Super Squats! - Getting Serious

[Lifeforce]

okay, so out of 4 exercises you progressed on 6. most guys would call that a good workout, what's so worthless about it?

you're about 180. 14" arms sounds about right to me, so again, nothing weak about that.

you say your bench is weak - what part of it? the lockout, going off the chest, what?

Yeah, but you know the feeling you have, you want to feel stronger too. It was very heavy today.

Yeah, it's just that my friend who's 160 lbs who have equal arm size as me. He has perfect beach genetics, good lats, arms, chest. I got in my face that I will soon be as big as him by a friend. I mean, I outweigh him by 20 pounds for gods sake! My legs totaly crushes his though.

The middle of the bench 4" of chest, I tried doing lockouts before to strengthen and it worked to some degree. Now I've lifted db presses with pretty narrow lifting technique, this time I tried lifting with elbows out. When I do normal bench press I flex my abs, tuck my shoulder blades together and then lift. No bounching whatsover. I've figurerd it's either:

A: Undertraining
B: Overtraining

As I see it now, it's probably undertraining, because I've tried reducing the sets with no success and I've tried bettering the form and it doesn't work that well either. I'll add in an extra exercise so I do 4 sets per training (straight, not RP)

 

[Warboss Alex]

my frank opinion is that you're not ready for rest pause on any exercise anyway (at your current stage of development) but if it's working stay with it.

lockouts only train the lockout which really is just the lockout at the top, that's not where you're missing the lift. 4 inches off the chest is too close to the chest to be considered a bench mid-point really.

you could do board presses from that height but I think you'd be better off with paused benching. prepare for your ego to take a hit as you pause in the bottom position (no resting the bar on your chest please ) for two seconds before exploding up. the momentum is gone so your chest should be very much involved.

also for size building there are better options than flat barbell bench, but you already know that.

don't do db press and bb press in the same workout. what's the point? you're basically doing the same thing again. if you were doing singles with one and repping with the other there'd be some reason to it but right now you're mostly likely overtraining your chest, not undertraining it. do one main chest movement and choose another which is different (incline, decline, close grip, db hammer press whatever) - keep this second exercise higher rep and do 2 x 5 or 2 x 6 on the first.

so maybe
paused flat bench 2 x 5
close grip bench 2 x 8-10 (not paused)

also I'm assuming you're gonna do a real split sometime soon huh? you know better than to do chest/back in the same workout. your lack of progress may well be down to that. in the past you had a simple 3day split right? or am I remembering wrong..

 

[Lifeforce]

Thank you for the reply =)

Right now I do a two day split

chest, back, acessory body parts
legs, shoulders, acesssory body parts

So it's not quite as chaotic as it looks

-----------------------------------

Pause bench is a good idea, I did pause benches on about half the reps I did today.

So if I do like

2x6 paused bb bench
2x10 db incline
??

 

[Warboss Alex]

Thank you for the reply =)

Right now I do a two day split

chest, back, acessory body parts
legs, shoulders, acesssory body parts

So it's not quite as chaotic as it looks

-----------------------------------

Pause bench is a good idea, I did pause benches on about half the reps I did today.

So if I do like

2x6 paused bb bench
2x10 db incline
??

sounds good to me. choose a second movement to address your weak point really.. incline seems a good idea since you don't lack tricep strength really (I saw your near 50kg skullcrushers which is a good weight indeed). yup, sounds great. don't cheat on the pauses now!

 

[Lifeforce]

sounds good to me. choose a second movement to address your weak point really.. incline seems a good idea since you don't lack tricep strength really (I saw your near 50kg skullcrushers which is a good weight indeed). yup, sounds great. don't cheat on the pauses now!

A big thanks for your help. I'll try this next time I work chest. =) Would be good to get the chest strength up to par with the tricc.

No cheating, I'm gonna do textbook form. :trouble:

 

[GodsGiftToFatBirds]

Just a thought here but if you're only doing a 2 day split, you might be suffering from not having enough recovery time between sessions. For example, if you're training triceps (you say you're pretty strong on triceps) under 'accessory body parts' in your 2nd session, then they might still be fatigued and holding you back when you do bench press on your 1st session a day or 2 later (I'm not sure how often you train).

I personally prefer a 4 day split (back & biceps, shoulders & triceps, legs, chest in that order) with a day in between each session.

Just my thoughts but I'd be interested to know what you think.

 

[Lifeforce]

Yes it is possible, but if the triceps strength is improving and mostly overthing else then it's strange that the chest wouldn't improve also. Weak triceps would mean the chest need to take more of the punishment.

I sincerly don't think I have too short recovery time between sessions. It's a good call but I don't think it's so in this case.

 

[mrRuckus]

Just a thought here but if you're only doing a 2 day split, you might be suffering from not having enough recovery time between sessions. For example, if you're training triceps (you say you're pretty strong on triceps) under 'accessory body parts' in your 2nd session, then they might still be fatigued and holding you back when you do bench press on your 1st session a day or 2 later (I'm not sure how often you train).

I personally prefer a 4 day split (back & biceps, shoulders & triceps, legs, chest in that order) with a day in between each session.

Just my thoughts but I'd be interested to know what you think.

The 5x5 training i'm doing does squats 3 days a week and bench and bent over rows 2 days a week. The strength coach its based on off explains that people tend to think of things in terms of recovering from ONE workout when they should be thinking in terms of recovering from a few weeks or months worth of workouts. Yea, i'm left pretty sore but everyone who is eating right gains pretty quickly on the program. Your body adapts to the workload and is more willing to grow to adapt to an exercise that you're asking it to do all the time rather than once a week. Your body is like "pffft you only do this once a week i'm not going to bother to grow i hardly ever have to do that." Compare that to "oh **** i have to squat 3 days a week? i better freakin compensate or i'm gonna die!" So instead of 3 exercises for one body part on one day like way too many people do, you hit that exercise 2-3 days a week. So you do just as many sets in a week but not all on the same day. You gradually build up muscular fatigue over a few weeks (think fatigue over a period of time. not so much from one workout. In the grand scheme of things one workout means next to nothing.) This is where periodization comes in as i understand it... weeks of growth followed by an active resting week or two where you're letting your body rest and add back to its fatigue cooking jar so you can bust through your records again when you get back to your unfatigued state.

That's how i've understood it at least through one school of thought. It's not the end all of things and plenty of people disagree and maybe it's better for strength than size or vice versa.... and it doesn't apply so much to tiny muscle groups so no reason to be doing biceps every workout...but i really don't think you need an entire week to recover from an exercise.

 

[Warboss Alex]

The 5x5 training i'm doing does squats 3 days a week and bench and bent over rows 2 days a week. The strength coach its based on off explains that people tend to think of things in terms of recovering from ONE workout when they should be thinking in terms of recovering from a few weeks or months worth of workouts. Yea, i'm left pretty sore but everyone who is eating right gains pretty quickly on the program. Your body adapts to the workload and is more willing to grow to adapt to an exercise that you're asking it to do all the time rather than once a week. Your body is like "pffft you only do this once a week i'm not going to bother to grow i hardly ever have to do that." Compare that to "oh **** i have to squat 3 days a week? i better freakin compensate or i'm gonna die!" So instead of 3 exercises for one body part on one day like way too many people do, you hit that exercise 2-3 days a week. So you do just as many sets in a week but not all on the same day. You gradually build up muscular fatigue over a few weeks (think fatigue over a period of time. not so much from one workout. In the grand scheme of things one workout means next to nothing.) This is where periodization comes in as i understand it... weeks of growth followed by an active resting week or two where you're letting your body rest and add back to its fatigue cooking jar so you can bust through your records again when you get back to your unfatigued state.

That's how i've understood it at least through one school of thought. It's not the end all of things and plenty of people disagree and maybe it's better for strength than size or vice versa.... and it doesn't apply so much to tiny muscle groups so no reason to be doing biceps every workout...but i really don't think you need an entire week to recover from an exercise.

some people can recover fast, others can't. if you're not recovering as well as you'd like, eat more food and assess your cardio routine. personally I think for a high-frequency program like 5x5 you need massive calories, 2g protein, active recovery, stretching, high dose glutamine.. all that stuff so you can recover quicker to get bigger. a push/pull/legs still needs that stuff but it's only really one bodypart a week so you've more room to recover.

 

[TheTrader]

that's a good call lifeforce. if i remember it right a loooong while back you did 1x90 10x70...stuff like that(with not so good form probably). but you were benching a lot more back then than nowadays. i made the best progress with flat bp when i benched 3times a week. screw mp and the like for better recovery.

 

[mrRuckus]

some people can recover fast, others can't. if you're not recovering as well as you'd like, eat more food and assess your cardio routine. personally I think for a high-frequency program like 5x5 you need massive calories, 2g protein, active recovery, stretching, high dose glutamine.. all that stuff so you can recover quicker to get bigger. a push/pull/legs still needs that stuff but it's only really one bodypart a week so you've more room to recover.

It's really not that bad. A day like wednesday is a light day of squats. Enough to tell your body "hey don't forget how to do these" without really taxing you. Get some good bloodflow and smack the muscle in the face not to relax too much cause you have a record to set on Friday.

Keep in mind the 5x5 i'm doing isn't like 200,200,200,200,200 as some advanced people are doing with periodization and stuff. Mine's the intermediate version.

It's a slow buildup to the 200 where you try to add a couple extra lbs to the 5th set every week. It's not even really that different than DC other than without the 3 exercises per body part (just repeat the same one each time), no rest pause, and you actually count the warm up sets as sets. There really is only one difficult set of the 5. The fourth is moderately difficult but really if you can squat 225 for 5 the 4th set is like 195 and isn't rough at all. I'm sure you're pretty aware of the program though. If i had to say anything it's a moderation between a volume and intensity workout.

Anyway you saw my diet and i hover between 300-350g protein if not more. Another thing is that i'm not sure if i really believe in soreness meaning you're not recovered. I tend to be someone who is sore all the time but i've never really been kept from progressing on my lifts every time I go so i think i have decent recovery. I need to be more aware of when I should back off a little bit though.

I think the last few months i really needed a break and i didn't take it until just recently so i floundered a bit. But this time i'm prepared ahead of time to pay attention to when i need a break... or at least back off and actively recover a bit.

 

[Warboss Alex]

being sore all the time = eat more protein and food. add 500cals per day and do more cardio, I bet you'll be less sore.

as far as soreness goes I don't worry about it. I can ride a bike for 3 hours and I'll sure be sore, but will I grow? likewise if I don't get sore but got stronger then I'm happy. I actually have great results when I DON'T get sore, it means my recovery's working overtime. but usually I'm sore.

 

[Lifeforce]

Finally back from my sickness went balls on the wall and made some PRs

WORKOUT - Pissed off

Shoulder press w/ dbs 9x19 kg 42 lbs very good form on all
Shoulder press w/ dbs 6x19 kg 42 lbs
Shoulder press w/ dbs 7x19 kg 42 lbs

Pause Bench 5x65 kg very strict on all
Pause bench 4x70 kg

Incline db press 8x19 kg wide out and deep down on all sets
Incline db press 6x19 kg
Incline db press 8x19 kg

Squat ATG 5x123.5 kg 271 lbs +3 kg Increase
Squat ATG 1x141 kg 310 lbs PR
Squat (paralell) 1x151 kg 332 lbs PR

One leggedf Calf torture 50(15,10,8,5,2,10)x120 kg

Biceps curls db 10x19 kg +1-3 rep
Biceps curls db 6x22 kg +4 reps
Biceps curls db 4x22 kg
Biceps curls db 2x22 kg
Biceps curls bb 6x40 kg
(cheating on some reps)

Skull crushers to forehead 10x32.5 kg 5x37.5 kg, 3x37.5 kg

Comments

This maybe isn't productive but I don't give a **** right now I was so pissed off when I went to work I didn't care at all what I did. When I came home I was calm again. Been a long week and everything going against me so I needed to let of some steam. Worst case I need an extra day to recover.

 

[mrRuckus]

being sore all the time = eat more protein and food. add 500cals per day and do more cardio, I bet you'll be less sore.
.

4000!!!

 

[Warboss Alex]

4000!!!

why not?

massive calories = massive gains, massively better recovery. you gotta give a little to gain a lot. I never cared about keeping abs or eating too much (I was an endo and eating 4.5k at 180), gained about 50lbs and lost fat in my first year.. you can say newbie gains but if I hadn't just been eating I wouldn't've gained half that much AND I'd've been fatter. but the choice is yours.

 

[RedPill]

massive calories = massive gains, massively better recovery. you gotta give a little to gain a lot. I never cared about keeping abs or eating too much (I was an endo and eating 4.5k at 180), gained about 50lbs and lost fat in my first year.. you can say newbie gains but if I hadn't just been eating I wouldn't've gained half that much AND I'd've been fatter. but the choice is yours.

It's hard to keep in mind sometimes that sacrificing an ideal bf% has a huge payoff in the end - all that muscle you gain will melt fat away quickly when you put more focus on getting leaner (not to be confused with the bulk/cut methodology). When I started out, I was one of those skinny fat guys. No muscle, ridiculously thin, but with a spare tire. Cardio at that stage was worthless. A little over a year later, it's tempting to say "hey it's summer let's lean up some," but I don't want to slow down my current rate of gains. Like you said, short-term sacrifice for long-term payoff.

And to Lifeforce - hey man sometimes the pent-up aggression workouts are the best, even if you aren't following the plan exactly.

 

[grr]

I agree. You must reach a volume of size & strength where you can maintain muscle size just by diet if you had to.

 

[Lifeforce]

WORKOUT - Back, chest, tris, forearms, abs

Pause Bench 5x67.5 kg +2.5 kg Inrease
Pause Bench 7x70 kg +3 reps Inrease

Incline press 10x19 kg +2 rep Inrease
Incline press 8x22 kg +2.5 kg Inrease
Incline press 6x24.5 kg +5 kg

Lat Pulldown 4x100 kg (was too tired to do anything worthwhile)

Deadlift 8x125 kg (singles) +2 reps Inrease

Bent over rows 10x70 kg +2 reps
Bent over rows 6x72.5 kg +2.5 kg
(don't like this exercise!)

Decline sit-ups 20x15 kg Inrease
(felt too easy, should have gone with 20 kg)

Skull crushers 6x45 kg
Skull crushers 6x45 kg

Forearm curl 8x35 kg/4x35 kg/1x35 kg


Comments

Felt alot stronger today. Made sure to keep everything perfect form, especially deads and bench where I stopped one rep short of failure to maintain form. Pretty satisfied with todays workout.

 

[DrSassyPants]

What's your diet looking like nowadays Life?

 

[reyalp]

no update from teh lifey camp, what's up?