***The 2020 Gym Rats Thread*** ᕦ( ͠°◞ °)ᕥ

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Not worried about upper body because you can do a lot with push-ups, dips, a pull-up bar, resistance bands and rest-pause techniques like Myo-Reps.

Lower body will be a bit trickier.

I have noticed people on FB opening up their home gyms or garden callisthenics areas to help other bro’s out. Keep a look out.
 
No idea what I'm going to do. Press ups aggravate an elbow injury. Nowhere I can put a pull up bar. Just going to get skinny fat until this all blows over I guess. :p

600mg of Test E p/week - scientifically proven to add more lean mass over 12 weeks whilst doing nothing than a natty training consistently. :p
 
I’d also like to note:
1) it takes a couple of weeks of no stimulus before you start to lose strength
2) as long as you’re eating enough you’re unlikely to lose much muscle in 1-3 months
3) even if you lose strength and size, muscle memory is real and although you won’t rebound instantly, it’ll come back a lot quicker than it took to get to there in the first place
4) you get to relive noob gains mode all over again (and noob DOMS, unfortunately)
 
I hear ya. However I think the gyms will be shut for a lot longer than 3 months.

It’ll probably make sense to start back with sl 5x5 by the time they reopen.

Some spit and sawdust gyms are already taking back-handers or letting people train hush-hush - in the case of my gym the elite guys have keys and will train in there privately: all about who you know obviously.

If I’m still having to do bodyweight stuff after a couple of months I’ll see what the crack is with people renting out their garage gyms locally (this is a thing I’ve seen already).
 
Assuming this is going to last 3 months or so, I'm tempted to cut more agressively than normal so I'm in a position to lean bulk when gyms open again. I know I'm going to lose muscle regardless so I think I may use this as an opportunity to cut as much fat as possible although obviously making sure I eat suffient protein and as much muscle stimulus as possible.

I think I'll concentrate on my running (got a treadmill) - I feel a strong pair of lungs are more important atm :p

I'd argue you're more likely to lose lean mass aggressively dieting without a sufficient training stimulus than you are just trying to maintain your current weight, although it depends on where your physique is at currently. Also one of the effects of being in a prolonged hypocaloric state is a compromised/weakened immune system, which obviously isn't a good thing currently, although I suppose it depends on your level of isolation.

Additionally, I think there's an element of hyperbole when it comes to gym rats thinking just because they don't have access to a gym their muscles are going to fall off. Yes you'll lose some specific strength if you've spent a long time becoming hyper-efficient at certain big lifts, but ultimately something like your tricep doesn't know the difference between barbell bench and doing dips between two chairs - it only knows tension demands are being placed upon it. Let's take pull-ups - how many people here can do 20 reps (for multiple sets) strict - as in no swinging/heaving - and with a full range of motion from the hang all the way to touching the sternum to the bar? Sprinkle in some inverted rows or resistance band rows and something you can curl or reverse fly and that'll keep your back busy for a good while...

Yes it's a bit harder for legs and requires some creativity there, but there's no reason why 95% of people with the bare minimum of kit at home can't maintain or even make some progress as long as there's some consistency with programming. The biggest impediment for most people atm is going to be willpower, because it's a lot harder to train at home consistently with all the distractions available compared to a gym.
 
At that bf% you have decent energy availability so if that’s what you wanna do it’s not as bad as someone relatively lean trying to get a bit dicier.

Also someone mentioned the Pull-Up Mate - it’s decent, and can handle surprisingly heavy loads for something packable.

Finally, natural leg extensions are as hard as Nordic curls and my quads are toasty. Also pistol squats going ATG against a wall to a simulate a hack squat are nasty too. So far the hardest movement pattern to make difficult is hip extension...
 
I wish I had space for a rack and bar - I miss the feeling of a heavy weight on my back. Upper body training has been going ok but my legs are really messing dem wheelz on the bar.
 
What do people think of these pushup boards? https://muscleboard.co.uk/

My normal gym routine is built around compound lifts which I can't do at the moment. Just looking for something to keep me ticking over for the next few months.

If you want push-up handles, just get some wooden mini parallettes off eBay for £15-20. More solid than the plastic-y ones on Amazon and not priced stupidly. I like them for adding some ROM to push-ups with the feet slightly elevated too, and using them to create room to get your head through more on handstand pushup variations.
 
Is anyone else finding motivation and consistency more of an issue trying to workout at home? Up until the lockdown I'd been really consistent with my gym attendance and was making some good progress, and once I remembered I had a weights bench and dumbbells stored away in the garage I thought I shouldn't really have too many issues without the gym, but for some reason I'm finding it harder to stick to a routine even though it's only a ten second walk down the garden.

I’m sure it’s the same as working from home - there’s a lot more distractions and ‘I’ll do it in a minute’ thinking - so it’s kind of like having to start from scratch as far as building it into a habit.
 
Yea I'm struggling to motivate myself but I'm still getting through it. I just feel like whatever I do is going to do 10% of what I did in the gym (as I have no weights at all). I've tried a backpack full with bottles of water but that still only equates to about 10kg.

I've decided I may as well cut during this time as I'm going to lose a load of strength anyway.

Edit - Any ideas for heavy things I can find in a supermarket to fill a backpack with?

You can get things like those massive water containers (20L+) which you can either fill with water or building materials like sand but then they won't fit in a back pack...

After faffing about, I've decided the secret is to keep the number of exercises minimal, but hammer them, because there's no way I can really 1:1 my gym routine atm and a lot of stuff is either far too easy or too impractical. If you're used to only doing 5's and stuff like that then it is a bit of a culture shock - I know I'll have lost peak strength, but I shouldn't lose much mass as long as I'm basically going to failure on these exercises a couple of times a week (which is okay because the systemic stress of failing isn't the same as failing a x3 bw deadlift or something) - but losing size shouldn't be an issue really if you're able to do these:

Dips (w/forward lean to get the pecs involved) with a slight pause at the bottom - I'd only start to stress if I could do more than 20-30 reps with a loaded backpack for sets, if not that's horizontal pressing sorted. Or you could work on one-arm pushups (or Archer pushups)- again unless you're doing those for 20+ reps a side I wouldn't worry.

Handstand push-ups, either against the wall or the upside-down L ones where you're feet are on a chair or something (ideally with hands elevated to get a greater ROM)... that's vertical pressing sorted, because unless you OHP your bodyweight for fun, then these are haaaaaard.

Pull-ups and inverted rows (ideally with feet elevated to the same height as the hands), both with pauses at peak contraction should again be challenging enough to keep nearly everyone busy for a few months when it comes to horizontal and vertical pressing.

Pistol squats - using a rope/band and elevating the standing leg (to help you if you aren't flexible enough), these hammer front of the leg and glutes, and again a pause at the bottom makes them harder - I've been doing the deck squat variation too - especially if you really try and keep positioning consistent. No it's not as nice as just squatting with a bar on your back but what can ya do.

Nordic curls and kneeling leg extensions are also incredibly hard and require assistance unless you've attained god-tier strength even for low reps.

That covers nearly everything - throw in some band lateral raises/face pulls/curls/abs - and even if it's not the same as heavy bar work, it's likely the difference between going back and having say, a 10% drop in performance that takes several weeks to bounce back from and a huge drop in performance that takes months to correct.
 
I'm actually doing almost all of those and I've found 10kgs worth of plates so I can put around 20kg in my backpack altogether. That should keep me going to a while.

I need to figure out how to weight inverted rows or I'll end up doing loads. My backpack touches the floor halfway through the rep. I'm putting my feet up on a stool for it at the moment.

It's not as bad as I though it would be. Missing the 5's though.

What are you rowing off? I have some slings and grips I can hang off my pull-up bar and adjust the height so that's not an issue. If you had rings you could flip the backpack and wear it on the front because it can go through the gap in the middle vs a bar where it'd bump into it.
 
My pull up bar. It’s between 2 walls and I can adjust the height of it. Rings would be amazing but I don’t have any.

Get some Angles 90 grips like I have, along with the slings they sell so you can make pseudo rings (but that can be used for other stuff) - they're a wicked little addition to my gym bag.
 
Waiting to see what the craic is with MuscleWorks and Pure. The former have added various facilities and some new machines while they’ve been closed #shadybutIDGAF. Train mid-afternoon so should be ok with both but I can’t face any sort of ‘one out, one in’ policy if it’s too busy, time limits or anything like that.

Gotten a bit podgy (for me), but no dieting until my strength is back to pre-lockdown levels.
 
Some sort of lower/upper split (e.g. lower, upper, rest, lower, upper, rest, rest, etc) is usually the default for x4 a week, assuming you stick to a 7 day cycle. Translated to a typical strength routine based around the classic big movements that’s usually ‘squat day, bench day, deadlift day, OHP day’ then you can pad each one out as you see fit (e.g. keeping both days balanced, skewing one lower day more quad heavy, the other hamstring, one upper day more pushing the other more pulling etc) depending on your goals/preference.
 
I’ll start Monday the 27th - I don’t want to go to MuscleWorks reopening because they’ve got DJs playing all day like it’s some sort of party. I usually train mid-afternoon so should be fine as far as access, and with my work Pure membership I do the same or on night shift go at midnight when it’s dead.

Got a lot of niggles from all this bodyweight high rep stuff though so might book a sesh on the opening weekend with one of the physios at MW and cracked, scraped and elbowed before I can enjoy the wonderful world of low to moderate rep stuff again.
 
Haven’t gone back yet as MW are transferring over to a new membership system and until Aug 1st are just doing day passes... at £10 a pop. Having a lazy week after all this bodyweight stuff and will go Pure when I do nights at the end of the week and test a few lifts to get an idea of starting weights for the next Monday...

They’re changing all their barbells to Texas Power bars too, which is kinda nice since pre-lockdown if you couldn’t grab one of them the other bars varied in quality a lot - yes, barbells make a difference - although it sucks for anyone that does WL’ing movements since they don’t spin much (and the centre knurling is no fun for front racks).
 
Night shifts tonight and I’ll pop into Pure and get an idea of what my starting numbers will need to be. Probably do full body tonight and Saturday and then get back on the LULPP rotation Monday. Will never take a barbell for granted again.
 
LOOOOOL - didn't read the small print; Pure are only open till 10pm every night (8pm weekends). Have to go tomorrow to test.

Das not it mane.

EDIT - I also had to reposition the screws on the lever belt in my work locker, because fatty. Sad times.
 
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Mixed bag! Haven't lost too much on squat and bench but my hip hinging stuff was pretty weak (the one movement pattern I haven't been able to train hard w/bodyweight). Pure are determined to upset me by taking away the plyo boxes I use for seal rows, so I'll have to do poverty BORs till they bring them back. One set of toes to bar cramped my abs as well :-/
 
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