Natty on Pennies

Diet update

Made the first diet adjustment yesterday. As I did fuck up my macros (as said in an earlier post) I’ll have to go a different route with my diet adjustments than what I laid out.

Adjustment 1:
Reduce amount of rice by 25 grams (75g > 50g post workout)

Add 5 minutes of cardio post-training with decent intensity

Add 10 minutes if sandbag work on rest days (the streets are not frozen anymore so it’s a go)
By 10 minutes of sandbag work I’m referring to, well, 10 minutes of work. For example yesterday I did interval sprints with the bag 1 minute on, 1 minute off for 10 rounds. (So 20 minutes total) that way it’s easy for me to track how much actual work I’ve done because I’m forced to actually accomplish that 10 minutes. If I just went outside with the bag and did stuff for 10 minutes who knows how much I’d have rested or done insufficient work?

Gotta say that it was a lot harder than I remembered, but it’ll get easier as I do more of it.

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Holy shit lol! The Eddie hall diet :joy:

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Eating that much every day would be fucking insane really

It wasn’t too hard to do once but seven days a week? No thanks.

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Training update

I feel free
Like, free from trying to fit into a program, which is something I’ve always struggled with - I don’t do well with a fixed program.

But now, with my current one (which is still phase two hypertrophy adapted) I feel like I’m not even on a program. All I have is parameters which I tweak - a partial press, volume adjusted on how I feel, supersetting big compounds if I want to. And it’s all progressing really well too.

This is the moment I love, the moment where I’ve mastered the program and now I’m the one playing.

I’ll give you an example - my workout from today:

1a Clap pushups 3x3
1b Explosive chin ups with reset 3x3
(Getting prepared)
2a Incline bench as per the program: 2x3, increase weight, 2x2 and an AMRAP (got five reps)
2b Pull up with fat grips 5x6
3a Floor press w/fat grips 3x8
3b Pendlay row w/fat grips 3x8 (just used the same bar here, addead a bit of weight obviously
4a Dips 4x8
4b EZ-Bar curl w/fat grips 4x8-10
5a Seated rear laterals
5b Partial incline laterals
5c Seated cheating Side-ish laterals
The “5” exercises were done as a circuit with the same dumbbells, 3x20 each, no rest
and lastly five minutes of cardio

You see, it’s pretty far from what I laid out, but it follows the same kind of principles. I’m not tied to an exercise either, I may do board press or pin press instead of floor press, sometimes with a pause or fat grips etc. But it all blends in well and I’m progressing every time I do the exercises again.

It’ll probably be a while before phase 3 kicks off

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My left hip flexor and my lower back have been giving me shit for a couple of days now, oh the joys of being tall

Today I was supposed to do heavy sumo pulls, but man my lower back did not agree. In this context “heavy” refers to working in the 365-405 range, as I’ve pulled sumo like twice in my life and I’m just trying to learn the technique, so I’m not using really all that heavy weights at all.

I pulled my triples, back was a minor annoyance, bumped up to four plates and tried to pull. My lower back just felt wrong in a sense. Now I don’t know what it is but I have some sort of real strong defensive system with pulls from the floor -I could not budge the four plates. I tried adding a belt and straps but nothing. So I called it off. (And for anyone saying it was a strength issue - I pulled 20 reps with 315 beltless last time, crisp, clean reps so I’m pretty sure 405 should come up)

Moral of the story?
Don’t be tall.
If you can’t do that
Don’t risk injury, ever.

So I moved onto front squat variation. I wanted to take it light so I did them with a pause and hands off bar. After that it was leg press, calves and 5 minutes of cardio for me.

A funny thing, before I reintroduced conventional deads I had no problem with my lower back at all. Right now I’m contemplating, what is the real risk-reward ratio for me with conventional pulls off the floor? Could I get the same effect with SLDLs and rack pulls?

Man, I don’t know. Really the lower back pains are probably just a side effect from being dried out because of the diet. If that was the case it would be easy just not to deadlift when dieting. But from a bodybuilding perspective deadlifting would make more sense when done on diets and not so much during the mass phases. That’s because the deadlift isn’t all that spesific when talking about growing muscle but it takes toll on recovery ie. on mass phases you don’t gain too much of it as you want to direct most of your energy on improving weak bodyparts, but on diets it offers a huge hormonal boost and it takes a lot of energy (calories) to recover from.

Oh, the monthly ramble is here, who would’ve guessed.

Got some thinking to do.

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A month into the cut

Man am I feeling depleted. I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it now; I get depleted real quickly. (Eating rather few carbs at the moment makes the process even faster)

By accident my diet resembles intermittent fasting now. I’m only eating 4 meals a day so as I eat them 2-2.5 hours apart I’m basically having a 15-16 hour fast every day from my last meal to next days first one.

Not complaining though, it’s really convinient that I don’t have to eat in the evening when I’m doing personal training/bouncer stuff.

But man, rest days are the worst. At least on training days I get some kind of real stimulus from lifting and ingesting fast-acting carbs and amino acids. On rest days it’s just not the same with only cardio and just 70g if carbs (120g carbs on training days)

So no wonder I’m depleted and all that, but in reality, as long as we don’t get too depleted there is no problem. (Being too depleted you can’t train effectively and your fat loss is hindered from the depletion itself) it’s all just a mindset.

One month down, two to go. More than enough room for adjusting calories and training.

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One thing that really irritates me about this strength and muscle building community is the mindset that “I go to the gym, I can get away with eating this” and making all the suboptimal nutritional choices.

Say you’re on a diet and you notice a bit of depletion going on. Oh fuck. You don’t look as good as you could! Time to carb load right now even though you’re only a week in. You order a pizza and make some ramen while waiting. Perfect, full again. Fuck that. When dieting you don’t rush it like that. Have a plan. If you really lack discipline, have a cheat meal every other week. One meal. After training. But if you do want to actually get somewhere use smart refeeds according to how quickly you get depleted and how much carbs and fat you are eating.

I see it all the time. People making up excuses to eat shit. Another thing is the “I’m bulking” mentality where you think it’s okay to eat pizza twice a day, every day. There’s no rhyme or reason to that! People who plan weekly cheat days for their mass phases are even worse, what the hell? - you’re not restricting yourself on the weeks, and even if you were there is no reason to have cheat days during bulks. Instead, eat clean foods that you’ve measured in some way and try to gradually up your calories week after week. If you want to have a dessert or eat out, go for it! But please don’t have those days where you just eat pizza, cake and donuts all day. You’re just getting fat and wasting time!

Now I get that you may not be as into this as I am, maybe you want to have a social life and eat a slice of pizza here and there, that’s fine. The thing I’m referring to is excessive amounts of junk eaten because “you’re bulking” and gobbling down 20K calories every Sunday on your mass phases. When dieting, it’s a different story - properly executed cheat days can give you a huge metabolic boost and supercompensation effect. Panicnoodles won’t.

In short, I’m really irritated by the people who claim to be “strength/physique athletes” and eat like a middle-aged morbidity obese person would and make bullshit excuses for it.

PS. This is not an attack in disguise towards any of you guys, I just had to get that out

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I used to eat pizza for breakky every day :joy:

I know what you are getting at mate, but at least the big eaters are getting out there and burning some of it off and turning some of it to muscle. Not like all those fat couch potatoes out there haha

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Jesus man, eat big get big and so on?

With some of them that’s the case, and it’s good - even though they would benefit from healthier eating as well. But there are also those guys who go to the gym a couple of times per week and just mope around for all day, every day eating crap. Those are the fat guys with decent traps.

I accidentally broke the bed

Looks like I’m sleeping on the floor tonight

uh- story?

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That moment when when you try to overhead press the bed

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Duke seems to know what happened already

Just kidding

I’m not sure what the hell happened, just laid down on my bed ready to sleep and then this loud noise of cracking wood begins. Sounded like a tree was falling down. Both of the bed’s legs on the left-hand side broke and now it’s only good if you want to experience the most unenthusiastic slide ever.

On a positive note, sleeping on the floor was pretty good. Well, until the dogs we’re taking care of at the moment figured out how to open the door. It was pretty confusing to wake up at 4am thinking I’m drowning as two dogs are licking my face like no tomorrow.

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My mother is back from her trip

As I excepted, she went the whole time (10 days if I recall correctly) eating like 500 Calories a day and it showed in today’s training.

That’s not good really, but when the other option is eating 5000 Calories I can’t complain. (That’s something we have to tackle though)

Today we did the first (and only) session with deadlifts during the month between tests. She pulled 5 reps with 60kg on 19.3. Today she pulled 3x2x70 and 2x4x65 with 30 second rests, so I’m pretty confident she’ll pull decently come Thursday. If she was here last week we would’ve pulled then as well, but no can do.

Tomorrow we’ll do one more session, Wednesday will be a rest day and then we’ll test out and evaluate.

I forgot to mention; I rolled a joint in my thumb (can you put it that way?) putting together a trampoline yesterday. Well, actually I rolled it as I threw my girlfriend onto said trampoline, but that doesn’t matter really. It hurts pretty bad now.

Also, I’ve been eating spoiled oranges for the past three days. It only occufed to me as I threw up five minutes ago after eating one.

This is going to be an interesting bench session.

It’s not the only thing you rolled :wink:

Yeah I don’t get it either… Hah

Why? Have they got special thumb healing properties??

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Actually, if you consume them while performing the ancient Nordic healing dance they do

Nah man, I’ve just been so deep into my diet psychosis that I didn’t even realize until I started feeling sick as hell and throwing up after eating one today

So, today’s training

With poor sleep, a thumb that hurts like hell and throwing up after spoiled orange how well could it go?

Surprisingly well. Not anything astounding but pretty good still.

Here’s what I did:

1a Clapping push-ups
3x3
1b Explosive chin ups with resets
3x3
2 Close grip bench
2 triples
increase weight
3 doubles
3 Weighted pull-ups w/fat grips
3x5
4a Incline pin press w/fat grips
5x6
4b Seal row
5x12
5a Seated dumbbell curl
5 sets, 20/15/12/10/8 reps
5b Cable tricep pushdowns
5 sets, 20/15/12/10/8 reps
6a Seated side delt burns
3x20
6b Rear laterals
3x20
6c Seated cheaty side-ish laterals
3x10
5 minutes of cardio

Notes:

On close grip bench you see I did three doubles. My program calls for two doubles and an AMRAP, which was a double as well today. Given the circumstances and the fact that I was 5 pounds from my best double ever (while being 20 pounds lighter than I was) I’m not too mad. I’ve kind of shifted from doing this percentage-based to a more linear approach. If I get 1 or 2 reps on my AMRAP, I don’t up the weight me,t time I do the exercise. 3 reps and it’s up to how I feel the next time, 4 or more and I up it. Simple.

On pull-ups I used a wide-ish grip, fat grips, slow tempo and a little added weight. Basically I was just trying to make exerise so hard that I could you small weight for short sets while doing all of the work with my back.

On incline partials I did slow negatives and dead stops on every rep and an hold on the last rep of every set. Hurt like hell.

Seal rows for me are kind of a upper back/rear felt hybrid movement. Back is my strong point so I don’t use too much time on it, and seal rows ale for an amazing rear felt exercise when done in a lateral-ish way.

Then, arms
you notice 5 sets of 20/15/12/10/8 reps. I used the same weight for all sets instead of upping it as reps went down. BUT I made the exercise harder by slowing down the tempo set after set. That way I could use the same weight on all sets while still hitting failure and grinding.

For delts I used exercises that are sure to hit them instead of my overactive traps.

First, side delt burns. Basically it’s just the bottom half of a lateral raise with straight arms and a pause at the “top”

Then rear laterals, self explanatory.

Cheaty side-ish laterals are something I stole from Alberto Nunez and then twisted it around.

Basically you’re doing a seated side lateral with some body English but instead of going straight to the side you lift the DBs a bit more forward. It’s a mix between front and side raise. When your arms are parallel to the ground you flex your delts violently. Control the weight on it’s way down. Arms should be slightly bent and you should be slightly tilted forward. Elevate your feet onto an aerobic step/etc.

Doing those after side delt burns and rear laterals gave me a painful pump.

It’s a really good triset if you ask me because you hit your side delts hard, then rear and then side and a bit of front delt again. And as the shoulder has like eight heads in reality it’s a really good idea to avoid doing your laterals exactly the same way every time for best overall development.

All in all, a good session.

I’ve been thinking about maybe doing these training updates a bit more often, it would keep the log active. The question is do you guys want to see them?

An observation I’ve made is that nowadays I don’t rely on wrist wraps, straps and belt nearly as much as I used to. Wrist wraps I haven’t used in ages, I use straps on my Deadlift AMRAPs and I use my belt only during front squats. (I may use it with deadlifts if my back is feeling cranky)

I’m also doing my lifts in a more controlled manner than ever before. A squat descent takes multiple seconds now. Of course I still lift the weight aggressively, I’m just slowing the negatives down a lot. Feels good.

Today I trained alone, and did the whole session with practically no rest between sets (which is quite usual to me nowadays) I only rested between sets of squats as that was the only movement that wasn’t paired with something else. Even then the rest was sub one minute.

So, today’s training:

Lower body

1 Beltless Highbar squat
2x3
increase weight
2x2,5 (last set amrap)
2A Rack pulls from pin 2 (about mid shin)
2x5,10 (last set amrap)
2B Standing crunch on lat pulldown
3x10
3A Seated leg curl
3x8,15
3B Hip Belt Squat
4x20
3C Hanging leg raise
3x15
4A Seated calf raise
2x15
4B Leg extension
2x15
4C Situps with a twist
2x10/side
quad stretch
5 minutes of cardio

Notes:

Squat felt really solid. I squat in a very quad-dominant way with a high bar position. I push my knees out and forward and descent in a rather upright position. I can’t do that with a belt, for some reason it seems to turn squat into a more posterior chain-focused movement.

After squats I did rack pulls from mid shin. A huge difference in the way these feel on my back compared to pulling from the ground. I used straps on my last set but went without them for the first two. Given the bad knurling on our bars it really taxed the grip.

Next up, seated leg curl. I have a problem with the movement - the stack is too small. I can rep the whole stack for over 30 reps so I really had to do everything in my power to make the lift harder so I could do sets of eight here. Last set I wanted to let it a bit looser and did 15.

Our gym doesn’t have a belt squat machine so I just stacked up a bunch of plates to create two platforms and squatted between them. I used a dip belt for this. Keeping an upright torso and squatting deep with constant tension for sets of 20 had my quads screaming.
By rep 8 of the first set I was already contemplating life, just so you know.

Lastly I did calf raises with a five second stretch at the bottom. That eliminates the stretch reflex really well. Also did a three second peak contraction hold at the top here.

I paired it with leg extensions to get a bit of isolation for the quads going on. Did a one-second hold on top of each rep here.

I did the quad stretch after my second set of these.

The situps with a twist are one of Scott Abel’s brainchilds. Basically you hold your arms pointed straight forward (if youw were standing) the whole time and as you come up you reach for the toes of the opposing side with one of your arms.
So go up reach for left leg toes with right arm, go down. Go up, right leg toes with left hand etc.

Finished up with 5 minutes of cardio.

All in all, a solid session. No pain in the wrong places, everything felt just like it was supposed to feel. Spent ten minutes afterwards in the locker room trying not to die.

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I enjoy reading them.

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