Pull-up Pr is no joke…
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30 September 2018 - Recovery Bodyweight: 213.2lbs
Warmup: Soft tissue hips, band walks 4x10 4 ways
Pallof Twists 2x10 (0sec)
BTN Press + OH Shrug 95x8, 105x8, 115x8 (60sec)
Decline Sit Ups 3x10 (45sec)
Rear Flys 1x15 15lbs, 1x10 20lbs
Hammer Curls 1x20 35lbs
Notes
25 minute workout today. Had to get home to watch my Bears beat the living hell out of the Bucs. I got home just as the second quarter started while the Bucs were lining up for their field goal and it was already 14-0 Bears. The final was 48-10, in case any of you guys missed it. THE BEARS ARE BACK.
Nice lil workout to get the blood moving today. Core, band walks, and the BTN press more for the mobility work than anything else.
I felt my lower back twinge a little bit during the rear flys which is incredibly annoying. I’m going to throw some electric stim on it after this post.
Tomorrow is going to be some good old-fashioned squat work. I think last time I did 315/60sec, so tomorrow I may try 325/60sec. For assistance I’m thinking about doing good mornings, of course. Possibly some single leg variation to work on mobility and glute strength. After that, we’ll see. I want to shift from vertical pulling to horizontal pulling, so I’ll either try barbell rows or just go back to my classic DB rows.
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1 October 2018 - Squat Bodyweight: 212.8lbs
Warmup: Soft tissue hips, 5x10 band walks all ways
Back Squat 3x3 325lbs (60sec), 3x3 275lbs (60sec)
Good Mornings 135x8, 155x8, 175x8, 185x10
Pull-ups 10, 8 (60sec)
DB Rows 1x5 60lbs, 1x10 75lbs
Hanging Leg Raises x10, 8
0.60 miles - 3:42sec
Notes
Hip flexor pain today. Idk. Cardio went all at least.
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These are heavy good mornings
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I agree. I don’t plan on going higher than 185 for a while. It was noticeably harder for me to feel it in my hamstrings in each successive weight.
I enjoy the 20 rep sets of good mornings with 95lbs, so maybe I’ll just start at 95 and do 20 reps, adding 5lbs each week. Something like that.
2 October 2018 - Bench Bodyweight: 212.2lbs
Warmup: Side planks, Pallof press raises, 5x10 band walks all ways
TnG Bench 45x10, 95x10, 135x8, 185x6, 225x10 (3-4 RIR), 225x6 (3-4 RIR) (120sec)
DB Bench 40x8, 60x6, 85x12 (2 RIR, PR), 95x5 (90sec)
Tricep Extension/Pull-up SS – 3x10 (Tris), 1x10,8,8 (60sec)
Biceps 35lbs AMRAP, 25lbs AMRAP (0sec)
Rear Flys 1x15 10lbs, 1x12 15lbs, 1x8 20lbs
Chin Ups 1x12
0.60 miles total - 0.50 miles in 3:17 (0.10 mile cooldown)
Notes
Yesterday was just a really fun day in the gym. I kept the bench volume low; I kept 3-4 reps in the tank for a few reasons. First: No spotter. Second: I don’t want to overreach right now. I don’t think pushing myself to failure in a deficit is a wise move. On the bright side, I noticed that I have been recovering more quickly between sets than I’m used to which feels awesome.
There were a couple cute girls in the gym, too, which made everything better. I don’t want to sound full of myself, but I think one of them was checking me out while I was doing DB bench. I mean, I saw her looking at me out of the corner of my eye a few times… so I either smelled horrible and she was thinking about letting me know, or maybe I kept making weird noises while lifting (I noticed lately that when my music is turned up, I do make noises. Not super obnoxious but definitely louder than most people in a commercial-type gym).
So, a PR. And it feels amazing. If you’re wondering why I kept some reps in the tank with the 85s, it’s because they felt light which made me want to try the 95s. In hindsight, I should’ve done 5 reps with the 85s and then gone up. Then I would’ve had more success with the heavier weight. Oh well, next time. Just messing around with random dumbbell AMRAPs is a lotttt of fun for me. OHP, Bench, goblet squats… it’s all fun. I recommend it to all of you guys.
Pull-ups have been a breeze since I did the lat pulldowns for 3-4 weeks. No, I didn’t even come close to my goal of 1,000 reps in 30 days. And no, I haven’t noticed any extra back development. But YES, my back is stronger now!!
Arms are boring but I did them anyways. The worst thing in the world for me would be if my upper body got injured, so I need to keep everything balanced. The biceps drop set took about 90 seconds total. I think I got ~15 reps with the 35s and ~10 with the 25s, but taking it to failure (twice) should make up for the low weight and volume. It’s totally okay.
I ran for the second day in a row, and I decided that I would rather sprint for half a mile than jog/run for a whole mile. Not only does that mean less time on the treadmill, but it gets my heart rate up more. So 5-6 total minutes on the treadmill is fine by me. My lungs and throat get that weird dry/painful feeling because I’m still getting back into it.
I felt some nerve pain in my right quad yesterday after running. It feels fine today, but I’m resting. My parents okay’d the PT (I think I said this), so I’m going to make an appointment this week or next week and see what I can do to help. I looked up “taurine for strength athletes” earlier today and I came across a list of a few things that have been proven to encourage, stimulate, and/or reverse peripheral neuropathy. On the list were a lot of things that I currently have in my basement, including beta alanine, B12, and L-citrulline. Also on the list were things that I have taken before but don’t currently have: taurine, acetyl L-carnitine, and R-Alpha Lipoic Acid. So I’m excited. I’m going to start taking all of these (except maybe ALCAR and RALA because they’re pretty expensive) every day. My electric stim machine wasn’t working two nights ago, so if that’s broken, I’m going to order a new one. I’m also going back to single leg squats for a little while. I’m getting pretty tired of switching back and forth between squat styles, but single leg squats don’t work with the program I’m on. I’ll figure something out.
Rest day today, squats tomorrow. The diet has been back on and it’s showing. My morning weight has decreased about 2lbs in the last few days. I’ll also buy a scale so I can continue weighing myself in the morning. The day that my morning weight gets below 210 will be a joyous occasion indeed. That could (and probably should) happen this month.
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Alright. I saw this last week and didn’t say anything but now I want to know…what does RIR mean?
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Reps in Reserve. It’s part of the RPE-type intensity scale I believe. It requires you to think a little more than if you were to just grind through x amount of reps at y%, but it’s also easy. You’re definitely in tune enough with your body to make it work. I know that when I’m squatting, I have ~5 RIR when I start breathing really hard. For bench, I’ve got about 5 RIR when I start to lose speed off the chest.
I don’t know how to apply it to programming a mesocycle, because I just don’t know how to program in general. I just write it down sometimes so I can look back and see where I was at on a certain day (it’s something I’m going to be doing a lot more now).
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That’s how I interpret the RPE scale. A 7 means I had 3 left. A 9 means I had 1 more and so on.
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I’ve been thinking about programming in general lately and to grow you need increased poundage over time and it should fluctuate in intensity and rep scheme. Finding recoverable volume and setting up from that. I wish I knew how to set up my exercises in a spread sheet that would track to age through time and I could watch the volume and intensity from cycle to cycle. I currently mentally track it and go by feel. But it would be nice to see the numbers and work from a percentage based thing.
Ideally it would be separated into upper and lower exercises. And those into anterior and posterior groups where I could run a true conjugate system while tracking tonnage too.
Maybe I’ll get started on it and see where it goes…
If you’re like me then you’ll quit when you realize your list of exercises keeps growing because it’s nice to change up the assistance work. I started a spreadsheet that just tracked my weights. I could make a graph if I wanted a visual aid but it just got out of hand.
I use FitNotes to track my training (I track it three ways because I’m weird). You can customize the exercises and categories. You can view rep maxes, volume, about everything you mentioned. You can view an analysis by category or lift. It’s also nice to view my history when I’m doing an exercise. I don’t have to flip through my training book.
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I’ve got an app I track with and it sends me weekly and monthly reports. I’m too cheap to pay to unlock the premium tracking services. Maybe I should just unlock it…
The RPE scale is kind of weird. It’s logical, and it’s a straightforward way of gauging difficulty of a session after the fact, but I have no clue how people can walk into the gym and say “I’m hitting RPE 8 on bench today.” How do you know what weight to use or roughly how many reps you’re going for? Percentage based systems are MUCH easier for me to understand–but it isn’t necessarily better than RPE. From what I’ve seen, there’s a war being waged on which one is better. IMO, it’s identical to the sumo vs. conventional argument. Who fucking cares?? It confuses me so badly when dudes get salty that other dudes pull sumo.
Slight tanget here: I have a friend who can bench 355, but all he does is chest and back (and his legs are still thicker than mine lol). He refuses to arch, or even retract his scapulae. He tells me it’s cheating. I say, “no, it’s just taking advantage of physics and biomechanics,” to which he replies “if it’s so helpful, why do I bench 50lbs more than you?” And at that point, I mention the fact that my 3 lift total almost double what his is. Then he shuts up.
Yeah, the fluctuation part is what I don’t understand. I understand the premise that you can’t do linear progressions forever, that makes sense. What I don’t get is how many reps to do, and when. And why. I’ve always needed a “why,” which is part of the reason math is so hard for me. I can learn something in math, but "why"s are so rare in math. Same thing with programming. I understand all the different phases, high vs low reps, etc, but there are many things that don’t make sense because I’ve never seen it explained.
But that would be cool. I really want to program for myself after I’m healthy and run SGSS for 12 weeks or whatever it is.
I’m gonna get that right now. I’ll start using it tomorrow
I’ve been listening to some nerdy podcasts about hypertrophy and looking back at some old articles to try to understand building muscles and using RPE instead of percentages. Like, how to plan less strictly.
Listening to super nerdy Mike Isreatel, an impossibly simple RPE for size program could start out like
4 exercises for 3 work sets each. In the first week, you could take each set to RPE 7. A few reps in reserve. Then next week all sets go to RPE 8. The following week, RPE 9… Increasing intensity as a feeling over the weeks.
After 3-4 weeks you could wave back to RPE 7, like a deload in intensity as a feeling. But now you would do 4 exercises for 4 work sets each. Increasing volume. Then you progress RPE for 3-4 weeks.
From there, wave RPE back down, and add more sets. Then go harder (from 6-9 rpe) for 3-4 weeks, then repeat…
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SGSS might help you understand programming. CT lists percentages for each phase but I only used the recommendation for the first phase which is 70-72%. We all know that everyone is different when it comes to doing a certain number of reps at a given percentage.
I find that triples and below are much easier than 5’s and higher. When I’m doing these pyramid/ladder workouts of 5/4/3/2/1 I find the 3/2/1 sets to be easier than the 5 and 4. It just suits me, I guess.
I wrote my next program and it’s going to be a three day per week full body program. I used Alpha’s Dark Horse for inspiration. I’m doing the SGSS progression of 3x8, 5x8, 3x5, 5x5, 3x3, 5x3, but I’m doing it in that order from one workout to the next. I also staggered it so that I’m not doing the same thing on all of my lifts. On week one some lifts will be 5x5; some will be 5x3; some will be 3x8. I tried to stagger the loads so that my squat and deadlift aren’t in the same phase and my bench and OHP aren’t in the same phase. I’ll run it for six weeks and then just start over.
To determine my weights I’m using just a little more weight than what I was doing during this round of SGSS. I don’t care about the percentages. I just need to do a little bit more weight. For example, I finished with 415 for triples in week nine of SGSS. I’m doing triples in week one of my new program and I’m using 405. 415 was a bit of a grind so I’m backing off a bit and I’ll progress from there.
Use percentages as a guide to get your starting weights. After that just add five pounds for upper body and 10 pounds for lower body movements.
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I know Jim Wendler didn’t create this, but I’m going to credit him. This is exactly what he prescribes for 5/3/1 and it always works as long as you start relatively light.
So how does one decide how much weight to use? I feel like I could achieve RPE 7 with a large range of weights. Is there a standard rep range goal for each wave?
So say I’m going for RPE 8, which means 2-3 RIR (I think). Would I want to bench 225x11, 205x16, or 245x8? Or does it not matter how much weight I use as long as I achieve the desired RPE?
Also, for the record, I love Dr. Mike. He came to a gym that one of my friends owns and did a seminar in April. I had to work that day (plus it was $100) otherwise I would’ve gone. I love everything he does.
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4 October 2018 - Legs Bodyweight (Evening): 215.2lbs
Warmup: Soft tissue rolling, band walks, side planks
Single Leg Squats 50lbs 3x12 (90sec)
Good Mornings 95lbs x 20, 135lbs x 15
Face Pulls 17.5lbs x 25, 27.5lbs x 20, 37.5lbs x 15
Notes
30 min in the gym today. Had plans to hang out with one of my buddies after he got off work. I got home from school, had a snack, then headed back to the gym.
Single leg squats felt good. Good mornings felt great. I think it was a solid day in the gym even though I didn’t get to do everything that I wanted to do. Thankfully tomorrow I have no commitments other than filling out the FAFSA with my mom in the morning and drinking with my buddy around 7. So I got all afternoon to be in the gym, which means that I can do everything I wanna do. I’m working all afternoon and night on Saturday so no gym then. And the gym closes at 2pm on Sunday, so depending how late I get home from work on Saturday I may just sleep until noon and then get a quick recovery workout in to prime myself for the week.
Tomorrow the plan is to bench 10x3 240lbs (60sec). After that, definitely some rows. I did some barbell rows on the day I set my pull-up PR, I just forgot to log it. I like em.
back work is becoming more fun for me every time I do it… I was waiting for this epiphany. God bless.
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RIR or RPE not much of a difference there I guess.
With RPE you go in the gym planning to hit say 225 ending at a rpe of 7
with RIR you go in the gym planning to hit say 225 with 3 RIR
That is probably just about the same thing in my thinking, just with other words.
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The weights to use depend on your goals, style and creativity, or just on the program.
A generic old school Double Progression, especially for mass could be like pick 1 weight for 3 sets of 5. Over the weeks, stay at the same weight and build RPE with more reps and sets. Start with a weight you can get 5 sets x5 reps and grow it into 5 x7reps. Then 10 sets of 7 reps.
Or you could go 90s bodybuilder style and do 4 sets, 10-8-6-15 reps. Pick weights that let you get those reps, with a couple reps in reserve. Then keep the reps the same and add weight to the sets to progress the RPE over time.
Paul Carter has the 350 method, where you pick a weight and do 3 sets. Then stay at that weight until you can get 50 reps in those 3 sets.
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