davew0000 Member

Toast with peanut butter and jelly (or jam if you’re uk). Tasty, lots of calories, pretty good nutritionally too. Porridge for breakie too. I throw nuts and dried fruit in there. That’s a surprising amount of protein. Honestly, I quite enjoy eating like that.

Daily, 1st thing (after pee and before drink), and track the weekly averages for me. This minimises noise and helps to track the trends.

It’s an interesting article. Not sure whether I learned the right lesson but it was this, together with the general conversation and a desire to keep my sessions efficient, that resulted in me skipping my 5 minutes of related cardio and a few stretches before starting with my warm up sets. I think I’ll go back to the…

To the coaches and other experienced lifters. What do you think I did wrong yesterday? It was upper body session which currently starts with Arnold presses. I didn’t do stretches and instead my warm up comprised of a couple of sets with lower weight (10kg dumbbells). I did my first working set and managed to strain my trap…

Where does TRT fall on the performance enhancing drugs scale? I guess you couldn’t consider yourself “natty” if you’re on it but I can understand why you’d want to correct it if your levels are low. It’s not something I could imagine doing myself but I’ve never had T levels checked

Thanks Chief. I’ll find some new footwear and give that a try. Appreciated, as always. Dave

I’m 6”4 and 196lbs and I have to eat ~3000 calories a day to maintain my weight. I’d expect you to be losing weight at an alarming rate if you were really were eating 1600-1800. Better to base your calorie requirements on empirical evidence (track calories and weight daily over a few weeks and determine the trend) than…

Ah… it didn’t embed because I made it a “short”. Not sure what the point of those are. Here’s the same video. https://youtu.be/4IybgOakjoc

Hello again @Chieflrg, Please could I get your input on my deadlifts? This set was 1st of 3 at 120kg x 6. I’m reasonably happy with what I see but note that my neck position looks somewhat off neutral. I’m aiming to (and think I am) fixing my gaze on a spot that’s effectively on the floor 10-15ft in front. It doesn’t quite…

Yeah, it can be annoying when people silently disagree. I suspect it is the promotion of the Maingain concept, which is a rebranding of body recomposition by Greg Doucette, who gained his physique with steroids and bulk and cut cycles. This makes his advice a little disingenuous. Still, there’s a decent case for recomp…

Are you continuing to make progress on your lifts?

Hi Matthew, (Been a while, I got myself locked out of my account) One thing I’ve learned is that even with 4x training per week, progress is quite slow (at least for me). In a full bulk and cut cycle of about 4 months, I gained something like 3-4lbs of muscle. Not a great deal and it’s pretty hard to tell the difference in…

Didn’t read OP properly, sry

I am following Matthew’s program and also felt, as a 41yo, just the lifting warm ups were insufficient. I do 5 mins of targeted CV, e.g. rowing on pull day, and some stretching of the muscles involved before starting my warm up sets.

No doubt a daft question, but isn’t failure at RPE7-8 a contradiction in terms? I guess you’re saying that if your grip was stronger you could lift more. But we’re only as strong as our weakest link, right?

I’ve had the same problem. I improved my grip strength by doing deadlifts and holding at the top. I used my top warm up weight and held at the top for around 30s. This is a very specific form of grip strength training for deadlifts. It’s worked and my grip strength no longer my limiting factor, for now at least.

That’s great to hear I’m on the right lines. Thanks for the pointers, Chief, they seem to have helped. Sometime I may ask you for thoughts on my deadlift. Dave

Hi again Chief, I have another squat video on which I would really appreciate some feedback. Last time you suggested I squeeze glutes and lock knees as a starting position, eyes on the floor a few feet in front, and that I squat onto plates to fix the depth. I’ve had a go at all those. I don’t know whether my box squats…

I use MFP while at the gym and log it in an Excel spreadsheet when I get home.

Sorry to hear. Just out of interest, why maintain your weight? Weight loss would be a faster path to reducing your waist size.

I’m similar. I weigh myself every morning after having a wee and before having a drink. I don’t tend to have nearly the fluctuations that I’ve seen in others. I can go a few days with fluctuations within fractions of a pound. There are exceptions to this though. I went on a short holiday, drank a lot and ate out a lot……

Haha... it’s made you one mean MF on the right there. Well done

I’d start by looking at the “Most helpful posts” pinned post at the top of this forum then looking at the “Which program is best for me” post. It’s an extremely helpful resource with a few body weight and dumbbell routines.

Nice one. How are you choosing your workout? Is it based on a program or just what you feel like doing for the day? Is your strength improving?

I don’t think anyone doubts that. My question was (as garyruns recognised), if you’re in a calorie surplus, does eating a higher fat diet result in a higher proportion of fat gain and lower proportion muscle when compared to a higher carb diet.

Hi ninerbuff, I’ve heard it said that dietary fat is more easily stored as fat in the body as there’s no conversion. Not true?

No... but it’s a slow rate and your estimate of your TDEE might not be accurate so it may not actually be a surplus. If after a few weeks (and it may take a few weeks to see a trend) you don’t appear to be gaining anything you may want to raise. I use trendweight.com to work out my actual surplus. 125 calories is about…

Thanks Chief. I was aware of RPE but hadn’t heard of VBT bed. Interesting stuff (though my current objective is learning the moves, so perhaps one for the future).

Yes, it feels a little like witchcraft but I could easily imagine it’s a way to ask your body/psyche how on form you are. Here’s a post. He never quite gives as much detail as I’d like. He never gives any suggestion of why it might work or exactly how to use it to set intensity for your session.…

I think you can go a long way with push-up variations. There are a few nice ones in this book by Bret Contreras, such as side to side, diamond or one armed push-ups