research said the recommended therapy was to start with significant time away from whatever was causing the issue, meaning time not lifting, possibly a lot of time. I ultimately took about 4 months off, filled my gym sessions with cardio (joy), lost a lot of weight and a fair bit of strength (though less than I'd feared). My elbow wasn't quite 100% pain-free, but it was close, and over the next few months the pain went away completely.
Fast forward to a couple weeks back, and my left elbow started showing the same symptoms. Stopping lifting for another 4 months did NOT appeal to me, so I made a few changes to my routine: 3 sets instead of 4 on hypertrophy days, underhand pulling when possible (since it somehow doesn't bother my elbow, while pronated does), cutting out heavy bis/tris work, keeping only the moderate-weight. I think it's working, as the pain has been slowly going down, but it's proving a long slog.
Have any of you fine folks had to deal with tennis elbow? What did you do to account for it? Did you take time off, change up your routine, or simply pop an aspirin and forge ahead?0 -
Here's a question members of this thread may have had to learn to deal with: tennis elbow. I don't know if it's because I switched from powerlifting (sets of 1-3) to traditional lifting (sets of 10-12), or my age, or an accumulation of time spent in the weight room, but last November my right elbow grew very painful, I lost 90% of my grip strength, something which developed over the course of about a month. Fortunately I'm ambidextrous so was able to keep doing everyday things like eating, but when it didn't go away after taking a week off from the gym, I did my research, and diagnosed myself as having developed tennis elbow.
All the online research said the recommended therapy was to start with significant time away from whatever was causing the issue, meaning time not lifting, possibly a lot of time. I ultimately took about 4 months off, filled my gym sessions with cardio (joy), lost a lot of weight and a fair bit of strength (though less than I'd feared). My elbow wasn't quite 100% pain-free, but it was close, and over the next few months the pain went away completely.
Fast forward to a couple weeks back, and my left elbow started showing the same symptoms. Stopping lifting for another 4 months did NOT appeal to me, so I made a few changes to my routine: 3 sets instead of 4 on hypertrophy days, underhand pulling when possible (since it somehow doesn't bother my elbow, while pronated does), cutting out heavy bis/tris work, keeping only the moderate-weight. I think it's working, as the pain has been slowly going down, but it's proving a long slog.
Have any of you fine folks had to deal with tennis elbow? What did you do to account for it? Did you take time off, change up your routine, or simply pop an aspirin and forge ahead?
Here’s my 2 cents. I’ve dealt with elbow tendinitis on and off. Several years ago it would occasionally flare up. It rarely occurs now, heres what I’ve implemented that may also help you. The supplements omega 3 and collagen have seemed to help. It’s important to note that these were long term benefits and not immediate. A technique you can utilize when performing back pulling movements is called gun hands. So you’re basically griping the bar with the last fingers leaving your pointer and thumb free from pulling on the bar. Spending 10 to 15 mins warming up the elbow doing basic curls also helped me. Going light with 10lbs and working heavier upwards of 20 to 25 lbs just to get the tendons warmed up before going under heavy weight. I’d also do tricep Pushdowns to fully warm up that elbow before going heavy. Freeze water in small paper cups so you can rub those on your elbow and as the ice melts simply tear the paper cup away to keep the ice exposed. You take a hard object like the handle portion of a screw driver to give yourself deep tissue massage.
I hope some of this will help.
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Here's a question members of this thread may have had to learn to deal with: tennis elbow. I don't know if it's because I switched from powerlifting (sets of 1-3) to traditional lifting (sets of 10-12), or my age, or an accumulation of time spent in the weight room, but last November my right elbow grew very painful, I lost 90% of my grip strength, something which developed over the course of about a month. Fortunately I'm ambidextrous so was able to keep doing everyday things like eating, but when it didn't go away after taking a week off from the gym, I did my research, and diagnosed myself as having developed tennis elbow.
All the online research said the recommended therapy was to start with significant time away from whatever was causing the issue, meaning time not lifting, possibly a lot of time. I ultimately took about 4 months off, filled my gym sessions with cardio (joy), lost a lot of weight and a fair bit of strength (though less than I'd feared). My elbow wasn't quite 100% pain-free, but it was close, and over the next few months the pain went away completely.
Fast forward to a couple weeks back, and my left elbow started showing the same symptoms. Stopping lifting for another 4 months did NOT appeal to me, so I made a few changes to my routine: 3 sets instead of 4 on hypertrophy days, underhand pulling when possible (since it somehow doesn't bother my elbow, while pronated does), cutting out heavy bis/tris work, keeping only the moderate-weight. I think it's working, as the pain has been slowly going down, but it's proving a long slog.
Have any of you fine folks had to deal with tennis elbow? What did you do to account for it? Did you take time off, change up your routine, or simply pop an aspirin and forge ahead?
Oh Lord yes, and thank you for asking this.0 -
KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Happy Halloween all!
Gotta ask...did the cape get in the way at all? I would've been hyper-conscious about snagging it, or it getting in the way of my arm motion, or something.
Not really... The shirt did more than anything, it was a lot tighter around the arm holes than it used to be. I was worried the Cape would impede my ability to stick to the bench, but the material actually helped. 😂
Haha thank you! 😊kinetixtrainer2 wrote: »KickassAmazon76 wrote: »Happy Halloween all!
Haha how did I miss this. Good lifts 🤗
Thank you! 😁0 -
Whew! Finally finished! I've known about this thread for years, but never opened it until now. Started reading, got 10 pages in and debated jumping ahead to the end, decided instead to read EVERY. SINGLE. POST. Took me two days to do so, since I read it at work and could only get a few pages at a time during breaks between meetings. Very glad I did, as I was able to live the drama of watching progression, the making and breaking of records, the preparation for the strongwoman competition, the very positive vibes from (almost) every poster (compared to the occasionally nasty vibes from some other threads in MFP). The only real irritating part was I couldn't post my two cents at random intervals into conversations which took place months/years ago. Well, now I get to make a few comments, which may seem random but are, in fact, directly associated with one or more moments throughout this thread...
*****
I am solidly in the "up at crack of dawn to lift" camp. As in 4:30 alarm so I can be at the gym when it opens at 5. Part of this is I simply am a morning person (complete opposite of my wife). Part of this is so I can get my workout in before work, as I know after work won't be time between commute, cooking dinner for my family (I'm the chef), helping my wife and daughter with their homework (wife close to completing her college degree), and a little alone time with my wife before bed (watching TV, keep this thread PG-13, lol). Part of the reason is the smaller crowd at that time of day. But I've also kept a journal of every workout I've done for the last 14 years, and have actual proof that I simply perform better in the morning. If I hit the weight room in the afternoon, my weights drop about 5-10% from my morning numbers; if I wait until the evening, it's more like 25%.
*****
Back when I was a powerlifter (I'll talk about me later), I remember ramming straight into a brick wall when trying to squat 315. I could get 310, but something about that third plate per side was just a mental block I could not overcome. So I tried something different...instead of pushing for a 1RM every leg day, I spent three months dropping the weight to 225, and just repping the blazes out of it. I'm talking sets of 10, 15, 20, 25. At the end of that three months I did a set of 100, where I could rest as long as I wanted between reps but couldn't re-rack the weight until I had finished all 100. (Longest 20 minutes of my life, believe you me.) Took a week off, and tried my 1RM again. Turns out, my max had in fact increased, and I was able to hit 315...for 10 reps. Turns out my max had leaped up to 365! Do I recommend doing a set of 100? Only if you're a glutton for punishment like I was, but the point is I gained over 50 pounds on my max without ever actually lifting close to my max, but instead through use of sub-maximal loads.
*****
Speaking of mind-over-lifting, knew a guy at the gym who was equally convinced he could never bench 225. I knew how strong he was, figured he didn't need to wait the 3 months like I did on squat, so I offered to spot for him one workout, but only if he allowed me to do the weight loading during his warmup, he had to just remain lying down the entire time. He looked at me funny, but agreed. He looked at me even funnier when I started loading his bar, not with 25's or 45's, but a whole bunch of 5's and 10's, and not in any particular order, but a random smattering. He completely lost count trying to add it all up, and just accepted my promise he was lifting the right amount. I, of course, had kept very close watch over how much I loaded, and after one set where he banged out 3 very clean reps, I had him stop and do the math with me. This man, convinced he could never do a single rep at 225, had just done 3 reps at 245! He never asked me to spot him again, but I saw him a few years later benching 315, and I just smiled and turned away.
*****
When I first began lifting, not only was I overweight, but I was also clearly the weakest person in the weight room. Not just weakest man, weakest PERSON, as the ladies were all outlifting me, even ones half my size. I was determined not to quit, but I simply knew that I didn't belong lifting. So, I fooled myself. Sounds bloody corny, but I wore sunglasses inside the weight room, cut the sleeves off my shirts into makeshift tanks, loaded my music player with angry heavy-metal music (I'm normally a country guy) and literally looked at this person in the mirror and said (not out loud), "Meet Joe Cool, he loves to lift, he belongs here." Did this for about 3 months, until some combination of losing weight, increasing weights lifted, and simple familiarity with the place allowed me to remove the shades and acknowledge that I was the one standing there, right where I belonged. (Kept the music and the shirts.)
*****
In 14+ years of lifting, I have been injured three times seriously enough to be forced to take time away from lifting. Two of those times were during deadlifts, and both occurred during the initial pull off the floor. I love deadlifts, but at age 46 I have to admit I'm more prone to injury, and the same injury today will take longer to recover than a decade ago. In talking about the situation with a personal trainer buddy, he recommended trying rack pulls, since I could do 90% of the same ROM and avoid entirely the initial floor-break which has been the source of my problems. I have since fallen in love with them, and without that initial break I'm definitely able to load up the weight considerably heavier; the other day I did 5x5 with a weight 40 pounds heavier than the weight which injured my lower back for a single rep the last time I tried deadlifts.
*****
I'm out of time now (time to enter "rush hour" for my hour+ commute home), and this has already grown long enough. But I wanted to say hi, kudos all around, loved the read, I've now added my little contribution to previous conversations, and tomorrow I will do my obligatory "about me" post. All words, no GIFs I'm afraid. My gym has a no-recording rule to respect privacy of others who may not want to be recorded.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through and share your thoughts! It's been nice to go back from time to time and would be so awesome to have others contribute more too. Still, we've had some good discussion over the time it's been up and some awesome gifs shared!
Look forward to hearing more from you!0
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