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Start of New Cycle

hairygrandpa said:
Outside -or right under a lamp would have been way better. The lighting is as bad as it gets.
Compared with your first pics, you lost a considerable amount of fat on the trunk. Could be the bad light -but, to be honest, gains are lacking.

You need another cycle with optimal diet. This time a cycle that really works. When do you start?
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I think the lighting is bad I was trying to get some down lighting from the bathroom, and the wife said it would be better in the hallway. I will be doing another run in March.

Here is a side by side of start, and as of today

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You look sturdier now, change in traps is most prominent. After the holidays may be the time for a cut to get definition and ready for the march cycle, what do you think?
 
DemntedCowboy said:
So current Pics as Promised:

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This is going to sound weird (no not in a homo erotic way) but I honestly think you would benefit from hitting legs heavier/more often (obviously can’t see your quad or hamstring development hence why it might sound weird).

I looked back at your numbers and just imho your squat is disproportionately lower than your upper body (where numbers are strong). I’d probably have expected to see sets of 5 squats up around 275 if not more based on your upper body stuff.

My logic for hitting legs often (2-3 times per week) is simply that they are the largest muscle group in the body, we know building resistance training increases T naturally and hitting legs (inc deads) engages more muscle and elevates t more. It’s also the biggest compound lift (inc dead) so you can add more lean mass, lean mass burns more calories at rest.......

Honestly I’ve still got a long way to go myself but this is genuinely a comment to try and help as we have some similar battles in life and I’d love to see you hit your goals bro.
 
Whisky said:
This is going to sound weird (no not in a homo erotic way) but I honestly think you would benefit from hitting legs heavier/more often (obviously can’t see your quad or hamstring development hence why it might sound weird).

I looked back at your numbers and just imho your squat is disproportionately lower than your upper body (where numbers are strong). I’d probably have expected to see sets of 5 squats up around 275 if not more based on your upper body stuff.

My logic for hitting legs often (2-3 times per week) is simply that they are the largest muscle group in the body, we know building resistance training increases T naturally and hitting legs (inc deads) engages more muscle and elevates t more. It’s also the biggest compound lift (inc dead) so you can add more lean mass, lean mass burns more calories at rest.......

Honestly I’ve still got a long way to go myself but this is genuinely a comment to try and help as we have some similar battles in life and I’d love to see you hit your goals bro.
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Good catch brother. Honestly, I do tend to do less legs than I should. Normally on my cuts I do legs twice a week. And when I am bulking. I kinda just forget about them most of the time. I need to get better at that.
 
Here is the back comparision, another area I think I did well at while on my run. Pic on the right is a couple weeks in. Left is today hairygrandpa

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DemntedCowboy said:
Good catch brother. Honestly, I do tend to do less legs than I should. Normally on my cuts I do legs twice a week. And when I am bulking. I kinda just forget about them most of the time. I need to get better at that.
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Personally I’ve found having one day hypertrophy based (no belt) hitting 4x8 up to 4x10 and then one strength day (with belt) working sets of 3-5 reps to be really beneficial recently.

I then deadlift on my back hyperthropy day for additional glute and hamstring work.......

To me heavy squats are like a first date with a beautiful women, at first I’m nervous, I always think about backing out and deep down I’m just hoping I don’t physically sh!t myself..........but afterwards when it’s gone well I feel awesome ��
 
DemntedCowboy said:
Got some chest in tonight. Not to many people in the gym. So was able to do what I wanted.

Incline bench(Smith): 95x18, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, RP 155x8, RP 155x8, RP 155x8

Decline Bench(Smith): 95x18, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, RP 155x8, RP 155x8, RP 155x8

Overhead DB Press: 40x15, 40x15, 40x15, 40x15

Machine Press: 70x18, 110x12, 110x12, 110x12, 110x12, RP 110x8, RP 110x8, RP 110x8

Chest Dips: BWx12, BWx12, BWx12, BWx12

Cable Flys(High): 20x15, 15x15, 10x15, 10x15

Cable Flys(Mid): 20x15, 15x15, 10x15, 10x15

Cable Flys(Low): 15x15, 15x15, 10x15, 10x15
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Is there any room left for more critique? LOL.

Here an example of a workout. I noted that the rest pause sets (RP) are unusually high in reps. Something is wrong. Either your initial weight is too low and you never go to failure -or your pauses are way too long between RP sets. It should be a 10 sec pause between them.
Doing 8 RP sets after a set of 12 is twilight zone stuff, LOL.

To give an idea, when I do pull ups it would look like this, valid for all exercises:

12/pause 1 minute/10/pause 1 minute/10 RP (pause 10 sec) 4 RP (pause 10 sec) 3 RP(pause 10 sec) 2
 
hairygrandpa said:
Is there any room left for more critique? LOL.

Here an example of a workout. I noted that the rest pause sets (RP) are unusually high in reps. Something is wrong. Either your initial weight is too low and you never go to failure -or your pauses are way too long between RP sets. It should be a 10 sec pause between them.
Doing 8 RP sets after a set of 12 is twilight zone stuff, LOL.

To give an idea, when I do pull ups it would look like this, valid for all exercises:

12/pause 1 minute/10/pause 1 minute/10 RP (pause 10 sec) 4 RP (pause 10 sec) 3 RP(pause 10 sec) 2
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Critique is always good. Always room for it. I take 1 min breaks between sets, and I do 10 sec breaks like you said to originally told me to for RP sets. So maybe I need to up the weight some more, on my warm-up set, and my other 4 sets.
 
DemntedCowboy said:
Here is the back comparision, another area I think I did well at while on my run. Pic on the right is a couple weeks in. Left is today hairygrandpa
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Yes, I see more thickness and development in the traps area, lighting isn't good enough to see the lower back.
Maybe I had too high expectation for your last cycle. My transition was also slower as I would have liked, LOL. We all are impatient when it comes to gains. :)
 
DemntedCowboy said:
Critique is always good. Always room for it. I take 1 min breaks between sets, and I do 10 sec breaks like you said to originally told me to for RP sets. So maybe I need to up the weight some more, on my warm-up set, and my other 4 sets.
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It seems you don't go to failure on your sets. You are hitting consistent numbers throughout, could that be?
 
hairygrandpa said:
It seems you don't go to failure on your sets. You are hitting consistent numbers throughout, could that be?
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It might be, and I may not be going to failure cause of fear of thinking I'm ego lifting. Maybe I should up the weight just a bit and see how things change.
 
DemntedCowboy said:
It might be, and I may not be going to failure cause of fear of thinking I'm ego lifting. Maybe I should up the weight just a bit and see how things change.
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I would keep the weight as is and go every time to failure (minus the warm-up).
Should look like this:
Before:
Incline bench(Smith): 95x18, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, 155x12, RP 155x8, RP 155x8, RP 155x8
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After (guessing)
Incline bench(Smith): 95x18, 155x16, 155x16, 155x12, 155x10, RP 155x5, RP 155x5, RP 155x3
 
hairygrandpa said:
I would keep the weight as is and go every time to failure (minus the warm-up).
Should look like this:
Before:

After (guessing)
Incline bench(Smith): 95x18, 155x16, 155x16, 155x12, 155x10, RP 155x5, RP 155x5, RP 155x3
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Ok I will try that out and see how that works. I will up the reps and see if I cant burn myself out a little more
 
DemntedCowboy said:
I will start by upping my warm-up sets and working sets by like 10 lbs each. What do you think hairygrandpa?
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Nah. Warm-up is highly debatable if it does any good at all, there are studies. Imagine you work in construction and warm-up before carrying anything around....silly. I do warm-ups -but more to see if I perceive any problems in joints and to get the perfect form before going more heavy.
 
hairygrandpa said:
Nah. Warm-up is highly debatable if it does any good at all, there are studies. Imagine you work in construction and warm-up before carrying anything around....silly. I do warm-ups -but more to see if I perceive any problems in joints and to get the perfect form before going more heavy.
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Ok I got you. The warm-up set is something I have always done but what your saying makes since
 
DemntedCowboy said:
Ok I will try that out and see how that works. I will up the reps and see if I cant burn myself out a little more
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Nah, not "upping reps" -but repping until it doesn't move up anymore. If you control timing, you could go to failure with even less reps. It's about failure -not numbers.
 
hairygrandpa said:
Nah, not "upping reps" -but repping until it doesn't move up anymore. If you control timing, you could go to failure with even less reps. It's about failure -not numbers.
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Yeah I understand what you where saying, maybe the way I responded just came out wrong
 
DemntedCowboy said:
Yeah I understand what you where saying, maybe the way I responded just came out wrong
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Your next cycle will transform you visibly, just try to focus on fatigue with every set. BEAST73 would tell you the same, he is a volume/fatigue beast!
Counting the reps is , well, somewhat unnecessary. Imagine 20lbs DB's doing biceps curls. You could do probably 25 reps per set.
Now do them : 1 sec. up/ 4 sec. lowering. See? Number of reps mean NOTHING at all. Now do them with the back against a wall AND slow - see? :)
But, it doesn't matter much (it does a bit) how fast you do them, what matters is failure
 
hairygrandpa said:
Your next cycle will transform you visibly, just try to focus on fatigue with every set. BEAST73 would tell you the same, he is a volume/fatigue beast!
Counting the reps is , well, somewhat unnecessary. Imagine 20lbs DB's doing biceps curls. You could do probably 25 reps per set.
Now do them : 1 sec. up/ 4 sec. lowering. See? Number of reps mean NOTHING at all. Now do them with the back against a wall AND slow - see? :)
But, it doesn't matter much (it does a bit) how fast you do them, what matters is failure
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From here on out I will not just be like ok, I got 12 reps thats a set. I will just do reps till I can't anymore, and count how many I did so I know how many it was for when I log it.
 
I like to change up training every so often into different block say strenght block and volume blocks. And I fully believe there is no right or wrong, but from the other side of the coin on not training to failure check out so of pavel tsatsouline articles he has written. Always good to open up to different training styles and like i said nothing is truly right or wrong and different things work for different people.
 
hairygrandpa said:
Nah. Warm-up is highly debatable if it does any good at all, there are studies. Imagine you work in construction and warm-up before carrying anything around....silly. I do warm-ups -but more to see if I perceive any problems in joints and to get the perfect form before going more heavy.
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While I believe there are benefits especially if lifting heavy I never do warm ups. Then again I've never been injured, maybe it's luck. Heck I haven't had fever in 15 years.
 
I always do a warm up light weight to get the mind-muscle connection going and the form in check. I think its just personal preference. When I say light weight about 50% of 1rm.
 
SilentSavage0523 said:
I like to change up training every so often into different block say strenght block and volume blocks. And I fully believe there is no right or wrong, but from the other side of the coin on not training to failure check out so of pavel tsatsouline articles he has written. Always good to open up to different training styles and like i said nothing is truly right or wrong and different things work for different people.
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Yes, I change between volume, TUT and moderate -to heavy too. But there absolutely is a "wrong". Failure is a determining factor, It should be obvious.
Not every day, but most days. There was a lot of debate in the past if weights/reps play a role in hypertrophy, it was no surprise for me that weight -and number of reps is not the determining factor -but failure is.
 
Chados said:
While I believe there are benefits especially if lifting heavy I never do warm ups. Then again I've never been injured, maybe it's luck. Heck I haven't had fever in 15 years.
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Not agreeing on heavy here. Look at a boxer, look at a gymnast, look at a calisthenic... all works, if you push the limits (failure/fatigue). Personally, I prefer a mixture of all.
 
hairygrandpa said:
Not agreeing on heavy here. Look at a boxer, look at a gymnast, look at a calisthenic... all works, if you push the limits (failure/fatigue). Personally, I prefer a mixture of all.
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No I mean warming up before putting heavy weights. If I'm gonna bench really heavy I feel it's more comfortable having lifted lighter weights before. The weights actually feels lighter too when I'm warm. Not sure that's so much of a warm-up but more of a kickstart to the bench :)
 
hairygrandpa said:
Yes, I change between volume, TUT and moderate -to heavy too. But there absolutely is a "wrong". Failure is a determining factor, It should be obvious.
Not every day, but most days. There was a lot of debate in the past if weights/reps play a role in hypertrophy, it was no surprise for me that weight -and number of reps is not the determining factor -but failure is.
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I see what your saying but also what may be wrong for you ,might not be wrong for me and vice versa.
 
SilentSavage0523 said:
I see what your saying but also what may be wrong for you ,might not be wrong for me and vice versa.
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Off course you are right. Be it heavier progression, upping number of reps, upping TUT -or a mixture of all. It will work. There is a genetic component to it what works best for you, no doubt. A lot is preference too.
 
Chados said:
Will be following, been kinda fun to have a long log for once :) what will you be running?
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If you want a "long" log, look up my cutting log, LOL. It will take at least as long as the universe needed to form. The stubborn fat just isn't moving fast enough.
 
For the next 10 days will be pushups, situps, reverse situps, locomotives, mountain climbers, sprints resistance bands, and 2-5 mile runs, and different stretches. I'll log if y'all want or juat wait till I'm back
 
DemntedCowboy said:
For the next 10 days will be pushups, situps, reverse situps, locomotives, mountain climbers, sprints resistance bands, and 2-5 mile runs, and different stretches. I'll log if y'all want or juat wait till I'm back
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Don't forget pull ups, inverted rows and chin ups. Pull ups are a game changer, assisted at first -but later, when you can do them in sets, it separates the weak from the strong, IMHO.
 
hairygrandpa said:
Don't forget pull ups, inverted rows and chin ups. Pull ups are a game changer, assisted at first -but later, when you can do them in sets, it separates the weak from the strong, IMHO.
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I do pullups at the gym, but I will have to figure out how to do them at my parents house. May have to use a tree. Lol
 
If you havent seen the long road home. Go watch it on National Geographic. This was my unit during my first tour in Iraq after Pres. Bush declared Victory
 
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