DYELB: The Gainz Train

[coogles]

Not with that attitude it ain’t!

That’s okay though. There’s nothing magical about them and it’s very easy to argue that they waste a lot of energy resources when training. Unless you really love doing them, or need to do them because you’re a powerlifter, there’s no reason to force them in to a program.

Yeah pretty much. Plenty of ways to train the posterior chain without doing traditional deads.

[SAWCE]

Not with that attitude it ain’t!

That’s okay though. There’s nothing magical about them and it’s very easy to argue that they waste a lot of energy resources when training. Unless you really love doing them, or need to do them because you’re a powerlifter, there’s no reason to force them in to a program.

I do those at the very end of the back workout after I have already trashed my lats and lower back. 265 Max. Fine finisher, I have given up on big numbers in the DL @ AARP age. My max was only like 325 anyway.

This is a great plan. Once I get cleared to train quads again, I plan on hitting them with extensions to pre-exhaust them before doing any squat patterns so that I can get more on those movements with less weight on my joints and tendons and whathaveyous.

[Desertbreh]

I do those at the very end of the back workout after I have already trashed my lats and lower back. 265 Max. Fine finisher, I have given up on big numbers in the DL @ AARP age. My max was only like 325 anyway.

This is a great plan. Once I get cleared to train quads again, I plan on hitting them with extensions to pre-exhaust them before doing any squat patterns so that I can get more on those movements with less weight on my joints and tendons and whathaveyous.

Yeah, unless you're chalking it up with a bunch of your bros at the powerlifting ONLY gym, it's about how you look, not your total weight on a compound exercise. At least that's my story these days.

[coogles]

Yeah, unless you're chalking it up with a bunch of your bros at the powerlifting ONLY gym, it's about how you move, not your total weight on a compound exercise. At least that's my story these days.

ftfy

[SAWCE]

This is a great plan. Once I get cleared to train quads again, I plan on hitting them with extensions to pre-exhaust them before doing any squat patterns so that I can get more on those movements with less weight on my joints and tendons and whathaveyous.

Yeah, unless you're chalking it up with a bunch of your bros at the powerlifting ONLY gym, it's about how you look, not your total weight on a compound exercise. At least that's my story these days.

100%

[Desertbreh]

Yeah, unless you're chalking it up with a bunch of your bros at the powerlifting ONLY gym, it's about how you move, not your total weight on a compound exercise. At least that's my story these days.

ftfy

I accept this correction as an improvement.

[D Griff]

395 was my max deadlift. Never happening again.

Not with that attitude it ain’t!

That’s okay though. There’s nothing magical about them and it’s very easy to argue that they waste a lot of energy resources when training. Unless you really love doing them, or need to do them because you’re a powerlifter, there’s no reason to force them in to a program.

I really enjoyed them back in the day. It’s just cool moving that much weight around. It made me feel good. But I kept tweaking my back and that’s just no bueno. One day I may work them back in more Eric style at the end with lower weight. For now I’m really only lifting upper body as I’d rather save my legs for cycling and running which I also enjoy a lot more than leg day.

We’ll see where things go when the baby is here. I’m planning on joining the Y eventually since they have free childcare. I could take there, give a break, and get workouts in. I absolutely hate indoor cardio so maybe I’ll get back in to a bigger focus on lifting.

That said, the 2X/well week upper body alongside cycling and such seems to be maintaining my fairly well.

[D Griff]

ftfy

I accept this correction as an improvement.

It’s both. I want to look good, feel good, and be able to carry my groceries up stairs and such when I’m old.

[coogles]

I accept this correction as an improvement.

It’s both. I want to look good, feel good, and be able to carry my groceries up stairs and such when I’m old.

I definitely want to look good too, but at this point in my life I am 100% more concerned with how I move.

This is in large part why I have a love/hate relationship with cycling. I enjoy it, I want to be good at it, but if I spend too much time on the bike, flexed at the hip in a pretty static position, I start to feel like I don't move as well off of the bike.

[D Griff]

It’s both. I want to look good, feel good, and be able to carry my groceries up stairs and such when I’m old.

I definitely want to look good too, but at this point in my life I am 100% more concerned with how I move.

This is in large part why I have a love/hate relationship with cycling. I enjoy it, I want to be good at it, but if I spend too much time on the bike, flexed at the hip in a pretty static position, I start to feel like I don't move as well off of the bike.

I do kind of feel like you get used to it. I'm surprised it bothers you given you're pretty elite when it comes to training on flexibility and such. It could be that we're just built different though. Cycling is the only sport I've ever felt like I'm remotely naturally good at. I suck at all sports, have no coordination, sucked at power lifting... I feel like most power lifters who put in as much effort as I did got way stronger, like I did 5x5 and 531 for 5+ years and could never even squat 300. But cycling just comes pretty naturally for me.

[SAWCE]

Made it in to the gym this morning. I think it’s time to start eating more again. Been basically only doing some fruit with most of my meals for carbs. Protein still high at 390-410g every day, fats are just what I get from my meats plus some avocado added to some meals.

Probably start doing something like 200g carbs on training days, 100g on rest days, then like 60g fats every day. Start working my way up from there.

[coogles]

I do kind of feel like you get used to it. I'm surprised it bothers you given you're pretty elite when it comes to training on flexibility and such. It could be that we're just built different though. Cycling is the only sport I've ever felt like I'm remotely naturally good at. I suck at all sports, have no coordination, sucked at power lifting... I feel like most power lifters who put in as much effort as I did got way stronger, like I did 5x5 and 531 for 5+ years and could never even squat 300. But cycling just comes pretty naturally for me.

I struggle to imagine how how cycling could help with anything other than cycling. Hanging out for hours on end, flexed at the hip in cyclical movement, just doesn't translate to basic human movement out in space (walking, sprinting, throwing). I may be particularly sensitive to it, though, I suspect due to the issues I have with my hips from 25 years as a hockey goaltender. If I spend time on the bike I *have* to balance it out with at least a 10 minute yoga class or something. If not, I end up having a hard time accessing hip extension after awhile.

[SAWCE]

PT on Friday went well. She’s happy with where my knee is at right now. Need to schedule today, but she wants to see me every other week for the next six weeks; thinks I’ll be good to go after that. She expects to clear me to start doing light/bodyweight stuff in the gym after my next session. Gave me some new stuff to do at home to strengthen my knee so I’m gonna make sure to do those every other day like we talked about.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to move to a bro split workout routine. We’ll see how I hold up, but I’m going to try to train M-F each week. Haven’t gone with that frequency in a while… I may need to do something like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, rest Thursday, train Friday and Saturday then rest again on Sunday. I’ll run the bro split for at least these six weeks, but probably for a few months after as well. Once I’ve regained some strength in my quad and I feel confident in my knee I’ll go back to DC training. Then once my strength is really back I’ll move to a 3 way DC routine so I can throw some extra volume at arms and legs and start bringing them up.

Starting weight this morning is 222.0. Surprised I didn’t drop lower than that. Gonna start pushing food up slowly and start getting my weight back up. Training day macros will be 410p, 200c, 60f, and rest days will be 390p, 100c, 60f to start.

[SAWCE]

Got my meals pretty much nailed down. Keeping most of my carbs around my workouts on those days, and keeping those meals as low in fat as I can. Using a little insulin to shuttle carbs and stay a little leaner.

Meat weight is cooked, carb weight is uncooked.

M1 pre workout:
171g chicken breast, 2 cups bone broth, 90g rice. 65p, 7f, 75c

Intra workout:
25g clear whey, 27g Gatorade powder. 20p, 25c

M2 post workout:
34g whey isolate, 378g nonfat Greek yogurt, 19g honey. 65p, 30c

M3:
280g shrimp, 60g rice, handful of “stir fry” veggies. 65p, 50c

M4:
2 while eggs, 368g egg whites, 32g bacon, 55g avocado, 82g mixed berries. 65p, 25f, 10c

M5: 235g canned tuna, 38g light mayo, 80g clementines. 65p, 15f, 10c

M6: 228g mixed 99/1 ground turkey and 96/4 ground beef, 55g avocado. 65p, 15f.

Easy. I think I’m going to drop the clementines and berries from 4 and 5 and eat them with 2 instead, that way I’ve got all my carbs in my first three meals. I add some veggies to most meals as well for HELTH. Don’t count those as carbs since they barely have any. Things like mushrooms and peppers scrambled up in my eggs. This will be easy to scale up too as I need more calories to keep growing.

The tuna and mayo is very anti-bodybuilder of me. But it’s an easy meal that tastes good, can be made in batches for a couple days at a time, and is easy to eat. When life with the baby slows down a bit I’ll drop that for more chicken and probably some walnuts or something for the fats.

[D Griff]

That is a lot of protein! Kind of wild seeing it all spelled out. I like tuna and mayo With the stir fried veggies, it mostly all sounds decently tasty as well.

[SAWCE]

That is a lot of protein! Kind of wild seeing it all spelled out. I like tuna and mayo With the stir fried veggies, it mostly all sounds decently tasty as well.

It’s a lot for sure. I remember when I first started lifting struggling to get 150g a day in without using several protein shakes. Now this all goes down pretty easy lol.

The tuna is tasty for sure. I’d leave that in, but don’t want the mayo to be a long term staple in my diet and my days of being “hardcore bro” and eating tuna straight out of the can are long behind me.

[coogles]

I might need to bug you about a meal plan breh. I'm not into weighing out food and tracking macros but it's probably time if I'm going to make any progress from where I am today.

[SAWCE]

I might need to bug you about a meal plan breh. I'm not into weighing out food and tracking macros but it's probably time if I'm going to make any progress from where I am today.

It makes a difference for sure. Hit me up whenever.

[SAWCE]

Stuck to the meal plan pretty good last week. Had a few cheat meals throughout the week due to just being exhausted at the end of the day and meals getting push back later than I wanted with just not having as much time to eat. Still dropped close to 2lbs, so I’m bumping carbs up a bit. Not much, just an extra 25g with my post workout meal. I imagine I’ll do another 25g bump for the next several weeks before I stop losing weight and start gaining instead. Especially as I continue to cut more of those cheat meals out and get back on only one per week at most.

Training a bro-split was cool. Haven’t trained that way in a while. Was definitely sore in a way I haven’t been in a while. The soreness doesn’t mean shit, but it’s still fun to feel.

[D Griff]

I might need to bug you about a meal plan breh. I'm not into weighing out food and tracking macros but it's probably time if I'm going to make any progress from where I am today.

One thing I will say is that if you're not super hard core , you can do this for a couple of months and really learn what a certain amount of a thing looks like. I don't weigh anything but I do track a good amount of the time (not so much recently) and I feel like my guestimates are close enough after doing it pretty hard core years ago when I was burning off the fat I loaded on from age 19-26.

[SAWCE]

I might need to bug you about a meal plan breh. I'm not into weighing out food and tracking macros but it's probably time if I'm going to make any progress from where I am today.

One thing I will say is that if you're not super hard core , you can do this for a couple of months and really learn what a certain amount of a thing looks like. I don't weigh anything but I do track a good amount of the time (not so much recently) and I feel like my guestimates are close enough after doing it pretty hard core years ago when I was burning off the fat I loaded on from age 19-26.

Definitely. You start learning what different portions of things look like, start remembering random stuff about what macros per 100g of different foods are and it becomes much easier to work on the fly and eyeball things with “good enough” accuracy for keeping in general shape.

[golftdibrad1]

Pulled 485 for a double today. decent week of lifting. 3 weeks ago got 505 for a single, last week couldnt break 435 off the floor

My recovery must be shite. Oh well, strong enuf.

[SAWCE]

Pulled 485 for a double today. decent week of lifting. 3 weeks ago got 505 for a single, last week couldnt break 435 off the floor

My recovery must be shite. Oh well, strong enuf.

Yeah dude, any deadlift that starts with a 4XX+ is solid work. Good shit.

[SAWCE]

Spent the last few months since de bebe came prioritizing arms. Still giving them a bit more volume than everything else now that I’m back in the gym full time. Starting to see some size and a shape I can be happy with. Arms are still “small” and I’m sitting around 220lbs, but feels good to know I’m throwing more food and fuel on the fire and will be pushing my weight back up. Will hopefully be able to get up to 240ish before needing to do any mini cuts, and then hopefully after a quick one around there if needed I can push up to 260s.

[coogles]

Lookin' huge



I guess if I had to critique (this is the name of the game I guess), I'd agree that your arms lag the rest of your physique. Your arms aren't by any means small, but your lat development is pretty nuts and it sort of dominates your frame. Good "problem" to have.