man I never know if Jekyll or Hyde are coming out on a given day. I just go through the warm up motions, crank the music and hope for the best. But there is something about routine... usually pulling out the knee sleeves and lacing the shoes flips a switch in my head. no matter how crappy I feel walking INTO the gym, lacing up the shoes turns on a competitor usually.
Right on. I think I'm just being a Negative Nancy due to the deficit.
its easy to do, gotta count on discipline. I bet I'm amped up for my next gym session MOST evenings, and even in the morning getting ready for work, but as the day wears on it gets harder to maintain the excitement... force myself to walk in the door, then the beast comes alive. walking in the door has always been the hardest part for me.
After looking back over my log and food log, the last i made substantial progress losing fat was at this time eating 2600 kcal on average. I’ll be dropping calories to this most days. 6 weeks left until I gotta fit in a tux.
you showed up, dude. its already hard enough without you beating yourself down, they can't all be 10/10 sessions!
same, since bringing standing OHP back in with my 531 I'm grateful for how its reconditioning my core tbh. I can tell when throwing heavy weight overhead when my structure can't support it and I'm untrained in that way. but when I was running CUBE I think one of the accessories were seated and they were serious shoulder killers. even much much lighter weight. (barbell, like 95lbs ish? I can't remember)
I plan to hit both plus maybe a couple sets of machine OHP. Are you doing both?
I've been running totally basic 531 with occasional jokers (depending on fatigue level) and BBB almost every time unless I'm pinched on time. so 4 day split basically: Squat/Bench/Deadlift/OHP.
And you're enjoying it? The last time I tried it, I was too far into a deficit but I enjoy working out and it just wasn't fun.
I am now that I'm being a bit smarter with volume and recovery. Historically 531 would give me fantastic gains and completely destroy me within 2 cycles. I'm starting cycle 5 next week and I'm very optimistic.
I wonder why the BBB sets are never an auxiliary exercise...is that ever used?
Here is an example of default deadlift day.
Gotcha, so 531 on mains and BBB accessories would be permissible?
I think you have to self regulate and I always defer to Hyde in regards to over training since I'm notorious for it, but my routine so far has been:
Side note: I’d really like to see what happened if you took a solid 3-5 minutes rest on lifts instead…
I do for the final lift and jokers, but not really needed when moving from 185-220 etc. I treat the top set like a competition set, where I need all my faculties to bust out a meaningingful AMRAP with the best form I can muster.
Ohhhhh ok, I misunderstood.
Between sets, I focus a bit on breath work/meditatively. But that comes back to my ritualistic routines tbh.
Keep feeling the deficit. Embrace the suck my man! You are trying to lose weight, if you are working hard and your numbers go down some, they go down some. You aren't doing a strength event, you are preparing for an aesthetic goal, and to show up how you want to in that tux you have to push harder and embrace the suck. So what if strength drops a little, it will come right back at maintenance when you finish the task at hand. That task is leaning up as much as possible for your penguin suit. Just like when you focus on growing a weaker body part, you show less preference to other muscles to get to that goal. You have to prioritize your weight loss right now.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I notice you tend to jump to, it is this that made me feel better, then after a week or two you have bad days while still doing that thing. It seems to be a repetitive cycle. Their may not be a smoking gun or magic bullet, just an intermittent problematic issue. From the outside looking in, I see the correlations, but I am not convinced there is much evidence or consistency of outcomes to go from something that correlates, to an actual cause or trigger. So avoiding some of the things you need or want to do for your goals, thinking it is going to cause the PEM might just be holding you back.
Now that is a sharp looking Rhino!
Gotcha, yeah, you’re right though, I do do that, because I still refuse to believe I’m the delicate snowflake that can’t handle a normal deficit. It’s super frustrating. Up until this point, I never considered it could be potassium because I’m on a potassium sparing ARB and my blood levels always look fine. I might never find the smoking gun, but I’ll keep putting theories in here though for future reference.
I definitely think it is right to keep track of these things and see if you can find the reason, just don't commit to the "can't do" to heartily off of a correlation unless it proves itself to always be a problem. That being said, I commend you for just continuing to plug away no matter how frustrated you get with this stuff.