Natty on Pennies

Training Logs
1202

Just got back from the physical therapist, learned some stuff about my body there which was cool.

Apparently I have a very straight lower back, not swayback like I thought before - I was pretty massively wrong there. According to her I’m at a greater risk of injuring my back due to this.

I also lack hamstring mobility (which I know) but I have exceptional hip mobility. My glutes and low-low back don’t fire properly. (Rest of my lower back was really good).

So I learned something new and got a confirmation to some stuff. I also got a couple of exercises and stretches I’m supposed to do, I also got a follow-up time in about two weeks.

1203

what does that mean?

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1204

Yeah man, keep logging the weights.

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1205

The (40)?
That’s the rep goal; amount of reps I want to achieve in total over all of my working sets for the exercise. In this session I did 5 sets for bench and pull ups and 4 for incline db and rows. Rep goals were 40 for both presses, 30 for pull ups and 50 for rows

I’ll try to remember

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1206

Ohhhhhh

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1207

Daily log:

Weight:
85.1kgs/187.5lbs

Woke up sore as hell today

Same as yesterday, nice

Nutrition: (about so)
2760 Calories
285g protein
225g Carbs
80g Fat

I’d say it’s around that, maybe a tad higher. My girlfriend’s family was grilling and asked if we would join them. So, I took the chance

Training:
Quads/Hams/Glutes, Abs
1a Front squat
5x6x95kgs (30)
1b Hanging leg curl
4x12xBW
2 Good morning with pause on pins
4x12x125kgs (40)
3 Sumo leg press with pause
2x15,17x150kgs (50)
4a Adductor machine
3x20x60kgs
4b Kneeling pulley crunch
3x20x82kgs(the stack)
50 Side twist w/broomstick per side
Physio stuff

Notes:
Took am accidental two and a half hour nap after the physio, woke up half an hour before hitting the gym. (Went with a friend so my schedule was fixed by it)

Both front squat and good mornings were done with a belt and one lockout. After that it was constant tension.

Front squats were shamefully heavy. I’ve never liked to do more than two reps per set with them so this was pure torture. But I’m still happy that I moved some weight here.

Paired it with hanging leg curls, it’s there just to up the training density as it cannot be loaded or really progressed too much.

Seems like I lose a lot less strength on pulling/hinge movements, such as good mornings compared to presses and squats, knowing that I’m also stronger on them I’d say it has to do with neural efficiency.

I think this was my first time doing sumo leg press ever. I can’t get a wide enough stance because the foot plate of our leg press is too small. Also, I put the seat at a ridiculous angle, it was almost parallel to the foot plate. Used a pause at the bottom here and man, it really wiped me.

On leg press, crunches and adductor machine it was pretty much just flexing with weight again. On the last two it was because the stacks are small (100kgs on adductor and 82kgs on pulley). On the former I want to have the ability to progress further from here and the latter I only did because the lat pull down was being used.

Finished with 50 Side twist with a broomstick per side. Really it was just me contracting my abs and obliques as hard as possible for reps. These supposedly help with abdominal control and making them more prominent once you diet down. I’ll do them every day if I don’t notice them affecting my performance in other training (getting fatigued easier comes to mind) at some point I’ll bump it up to 100 per side.

After the training was done I did the exercises my physical therapist suggested, I’m going to do them every day as well.

Overall, this was a pretty good session. I’m quite certain this is enough to maintain my leg size. (Which is the goal at the moment as I’m priorizing the “show” muscles at the moment) I’m still training hard in every session, but the absolute amount of work done here is rather small compared to the muscles under prioritization. I’m also interested in seeing how fast I get my squatting strength back now that I’m back at it.

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1208

The results are in

And yet again, I didn’t get into a school. Great.

Now I’ve got to think about what will I do for a year.

I got a flat in a different city than the one I’m living in at the moment. (Atm I’m -by that I mean both me and my gf really- just staying at my father’s, mother’s or my girlfriend’s parents place.)

But the thing is I have a job here. So what I could do is to either rent my flat forward for a year, or give it up, which I’m hesitant to do because it’s at a really good spot and I may go and study in that city next year. (If I get into a school, damn it)

So the logical choice would be to rent my flat forward and get another one in this city with my girlfriend, because I’m not going to live at other people’s places for a whole year. With the amount of work I’m doing I can afford my own place, and it’ll be nice having a home with my girlfriend.

So I guess that’s the plan. Continue working 80-90 hours at three jobs and get a flat/apartment with my girlfriend. Also rent the other flat forward I guess.

Next year I have to get into a school, this is not even funny anymore.

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1209

Daily log:

Weight:
84.7kgs/186.5lbs

Down nearly half a kilo from yesterday, interesting.

Nutrition:
2700 Calories
290g Protein
245g Carbs
60g Fat

Edit. Got home from work starving. Had some potatoes and chicken, and thus my macros changed (edited them already)

Training:
Arms/Shoulders/Small muscles

1a CG board press
4x8,12x112.5kgs (40)
1B Seated DB curl
5x12x17.5kgs (60)
1C Band pull apart
5x15
2a Skullcrusher
2x13,7,6x35kgs (50)
2b Reverse curl w/Fat grips
4x15x27.5kgs (60)
2c Band pull apart
4x15
Bicep stretch
3 Side delt burns
1:30 w/9kg DBs
4 EDT:
BTN Smith press
11x6x62.5kgs
Bent over rear laterals
10x8,11x15kgs
end of EDT
triceps and delta stretch
5a Seated cable wrist curl
2x15xN (forgot the damn weight)
5b Seated calf raise
2x15x50kgs
forearm and calf stretch

Notes:
I was running late so I had to cut it short today. I’ll do my neck stuff and side twists once I get home from work.

Board press felt good, did the last set with one lockout. Apart from that everything was more or less constant tension and flexing with weights.

Reverse curls with fat grips are horribly hard, jesus christ. Also, I’m pretty pathetically weak with skullcrushers + I totally tanked after two sets, don’t know what that was all about as it hasn’t happened before.

Got a nice pump with side delt burns before the EDT, but as I was doing it it just faded away. I’m really starting to question wether or not this EDT stuffis worth my time. My performance doesn’t go down at all and thus I’m not going to failure on any of the sets, that combined with the lack of pump, yeah. Go figure.

After that I just did two sets of forearms and calves, I’ll hit them again the day after tomorrow so that should be plenty.

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1210

That’s unfortunate man.

Sounds like a good plan

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1211

Bad news Dante, sorry to hear that.
But you seem to have a plan for the next year.
Can you do anything to get a better position to get accepted at the school?

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1212

I looked into it, at the moment you can apply for things like sports massage and personal training, which would be 1250 hours of studies in total. (That translates to ten months) The problem is that most of these are in god awful places, as in far away and just poor places to live in.

I’m also not quite sure if getting education like that is a positive in the end as I don’t know if I’ll lose my “first timer” bonus points that people who do not have an degree get. (In addition to that I don’t know just how much getting a sports massage degree would help with getting into PT or sports biology as the thing I failed with PT was probably the physical tests again and with SB I failed the entrance exam)

And lastly, I’m not really interested in sports massage (but I could find something that is interesting). That being said, I could save some money by getting into that school and then teaching the stuff to my girlfriend as well - free professional massages all around!

But in short, I’m not sure how all this works, I’ll have to find out. Also, I’ll need to find something interesting if it seems like there would be no problem with getting additional education.

1213

That sucks about your schooling mate. Things will work out for you though.

Is that really the best option? Working so much just to… Well I don’t actually know why you are working so much…?

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1214

Yeah, in the end, everything usually has a reason for why it went the way it did

In a sense, it’s all about paying your dues to me. (You can find a write-up of paying your dues by mr. Trudel in my log, I’d suggest hitting control+F and putting that in there if you’re interested)

But in short; in my mind, if I work as hard and as much as possible now, it’ll make it possible for me to take it easier in the future. Either during my studies when I eventually get into a school (not having to work/only working weekends would be really nice) or just later in life in general. Having some money saved up will come in handy once I’m going to buy a house or have kids and all that.

Now, having my own place is more a thing of pride and being a decent human to me, but apparently it’s all cool if me and my girlfriend live at our parent’s places for the year. By doing that I would save somewhere between 5-6K€ so I’m probably going to roll with it.

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1215

Daily log:

Weight:
85.1kgs/187.5lbs

I seem to be floating around here, neat

Nutrition:
2215 Calories
200g Protein
215g Carbs
65g Fat

As it is a rest day I’ll have a quark/greek yoghurt/müesli meal instead of my peri-workout protocol.

Training:
50 Side twists/side
PT movements

And that’s that. I’m currently looking into renting the apartment forward, I’ll speak with a the person I’m renting from about it next week. I’m also looking for educational paths that would benefit me with getting into where I want to be.

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1216

Daily log:

Weight:
85kgs/187.5lbs

Nutrition:
Around 3.5K, visited my father’s place after gym and we grilled and so on. A bit more of everything macro - wise.

Training:
Chest/Back/Shoulders/Small muscles

1a Low incline bench
4x8,13x85kgs (40)
1b Pendlay row
4x8,9x90gs (40)
2a DB Bench w/feet up
3x10,11x30kgs/hand (40)
2b BTN Lat pulldown
3x12,16x80kgs (50)
chest&back stretches
3 Side delt burns
100 reps with 8kgs
EDT: 8 rep sets w/10RM 10 minutes
A Lying cable upright row
11x8x65kgs
B Head-supported rear lateral
11x8x15kgs
end of edt
shoulder stretch
4a Smith machine calf raise
4x15x75kgs
4b BTB wrist curl
4x15x55kgs
calf and forearm stretches
5a Neck curl+extension
3x15x7.5kgs/side
5b DB External rotation
3x12x5kgs/side
50 side twists, physio stuff

Notes:
Again, constant tension, only exceptions being last set of incline bench and the rows, as I paused each rep on the floor there.

Everything felt pretty good, apart from the chest stretch. Around 30s or so my right side started feeling numb and I felt pain in the area as well. It wasn’t a stretch kind of pain either. Odd, I have to say.

EDT went a lot better now that I moved from sets of 6 at 10rm or 8 at 12rm to 8 at 10rm, still no drop in performance but I got a decent feeling of having to work there.

Overall, a pretty good session, nothing too interesting went down.

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1217

Of course mate, makes sense. Good attitude to have and unfortunately it seems to be an attitude that is getting pretty rare to have.

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1218

Taking things for granted and expecting everything to go your way is foolish in my mind, sadly it seems to be the general way if thinking nowadays.

Maybe our world is a bit too good really

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1219

Daily log:

Weight:
85.7kgs/189lbs

Nutrition:
2650 Calories
300g Protein
250g Carbs
50g Fat

Training:
Lower body; finding the mmc edition
1a Close stance heel elevated squat
4x8,12x65kgs (40)
1b Leg curl
5x10xStack (110kgs)
2 Hip thrust w/only balls of feet on the floor
2x10,7,5x102.5kgs (40)
3 Heel elevated leg press
30,2x27x90kgs (75)
hamstring stretch
4a Leg extension
3xFx25kgs
4b Exercise ball crunch
3xF
quad stretch
side twists, physio stuff

Notes:
Today’s session was all about establishing a good connection with the muscles worked - being in control, having tension. other excuses for not using big weights (And learning how to do the squat variation I did today) I want this to be a true quality oriented day, and thus I only went as far as I could before the assisting muscles would take too much of a part in the lift.

The squat got a lot easier as the sets went on, I actually feel that I had the most tension with my 40kg warm up! As a point of perspective, I did a single with 150 kilos on the regular high bar deep squat before tweaking my back, so this isn’t a heavy weight at all for me. (Not saying that 150 is anything impressive, I suck at high bar.) I’m just trying to do the squat in a manner that excludes the hamstrings, glutes and low back as much as possible.

On hip thrust I tried a new thing. You see, one of my physio movements is a gluten bridge with only balls of my feet in the floor (in addition to the shoulder girdle, that is) and with my legs being straight instead of spread out. I took both of those and put them into a weighted hip thrust and man, was the glute tension something new. Jesus. I recommend trying it out.

On leg press and leg extension it was just about getting the quads burning, using as little rest as possible (on leg press that was 30-40 seconds, on leg extension it was a set of crunches) used a light weight on the leg press as the angle makes it very easy to turn it into a hamstring movement. Also used a very slow tempo and a long range of motion.

And that all there was to training today, folks.

Got to see some photos from my gf’s graduation party today, I really have to put on some mass. Also, I should be sleeping by now.

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1220

I feel that I may have cracked the EDT code today. (For myself)

Today was an arms/delts/small muscles day, and as per usual I did EDT (escalating density training) for my delts.

Now originally EDT goes like this:

  • Pick two exercises that either do not have overlap or have very small amounts of it. (Bicep curl and tricep extension for example)
  • You have 15 minutes to perform as many reps as possible on those exercises
  • Use your 10RM weight and start with sets of 5-6 reps
  • hen you have increased your reps by 20% from the first session increase the weight. (So if you did, say 50 curls and 40 extensions I’m your 1st session, 55 and 45 in your second and 60 and 50 in third you’d increase the weight after that third session)
    Usually people get around 40-60 reps first time around.

So, my problem with this was that with such low mount of effort (rpe wise) I was performing around 120 reps per exercise in that 15 minutes timeframe because I recover quite fast between sets. I tried to battle that by upping my reps to 8 with 10RM and doing pre-exhaust stuff, but it didn’t help (I was still doing around 90 reps in 10 minutes -as I wanted to cut the time down- with no loss in performance)

Now today I tried something new, and it was pretty good, here’s what I did:

  • After pre-exhaust (band pull aparts and face pulls)
  • Set timer for 10 minutes
  • Pick two exercises that have a lot of overlap, one being isolation and other a “targeted” compound. (I used standing Arnold press and side delt burns)
  • On the compound use 8RM, on isolation use 15RM, try to use a form that is as difficult as possible to bring the weights used down. (Less risk of injury and other muscles partaking)
  • Alternate between the exercises doing 8 reps on your compound and 15 on the isolation on every set. When performance begins to suffer use rest-pause (3-5 breaths) to get the reps in.

By doing this I was able to actually get a good pump and to bring the reps down to 48 on presses and 90 on laterals (which is still more than average given the time restriction). I really liked it. Now I just have to test it with my other pairings. I use four different pairings because I do these often and I want to avoid overuse injuries.

And there you have it; EDT for those with great intra-workout recovery rate.

That’s what training should be all about - making things fit you instead of trying to fit into things.

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1221

Daily log:

Weight:
86.3kgs/191lbs

Slept horribly last night

Nutrition:
2200 Calories
250g Protein
175g Carbs
55g Fat

Training:
Arms/Delts/Small muscles
1a Kneeling tricep extensions
4x15x50kgs (50)
1b Incline DB Curl
2x17,15,13x15kgs (60)
2a Feet up CG Bench
5x10-7x85kgs (40)
2b Hammer curl
5x15x15kgs (50)
Chest&bicep stretches
3a Band pull apart
2x30
3b Band face pull
2x30
EDT: 10 minutes with 8RM/15RM (as described in the previous post)
Standing Arnold press
6x8x22.5kgs
Side delt burns
6x15x12.5kgs
End of EDT
Delt&tricep stretches
4a Seated calf raise
4x15x50kgs
4b 3-way cable wrist curls
Forearm and calf stretches
4xFx45kgs
5a Sides of neck
2x15x5kgs/side
5b External rotator cable pulls
2x25x9kgs
Physio stuff and side twists

Notes:
Bench was in use when I came in so I reversed the order of my arm exercises, no big deal.

Overall everything felt pretty good, this was supposed to be a low-ish impact workout in terms of neural stress and I feel like I accomplished that goal.

Couple of weird exercises:

3 way cable wrist curl is basically just 3 different wrist curls done back to back;
1st you do a seated wrist curl with your palms down and no arm support. Here you want to emphasize the contraction, so flexing your wrist hard is something you should do.

From there you go to a palms up wrist curl with your forearms supported on your knees. You know, the most generic version. With this you want to emphasize the bottom half while still contracting hard. I like to have my arm line up with the cable so only a tiny bit of my forearm is actually touching my knees. If I rest the whole forearm there I lose a lot of contraction and it feels odd in general.

Lastly, you want to stand up and do a wrist curl with palms facing you. Just focus on going though the whole range of movement, squeeze at top and lower slowly.

These give a nasty pump. Haven’t seen anyone coining or doing them yet but I ain’t gonna say u invented it, it’s just a simple giant set

External rotator pulls are basically slow face pulls that end in a double bicep pose-ish position. Used a really light weight here to feel how these would feel. Felt decent, I’m probably going to keep these in.

Also, I made up my mind about my old flat - I’m going to give it up completely. Renting it forward would be a big hassle and with it I would have a lot more responsibility and I don’t want that on top of what I’m already doing. I have until the end of this month to empty it up and clean it. I’ll go and spend a night there with my girlfriend during the final week, kind of saying goodbye to my home.

Man, it’s going to be hard to let go, I lived there for over four years and some of my best memories are strongly tied to the place.

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