Caesium32's Log - Cycling With a Side of Lifting

Training Logs
203

01/02/17 5/3/1 W2D2

Cable row:
30x15, 15, 10

Bench was busy and the person on it had five more sets left so I did this first. Was aiming for 50 reps but he finished so I just jumped straight off before someone else too the bench.

Bench (TM-65):
20x10, 30x5, 45x5, 52.5x5, 57.5x5x5

This was a bit harder than I would have liked, it was only really the last two sets that felt normal. I thought that with me doing it last week it’d be easy but maybe it was just an off day.

Incline press:
30x 18, 16, 16

Pallof press: 10x3
Stationary bike: 30s on/30s off x3

I was thinking last night how there’s a lot more upper body work than lower on this program then I remembered there’s sled drags/pushs which I aren’t doing. I’ve been replacing them with bike sprints but it’s hardly the same so I think I’m going to add a few sets of 10 on leg press with slow concentrics and fast eccentrics to try and mimic the sled a bit. I realise that this along with missing the jumps and agile 8 is getting away from the program a fair bit so I’m no longer going to call it 5/3/1 for hairdgainers. It may not be the best scenario but it works with what I have available.

BW: 85.2kg

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I’ve been having a think about future training again last night and today. My current cycle of 5/3/1 will finish on the week starting 6th March- that’ll give me two more weeks at university before I go home and train at the gym there.

I’m thinking after this cycle rather than start another cycle of 5/3/1 like I first planned I’ll just work up to a heavy set of five the first week with some back off sets then a heavy triple, double or single the next to test. I think starting any sort of program would be hard because the gym at home requires me to be creative with exercises and I don’t know how many times per week I’ll go. It’ll be fun to be a bit more laid back with my programming and won’t be long enough to mess anything up.

After this I’m thinking of getting a bit leaner. Nothing major just a small cut for a few weeks but I’m not sure how I’d train for that, probably 5/3/1 of some sort. I want to at least keep most of my strength. @MarkKO I’m sorry to be always bugging you, I really appreciate you helping me, do you have any ideas? Obviously this is what you’re doing at the minute. I’m not bothered about a six pack or anything but I’ve a bit more of a belly than I would like and it’d be good to walk around a bit leaner. Currently I’d say body fat was probably 20%+ if I had to guess and I’ve been the same for about two or three years now. I’ll probably post more about this later after thinking some more, these are just thoughts out loud.

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Certainly if you don’t have the time to run a cycle what you’re suggesting isn’t a bad idea. As long as you have some sort of idea of what you want to do you should be fine until you get back into it.

With the cut, a few weeks won’t do much especially if you’re doing it gradually. Twelve weeks would probably be a good starting point. For myself I’m a fan of tracking calories and macros, but I know it isn’t the way for everyone. Just as a test though, why not track both for the next couple of weeks to get an idea of what you’re getting and where you could improve? Then you can figure out what changes to makes and go from there. You may just need to be a little more choosy with what you eat and get the results you want, or you may find you need to do a little more.

Always happy to help.

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I should have been more clear with regard to time. I just said a few because I didn’t know an exact number of weeks, several would have probably been more suitable, 12 weeks would be fine.

I actually already track my macros and calories on my fitness pal, I started a few weeks ago to make sure I ate enough. Currently I’m aiming for 3000 calories a day to make sure I’m in a surplus but I’m not too strict so it varies 100 or so either way fairly often. The sources of the calories could definitely be improved though with a little effort. Also I’m aiming for about 190g of protein daily and just leave the other macros; today was 189 protein, 231g carbs and 119g fat. I saw that article about staying strong while dieting that you’ve referred to before and that would probably be my go to nutrition wise. I presume I’d have to cut back on training intensity somewhat if I lowered calories.

Thanks for your help.

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207

I haven’t and I’m glad I didn’t. Unless you’re dropping your calories stupidly low you should be fine. You might notice your rep capacity drops and you feel a bit tired for a week or two until you adjust but then you’ll probably be back to normal.

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That’s excellent then, I was worried it would effect me a lot. If I were to carry on eating as normal I was thinking of doing a couple cycles of BBB next. Do you think that would work in a small deficit?

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I wouldn’t recommend BBB on any kind of deficit. OK, now I know that kind of contradicts what I said just before but bear with me.

  1. Yes, you don’t need to drop intensity the moment you go into a deficit, but that doesn’t meant you won’t notice that you’re in a deficit. You’ll notice, but if you’re sensible about how you set things out you’ll adjust quite quickly.

  2. The volume you do on with BBB is different to what you do on FSL or any other template. Doing BBB about three quarters of your volume comes from your main lifts. They are the lifts on which you use the most weight - even 50 per cent of your squat is a lot more weight than you would likely use for lunges, split squats or even front squats. So, even if you do 50 reps of lunges on each leg, you’re still putting much less load on your body than doing 50 reps of 50 per cent squats.

BBB is a great template, but it isn’t very forgiving. FSL works a lot better because it has many variations. Full Body Full Boring would probably be good too, especially if you follow Jim’s suggestion and pull your DL double overhand and use nice low TMs.

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Thank you, I thought it might be too much. I will probably do FSL with either 5s pro or a PR set. Is full body full boring from the private forum? I aren’t familiar with it.

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It’s in Beyond

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Thanks I’ll have another read.

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02/02/17

0.8 mile run: 8:16 (~10:20/mile)

I want to try and do some sort of run once a week. Last week I didn’t do much of anything and the week before I just did five minutes on the treadmill and stationary bike so this is my first time running since that 5km a couple months ago.
I had a 1.1 mile route planned out but I was feeling a bit sore in my knees and calves so I played it safe and stopped early. Next week I’ll try and run the whole thing. The 5km run I did made my calves really sore for a good few days so I don’t want to impact my recovery too much, I’ll just build up slowly. Lower back feels a little tight at the minute.

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214

05/02/17 5/3/1 W2D3

Deadlift (TM-100):
60x5x2, 70x5, 80x5, 90x9 (PR), 70x5x5

Old PR was seven reps with 90kg. The bar speed didn’t slow down until about rep seven or eight and definitely could have got one, maybe two more at a grind. One thing I noticed after the PR set that I’ve not noticed before is my heart was beating like crazy. My conditioning must be pretty bad which could be why I find high reps on the deadlift so hard.
The 5x5 section was fairly hard too, especially on the grip, my hands feel a bit beat up. Again could be down to bad conditioning.
All sets but the PR one were double overhand.

Ab wheel roll-outs superset with press ups:
5x3/BWx14, 12, 10

Cut these a couple sets short and left out dumbbell rows, I didn’t feel like being in the gym today.

It was an average session, good considering how I felt. I don’t know why but I just didn’t feel like going to the gym, I’m not particularly tired or anything. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

I’m a day behind this week because I went out Friday night and wanted to be fresh for deadlifts so I waited until today. Tomorrow I’ll do my press workout and then Tuesday and Wednesday will be squat and bench as usual. I’m going home on Friday so I may potentially have to miss the press workout next weekend too. I need to increase the effort I’m putting in.

BW: 85.5kg

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[quote=“caesium32, post:2, topic:221425”]
Chin ups 30x8x3[/quote]
720 chin-ups???

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No that was using an assisted pull up machine with 30kg of counterweight. I should have been more clear when posting it, any weight with pull ups or dips will be counterweight.

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Now, that would be impressive.

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I think those who have done 3000 have migrated to the moon. I daresay at least a handful of 10,000 are now huddling ontop of Pluto eating banana-ice-cream.

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06/02/17 5/3/1 W2D4

Press (TM-40):
20x8, 30x5, 32.5x5, 37.5x5, 25x5x10 (paused)

I was supposed to use 27.5kg for the 10 sets of five but some guy had been waiting ages to squat so I let him use the rack and I just used the fixed barbells. I paused them all on the chest which felt very controlled and my back felt very tight. It hadn’t occurred to me that the first rep of a press set is always much harder because it’s a complete deadstop which explains why I got 40x7 but only 42.5x2. Do people usually pause their presses? I think I might start doing it for the back off sets. Everything else was good, only did a couple chins because I wasn’t using a rack.

Hammer strength pull down (50 reps):
50x20, 18, 12

Chest press (50 reps):
30x20, 17, 13

Dumbbells were busy so I decided to give this machine a try and really liked it. You kind of press inwards as well so it’s like a press-flye hybrid, I really felt it in my chest. Will come back to this in future if the dumbbells are busy or I fancy a change.

Exercise bike: 30s on/30s off x3

Good session. Upper back is really sore from yesterday surprisingly. Going to kickboxing tonight.

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220

WEEK TWO SUMMARY

Training:
Training was good this week, I hit two new PRs like I wanted to and didn’t miss any reps other than a few for assistance exercises.

Diet:
Didn’t take my fish oil or vitamins every day again which is annoying. Had more fruit and vegetables though by adding berries to each of my shakes. Average calories were 2784 and average protein was 164g each day which are both below what I want so diet hasn’t been the best. Average weight both this week and last week was 85.4kg probably because of the calories I had. I only went out drinking once this week and it was more moderate than usual- I’m going to try and limit myself to just once per week.

Other:
Band and neck work weren’t done as frequently as I’d have liked again, I just never seem to remember. I did go for a run though which wasn’t too bad but missed kickboxing. Mobility work was done once or twice but any SI or lower back pain has been pretty much gone completely since I started last week so thank you @BOTSLAYER.

I’m writing this on Monday but everything other than today’s push workout is from last week.

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I think Powerlifters generally do because that is how they have to bench in competition.

This makes me feel great!!! I am really glad it helped.

One person at a time will eradicate butt wink and SI issues!!! :smiley:

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07/02/17 5/3/1 W3D1

Squat (TM-80):
20x10, 40x5, 60x5, 67.5x5, 75x11 (PR), 60x20 (PR)

My lower back is definitely still fatigued from deadlifting the day before yesterday and I skipped chins because my biceps are sore but I hit a PR anyway. My old PR with 75kg was 10 reps- I think today I could have got one more but I don’t know about a second. It was my lower back going first though so who knows what I could do fresh.
The widowmaker set was pretty much death by barbell. Again it was my lower back going first, surprisingly my quads didn’t feel too bad at all until afterwards. Never thought about it before but technically all my 20 rep sets have been PRs. I think my best before this cycle was either 40kg or 50kg for 20 back in August or September when I was completely fresh.

Crunch machine (50 reps):
15x20, 15, 15

Didn’t fancy 100 reps, my abs are still destroyed from Sunday.

Lat pull down (50 reps):
40x20, 13, 10, 7

Again biceps are really tired and back isn’t much better from last two days, nothing major just a lot of soreness so took it easy. About 30s rest between sets.

Single arm kettlebell press (50 reps):
8x18, 14, 12, 6

No dumbbells free that I felt like pressing so grabbed the lightest kettlebell instead. I liked pressing one arm at a time. Right arm seemed to fatigue a bit faster than the left but only felt like I could do about a rep more. Really pumped the (medial?) side of my delts. Might swap this for dumbbells.

Took around 45 minutes.
Very happy with this session, squat is going great. It was a hard one but not so much that I feel run down and broken. I’m a little achy all over from training three days in a row but my only option really this week is to train each day until Thursday. I’ll probably go really light with assistance tomorrow.
Kickboxing last night was great too, seems to have renewed my enthusiasm for it. The atmosphere seems a lot more friendly than before which definitely makes a difference. There’s also a competition in about five weeks which a few people are training for so everyone seems a bit more motivated.
Another thing to mention; I’ve had an actimel yoghurt drink each morning for the last three days and have been feeling really good. I think it’s just a coincidence because I can’t see a yoghurt making such a difference but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

EDIT: Wow I ramble on a lot lol.

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