Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log
You know you who it is already. Can't recall my old password or even what email I used so here we are. I promised I'd start logging if legend n1h did. So that's why I'm logging.
Short term goal:
Successfully formulate a relatively optimized and easy to adhere to offseason diet model. In terms of food selection, I am more or less following Chris Tuttle's recommendations. Our very own BGP has been getting some free diet stuff from Chris since he has a full client load but will send a handful of emails to people for free if you ask nicely and want help. If you don't know who that is, go on youtube/instagram and see the man's work.
Remain injury free, which is easy with my new exercise selection which loco would describe as "leg press and lat pulldown 4 lyfe"
Adjust to a more strictly bodybuilding programming style as opposed to a "powerbuilding" style.
Here is the medium term goal:
2024 summer on stage in classic physique division at a level that would be competitive for winning a pro card. Winning the card itself is immaterial for the medium term, it'll happen when it happens and I will be patient.
Possible obstacles to this goal are gym closers due to continued zero covid policy, possibly moving countries and being unable to focus on prep in the interim, or international political disaster. All of which are legitimate risks.
Ostensibly we will start competition prep late winter 2024 and do a very long slow 20-24 week prep where I never need to bring carbs lower than 200g/day.
Long term goal:
Compete in one professional level show in the classic physique divison in the next 10 years. Don't really give a **** about placings.
Natty: No. Test, deca, mk677, humalog, cjc with 1295 with DAC, berberine (although the last one is both a PED and a general health supplement). Low doses. high dose AAS are massively overrated for hypertrophy, the real magic is the insulin and gh (or gh secretagogues in my case). less than 1g of injectables with PEDs that work on the IGF pathway is much better than 3g of injectables, for example. I'd advise anyone who wants to go down the PED route to incorpoate gh or gh secretagogue peptides along with insulin while they are still taking 1cc of test per week before you ever add any other AAS or increase test dose. You can keep your AAS doses much lower if you actually address this very critical muscle building pathway rather than solely relying on AAS, which are harsh... man...
No prep drugs or harsh AAS until the aforementioned 2024 late winter date.
Diet: High carbohydrates with carbohydrate cycling (2 high days the day before my 2 leg days, 1 low day on the day off, 4 medium days per week offseason), moderate protein around 1.125g/lb of bw, low to moderate fats. I tried a high fat Palbumo approach in both offseason and precontest this academic year. It was a ****ing disaster; this is a terrible way to diet for bodybuilding. Although if somebody is not trying to look lean/dry/hard on stage and maintain athletic performance in the gym, it'd be a great diet to follow because antecdotally it can lead to very high compliance for some individuals because it just destroys so much of your physiological cravings and lowers appetite considerably. Somebody like the apple-pied obese woman who's username I don't even remember might do well on this because she could probably eat 80/20 ground beef bunless bacon cheeseburgers twice a day for an emotional high, not feel hungry the rest of the day, and have only consumed like 1800~ calories daily.
More detailed post with training program and food log to follow. I'm a busy man.
Legs
The leg equipment at this gym is not that good. Hamstring curl doesn't feel right. Hip thrust I didn't feel ****. Got some glute kickback machine that feels sorta okay but not great. Leg press is absolutely ace and I can get full atg depth on it, but then hack squat and v-squat machines can't. I might do my leg sessions at the hardcore basement gym which has a better hip thrust. That one has no leg press but it has a good v-squat and a hack squat both of which can ATG. I've never done either of these movements and if they hit my quads and glutes well I can just stop leg pressing and do these instead.
Hip thrust: 4 plates on each side which is all it could hold, didn't feel **** after 15 reps
Hamstring curls: 3 sets failure but no stretch at the top b/c it's made for short limbed people
Glute kickback machine: 3 sets failure
leg press: 3ppsx22, 12, 9
leg extensions: 3 sets failure
Got 2 clients competing in men's physique and classic physique next month and one guy who finished a pl meet this weekend. PL bro I obviously want to convert to bb. He started meet prep with a hamstring injury that got him to do conventional instead of sumo. Then on meet day we were shooting for 340kg and he smoked 290 opener, hamstring mini-tear on 320. He set a lbbs pr at 290 and bench pr 170. 100kg class, he was walking around at about 104-106 most of the meet prep and he was panicked af about not makign weight but then ended up weighing 96.8kg from the water cut.
So yeah I wanna train normal people just tryna get in shape/20 year old boys experimenting with PEDS, but instead I end up with aspiring competitors trying to fix their nutrition/PEDs. Men's physique guy not natty, classic guy natty. If you can't tell the difference from pics you should not ask and should instead google search "men's physique" and 'men's classic physique"
Also got one 36 year old former PL riddled by lower back issues who's making the switch to doing bb+bench only pl. Non natty, best numbers were like 270 in wraps 250 raw raw, 180 bench, 272.5 dl all at 100. I want to get him benching 230 as a 110 or a slightly overweight 100 within 2 years.
Push
30 degree incline: 35kgx15, 13, 10
incline machine: 3 sets failure
flat machine neutral grip: 3 sets failure
prone delt raises: 3 sets failure
tricep pushdowns: 110kgx20, 3 more sets myorep matching except on the final set I reduced to 90kg.
Done in around 56 minutes.
There’s surely not a white guy in the word named Dontrell
I played rugby with a white guy called Donte though, so everything is possible
Lots of Pacific Islanders called Isaac too
Isaac is about as universal name as can be. I've known Black, White, Latino, Chinese and Indian Isaacs.
The OG Dante was a White bro from Italy. I assume there are probably a number of White Dantes running around, but of course I doubt any of them spell it with an 'o'.
Legs
V-squat machine: 3ppsx16, 12 felt good and got a comparable pump to leg press, but felt much more pressure on knees
single leg ham curls: 4 sets failure
hip thrust: 2.5ppsx20, 15
FFESS: 12.5kgdbsx12x3
I think I got pain from FFESS because of an unstable surface I was using previously. This time it felt great.
That Jake Davison incel shooter from the UK was acutally a roid user too. But he did a bunch of barbell lifting and low reps on SBD and didn't look like he lifted because he was so high bodyfat.
RIP; he needed to get perfect haircuts, become metrosexual, take the beard off, clen+yohimbine, 15k steps per day, and PPL no barbells with chicken sweet potato/potato+veggies 4x/day + 1 meal of oatmeal, fruit, and protein powder. I coulda saved the boy's victims lives, saved his life, and gotten him sum pussy in just 8-12 months. He was really fat though so it would have taken some time. Barbell permabulking fat powerlifters literally creates incel shooters.
I'm sorry guys, that joke was tasteless and extremely insensitive, regardless of its veracity.
Easily my best before and after to date. This guy went from dad to chad. This was only 4 months. About 2 months of eating around maintenence, 2 months of cutting hard. He's a grinder. owns a little kids English school with his wife. 55 hours of getting bitched at by ****** parents and singing the ****ing ABCS with 6 year olds. Still gets in his 15k steps, meal preps, 4x/wk upper lower training, and minimal PEDs (test+mast+gh). He couldn't tolerate clen because of carpal tunnel. No orals or trenbolone b/c he's a bit of a pussy with PEDs. Guy refuses to go over 500mg/wk of test but will take 1g/day of caffeine for months on end LOOOOOOL. Montecore logic. Well, that's not totally true. He was being coached/forced into powerlifting by another mutual friend of ours and, not really understanding PEDS, was taking very large doses of anadrol without realizing that not everything in the steroid world has equivalent mg per mg toxicity. So technically I greatly lowered the toxicity of his PED regimen (he was on orals continuously for months) even though the total MGs went up. But the biggest difference was taking out all the bullshit low rep barbell training and getting him on a real hypetrophy routine and then cleaning up the diet. It's not the first time some powerlifter has taken advantage of some fitness newbie who just wanted to look better naked and got bamboozled into trying to increase his 5rm s/b/d.
Next mission convert the other guy I'm coaching who pulled 330kg conventional in training at 104kg training weight to bb. He's already 30. Only made his first deadlift beause of hamstring tear on 2nd. He's not a pussy with PEDs and takes waaayyy more than I told him to for the meet. He never cheats on his diet but misses his step counts often. His latest meet was something like 290/170/312.5 and he weighed in at 96.6 after water cut. Not sure how I can block out faces for videos.
My PMS are open and i'm getting enough clients to where I can't keep doing this for free/donations much longer. My inbox is open to h+fers, natty or enhanced.
Isaac is about as universal name as can be. I've known Black, White, Latino, Chinese and Indian Isaacs.
The OG Dante was a White bro from Italy. I assume there are probably a number of White Dantes running around, but of course I doubt any of them spell it with an 'o'.
I feel like there are two aspects. 1) How likely if you just heard the name that you would think "That is a black man" 2) How many black men are actually named this? IE Popularity
ETA: While researching high probability "black man" names, I came across a middle aged white woman named LaTroy. Is nothing ****ing sacred anymore?
Pull
Chins: bwx17, 12, 10 left a bit in the tank sets 2 and 3
underhand rows: 70kgx12, 9
HS high row: 80kgx15, 10, 9
t-bar chest supported row: 25kg playtex15, 12
seated simultaneous hammer curls: 10kgx17, 14, 12, 10, 10
I don't like the way this easy bar at this gym feels so I swapped movements.
Appetite been a bit lower for whatever reason. BW a little lighter around 99.x fasted in the morning. Sorta maingainining here.
This.
Think you're spot on about the importance of nature for peace of mind for humans Evo, which I think many just simply forget in their day to day existence.
At some point will you want to stop moving and just enjoy one area for a loooong time?
You never answered this directly. Going with the flow is fine and all, but are you planning to stay mostly in China? Moving to e.g. Thailand would require you to start more or less from scratch with learning the culture, sounds hard.
I can't answer more directly because the answer is I don't know. That's something I'm struggling with right now. Is this nomadicism (nomadism?) part of who I am and something I should just continue my whole life? The answer might be yes. I actually made a facebook account and added some old friends from a long time ago and it blew my mind that people could stay in the same place with the same partner at the same job for 10 years. Deep down, I actually somewhat fear this. My life is anything but boring. I can't remember the last time I felt the emotion of boredom. But obviously there's a craving for stability and familiarity at the same time.
I don't know what I want with my romantic relationships. I'm def not down with open relationships/poly/Destiny style crap, but am I really cut out for LIFELONG monogamy? maybe not, maybe something more like a serial monogamy and a series of 0.5-7 year exclusive and monogamous relationships that were never supposed to last a lifetime which is sort of what people gravitate toward naturally anyway. I was actually out with a 43 year old woman I met in the gym (not interested in her as anything but platonic plus I am currently taken, although she's attractive) who has gone through 2 divorces and has 2 kids with 2 different fathers and takes care of her eldest （16）. She was telling me all about her philosophy of not doing any sort of serious relationships anymore and spinning her hamster wheel about why literally everything should be casual/non comittal and how her husbands treated her well, didn't do anything wrong, but she found she just wasn't suited for a married life. Maybe I am in the camp, maybe I am not. I don't know.
These are sort of the 2 most important questions a human has for their life along with career and most have made some sort of difficult-to-reverse decision by the time they are my age. But I still don't really know and I'm not in a rush to find the 'answer' and honestly mostly just try to avoid even thinking about it.
Just chill, you'll probably gravitate toward what makes you happiest naturally. Humans might not be great at identifying their own preferences and what they want, yet their behaviour often ends up reflecting this anyway. Revealed preferences in economics.. there's often no deception, just an unawareness of what one's preferences even are. I'd say it's 50/50 that by the time I'm 50 I'll have lived in like 3 different countries and picked up a few more languages along the way.
Great push workout today. Changed my form back to a much more tucked version. I think my recent pec/bicep issues might have been from excess flare to some extent. I seemed to have no problem flaring when I do db free wieght pressing second, but maybe don't do that if I'm doing it first.
Flat db: 40kgx15, 12, 10 all paused obv
incline smith: 1px16, 11, 10 all paused obv
machine press: 2px 8, 6, 6 all paused obv
prone delt raises: 5 sets failure
tricep pushdowns: Cable machine here is terrible, may as well ahve been 0x0 as I dind't feel **** on my triceps but just strain on elbows.
Going to finally pick a gym and sign up when I come back. Gonna do the 24 hour one which is the most expensive because they have the best hip thrust machine and hamstring curl as glutes+hams are the weakness now. They also said they were opening another location closer to me this year so yeah. Not the greatest posing area but w/e it's fine.
short emo post: One weird thing about being a teacher is that the people who end up knowing you the most deeply are a bunch of ****ing 15-19 year old kids. From my students at the previous school I literally got the nickname "mommy" for my effeminate (I don't use this word in a derogatory way in describing myself) nurturing demeanor, the way I talk, and teaching style. But then people woh know me way less well assume I'm a turbo alpha drug dealer badboy gets in fights all the time just by appearance. I think I already told the story how one of my exes legitimately feared I may try to SA her on the first night we met.
EVO! how are you doing?
just refound the thread
what does SA stand for?
I'm srs. She said to me maybe 6 months after we got together that she thought I was an absolute violent weirdo just by the way I looked and when I first approached her she thought to herself "oh ****... I'm gonna die tonight". But after i started talking to her about bands we both enjoy like slowdive she realized I was safe.
Just funny how the muscles can give such a distorted first impression.
Right I just got what you're trying to say. I used to obsess over this kind of **** (what are female preferences in mates and why does it differ so vastly from stated preferences) but now I just find it exhausting to even consider. Check the romance novels and porn with more female users to get an idea, don't try asking them because they don't actually know.
Leaving for Thailand tomorrow and it'll probably be more of a "normal vacation" kind of trip rather than a "training monkmode vacation" this go around. I'm still going to get my 5 sessions per week in, but I'm not even bringing my insulin or centering my whole day each day around training. Staying on track with the diet is a non-negotiable though. I'll allow myself maybe one smaller "cheat" meal per day but otherwise I'm eating stuff from here：pureprepbangkok.com
Maybe once the novelty of being in Bangkok wears off I'll finally do the monkmode trip but as of now even just going to a shopping mall or a night market is a fascinating experiece. Best gym I've been to in Asia: https://www.bpcthailand.com/
My only complaint is the slight lack of leg equipment. Muscle factory has better equipment but I run hot and both the Jomtien and BKK muscle factory locations have no AC which is kind of an essential for me to train my hardest.
Sometimes I think about dropping my teaching career, taking a portion of my crypto portfolio, and juist living for a year in BKK near BPC gym and trying to generate an income via online coaching. I'd also like to enroll in a university and study Thai language full time. PRobably the best year of my life was the 2017-2018 academic year when I was studying Chinese full time and working part time. It still feels like a bit of a pipe dream and I think if I focused on coaching westerners would be exceptionally difficult. But if I focus on the Chinese market, it's actually fairly realistic.
have fun, remember whenever i was in thailand how surprised i was how many people went there strictly for weightlifting/mma training
have fun, remember whenever i was in thailand how surprised i was how many people went there strictly for weightlifting/mma training
I've got a friend (name is Aaron Burke, or Bodybuilding With Aaron, I'll give him a plug b/c he's a good guy) who does exactly this. He used to live here in China and worked low level English teaching jobs while building up a coaching business and advancing his bbing career. Then during covid with only like ~12 clients he moved to Thailand to focus on bodybuilding and online coaching full time. He's making good money and lives a life centered around trying to become an IFBB men's open pro and coaching to generate a very good income relative to what most expat jobs in Thailand would pay. I run into him multiple times every single visit to Thailand. I met another British fellow in Pattaya as well as a Russian fleeing the war who were both doing this, but their names evade me.
I've thought a lot about doing the same thing. I'm infinitely employable in the international school teaching markets EXCEPT in Thailand (the most competitive job market for this field) so if i failed after a year I'd just return to teaching and it would be far from a wasted year because I'd probably have had a lot of fun, learned a lot of Thai language, and made the best gains of my life being able to focus in on training.
If you did the online coaching thing for say five years, could you transition back to teaching? Is there an age threshold for coaching or could you do it ~forever?
If you did the online coaching thing for say five years, could you transition back to teaching? Is there an age threshold for coaching or could you do it ~forever?
Coaching forever. Chris Aceto and Hany Rambod biggest names in the game both in 50s. Dave Palumbo I think 60s. The standard rate in the anglosphere for a really new to the game prep coach is around 200 usd per month, and for really elite coaches you're looking at 7-10k usd/yr. In China it's around 1500RMB per month up to around 4000 per month, a bit less variance. It's easy enough to figure otu how to not pay taxes on this income as well, so I would not need very many clients to exceed my teaching income. If I didn't have something at least comparable after just 1 year, I'd be out. And after 5 years even if you're the worst coach on the planet you're probably beating your teaching income just from grinding and from people that forget to cancel their automated payments. The Chinese market is almost vacant right now; they have a few guys in Xuzhou and a few in HK doing the online bodybuilding coaching thing. Online coaching for a chinese market would be almost entirely competitors; they don't really have the "roid using gym bro who doesn't actually compete" archetype that is so prevalent in the west. Normal people would be too ignorant to ever seek out a coach who provides these sorts of services in China. The sort of “middle hardcore" range here is too small.
China market for teachers will always be there even if you took time off for something else. I'm not exactly sure how to quantify their level of desperation for foreigners at international schools but it's "high". Schools like mine can be a bit of a challenge to get into and might not accept somebody after a long hiatus from teaching, but schools like my first 3 would be fine with this. And the difference is mostly in working conditions and reputation outside of China, pay differrence is insignificant.
I'm not worried; I'll figure it out eventually.
Forgot if I posted it already, excuse the redundancy if so, but a client said something to me once that made me think this might be a viable career path for me (in terms of how psychologically rewarding it is, not in financial terms). His exact words were "My wife complimented me on my appearance for the first time in our relationship of 9 years".
The way you look massively influences other parts of your life, even where it ostensibly shouldn't. If you help somebody improve the way they look, you are making a larger difference in their life than you might think.
The goal of magic internet money isn't to collect the most coins. It is to make money to make your life better. And taking a year to pursue a dream seems like a far better use than most people end up with.
The way you look massively influences other parts of your life, even where it ostensibly shouldn't. If you help somebody improve the way they look, you are making a larger difference in their life than you might think.
I don't disagree with this, but I'd think you hit diminishing marginal returns at some point. I mean if you were only 50% as jacked as you are now, you probably still get 100% of the looks benefit.
Being not fat probably gets you 75% of the way there.
I don't disagree with this, but I'd think you hit diminishing marginal returns at some point. I mean if you were only 50% as jacked as you are now, you probably still get 100% of the looks benefit.
Being not fat probably gets you 75% of the way there.
I deleted a longer rant about this since it was esoteric.
But this.
tldr: I work in the space with a lot of middle aged/kinda old fat/borderline obese/obese dudes... uniformly I look down on some dude who has a health issue related to being a fat ****. Ironically one of the dudes I pay money to give me advice is in that space. Happens. Got a dude who is almost 80 doing some work for us, healthy weight, good health (relatively). Loco would ****ing nut.
Not being ****ing fat is the key. I've always been a nit about weight gain. (buy clothes and never buy fat people clothes) But I've never realized how bad it gets for a lot of people.
I don't disagree with this, but I'd think you hit diminishing marginal returns at some point. I mean if you were only 50% as jacked as you are now, you probably still get 100% of the looks benefit.
Being not fat probably gets you 75% of the way there.
Me? wgaf about me. I'm talking about fatties, dads with 3 kids, soccer moms, normies off the street, people indoctrinated into the powerlifting cult and trying to reform into actual health fitness and aesthetics instead of fatness and barbellls (I'm looking at you, Andrew N1h) etc. Coaching somebody at my level would be ****ing miserable because they have to do so much optimization, lifestyle change, and habit adoption (or discontinuation) to make increasingly marginal gains that only bodybuilding judges will notice. Coaching somebody like me at my level would be nightmare fuel. I feel sorry for whoever my next coach is b/c it's going to feel like a ****ing interrogation instead of just "okay coach looks like a good plan I'll do it and stfu".
I would *need* to be 50% less muscular to have a better and more appealing body at this point.
