Less of a T-ransformation and more of a T-erribly uninspiring smidgen of progress:
Friday, 25 May
Still hovering, 212.4 today. Another tough workout for whatever reason.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
KB swings
Deadlifts
5x100kg
5x107.5kg
5x115kg
Press
5x5x42.5kg
Assistance
5x5 chinups [these beat up my right elbow something rotten]
50 incline DB bench
50 single-leg leg extensions [run on Weds aggravated the knee, so these were high-rep/light-weight; 2x25 per leg at like 15kg]
Diet
Pre-workout
2 eggs, cereal
Post-workout
Shake
Lunch
Chicken & veg
PM snack
Chicken salad
Dinner
It’s meant to be pork chops and potatoes but I just now realised I forgot to take out the pork chops. Fortunately we have a farmers’ market that comes to the office on Friday so I can pick up a couple of steaks or something. So, steak.
Totals
Approx. 2458kcal
Approx. 209g protein
This is basically the motto for all body composition phases. The main thing is that there was progression and not regression. I play the long game, I can’t wait to see what I can do in 10 years!
Haha, yeah. I wouldn’t have even thought about doing a six-month progress pic with a <10lb weight difference were it not for the challenge.
+1 that’s a good point.
Tuesday, 29 May
Had the girlfriend’s parents over from Sunday to today, but I’m at work now before they fly back this afternoon. Anyway that’s why there was no update yesterday, so I’ll do Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat lifting this week before getting back on schedule.
Had a good time - made steak on Sunday, went out for lunch and dinner yesterday, they gave us a car. Pretty good weekend really, haha.
Was 213.8 this morning but I don’t expect that spike to be too permanent. Had a terrible night’s sleep.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
KB squats
Squats
5x80kg
5x85kg
5x90kg
Bench
5x5x62.5kg
Assistance
5x5 chinups
50 tricep extensions
50 curls
50 cable crunches
Diet
Pre-workout
2 eggs, cereal
Post-workout
100g Fridge Raiders (some psuedo-chicken thing)
2 chocolate bourbons
Lunch
Salad & egg
Dinner
Pork steaks & baked potato w/peas
Evening
Shake
Totals
Approx. 2,483kcal
Approx. 154g protein (not ideal but it’ll do)
Wednesday, 30 May
Android can fuck right off. Set my phone to update between 2am-5am, which seemed convenient, but the cunts don’t turn your phone back on. Consequently my alarm didn’t go off, I woke up an hour late and had to really rush today’s workout.
Back down to 212.4. Have a holiday first week of July so ideally can be 200-205 by then. After that, five weeks until a Vegas weekend so ~200lbs for end of August seems reasonable considering how bad I am at dropping weight. After that I can just bear-mode it for a good six or seven months and try to actually get big and strong.
Workout
Warmup
50 pullaparts
25 dislocates
Paused deadlifts
Deadlift
5x5x115kg
Press
5x40kg
5x42.5kg
5x45kg
Assistance
5x5 chinups
50 single-leg extensions
Diet
Bit all over the place today but will be pretty much the usual. Not sure about lunch/dinner specifics but I’m having the standard shake at the time of writing.
Friday, 1 June
Was 211.4 yesterday and had the standard non-lifting session. Down to 211.0 exactly this morning.
Sleeping pretty badly at the moment since there is a music festival on basically next door, but after next week it’ll all be back to normal.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Squats
5x5x85kg
Belt on for all of these. Definitely need to improve my core strength and/or non-belted bracing technique.
Bench
5x57.5kg
5x62.5kg
5x65kg
Took some tips from @Alpha’s bench cheat sheet for this and it felt like I was going to throw these through the ceiling.
Assistance
5x5 BW chinups
50 tricep extensions
Diet
Out tonight to watch some mad cunts race around public roads at 200mph so no idea what’ll happen food-wise.
Nice work. Keep hammering away at that core. It is the weak link in most every lift
Saturday, 2 June
Had half a pizza last night so an unsurprising weight spike to 214.1 today. Still “only” 3,000kcal or so yesterday though. Not sue what diet plans are today, but will be fairly sensible.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Deadlifts
5x110kg
5x115kg
5x120kg
Press
5x5x42.5kg
Assistance
5x5 chinups
50 single-leg extensions
Just four more weeks of this…
Monday, 4 June
Was 213.4 yesterday and the same today.
No training today; work Summer Party is Thursday night and Friday is a public holiday, so it worked out a lot easier to shift everything back so my shorter session is Thursday morning and then I can hit two days without waking up at 6am.
After this week I’m going to take two weeks to test some lifts and hopefully bang out some PRs as I’m on holiday from 28 June and don’t have enough time to do another full 5/3/1 cycle.
Summer plans
I’d like to hit the 1-2-3-4 plate milestone for the lifts before the end of August. After the June/July holiday I have basically six full weeks of training so I’ll run 3/5/1/5/3/1 FSL with jokers to try and hit that aim.
Current PRs
Press: 45x6 (set a couple of months ago; have since smashed out 5x5 at 42.5 and hit an easy 45x5)
Bench: 70x6 (also from a couple of months ago, but pretty confident of beating that by a decent margin now)
Squat: 105x7/125x1 (haven’t gone for rep or weight PRs in the squat for an age; definitely the lift on which I’m least confident of hitting the goal)
Deadlift: 160x1 (less time ago than the rest and at the time felt like there was a smidgen more in the tank)
Post-summer plans
After August I’m going to focus on putting on quality weight, hopefully from a point of greater leanness than I am now but if not then oh well. Up volume, up conditioning, up calories.
If not for the fact that I’ve got a pair of Las Vegas pool parties lined up for the end of the summer I’d just start now. I definitely want to be an Absolute Unit more than I care about being lean, but vanity is a powerful drug.
On that note I’m switching up the diet at the moment to reduce calories down a little further by heading down more of an IF route. This obviously won’t do the 1/2/3/4 plate goals any favours but I don’t think it makes them impossible.
Tuesday, 5 June
Back down at 212.5 today.
First time training fasted in a while and it was a bit of a grind, especially on the bench. I also skipped tricep/core stuff because I was moving too sluggishly to superset bench and chins.
Just a case of getting used to it; the lack of sleep thanks to the late-night music isn’t helping either. Still, had many worse training days. Squats moved pretty well.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Squats
5x85kg
5x90kg
5x95kg
Bench
5x5x62.5kg
Assistance
6/6/5/5/5 chinups
50 EZ bar curls (25kg 14/12/12/12)
Diet
Lunch
Chicken, rice & salad
PM snack
Chicken & rice
Dinner
Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes & peas
Evening
Shake & 2 fried eggs
Totals
Approx. 2,279kcal
Approx. 195g protein
Wednesday, 6 June
Down to 211.9 this morning. Failed the top set of press today so the deficit is obviously working.
When the festival next door is over and I’m able to sleep properly again it’s going to be utterly anabolic.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
KB swings
Deadlift
5x5x120kg
Bumped it up by 5kg as I have a distinct memory of 120 being my max before I moved to IOM and it was nice to bash it out for a relatively trouble-free 5x5.
Press
5x42.5kg
5x45kg
3x47.5kg
1x50kg
Was pretty annoyed to miss this last set, so threw in the single as vengeance on myself. In retrospect, though, it’s not a terrible press given the deficit/lack of sleep and the fact that my best seated press so far is 47.5x5 or 45x8 when I weighed 10lbs more.
Assistance
5x5 BW chinups
50 lat pulldowns @ 60kg
Diet
Lunch
Chicken and rice
PM snack
Chicken and rice
Dinner
Chicken, bacon & leek thing w/potatoes and veg to complete a chicken trifecta
Evening
Shake
Totals
Approx. 1980kcal (!)
Approx. 191g protein
Thursday, 7 June
I had a total rest day today and I’m not even ashamed. Fell asleep on the couch at 9.45, then went to bed at 11 and slept solidly through until 8. I’ve been in dire need of a full night of sleep.
Also, down to 209.6 today which is nice. Work Summer Party tonight, then a three-day weekend - so we’ll see how long that lasts!
Friday, 6 June
Up at 210.2lbs today. Nice to not wake up at 6am. Didn’t go nuts at the party last night so haven’t ruined a week of dieting in a day.
Pleased with today’s benching. Felt very solid. Eager to hit some pre-holiday PRs over the next week or two.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Squats
5x5x85kg
Bench
5x60kg
5x65kg
5x70kg
Assistance
8/6/5/5/5 BW chinups
Solid PR!
Saturday, 9 June
Today, deadlifts were hard but press was a dream. Weighed in at 211.6.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Deadlifts
5x110kg
5x120kg
5x130kg
Press
5x5x42.5kg
Assistance
5x3 pullups
Diet
Post-workout/Lunch
2x ham/turkey sandwiches
PM snack
Shake
Dinner
Hunters’ chicken, potatoes & veg
Evening
Protein bar and popcorn (going to Jurassic World)
Totals
Approx. 2399kcal
Approx. 188g protein
Monday, 11 June
Forgot to reset my alarms after the long weekend and consequently overslept. Fortunately this is a sort-of-dial-back/deload period so I won’t fret over it too much.
Was 212.4 this morning. Expect to drop further over the week.
Tuesday, 12 June
Down to 211.8 this morning. Short and sweet 7WP/deload/testing workout today.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Squat
5x60kg
5x80kg
3x90kg
1x100kg
1x110kg
1x120kg
1x125kg
Equals a PR. That PR was set about half a stone heavier and not fasted training though which is cool. I probably had 130 in me but it would have been a horrible grind.
Assistance
8/6/5 chinups
5kg weighted planks 60/45/30s
Diet
Lunch
Chicken salad
PM snack
Chicken and rice
Dinner
Lamb steak rolls & veg
Evening
Shake
Totals
Approx. 2,218kcal
Approx. 195g protein
Wednesday, 13 June
Think this is the shortest workout I’ve done in this log. In and out in 35 mins including warmup. Why can’t every week be a deload week?
210.7 today.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Press
5x30kg
5x35kg
3x40kg
3x45kg
3x50kg
Was just getting my TM set up right but I think this is actually a seated press PR, haha.
Assistance
50 lat pulldowns
3x5 hanging chair leg raises
Months ago when I last tried these I could barely do bent-leg ones. These were easy straight-leg (mostly; slight bend in the knees) ones so obviously my core has improved a little at least.
Diet
Lunch
Chicken salad
PM snack
Chicken and rice
Dinner
Pork and rice stir-fry
Evening
Shake
Totals
Approx. 2312kcal
Approx. 192g protein
Thursday, 14 June
Down to 209.4 today which is apparently the third-lightest weigh-in since beginning this log.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Conditioning
20m elliptical
Diet
Lunch
Chicken salad
PM snack
Chicken and rice
Dinner
Completing a sad chicken hat-trick
Evening
Shake and some Breyers ice cream
Totals
Approx. 2,185kcal
Approx. 200g protein
Friday, 15 June
210.2 today.
Workout
Warmup
Flexible Five
150 pullaparts
75 dislocates
Glute drills
Deadlift
8x60kg
5x100kg
3x125kg
3x140kg
1x150kg
0x160kg
Was just ramping up to set my TM but decided to try and go for a max. Pretty disappointed that I couldn’t break 160 off the floor when I did it in April, but I suppose then I was heavier and not lifting fasted. I looked it up and turns out I’d happened to have ~2900kcal the day before that lift. Still, bit sad.
Assistance
3x5 bent-knee leg raises
3x10 machine rows
Really half-arsed assistance today; deadlift failure took the wind out of my sails. Still, whatever, it’s a deload.