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

[Somnambulist]

Managed to find a reasonably priced set of steel plates. Well, I say reasonably priced... £290 for 77.5KG...

Do you guys think I should get them powder coated for an additional £70?

If that was Pro Plates then THICCBOI10 (I lol’d) gets you 10% off which makes it slightly less gross. The bare steel will need cleaning when it’s delivered as it’s usually greased up for transport and they’ll probably need a rust protection spray, so if that all sounds like a lot of faff the powder coating might be worth it.

Taking about 100 orders a day too so I don’t think delivery times are going to be speedy.

 

[Somnambulist]

It's with a company a pal of mine has dealt with a lot, 'Weightlocker'. I messaged them last night and thankfully they do a 10% NHS discount which as you said makes it slightly less painful. Think I'm going to go for the uncoated option. If all it'll take is a spray with some anti rust stuff then that's not too much of an issue.

Saying this, just looked at Pro Plates and they're options seem much cheaper! Can get it powder coated for the same price and their delivery is cheaper.

There seem to be loads of these steel plate companies that have popped up - seems to be one of the lockdown entrepreneur opportunity areas - and they’re all super similar... but Pro Plates had a bunch of reviews so I went with them for my order for the Mira short-handle Oly DBs I got.

The plates are only 2cm thick so I should be able to get to 30-35kg per DB without needing to buy/use 10kg ones... as big plates on dumbbells don’t work well and that’ll be enough to at least do some meaningful lower body work with.

 

[Somnambulist]

Bench press. 7 sets.

Incline BP. 3 sets.

OHP. 2 sets.

An hour done. I then did 3 sets of CGBP and and 3 sets of skull crusher's.

Too many similar movements, too many sets, which I’m guessing are a bit easy as if I did 7 sets of bench I’d have nothing left for any other pressing.

Pick a couple of compounds for that day - ideally in different planes of movement - do like 6-8 sets total, then do a couple of sets of isolations for chest/tris/side delts. A good rule of thumb supported by the research is something like 10-20 hard* (as in <3 reps in the tank) sets per body part per week over 2-3 sessions.

Past the beginner stage, doing more is better than doing less for gains, but only up to a certain point: as you increase volume you get into something like diminishing returns where you can keep adding more but it doesn’t do anything more for you and just extends your workout time needlessly (called ‘junk volume’). Add more still and you start going down the other side of the hill where progress is slower, non-existent or you even start to backslide because the amount of work you’re doing is past your ability to recover from it properly for the next session. Something that always stuck with me I heard years ago was ‘do as little as you need to do to keep progressing’ - so if you’re not a complete beginner and doing say 12 sets for chest each week (both from compound and iso work combined) and lifts are all going up, why add more gym-time doing 13-20 sets if you don’t have to?

*most people don’t train hard enough and their ‘2 from failure’ actually turns out to be 5+ from failure when actually pushed in a sports science lab getting screamed at by a spotter - you can get a LOT out of a few sets if they’re done with focus and intensity. I don’t like training to failure but sometimes doing it for a session or two in a safe way can be illuminating as to what you can actually do vs what you think you’re doing and get you better at judging reps in the tank.

 

[Somnambulist]

I would say almost 2 months. Since I started gym I've lost about 10 pounds, I am eating about a few hundred calories short of maintenance on most days but a few it is normal.

Sleep is good. No stress.

Past the 'new to lifting' stage and as you get progressively lighter when dieting, it becomes more and more difficult to make good progress on lifts and the goal often ends up being just to maintain weight on the bar, so I wouldn't be surprised you're stalling on bench if you're spending most of your time in a deficit atm.

I'd imagine you'll progress fine once you finish the diet and do some form of bench a couple of times a week; things like obvious weak points and specific work to rectify those don't tend to crop up until you've been lifting a while and have really settled in to certain movement patterns and are like a machine in terms of performing reps, bath path and all that sort of stuff.

 

[Somnambulist]

What is the que for the lats, do you need to squeeze them together? I'm sure once you start lifting they start squeezing anyway?

Watch the other pillars too.

 

[Somnambulist]

Gym’s back open on the 2nd, praise be to the god of gains.

Weights still haven’t arrived but Lockdown 3 will so be a thing so haven’t cancelled my order and tbf they did say average weight time would be 3 weeks or so and I ordered on the 6th, so still time this week for delivery.

 

[Somnambulist]

Did some tester sessions the last couple of days, obviously a lot less strength lost than the first lockdown so anticipate things being back to normal in a couple of weeks. Nice to feel the knurling of the bar and hear the clink of plates agin.

 

[Somnambulist]

Yeah one of my first upper sessions back I felt like I could have benched a huge PB... but didn't have a spot around and wasn't willing to risk it... soon! Often makes me consider having either more frequent deloads, or when I do have a deload week doing way, way less than usual.

 

[Somnambulist]

Oh joy, no more gym again as of midnight - can squeeze my last session in shortly then it's back to training on the landing, although at least I'll have some weights this time...

 

[Somnambulist]

It's been recommended that PBs are done every two weeks or so.

I wouldn't go for 1RM PBs very frequently but every session I'm hoping for a PB or some sort, be that extra reps with a given weight, moving up to a new weight even if that's a sneaky 1kg jump.

 

[Somnambulist]

Wall-supported single leg RDLs are an absolute glute killer! Haven't really got anything to do hip-thrusts on for my 2nd leg day so wanted another hinge other than regular RDLs and these are godly, although it takes a bit of faffing about finding the right distance from the wall and foot height. Press the back leg into the wall and as a global cue for most of my leg training now, actively press the big toe into the ground (whilst staying balanced evenly through the foot). Feel the burn the next day.

 

[Somnambulist]

I would only eat a multi if you’re dieting and food variety is limited, and even then it’s more of an insurance policy than anything and half of it ends up being ****** out. If you make an account on Chronometer or something and stick a days food in, as long as your diet isn’t a disaster devoid of whole foods you’ll see it’s pretty hard to not hit a good amount over the RDAs for water soluble vitamins daily and the fat soluble ones over a few days (plus you’re supping O3 anyway).

There’s an argument for magnesium but it’s more for athletes who will train all day and sweat a lot, which isn’t the average gym bro.

Creatine, O3 (if you don’t eat a oily fish on the reg) and D3 are basically the trifecta of supplements* worth paying for. I suppose caffeine pills might be an honourable mention rather than wasting money on pre-workout drinks but you have to be willing to take a decent hit to see benefits and if you train late in the afternoon/evening it’s a bad idea as it will likely disrupt sleep due to the long half-life.

/MNU Nutritionist

*I don’t count protein powder as it’s a versatile food source to me.