Ha!
I love going heavy (well, for me, which is light for the rest of you) on things like pin presses or machine dips. Anything more than just trying to get a pump on something like extensions or curls hurts my elbows though.
We’re starting a whole neck pain club on here! Good luck with it; it’s absolutely debilitating. I haven’t found any foolproof fixes
It does make things uncomfortable. I’ve seen all the specialists and had all the surgeries; there’s not much relief now, except to keep throwing painkillers at it. Shrug. We march on.
Indeed we do; nothing else to it. Keep on keeping on, good sir
This!
I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work? Haha I know how the lifting weights thing goes; I’m out of my bailiwick when it comes to conditioning…
Shrugs might help, but I think you said walking was the devil.
I’ll tell you what, I’m about to put you on the same bad joke daily limit as I did @TrainForPain. And you’ve already met your quota for the day.
25May23
Deadlift
415x5 (PR)
355x5
355x5
355x5
Bench Press
185x8
185x8
Pendlay Rows
185x14
160x12
160x12
30 minutes on the Echo bike
Pretty good session.
III
Strong!
Thank you, sir. They felt pretty good.
I must admit, though, that I did use straps for this set. My personal policy is to not count a PR unless it’s done without straps. I’ve made the call to amend that to PRs of singles and triples. Hook grip has never been an issue for me, but I’ve been doing these “heavy” sets of 5 and they’ve been destroying my thumbs. So sets of 5 I will now count as PRs, even if I use straps.
Just to be clear, haha.
PR party! 
No shame in using straps while training.
Nah, I have no problem with using straps or anybody else doing what they want. It was just a little personal policy I set for myself a while ago. Hook grip probably isn’t really designed for higher rep sets anyway, but it was making my thumbs hurt for the whole week afterward. And I’ve never really practiced the mixed grip, so I didn’t want to mess with it at the “heavier” weights.
26May23
Seated Press
125x4
110x4
110x4
110x4
Split Squats
100x12
100x12
DB Bench
(MYOREPS)
60x19,5,5,5,4,4
Lateral Raises
20x15
15x15
15x13
It’s early yet, so I may get into something else today, we’ll see. For now, I’m headed out to mow my lawn.
III
29May23
So I just uploaded these pics to the transformation challenge thread, but I want to put them here in my log, too, for my own sake so I have them as reference if I’m tracking my journey. It also gives me a chance to bloviate and put down some comments so someday I can remember.
On my 44th birthday in August of 2022, I posted pictures of me at about 210-212 lb. Bodybuilding has never been my goal, but I’m as vain as the next guy and want to look awesome while continuing to get stronger, which is my goal. I wanted to slowly gain weight over the Fall and Winter, to hopefully help me get stronger. Hunting season always throws a wrench into those plans, as it did this year. It’s just hard for me to focus on training when I’m traveling so much and spending the majority of my days in the woods with a bow and arrow.
So by the end of 2022 I had gained some weight, but it wasn’t necessarily the way I had wanted to. I was up to about 220 lb. In an effort to jump start my attitude, which I felt had stagnated, I decided to do a run of Super Squats. I went all in and did the eating and gaining weight portion, too, even though that was going to push me pretty late into the winter if I wanted to get lean in time for summer (and the transformation challenge).
I felt the Super Squats run was pretty successful. I did end up way more fluffy than I would have liked at the end. But aside from the squats, I added in Wendler rows for my row variation. I have chronic neck issues, and direct trap work seems to help with that. Doing those while doing high-rep squats and eating hard actually really “blew up” my traps. I could almost watch them grow in size on a daily basis; it was pretty rad. I put it in quotation marks, though, because I still don’t have huge traps. They’re just much bigger than they were. My traps and delts saw, by far, the most growth of any muscles during the SS run.
To this day, I’m still getting comments from people about my neck size, which really just highlights how damn skinny it was before; not that it’s huge now haha.
So on February 28, 2023, I weighed in at 235 lb. Those pictures are here in my log. At that point, I cut calories and started slowly losing weight. Anybody following along probably knows I like to drink whiskey. Somehow I managed to continue losing weight and getting stronger, while also having a few glasses of drink each night. Over the last 3 months I’ve managed to get myself down to my current weight, which hovers around 215-220 lb. If I buckled down and cut out the drinking for just a couple of weeks, I think I could get six-pack lean pretty easily. And I may, at some point. But I’m comfortable with where I’m at.
While on my cut, I also got my squat into the low 400s and my deadlift into the high 400s. Bench press continues to be my white whale, but I’ve got plans in motion to address that. I know this has gotten very long-winded, but I want to be able to look back on this and remember someday. I feel both my strength and my aesthetics are in a good place right now.
I’m going to tag you guys here because I appreciate you commenting and liking and supporting not only me, but everybody on the forums. Please don’t feel like you need to comment or even read this post; I’m not fishing for compliments here. I just want to let you guys know that we all see it and it’s much appreciated. So @throwawayfitness, @simo74, @SvenG and @TrainForPain thanks dudes. (And everyone else who stops by) From all of us.
And here’s my current pics, taken by my lovely wife, who’s very supportive of all of my nonsense:
You’re looking ripped—how 'bout dem quads!?!
And of all the great stuff in this post, my man,
this is the biggest win of all!
Thanks brother!
And yes,
I couldn’t have asked for a better partner with whom to go through this life!
Congrats on your strength gains.
Amazing to read
Looking lean, strong, and fit. Outstanding work.
That means a ton coming from someone with your work ethic, @throwawayfitness. I hope my journey can maybe help inspire anybody the way yours has inspired me (and countless others). I never felt the need to be part of a community, but I am glad I joined here. I dig how we all encourage and support each other.
29May23
Squats
330x5 (PR)
285x5
285x5
285x5
Close grip incline bench press
155x10
145x10
135x10
RDL
265x8
275x8
Landmine hack squats
85x20
85x18
85x18
I try not to comment on stupid threads outside of the training logs section, but sometimes I lose self control. But if anybody’s peaking in here who might wonder how they can lift and still have a” social life,” this session was done with a hangover and on maybe 4 hours of sleep. I’m not going to list all of the things that make my life busy, because that just turns into a pissing contest, but suffice to say: if I took 4 days off to recover from one night of bad sleep, none of this would get done. That’s all.
III
nice work. congrats.
