*** The 2016 Gym Rats Thread ***

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reiyushin said:
I tend to not get bad rips often but recently I picked up a really nasty one so I've been pulling the bulk of my lifts with straps.

They do tend to happen when you either misgrip the bar or your grip isn't strong enough.
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Aye my grip is pretty weak, and I'm not pulling anything like what you guys are - think in a couple of months it'll really start to hold me back.

Probably grab a pair of ironmind grippers and get working on it.
 
The grippers will do nout for your bar grip strength in my experience.

You need to do holds at the top of your lifts ~ 5 seconds at the end of each set then 15-30seonds for the final rep of the day :)

The grippers provide an increase to your crushing strength, great for handshakes but not so good for resisting a heavy barbell trying to roll out of your hands :)
 
After quite a dramatic lifestyle change, I’m in need of some advice from you kind folk .. the advice might just be to keep on doing what I’m doing, but I’m checking to see if anyone has any alternative input.

My training all of last year went pretty darn well, I was making a lot of strength gains and looking better than ever before. It could have been a bit better with a cleaner diet and more calories… but all in all I was happy with my additional size.

Fast forward from December (big old bulking month as I had the entire month off and working hard in the gym) to now. I have moved to the Sunshine coast of Australia and things have worked out pretty well for me. I live less than 10 minutes from work, the gym is about 5 minutes from work and there’s an epic surf spot right next to work as well.

I’ve been out of the gym for the 2 months I took off to holiday / move / find a job and I’m back on it now (dear lord it hurts). Work positively encourages employees to have a healthy lifestyle, so they don’t mind if I take an hour and a half for lunch and do something active during that time.

The only “catch” is for me on a personal level, is that I try to go for a surf before work, during lunch and after work as well (particularly since there’s still a little bit of sunlight left when I leave and the water is still super warm). It all depends on conditions of course as sometimes there’s nothing on offer … but what it does mean… is that I don’t have an awful lot of fuel in the tank to work the gym as hard as I’d like.

So, I tend to base my split on this routine… but mix things up a bit / do alternative exercises based on how I'm feeling the day
https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/shaun--s-3-day-muscle-building-split.html

So, my questions:
Were you in my position, would you stick to a 3 day split like above, and just fit them in when you can?
Would you change the routine to suit my new lifestyle (i.e: focus on being more ripped and nimble) ?
For the fuel in the tank… would you just up the clean calories and wait for my body to get used to all the abuse? (surfing is pretty hectic on your shoulders and arms in particular due to all the paddling)

Any input welcomed!
 
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Bit of an update. Trained legs last night for the first time in nearly three weeks. Had a bad quad strain so I've avoided them totally. I think quads are one of my strongest bodyparts so I've not been too concerned about it. Had an okay first session back. First time doing squats in a few month too but gonna aim to get my numbers right back up on them! Went up to 14 x 180kg.

Current state of affairs:

Cardio going up this week. Carbs dropping for the next 3 days.*

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Supercow said:
So, my questions:
Were you in my position, would you stick to a 3 day split like above, and just fit them in when you can?
Would you change the routine to suit my new lifestyle (i.e: focus on being more ripped and nimble) ?
For the fuel in the tank… would you just up the clean calories and wait for my body to get used to all the abuse? (surfing is pretty hectic on your shoulders and arms in particular due to all the paddling)
Any input welcomed!
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If you enjoy the split then stick with up, modify your diet to suit your new needs (more calories, more proteins and where possible, more sleep) and understand that your gym will affect your surfing and vice versa until your body adapts :)
 
My gym is being turned inside out with new equipment from Cybex, literally everything getting replaced.

Pros:
More squat racks with more proper oly bars - aggressive knurling! - and bumper plates (alas, Jordan, not Eleiko). The racks have benches that slide up and out of the way when not being used and there's some 'technique trays' that you presumably use for RDLs (or shrugs lawl).

Tons of new machines including a good girls/bad girls one which amused me.

Cons:
I can no longer do seal rows because the new benches have too much stuff underneath. :( Going to have to try and find a horizontal pull that feels as amazing on the midback.

Still nowhere high enough to hang my rings off for ring pull-ups.
 
Spent an amazing hour and half in the company of a champion powerlifter at a local gym.

Gave me some great cues, advice and support and resulted in some lifts which I never knew I had in me at this time.

Squat 1RM was 75kg: Went 60kg x 8 - 80kg x 3 - 90kg x 1 walked out 100kg. Did some chatting then I said I was ready for some more. Expecting 95kg I actually did 100kg x 1. As a finisher I then walked out 140kg, yes it felt heavy as hell but I manged to lower it down under control to the safeties. He said that for a beginner my technique was actually ok not great but good enough to groove and increase weight. A great thing was that he helped me organise the take off and walk back better. Previously I calf raised the bar up and took random steps back. Now I squat the bar off the safety. Let the bar settle. Left foot back, Right foot back. Brace then squat..
He also showed me good breathing cues, so today my obliques are sore as hell.

Onto bench 1RM was 60kg - I went - 60kg x 3 - then 65kg x 1 then 67.5kg x 1.
He said my form was going off, because one arm was flaring and the other arm was keeping tight. I tried the Slingshot which gives you a great strong feeling at the bottom. I tried and hit 80kg x 3 then 85kg x 1. It felt great to bench over bodyweight.
 
Just ran a cycle of smolov jr for bench and will test 1rm this Saturday to see if I made any progress... Thinking of what program to run from next week though. I've only every ran powerlift/strength training programs during my short time training so I decided to give a short 10x10 GVT style session on squats a go. Only racked up 60kg but it was brutal near the end. I have some bad DOMS and this was on tuesday. Not sure if I eat/sleep enough to recover properly from a GVT program or whether I should go back to a strength routine.
 
GVT is very brutal for natural lifters. I prefer AGVT which is slightly less volume (10 sets of 5 reps) which still kicks your bottom but offers 50 reps of volume. So 100kg x50 = 5000kg (5 Tonnes!!!) for one set for example - that's still a lot of volume.
 
Freefaller said:
GVT is very brutal for natural lifters. I prefer AGVT which is slightly less volume (10 sets of 5 reps) which still kicks your bottom but offers 50 reps of volume. So 100kg x50 = 5000kg (5 Tonnes!!!) for one set for example - that's still a lot of volume.
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Thanks mate, I will look into AGVT. Otherwise I'll run a quick FF5 then back onto madcows or texas.
 
Anyone know how much used weights go for?
I got a marcy sr50 squat rack and around 160kg of plates, standard 1" various brands. not really getting used due to space now and started going to gym with someone from work after shift.
 
Tested 1rm for bench yesterday after running smolov jr. 1rm before was 85kg, yesterday was 97.5... Couldn't do 100kg so that weight still alludes me! Was just thinking that surely now without the stimulus of benching 4x a week the bench will go down anyway?
 
The Chemist said:
Tested 1rm for bench yesterday after running smolov jr. 1rm before was 85kg, yesterday was 97.5... Couldn't do 100kg so that weight still alludes me! Was just thinking that surely now without the stimulus of benching 4x a week the bench will go down anyway?
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That depends... If you leave off chest training entirely, then sure. If you maintain once a week, you will still make gains but more slowly. :)

Just keep pushing out the 80% reps, increasing slowly over time, and you will hit 100kg in a couple of weeks. :cool:
 
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