Just trying to get big

[MikeM]

I love your enthusiasm and desire to succeed, but where did you get this routine? You are hammering yourself into the ground, especially with pressing. If I'm out of line, please say so and I'll not say another word but it seems to me you're really over working yourself and only survivng because you take unplanned days off here and there.

Your joints hurt because they aren't getting near enough recovery. White muscle, or joints, tendons, ligaments, etc take longest to recover so while you can press a medium weight the next day, your joints are rebelling completely.

Squats too, you can squat every day, but not to the level you are doing and especially not if you are deadlifting too which is ridiculously taxing and needs recovery.

The only message I see you sending to your delts and low back is that you are going to beat the crap out of them and never let them recover. That is very blunt and I apologize if I'm out of line, but I feel you are spinning your wheels.

Recovery is at least, if not more, important than the lifting itself. You can make bigger gains, much faster, and with a lot less joint grief if you adjust your routine a little bit. Upper body recovers better with every other day lifting. Lower body can do more, but if you go heavy, it's really 48-72 hours depending on how hard you are hitting it. Consider some longer recovery time to help you make progress.

Hit your big lifts hard once a week. Only lift every other day at most. You're better off hammering squats, bench and deadlifts once a week and then recovering properly.

Just my opinion, feel free to ignore. I just see something and am pointing it out. Everybody's different. Do what works for you at the end of the day.

[SecondsOut]

thank you, Mike. i will make all the necessary adjustments. good luck with your fitness goals.

[SecondsOut]

Diet

[BendtheBar]

Keep driving hard.

[SecondsOut]

^ hell yeah

[SecondsOut]

Rest

Diet

[MikeM]

Originally Posted by SecondsOut

thank you, Mike. i will make all the necessary adjustments. good luck with your fitness goals.

Thanks! I need some luck especially with deadifts which for some reason I suck at.

I hope I didn't offend you. Looking back, I sounded all preachey which was not my intent. I just want to help you as I have experienced joint pain from lifting too frequently and it sucks.

Rock on.

[SecondsOut]

I'll start posting my warmup sets, too. I use them to decide how to train on a given day or as indicators that I need to adjust my routine. I do not include my warmup sets in my total volume. The warmup sets are in brown because F you and your primary colors

DL is just a repeat of my last workout. I'm going to stick with this routine (3x5 DL + moderate volume front squat) for a while, and I want it to feel more familiar before I add weight.

I felt so fresh on inclines today, fresher than I felt on DL. Everything felt light, my form was excellent (I pause for all upper body pressing movements all the time, btw), and I felt like I had endless stamina. The high volume training/daily pressing is definitely paying off. 135 felt incredibly light, lighter even than it felt on flat bench the other day. I only did 4 x 7 to limit myself; I might've been able to get 6 x 10 x 135, but I'm trying to stay fresh so that I can keep my near-daily frequency up. There's something about maximizing # of days in the gym that seems beneficial to me right now, like I'm greasing the groove.

Lower Body Total = 9,725 lbs.

Deadlift = 4,725 lbs.

8 x 135
4 x 225
2 x 315
1 x 365
a*) 3 x 5 x 315

*I decided to increase my rests and time them. I'll use 3 mins. This workout was not difficult, and I didn't struggle with any reps. I could easily add more weight and not struggle. That said, bar speed is still pretty slow. My immediate goal for DL right now is to get comfortable handling 315. I want to be able to blast it up before I add weight.

Front Squat = 5,000 lbs.

8 x 90
a*) 10 x 115/135/115/135

*All sets were much easier than last time, and I felt more comfortable with the form. I think the groove is setting in I'll probably add weight next w/o.

Incline Bench* = 10,380 lbs.

10 x bar
8 x 95
4 x 135
2 x 165
a) 4 x 7 x 135
b**) 10 x 105/110/115/105/110/115

*My immediate goal for inclines is to grow out my tris and upper chest. I will probably be going for high volume for quite a while and reserve heavy weight/low volume for flat bench.

**105 felt like the bar, that's how fresh I felt today. I was tempted to add a lot of weight, but I resisted. I really want to feel fresh tomorrow, too. I compromised by doing a 3-step pyramid (+5 lbs. each step) two times. It's another little Pavel trick, comrade

[jdmalm123]

Originally Posted by SecondsOut

I The warmup sets are in brown because F you and your primary colors

haha!!



I like what you're doing!

Glad the volume pressing paid off! What percent of max were you generally using when pressing that often?

[SecondsOut]

thanks haha

on all the presses, i was always working with low-40s to high-50s %1-RM for high volume workouts. if i averaged out all my workouts, though, i'd say it would be very close to 50% on the nose. my standard for high volume work is 6x10 @ 50%, and i just tweak things from there as i go along.