*** The 2019 Gym Rats Thread ***

Somnambulist said:
Perhaps! I am a manlet of peace though... a lot of it is technique tbh (and specific grip strength); you can easily use too much upper body to pull yourself about and forget to use your legs, lose energy faffing when momentum or better planning would have been more efficient. Humbling, but good fun!
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Aye, did this a few weeks ago and felt very much the same. My forearms where absolutely cooked for days after!
 
On what has been a terrible week in the gym overall I finally broke through 140 for 5x5 on low bar squat. Damn near killed me. Then onto leg press.

I’ve also somehow bruised the palm of my hand on my ring finger tendon. That can’t be good. I think it was my T bar rows that finished it off. Bench press is going to hurt.
 
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It's crazy how many imbalances you notice when you start to really put on the muscle.

My left peck is notably smaller when pumped then my right, but my right lat is almost none existent when compared to the left. Don't really know how to counter act this, especially the lat issue. Doesn't matter how much I focus, I just can't seem to FEEL the muscle on the right side anywhere near as much under load.
 
Was on the 5x5 for around 6/7 weeks before I started getting some real pain in my knee, decided to stay off it a couple weeks and things seemed fine. Tried to just do the bar squat yesterday and the pain has flared right back up. Definitely going to book in a physio. In the meantime because Squats are so key to 5x5 I have dug out GordyR's guide which had the split days on and I will follow that I think as its pretty straight forward and I like the exercises.
 
DrToffnar said:
It's crazy how many imbalances you notice when you start to really put on the muscle.

My left peck is notably smaller when pumped then my right, but my right lat is almost none existent when compared to the left. Don't really know how to counter act this, especially the lat issue. Doesn't matter how much I focus, I just can't seem to FEEL the muscle on the right side anywhere near as much under load.
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*cough* mobility and stability problems *cough*

Amongst others...
 
DrToffnar said:
Your almost certainly right. Reset everything to zero a few weeks ago to try and get my form decent.
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Probably won't help, because your brain thinks it is doing the right thing already.

Start doing band shoulder dislocations and every external and internal shoulder rotation thing going so you might be able (there is no guarantee) to find what is causing the problem...

I found - after thirty years - a pec release (which came from poor scapula fixation) helped balance me out, but your mileage will vary...
 
I need to get on some shoulder rotational love, my dead right shoulder has taken over after like 6+ years of being the naff one and is now better than my left shoulder and hurts less :p
 
Right I'm done with this deficit.

Started the second week in Feb @ 74kg. Weighed in yesterday at 65.8kg. I haven't completely gotten rid of everything I wanted to but I'll end at 50kg and I'm starting to lose some strength.

So now I want to start building muscle up again. To lose the fat I was on about 1800kcals a day. I had a few cheat weekends in that time but on the most part was pretty strict. What would you guys advise upping my kcals to? I was thinking 2500 but when I started lifting again I was on around 2600 and put on quite a bit of fat.

Also looking at my routine...I can only get to the gym 2 days a week at the moment. From the end of October I am aiming to get an extra day in a week but this is what I'm doing for now:

Monday:
Squats
BB bench
Standing OHP
Machine flies
Machine Lateral raises
Rope tricep pull downs

Thursday
Deadlifts
Bent of BB rows from the ground
Pull ups
Cable close grip rows
Straight arm pull downs
Maybe a bicep exercise if there's time.

(Everything is 3x8 except for deadlift which is 3x5)

I'm trying to cover all the main compound exercises then isolate with machines (although I could do more free weight isolation stuff). Is there anything else you guys would recommend for a 2 day split?

Thanks in advance!
 
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ShortWarning said:
Right I'm done with this deficit.

Started the second week in Feb @ 74kg. Weighed in yesterday at 65.8kg. I haven't completely gotten rid of everything I wanted to but I'll end at 50kg and I'm starting to lose some strength.

So now I want to start building muscle up again. To lose the fat I was on about 1800kcals a day. I had a few cheat weekends in that time but on the most part was pretty strict. What would you guys advise upping my kcals to? I was thinking 2500 but when I started lifting again I was on around 2600 and put on quite a bit of fat.

Also looking at my routine...I can only get to the gym 2 days a week at the moment. From the end of October I am aiming to get an extra day in a week but this is what I'm doing for now:

Monday:
Squats
BB bench
Standing OHP
Machine flies
Machine Lateral raises
Rope tricep pull downs

Thursday
Deadlifts
Bent of BB rows from the ground
Pull ups
Cable close grip rows
Straight arm pull downs
Maybe a bicep exercise if there's time.

(Everything is 3x8 except for deadlift which is 3x5)

I'm trying to cover all the main compound exercises then isolate with machines (although I could do more free weight isolation stuff). Is there anything else you guys would recommend for a 2 day split?

Thanks in advance!
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It's hard to give a number without knowing your activity levels over your waking hours. Whatever your maintenance requirements were before, they'll be a bit less now because there's less of you. I'd just start with something conservative for a week or two (as you'll have an initial weight spike the reverse of how you get the initial drop when you diet) and then work from there, taking into account you only ever need to be in a small surplus to build new tissue, so weight gain should trickle up over time in conjunction with your working weights in the gym going up over time too.

Routine-wise if you can only do x2 a week I'd alter that slightly,

A = squat, bench, some sort of RDL/good morning/hamstring curl, pull-ups or some other vertical pull
B = deadlift, OHP, something quaddy that's easy on the back, rows

Then do some antagonistic supersets after each for bis/tris or pecs/side delts or whatever. What you could do as well, is on Friday or Saturday perform some bodyweight stuff to get some extra work in, using something like Myo-Reps (a rest-pause technique) to make it short but effective until such time as you can do x3 a week.
 
Finally going back to the gym today after just over 3 weeks off recovering from an operation. I'm going to bring my numbers down a lot to try and improve my form. I might be wrong, but I happened to see this video on Lower Back Position Control of Rip's recently and I think that it's the key to my form issue.


I've been practicing that movement so hopefully I can incorporate it into my squat and deadlift.
 
Somnambulist said:
It's hard to give a number without knowing your activity levels over your waking hours. Whatever your maintenance requirements were before, they'll be a bit less now because there's less of you. I'd just start with something conservative for a week or two (as you'll have an initial weight spike the reverse of how you get the initial drop when you diet) and then work from there, taking into account you only ever need to be in a small surplus to build new tissue, so weight gain should trickle up over time in conjunction with your working weights in the gym going up over time too.
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Thanks for the reply. Assuming everything is the same (my activity won't really be changing) maybe up to 2200-2300 then?
 
ShortWarning said:
Thanks for the reply. Assuming everything is the same (my activity won't really be changing) maybe up to 2200-2300 then?
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I find it best to trial a set amount of calories out a for period of time then closely monitor your weight. This is my first time bulking, been doing so for about 4 months now. The first month or two I actually continued to loose weight at about 2500 calories. I'm not lifting heavy at all but I do train often (upper lower split 4-5 times a week). I'm now sitting at closer to 3000 cals a day and only just managing to see a slight 1/half a pound increase every other week.
 
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