Originally I was going to give full, exercise by exercise breakdowns of my training but it was a boring wall of text. Let me know how you like this format, and if people actually want the wall of text I can do that in the future.
-Steve
For the first time in I don't know how long, training feels fun again.
It's not that I'm anywhere close to my best, strongest, biggest or most shredded. Every day I'm looking forward to my workouts, I'm seeing progress and I'm doing the things I love.
So just to kick things off.... what am I training for?
For the past decade my training is aimless when I have no goals. I always want to lose weight in that down time, but get dejected when strength/performance inevitably drops. At that point I usually fall off the wagon on my diet, get my strength back and move on like nothing happened.
For the first time, I'm largely disregarding performance and am trying to get as lean as possible.
I've always had either loose skin or the last bit of belly fat ruining my physique. My goal is to lose as much body fat as I can so that I can be certain it's skin and not just outrageously stubborn body fat.
Yes, I do have a strongman show picked out. No, I won't reveal which one...
Current diet:
I lost 13 pounds tracking macros and calories (1850 calories) with 1 day at 2250 calories for date night. I burnt out on it after going to the arnold so I'm doing a list based diet that worked for me in 2022, we'll see if I have an easier time sticking to it or if I need to go back to tracking.
Training:
I'm doing a 7 day split. It's basically a 5 day split with 2 "conditioning" days to make sure I over train.
Monday: Chest/bis
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: Back/tris
Thursday: Atlas stone and 10 sets farmers walk
Friday: Log press/shoulders/biceps
Saturday: Deadlift/back/hamstrings/tris
Sunday: 10 sets of sandbag carries
I started with the m/t/w/f/s probably 3 months ago and added the other 2 days in the past 4 weeks.
So far what I've learned:
10 sets of farmers 70 ft with a turn back and 60 seconds rest is extremely hard. Like I'm not sure how long I can keep doing it.
My elbows feel awful. I changed up my tricep training a little bit to do longer negatives because historically that helps. Sadly this is a problem that goes back long before this training split.
My biceps look great. Everyone who has told me you don't need to train biceps and that they'll grow from chin ups is full of it.
Training to and near failure is fun and motivating.
My biceps don't feel as horrible as I expected. I have a history of issues in both biceps but this training hasn't really triggered it.
This week: Honestly I didn't get the idea to track my training in a blog until Friday so my apologies for the first few days being a little lackluster.
Monday: Chest and bis
Highlights and lowlights:
I'm easily doing dips with 50 added pounds for sets of more than 10 for weeks now, time to buy a weight belt.
I'm horrible at incline bench. Like I'm embarrassed to say it but 165 for 6 was hard. I've never been good at incline though. It has always been much closer to my strict overhead than to my bench.
Hammer curls still hurt badly. In January I hurt something in my forearm/elbow and it only hurts for specific movements but man does it hurt.
Tuesday: Legs
Highlights and lowlights:
High bar paused squats: 275 2 sets failure (12, 7) FRICK that was hard. Pause varies between reps if I'm being honest with myself between 1 second and 2 seconds. Goal was 2 seconds but sometimes that's a 2 count.
Glute ham raise: 3 sets failure (10, 6, 4) These are still really hard but getting better.
Back extension on GHD: 8 then 7. Feel these a lot in my glutes and hamstrings, not strong enough at the moment to control with added weight I don't think.
Calf raises: 3 sets failure, one leg at a time. Been doing calves for a while now, feel like maybe they're making some progress. Never trained them intentionally before this year.
GHD sit ups 2 sets failure: 15/12 I honestly hate these.
Wednesday: Back and tris
Highlights and lowlights:
With my elbow and bicep feeling beat up, I still had an amazing day. No bicep pain, elbow pain mitigated by going slower and a little lighter through triceps.
During a cut I don't expect any size improvement but if I take this training through a bulk I would expect significant gains.
Thursday: Stone and farmers
Was raining out but it wasn't so bad at the start. Warmed up with 1 set of kettle bell curls with a 35
2 sets 1 rep 235 stone over 53" bar: getting very easy
3 sets 1 rep one motion: Failed set 1, STRUGGLED set 2, absolute grind but cleaner set 3.
**Neck already feels trashed**
2 sets farmers in the pouring rain: 135 per hand 70 feet down 70 feet back with a turn. I honestly would have kept going if it wasn't a flash flood down where I do it. Still an excuse...
Last week I did the same weight 10 sets and got 60 seconds rest for the first 7 before having to huff and puff with 3 minutes rest the final 4 sets.
Friday: Log/shoulders/biceps
HORRIBLE day on the log. My neck hurt so bad that I couldn't sleep but my warm up felt good. Threw up 185 one motion and thought 205 would be a smooth 205 10 minute EMOM of singles.
205 10 singles EMOM: 0. Big fat ZERO.
Not sure what happened. one motion wasn't close, jerk wasn't close. It just felt like pressing 275 or something. Awful.
185 10 doubles EMOM: 1 successful set 1 failed second rep.
Called log there, that was just awful. Mixture of dieting, hard training, and the neck I guess. Whatever, on to the rest.
I had a good workout after that catastrophe on log. Going to try one more week at 205 before moving down to reps EMOM.
Saturday: Deadlift/back/hamstrings (removing triceps)
Triceps have been getting more than enough work in.
Deadlift: 475 10 singles EMOM
Whoops! Did 485. Thought 4 reds was 475...
It was a lot harder than I expected but did the first rep beltless and strapless, second and third rep kept the straps off before throwing them on for the final 7.