ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ ||| The 2023/2024 Gym Rats Thread ||| ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

[Somnambulist]

Summer seems to come later so I’ve delayed mine - no incentive when it’s cold and wet outside!

Began at the start of the month. Averaging about 500g loss a week. Strength basically unaffected - just keeping intensity the same and dropped a set on 3 set stuff as all the literature shows the amount of work needed to maintain adaptations = a lot less than the amount needed to get them in the first place. No point impairing recovery when I’m unlikely to make much progress while cals are low.

 

[Somnambulist]

Nice.

As an old person, I have a cruise booked at the end of August so am basically slow bulking until that ends. No shred this summer. But I loathe cutting, anyway.

Sitting at about 95kg unladen, focusing on hypertrophy because why not, and going to transition to strength/power for the rugby season.

I have also discovered the horrors of belt squatting. Not content with using a trap bar at a deficit to pretend it's a leg press, I rigged up a belt squat in my home gym and it is BRUTAL when done for 10+ reps, particularly with slow descents and two second end-ROM pauses.

I love a good belt squat. The best version I ever tried was the basic weightlifter style one with a dip belt and loading pin, stood on two boxes and near a rack to maintain stability. My gym used to have quite small 10kg plates which meant I could load the pin up with the plates horizontal but keep my regular squat stance… alas they then changed to these oversized Ivanko plates and got rid of the boxes.

In recent years they bought the Pit Shark belt squat machine but it’s not the same it - it only feels ‘right’ if you squat like you’re at Westside Barbell, it pulls you forward so you have to sit back to counter it and is one of those machines where it feels like you have to load far more plates than should be necessary for it to be heavy. One of the few movements where it’s easier to do it properly (i.e. in a way that rek quadz with good ROM) with a DIY method than with most of the machines that I’ve seen.