Mario’s BodyBlog

Yesterday I went back to my old gym to do some shoulders. Felt a little bit strange at first to walk in there after more than a year.

Started with free weight seated military presses for a maximum of 120kg for 8 reps. Damn, I used to go a lot heavier on these, but I have been using the smith machine for a long time now and the stabilizing muscles seemed to have a hard time keeping the free weight bar under control, so I decided not to go too crazy on these to avoid injury.
After this, it was time for some side laterals, for a max of 28kg, followed by dumbell presses, but these turned out to be too light. The maximum dumbell weight over there is 50kg and I ended up doing sets of more than 15 reps.

Time to hit the front delts. For these I did some front dumbell raises.

The rear delts were hit with bent-over cable laterals, followed by seated bent-over dumbell laterals.

To finish off, I went back to the cable rack to do some side cable laterals to get a maximum pump in the delts.

Yesterday evening was also time to get measured. The weight was 111kg with a bf% of 5.1%. Not bad - seemed to have lost 2kg of body fat in one week, without doing any cardio at all.

Today is actually my off day, but I didn’t do any hamstrings yet this week, so I’m gonna go do them this morning.

Went working out pecs and calves with my wife in Brussels yesterday evening because the weights are just too light at my local gym.

Started out with some incline dumbell flyes, felt pretty strong so I went up to 46kg for 8 reps. Next was incline barbell presses for a maximum of 140kg for 8 reps. Didn’t feel a lot of pump yet, probably because of the carb depletion the day before, so I decided to do some higher reps on the bench to the neck presses. Don’t remember how much weight I used but I did a lot of high rep drop sets. To finish off, I used the cable crossovers, again not too much weight but really squeezing and contracting at the top and holding the weight when going down. This really got the blood flowing.
After this it was time to hit the calves. For this I used standing machine press and went as heavy as I could for 8 to 12 reps.

As we went home my wife had the magnificent idea to order some pizza for her and my little daughter… damn, I hate these diets… myself I had some very tasty chicken and rice while I was watching them eating… urgh… these diets are getting harder and harder to deal with as I get closer to the contest, but I’m proud of myself that I didn’t take one single bite. Oh well I just hope it’ll pay off…

This morning I went to do some back training at a gym near my house. They don’t have a lot of weights there, so I stuck to the basic barbell movements. Started to warm up by doing front pull-downs, followed by heavy t-bar rows and barbell rows. To finish off, I did some seated rows, followed by bent-over rows combined with cable pull-overs. Didn’t feel my back as well as I do when training at my regular gym but I didn’t feel like spending too much time to drive to Brussels.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be doing shoulders and hamstrings in Geraardsbergen and Friday will be my off day. I’ll also get my fat percentage measured tomorrow evening so I hope I made some improvements from last week.

Hi folks,

I will be keeping this blog as a personal reference to track my current contest preparation for the Belgian finals on October 13th.

Today is my off day, I’m currently in vacation. The sky seems to be clearing out so it will be a good day to spend some time with my wife and kid.

This morning I had 100g of oats, for the rest of the day no carbs… damn I hate these days, but they seemed to be effective last year, so I’ll do them anyway.

Veins are starting to become visible on legs and calves. Weight on the scale in the bathroom this morning was 109.5, I’m starting to doubt if I really made a lot of progress from last year, but it’s still too early to tell for sure… still carrying some fat on lower back, glutes and legs, I will have to keep an eye on these areas day by day to see if they improve.

Legs are still incredibly sore from the heavy leg workout yesterday. Put all plates on the leg press machine for 12 reps (500kg), followed by narrow stand squats with 180kg for 6 reps and then finished them off by doing barbell hack squats (80kg), lunges (32kg dumbells) and leg extensions.

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