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.
Guy,
COL is incredibly high in those areas. Plus you're looking at a pretty obscene tax burden. Take home is under 200k. (On a 300k income.)
FEIE is incredibly strong when you're under the threshold. Esp since the housing benefits receive preferential treatment. Basically you're likely falling somewhere in that range compared to someone bragging about making N amount in a very high COL area with onerous taxes. (Yurop says hai.)
On a chicom que
Interesting insights regarding COL. It's been a long time and I never lived in a major urban area like that. I guess I should be more grateful for the income and cost of living I have now. The principal role will come eventually even if it doesn't come next academic year. I'm not stressed out about this. Even if I have to do some bullshit online 'educational leadership' graduate degree or certificate before I get it, it's going to come eventually and almost certainly before age 40. I already did one online post graduate certificate and it wasn't that painful and that will have paid for itself by like August. I can do another one to move forward.
The chewing thing is universal and not even restricted to mainland China afaik. I believe HK/TW/SG Chinese also do this.
Seriously considering dropping all barbell rowing since I SLDL and hip thrust every 8 days. I'm kind of imagining just how much overall weekly CNS fatigue this could remove... but rowing is cooolll the girls in the gym need to see me lifting and grunting and making mean faces with a big loaded barbell so they will want to suck my peennisss!1!1
I'll try rowing every other pull session like I said before and track session length. If I consistently can't keep it under 70 minutes, I'm going to drop them.
I guess I've only interacted with very westernized chinese people. This was weird as fk.
Weird how testing will actually tell you what stuff is doing.
Alright here's my new weekly plan that will start Feb 25. I don't remember if I posted it, but I will likely not compete this year. Potentially moving across the country and changing jobs is just gonna make it really stressful to actually do the tanning, final week peaking, travelling, hotel, etc. I'm doing a contest prep diet and going to go until I'm satisfied. Somewhere between 15-20 weeks depending on progress.
Biceps+legs 1
Hammer curls
EZ curls
Hamstring+leg extensions supersetted
SLDL
Front foot elevated split squat
Push
delt raises
Machine press
Incline db
machine flies
2 pushdown variants
Pull
Pullup variation
Underhand row
Pulldown or machine row (doesn't matter)
Behind the body cable curls: 4 sets
Biceps+Legs 2
hammer curls
ez curls
Hip thrust
Leg extension
Leg press
6 days per week with a day off every Wednesday. Legs/push/pull/repeat
Diet
This is only counting 'direct' macros, so for instance if I'm eating a chicken breast I won't count the fats toward this number and if I'm eating oats I won't count the fats or proteins toward that number. Just for the ease of tracking. Calories will and macros will be understated around 15-20% as a result.
Medium day: 350p, 300c, 30f
Low day: 350g, 150c, 60f (non training day, wednesday
High day: 250p, 600c, no added fats but a cheat meal with fats at the end of the day. Shoot for around 4.5-4.8k calories total by the end
Foods: Any vegetables but the majority will be green beans, chicken breast/tenderloin, beef knuckle, Salmon, brown rice, sweet potato, white potato, all berries, bananas, apples, pomelo, orange, oats, cream of rice, skim milk, white rice (but only sometimes), whole eggs, nuts, nut butters and butter, avocado. Basically IIFYM but only among this list of foods.
I'm going to try to avoid whey protein in the regular diet. I'll have it around the house for "emergencies" or to make high day treats like protein cakes and bullshit like that.
I'll be eating just over 1kg of cooked chicken breast/tenderloin daily to hit that 350 number.
1 high day per week on Friday probably. I haven't decided which day will be the high day, but probably not the weekend since that's when I have the most spare time to hit massive amounts of fasted cardio when I wake up.
Cardio
Saturday+Sunday 60-90 minutes on the stairs fasted in the morning, other days around 30 minutes on the stairs during the day/morning or 30min incline treadmill post training. Given my 7:45 work starting time and variable schedule, it's unlikely I'm able to get fasted cardio consistently or on the same days Monday through Friday.
Steps starting at my baseline of 10k/day and gradually increase this up to around 16-18k toward the end of the diet as I go along.
Motivation sky high. Elbows don't hurt. Literally nothing hurts except my right scap feels over-protracted because I haven't been doing my lock 3 since there are no little girl dumbbells. I don't know if they even have 1kg plates to use for it. I'm very excited for this getting shredded phase.
Last 2 workouts
Push:
Lock 3
DB prone raises: 7.5kgx4 sets failure
Machine press: 135kgx20, 9, 11
db incline: 30kgx17, 13, 14
Machine flies: 3 sets
Normal pushdown stuff, you know the drill by now
Pull
Chins: 17, 13, 11
underhand rows: 70kgx13, 11
Weird grip pulldowns: 2 sets
Facing away behind the body single arm cable curls: 5 sets each side to failure
Loving this pull workout. There isn't a huge performance drop off going into the curls because this curl variation involves a lot less forearm flexors or brachiallis which are already exhausted from the back work, but rather isolates that peak area perfectly. I finally found a good exercise to isolate this area... spider curls, leaning away db curls, concetration, curls, preacher curls, and then incline db curls all ended up causing me pain and ez curls/hammer curls really don't hit that peak part of the bicep as much and hit the bicep on the other end.
Alright so now I'm going to take a fairly long break for around 6-9 days and let the fatigue dissipate and joints fully heal. Nothing hurts or anything, I just think some planned time off immediately before starting a more intense contest prep is a good idea. The contest part most likely wont' happen. If I stay in my city, there's a show I can do in august. In that case, I'd probably cut from March but schedule a 4 week diet+stims break in the middle.
My bw already came up to a massive 99.65 but I stayed lean the whole time. When you're lean, you just don't need very many calories to add muscle and if you aren't stuffing yourself you gain a really good ratio of muscle and glycogen to fat. I may have underestimated how heavy I'd be when stage ready with peeled glutes. It could be as heavy as like 87kg which would be great.
I never made a big new year's post because I was busy with work and not able to just sit down, do nothing and think. I feel like I just completely slew 2023. It was off to a rough start with me initiating a breakup I wasn't sure I should have in October 2022 and the chaos of the reopening in December 2022, and I was hitting a lot of bumps around March/April, but after that I really got things together and just blasted through so many life and fitness plateaus and I've carrried the momentum into 2024 and I am just crushing all my goals with i guess the exception of not getting that job but that's kinda w/e tbh. Best years of my life were the 2017-2018 academic year and 2023 as a whole. 2024 seems to be getting even better and better and I've already decided that this is the year I'm gonna get shredded glutes. And I'm going to do it without abusing performance enhancing drugs or doing anything super extreme with the diet that messes up my mood sufficiently to mistreat or be impolite/mean to anyone irl.
Pumped pic with great lighting which makes me look leaner than I really am, but starting the diet from here and feeling very fresh/recovered/no cardio or stim tolerance built up yet? It's gonna be sick when I actually start dieting again.
So I guess I had 7 days off. I deliberately took things very easy just since it's been such a long time. Feel good, fresh, nothing hurting. Appearance rapidly got worse but w/e it'll come back. Now we're at the start of what will be my most successful cut ever. Gonna get inside out shredded. Feel like I've got my training and dieting strategies ultra optimized.
Cut Week 1
Pull
NG chins: bwx16
Fat grip supinate chins: 13, 11
Underhand rows: 70kgx10, 8
Underhand pulldowns: 50kgx13, 10
Facing away single arm cable curls: 20, 2 more myo-rep matching sets (get to 20 on sets 2 and 3 with as many 10-20 second breaks as needed)
The grip I was doing chins with was not exactly neutral, like halfway between neutral and supinated. I noticed slight elbow pain even on the first few reps on the "ng" chins which certainly solved a long standing mystery. I guess i should just never do those again. I coulda done more than 16, too...
All these equipment manufacturers always make so many different weird and crazy different grips. It's inconceivable that we might just want to be able to do regular supinated chinups, pronated pullups, and neutral grip pullups. Have you ever seen anyone doing the crazy angle and weird width grip pullups/chins? Me neither.
Anyway, our only normal pullup bar is those monkey bar things but super ****ing thick and way up there where I need to get on a 30 inch box to reach up there. But having refrained from using straps on everything but sldls for a few months now and I feel like my fat grip and normal grip chins will be around the same bc my grip and forearms have gotten so strong.
Did ~15 minutes of hard cardio on the stairs surprised to find I had lost almost no cardio fitness despite not doing any for about 3 weeks. I think I internalized a lot of rippetoe-isms (anchoring effect) and one of those was something to the effect of "cardiovascular adaptations are much less permanent than muscular adaptations. You can lose all your cardio shape within a few weeks/months". That's bullshit lol, cardio adaptations aren't as permanent as muscle, sure, but they're going to take years to lose just like muscle will take years to lose. More reason to keep doing it year round.
Because I'm unsure how long I'll be dieting and given the relatively lean starting point, I'm going to hold off on the clenbuterol for the first few weeks and do caffeine+yohimbine+synephrine only.
Re: your curl variation, I'm fairly certain they're called "Bayesian curls".
Glad to hear 2023 went so well; the new plan sounds great and I continue to appreciate this log.
Re: your curl variation, I'm fairly certain they're called "Bayesian curls".
Glad to hear 2023 went so well; the new plan sounds great and I continue to appreciate this log.
They're so incredibly effective. It's like pure bicep peak and very little forearm, lower bicep, or extensor strength. Hoping this visually affects my bicep peak a bit, but I suppose it'll take several months to find out.
Yesterday Biceps+Legs
EZ curls: 20kgx32, 16, 11
Bayesian hammer curls: nah this movement doesn't work, needs to be supinated
Hip thrust: 1.5px16, 10, 11
Leg extension: 22.5kgx20, 2 more sets myo-rep matching (get to 20 using myoreps as needed)
Leg press: 3.5ppsx20, 15, 12 taking it easy here, felt like rpe 4-5 or so.
This morning 30 minutes stairs, push this afternoon.
I'm not married to training biceps on this leg day. It's generally harder than the other leg day and immediately follows a pull workout; I just picked 4 days/wk because of a Dr. Mike video. I think biceps (hammer curls, maybe myo rep?) on the first day of the week (legs) and then on both pull days for 3x/wk bicep training could work just fine. My back movements are relatively more bicep dominant than most peoples' because I'm always going to be starting with fat grip supinated chins and go supinated on basically everything.
I should maybe pair down the # of bicep exercise to just standing hammer curls and these new bayesian curls. Hammers for overall arm+forearm strength and brachialis, bayesian curls for the peak. I'm not sure how myo-rep matching would go with hammer curls... I never do them alternating, I always do left side first all reps then right side. I could probably then come back to the other side and squeeze out myo-reps while alternating to the other side during the rest periods, but if it results in me cheating a bunch I won't do it. We'll try it out on Thursday and see how it works. I will play around with different bicep training exercises and see what feels the best. But spider and preacher curls are definitely out.
Push
Lock 3
prone delt raises: 4 sets
machine press: 72.5kgx18, 10, 8 afaik this is a 1-2 rep pr on the top set. I can't remember. Either way still close to or better than peak
Incline db: 30kgx15, 12, 10 easy, with RIR
machine incline fly: 3 sets
Tricep pushdown: 20kgx23, myo-rep matching 2 more sets
Dual rope psuhdowns: 10kgx13, myo-rep matching 2 more sets.
Loving the myo-rep matches for triceps. Will continue wtih this.
I'm a pretty big fan of myo rep match as well.
Did you 86 spider and preacher curls because of elbow pain? My elbows are pretty finicky too and I feel like I need to be careful with what bicep exercises I do or I risk the inevitable elbow pain.
Glad to hear last year was good for you. Hope this year's even better.
I'm a pretty big fan of myo rep match as well.
Did you 86 spider and preacher curls because of elbow pain? My elbows are pretty finicky too and I feel like I need to be careful with what bicep exercises I do or I risk the inevitable elbow pain.
Glad to hear last year was good for you. Hope this year's even better.
Not elbow pain, same right side bicep/pec tie-in area that's been giving me problems since 2011. Bayesian curls slay both of them though in terms of targeting that stubborn peak area of the brocep.
Daily diet
M1
6 hard boiled eggs, sum blueberries unmeasured
M2-4
120g green beans, 200g cooked weight chicken breast, 50g carbs worth of cous cous
M5
200g cooked weight chicken breast, 65g raw weight oatmeal, 300ml skim milk, artificial sweetener. Blueberry, apple, or banana. Maybe sum almond or peanut butter.
Biceps+Legs
Hammer curls: 15kgx20, 2 myo rep matching sets
EZ curls: 15kgx12, 9
Leg extensions: 22.5kgx25, 18, 15
Hamstring curls: 47.5kgx15, 11, 8 supersetted with leg extensions
Paused toes elevated SLDL: 100kgx10, 8
FFESS: 10kgx10x3 whatever
I was limited on time and feeling weak anyway so I went medium today. Which is what I should literally be doing every session but I'm too hardcore for my own good.
Push
Lock 3
DB prone raise: 7.5kgx4 sets
Machine press: 72.5kgx12, 57.5kgx10x2
Incline db press: 30kgx10x2, x11
Incline flies: 3 sets
Pushdown: 25kgx22, 2 sets myorep matching. Skin tearing tricep pump.
I should really have more sessions like this and be lifting more sub-maximally. But we all know I'll write that and not actually do it. Still I managed to finish in 57 minutes; I can't possibly go full effort and be under 75 minutes.
My appetite is just dead. Synephrine seems like a fairly weak stimulant.. maybe more than yohimbine, less than caffeine. It seems to work better for appetite suppression than basically anything I've used. My steps/activity/cardio have been very good overall considering it was the first week back to work and "Week 1" of "contest prep". I'm just going to count work-weeks rather than training weeks and say week 1 just ended today even though I train tomorrow. I'll try to add in the clenbuterol later rather than sooner as soon as I stop feeling lots of energy from the caffeine+synephrine+yohimbine stack. Yohimbine gonna stay at 20mg, caffeine around 400-600, synephrine 80mg. I'll add the clen at 20mcg and I'm guessing it'll be around "12 weeks out" from the show that I'm not going to do in all likelihood. I'm thinking what I'll do is diet down to mid to late June, take a break from the diet as we finish out the school year. I'm arranging a trip to bring some of my elite students to a school in an impoverished village and have them do some volunteer English teaching for the elemtnary school kids there. I'll spend a few hundred or low thousnads of dollars to donate sum school supplies and hang out with sum kids who will be amazed to ever interact with foreigners or big city rich chinese and do our best to help out. Our kids are oblivious to how privileged they are and I hope this will give them some perspective. This is a bit more important to me than doing a show when I'm not really competitive at the pro qualifying level just yet.
I might do a show later in the summer if I'm able to get everything set up and stable for next year's job in a new city and its a smooth transition, but its fine if not. Just getting shredded glutes by late june and then reverse dieting and going into offseason never doing a show is fine.
I'm arranging a trip to bring some of my elite students to a school in an impoverished village and have them do some volunteer English teaching for the elemtnary school kids there. I'll spend a few hundred or low thousnads of dollars to donate sum school supplies and hang out with sum kids who will be amazed to ever interact with foreigners or big city rich chinese and do our best to help out. Our kids are oblivious to how privileged they a
Sounds great. I'm sure future Emoken will look upon this decision with great satisfaction.
Pull
Chins/Pullups: bwx18, 12, 10 first set supinated, last 2 sets pronated
Underhand rows: 70kgx11, 9
Row machine: 62.5kgx15, 12
Bayesian curl myo rep match: 10kgx16x4
Easiest session in my program is pull RN. Even though I was dragging, not trying very hard, and going really slowly I still finished in under an hour. After the first set of chins everything afterword was half-assed. but I need to be way more half-assed to make progress so I should continue like this. More PEDs, more cardio, more food, more sleep, less CNS taxing hard training.
Cardio: 45 minutes stairs AM
Legs
Hip thrust: 1.75ppsx16, 11, 11
Leg extensions: 27.5kgx20, 2 sets myorep matching
Leg press: 3.5ppsx22, 17, 14
God that was tiring. Hard 140hr cardio and then legs the same day just ****ing sucks, you get so out of breath. IDK if I can't handle 6x/wk with all this cardio. Either I should go back to 3 on 1 off or even drop "all the way down" to 5x/wk. Taking 2 consecutive days off sounds really nice. I think I'll do that and take Wednesday+Thursday both off (cardio only).
Man it's ****ing depressing back in late winter Chengdu. We've seen the sun for maybe 4 hours in the past 7 days I've been here b/c so much pollution and clouds. Vitamin D falling. Libido annihilated. Moody even despite things that normally cause me lots of life satisfaction all skyrocketting. I gotta get the **** outta this place and go somewhere with clear skies or at least just rainy but not pollution filled ones. The $ is so good in Shanghai/Nanjing and I have all my western comforts, expat communities, costcos and sam's clubs, blah blah blah. But there's is pretty dark and polluted too. Haikou is litearlly the best air in any large urban area in China, but is still considerably less developed than anywhere I've ever lived in China. The idea of not having sam's club kinda freaks me out with how I eat and how much fixing what I eat has improved my life. A bit anxious about these upcoming life decisions and FOMO etc. It feels like all I can really do is get a vibe for the interviewers to get a read on where is the best fit but it just feels like such limited information before I go.
Okay change to training... Monday through friday legs/push/pull repeat so every week there will be one muscle group only being hit once that time, but that muscle group will be what we start with in the next week. I'll count yesterday's workout as a monday workout and take today off. Before, i didn't want to do this because I needed one day off gym on the weekdays to meal prep. But now I have a new meal prepping strategy of having my chicken for each day ready in zip-lock bags. I brine 5.4kg on Sunday, then portion it into 800g bags with italian+cajun seasoning+brown sugar+olive oil and stick them in the freezer. Then I just pull one out every day at lunch time to thaw, put it in the air fryer oven at night time before bed and set it to start cooking around 3 hours before i rise so it's cooled and ready to cut up with scissors when I wake up. Then just have brown rice going in the rice cooker or potatoes in the air fryer oven with green beans cooked and stored in a meal prep container so I don't need to really do much.
Why? Partially I just need a mental break to think about other things on the weekends and to possibly even have a SOCIAL LIFE. This weekend for instance I felt kinda burnt out already. I want to basically wake up, cardio, eat, posing, go out and get up to 12k steps, come home, and then veg out and enjoy myself/relax/meet friends/play single player rpg video games etc. If I get up at 6:45-7:30 I can have all that done by like 1pm and have the rest of the day free where I have no obligations. It does feel like bodybuilding 24/7 taking only 1 day off on Wednesdays. I work that day so it doesn't feel like a break to the same extent as if I had my days off on weekends.
this means sometimes my leg days will be on wednesdays but since I started my nocturia medication this is much less of an issue and its not going to kill me to give 80% effort on leg days once in a while when they fall on wednesdays... it mgiht actually end up being a huge benefit to not push so hard all the time.
The idea of not having sam's club kinda freaks me out with how I eat and how much fixing what I eat has improved my life. A bit anxious about these upcoming life decisions and FOMO etc. It feels like all I can really do is get a vibe for the interviewers to get a read on where is the best fit but it just feels like such limited information before I go.
I seem to remember when Syndrom was there he would just get his meat from a local market and certainly looked fresh and safe. I don't know if it was all meats, but I definitely remember chicken. If you go to the right place, I'd also expect it to be better quality than a Chinese Sam's Club, but I guess I don't really know. Why not just use local markets for meat?
Local markets are around 4-8x the price for beef, 1.5x the price for chicken, 1/2 the quality and freshness. And they often don't even have enough stock for me to do **** like buy 5kg of chicken to have ready for a week. Costco is GOAT but doesn't do delivery and is only 4 or 5 cities across the country. Sam's club is close but also does 1 hr delivery and they are in 50+ cities across the country with some cities having more than 1.
Decided I'm gonna probably go to a place on the outskirts of Shanghai. Cost of living is more like where I lived in Suzhou, but salaries and modernity will be more like Shanghai. And with none of the crowdedness. I've got a powerlifter friend living out in Qingpu and he absolutely loves suburban Shanghai. Salary is only marginally better than I make now but much better quality of life and convenience. And gyms in Shanghai use AC in the summer which would be a godsend.
Local markets are around 4-8x the price for beef, 1.5x the price for chicken, 1/2 the quality and freshness. And they often don't even have enough stock for me to do **** like buy 5kg of chicken to have ready for a week. Costco is GOAT but doesn't do delivery and is only 4 or 5 cities across the country. Sam's club is close but also does 1 hr delivery and they are in 50+ cities across the country with some cities having more than 1.
Interesting. Makes me wonder why Synbro didn't shop at Sam's Club.
B/c they dind't have it back then and he doesn't eat like an offseason bodybuilder. He's back and uses it now.
