scorp508’s BodyBlog

Well tonight kind of sucked. Not a good night of sleep and a crappy diet today resulted in a crappy performance. I’m kind of annoyed with myself right now, but my trainer says not to worry and in a couple weeks I’ll be fine. Enough excuses, here is tonigh’s craptacular performance….

Bench Press: 3×10 @ 232.5, 1×1 @ 315
Incline Dumbells: 3×10 @ 60
Shoulder Press: 3×10 @ 100, 1×1 @195
Close Grip Bench Press: 3×10 @ 115, 1×1 @ 250, 1×1 @ 285
Rotator Cuffs w/cable, front: 3×10 @ 40 lbs
Rotator Cuffs w/cable, rear: 3×10 @ 30 lbs
Pretty lame all around tonight. I need to up my protein intake drastically. I’m lucky if I’m getting 100g per day right now.

Squat went well tonight.

All successful: 3×10 @ 250lbs, 1 @ 365 lbs, 1 @ 390 lbs, 1 @ 405 lbs

Leg Press was decent too.

All successful: 3×10 @ 275lbs, 1 @ 450 lbs, 1 @ 540 lbs, 1 @ 630 lbs

Could have probably done more on the leg press, but the 630 wasn’t smooth enough for my trainer so he cut me off. Damn him and his perfection requiring ways.

Also did leg extensions; 3×10 @ 85 lbs, and standing calf raises; 3×10 @ 195 lbs.

Onto bench press to see how it goes!

This being week #5 it is time to start doing new 1RM attempts. I think this weeks’ goals are 405 in the squat and deadlift. I’m not sure what I’ll attempt in bench press on Wednesday, but probably in the 375 range. It mentally feels strange to jump back into this, but my trainer says the hypertrophy training will have me primed, and the extra pausing I’ve been doing will have built up explosive strength. I’ll just go in there and see how I can do. If I’m not ready then I’ll readjust and keep working at it. Tonight is the squat. I’m dying to get squat/dead up where they should be, so the mental determination is there for sure.

I have put on about 10 pounds since the beginning of this routine. Fully clothed I weigh 192 at the moment. I had been right at 181-183 fully clothed for months previously. I don’t know if it all from the routine or a combination of all the crap I ate during the Christmas and New Year holidays. I can see added thickness throughout my legs and torso, but I hope its good weight.

The hypertrophy workout still ongoing. We’re in week 3 now. I was a little off on the routine itself, it should have said;

Week 1: 55% of max, 5 sets, 15 reps each set
Week 2: 57% of max, 4 sets, 15 reps each set
Week 3: 60% of max, 3 sets, 12 reps each set
Week 4: 62% of max, 2 sets, 12 reps each set
Week 5: 65% of max, 2 sets, 10 reps each set, then two attempts at a new personal best 1RM after 3 mins of rest after 2nd set of each exercise.

It has been nice to go back to something different for a little while. The first couple of weeks were tough, but now things are getting easier and we’re completing the workouts in about 75 minutes for both of us combined.

I’ve also started pausing at the bottom of each rest and really trying to explode on the way up (or towards me depending on the movement) at the advice my trainer. This approach is really getting a great pump on and the surge of blood is amazing.

There have been a couple funny looks and comments in the gym "Hey… weren’t you doing like 350 a month ago? Did you get injured? Why so little weight now? Is everything ok?"

I’m not sure if mentioned this or not, but I’ve been off of the creatine since the beginning of this routine. When we get back to the power cycle I’ll go back onto it. Right now I’m only taking L-Arginine, L-Glutamine, and BCAAs.

p.s.

Thanks to Christmas and New Years I’ve put about 7 pounds on. Damnit. Time to start watching what I eat again.

Change of plans. My trainer decided we weren’t ready for the "rep to failure" routine, so we’re doing a hypertrophy type plan now for 5 weeks before the next power cycle.

The plan is to do this.

Monday, Legs & Abs; Wednesday, Chest/Upperbody & Abs; Friday, Back/Rotator Cuff & Abs.

Week 1: 55% of max, 5 sets, 15 reps each set
Week 2: 57% of max, 5 sets, 15 reps each set
Week 3: 59% of max, 4 sets, 15 reps each set
Week 4: 61% of max, 3 sets, 12 reps each set
Week 1: 63% of max, 2 sets, 12 reps each set, attempt new personal best 1RM.

After the first week (last week) it was painfully obvious he was absolutely right about not being ready to do the rep to failur routine yet. After the last sets I was ready to throw up and could only get to 11 reps on some of the later sets. God damn am I not used to doing high reps anymore! Thats ok, I welcome the challenge and it’ll be nice to have a balance of strength and stamina by the time we’re done with this one. We reset the week counter and this week is again week 1. We dropped the weight down to 41% of 1RM and will increase from there. Today the leg workout (squat, leg press, leg extension, calf raises, abs) went far better. I’m looking forward to Wednesday and seeing if I can do all 5 sets of military press this time to completion.

The goal is to have bench >400 and squat/dead >450 by the end of this routine. Wish me luck!

So that 2 month cycle is done, we finished up the maintenance weeks then did one last heavy workout this week to see what gains I had. I was able to do 357.5 / 385 / 380 in bench / squat / deadlift respectively, all raw. The squat and deadlift are still lagging behind where they should be due to lack of training years previous, but they are still showing strong progression.

The plan now is to take 2 weeks off from going heavy and go light. A new cycle starts afterwards and my trainer informed me it will be rather harsh and we’ll be working in some new rep-to-failure sets. I can’t wait!

This week began the first of 3 weeks of a repair/maintaining strength workout. The weights are not being raised a single pound over last week while the muscles recoup a little bit. The max lifts should feel easier by the end of this as I’ll have done the same weight amount for 4 weeks straight. I’m hoping for between 5 to 15% gain in 1RM in all 3 lifts in the 1st week following this time period.

My trainer is also putting us both on a more intense rotator cuff repair program 2 days a week compared to what we’ve been doing. We’ve both shown signs of slight cuff soreness on upper body night so hopefully this will get us back in good shape.

Right now the 1RMs @ 182 lbs bodyweight are:

Squat: 360.00 / Dead: 357.50 / Bench: 340.00

I’m still aiming to get Squat & Dead into the >500 range and Bench >405 before the end of April. I feel like there is lots of strength left to gain in my legs so I am confident this is attainable. We’ll see!

Well…. I finally broke 1,000 lbs combined in squat/dead/bench by doing 340/340/330 respectively. Bodyweight is staying rather consistent at 181 pounds today (with sneakers/clothes) and I feel great. I would get totally smoked in competition, but that is what I get for not working my legs and back for years. Now that I finally am I hope they wake up and join the rest of the party.

I’m loving this workout and can’t wait for the next phase after another 2 months of this one. My trainer says that is when things will really get interesting and we will switch to 3 days per week and very heavy sets. Wish me luck.

Good night, everyone!

Another upper body max lift workout complete, and I’m tired.

My goal today was to do flat bench 315 clean with no help, good form, and no hesitation or pausing. The workout started with 65 lbs. working up to 315 with various pre-determined weight %’s and rep #s per set. 315 was on my 10th set and proved to be no challenge today, which felt great. There was no aid in the lift at all, it was all my own power moving it off of the pins, down smooth touching my shirt, up smooth to lockout, and racking it back on the pins. It felt like another 5-15 pounds may have possibly been doable, but form would have suffered and that isn’t acceptable these days.

It was an intense and long workout for sure; Flat Bench, Incline Bench, Good Mornings, Military Press, Close Grip Bench Press, Bent over Rows, Rotator Cuffs, Barbell Curls, and Leg Lifts to round it out.

It has been a very long time since my old personal best of 375, and I am looking forward to not only getting back to it, but surpassing it this time around. Wish me luck. I’m happy to finally be over 3 bills in all three of the major lifts at the same time. Now its onto 4! It is amazing what training correctly can actually do.

This is my schedule at the moment.

Mon: Max lower body lifts.
Tue: Max upper body lifts.
Wed: Cardio, abs
Thu: Dynamic lifts, lower body.
Fri: Dynamic lifts, upper body.
I’ve dropped the overall amount of weight on some of my lifts, working hard on form, and am trying to go up 3-5% each week while maintaining form and focus. Tonight my squat of 315 and deadlift of 325 were a 6.5-7.0 on a scale of 1-10 for difficulty, but I’m not too concerned with the numbers right now. My targets at the moment are to get both my squat and deadlift over 400 and bench around 365 by mid December. I think if I keep having success each week this may be attainable without injury or over training even with a 3% gain per week. Its going to be a lot of work, thats for sure….

My body feels great after each workout, tired, fully pumped, slightly sore, but not hurt. I’m probably sacrificing the leanness and muscle definition I was working on, but working hard to obtaining some personal bests is intriguing at this point.