Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Oh, some Chinese guy who's a friend of a client and aged 55 living in Thailand reached out to me for coaching. I'm going to tell him "no" becuase I told him what coaching entails as far as lifestyle/diet and he said "yeah I just want help in the weight room and a training program". I can't justify charging my normal price for only that, but it's not really worth my time to do so. I feel like I'd be doing somebody a disservice by "coaching" them and doing 0 lifestyle/diet interventions. But everyone is a donk who wants to maintain their same life habits and noobs refuse to see how drastically lifestyle and diet contributes to fitness when compared to the actual training process. I don't have time for donks in my coaching where i can choose who I work with, I gotta deal with donk students/colleagues all day.

My 2c- the price you charge for coaching is justified by the value the client sees in what you help him/her do/feel like/look like

Some people will listen more if they spend more and a richer person may still derive huge value from your service even if you think you are charging too much….even BECAUSE you are charging more than the market.

You have a ton to offer in terms of weight room, training plans etc. Don’t undervalue it and give the people what they want

Maybe. I just feel ******ed telling a person how to get in shape and leaving out 65% of it. It'd be like teaching a language and only using verbs b/c the person wasn't interested in other words. But he'd still be technically better off.

I never thought about this. Basically the relationship between national income/economic development might be very different based on dominant ethnic group of that community or nation. Jews seem exceptionally resistant to the fertility drop-off that occurs when incomes rise, anglo/euro whites/Americans are similarly very resistant, and Asians are very vulnerable. It really doesn't take much extra income for Asians to deprioritize family and kids.

He points to cultural differences where people's spouses and children are less a source of meaning in their lives. I don't know if I agree in the case of China; he ignores that the ratio of the cost of raising a child from 0-18 to median or average income is way worse in Asian countries compared to western ones.

13:20 the racepill on Asian women preferring other ethnicities over Asian men in the old 2009 OKC data set. This data was from western countries obv. Of my 4 srs girlfriends since I moved to China, only one had previously had a foreign bf but he was Afghanistani ethnic group Indian so way more traditional gender roles than the average Chinese. I'm kinda shocked my current one never had a non-Thai bf given how much contact she's had with foreigners and having lived abroad in Switzerland and again in Taiwan. Anyway, he has some interesting discussion that makes me very uncomfortable just because he's literally talking about me.

That 2009 OKC data would be heresy to even collect today. Things were different 15 years ago when we cared more about what the data says than what we want to be true.

I have a lot of personal connection to these groups and peoples. It makes me sad that they are literally going extinct. And i'm not exactly doing anything to prevent this either...

63 weeks out, Week 1 day 2 of cut
Underhand rows: 90kgx10, 80kgx12, 60kgx13
HS plate high rows: 1.5ppsx15, 13, 10
Machine rows: 3 sets failure
Dual handle pulldowns: 21.75kgx16, 10, 11
ez curls: 20kgx35, 20, 15
seated hammer curls: 7.5kgx3 sets failure

Didn't do chins because of last little vestiges of proximal bicep pain. I think I might take some more upper body days totally off until the pain is 100% gone as it's been at about 90% gone for a long time now.

Food:
100g oats, 350ml skim, 200g salmon, buncha blueberries

150 green beans, 200g chicken, 250g sweet potato, 14g butter

150g salmon, 100g blueberries

200g chicken, 300g white potato, 150g green beans

Meal 5 yet to be eaten but will be around 250g white potato, 200g chicken, 150g green beans, and maybe some butter.

Steps I'm only at 8k now at 8pm gonna shoot for around 13k today.

Been spamming yt vids in my log lately, why not continue the trend?

I couldn't even remember this guy until I saw this video. He was super active in the strength and fatness days of like 2009-2014. Basically an extension of rippetoe. He switched to enhanced bb, became a delusional high dose permabulker who looks like Comic Book Guy with 0 aesthetics and who never actually gets stage lean and does big crash cuts to normieshredded and then rebounds hard and gets fat again. Mysteriously vanished a year ago.

Izzy Narvaez is a good example of how not to bodybuild. Trash nutrition, trash training, trash approach to the sport overall. I made like 5 comments on the video expressing my thoughts, but any of my readers already know.

It was cool to see what happened to this guy. A good cautionary tale about exactly what not to do if one starts their enhancement journey. Like I wrote above, maintaining lean bodyfat is even more important if you decide to get on PEDs.

Being high bodyfat is just so bad for you if you're on PEDs. Obviously its bad if you're natty too, but there's less room for damage from high bp, aromatization, digestive distress, and kidney strain than if you were natty. Do not get fat.

Getting huge and strong and just adding mass indiscriminately is going to result in a super ugly and displeasing physique even if you do eventually get stage lean. For my division (classic) or for men's physique, you gotta be very careful about where you're actually adding that mass. People who train like Izzy, and I used to be somewhat more like this in my earlier days, invariably end up with super imbalanced gross meatball looking physiques that even non-bodybuilders and judges find weird and uncomfortable to look at. The normies are not complaining or gawking in disgust when they see Robert Timms/Breon Ansley/Cbum/Urs. But they are when they see Roelly Winklaar, William Bonac, or similar types of physiques.

so given how much socialization goes around group dinners with a bunch of food all in the middle and usually the host just orders a bunch of food so you get what you get

how do you approach that while maintaining your very strict diet?

i haven't had a very strict diet the past month. just live like a regular person at least 1/4th of every year.

Legs

Hip thrust: 3ppsx20, 12, 11
hamstring curls: 25kgx17, 17, 11, 9, 10
leg press: 1ppsx20, 2ppsx20, 3ppsx20, 4ppsx20, 3ppsx13
leg extensions: 3 sets failure

Hip thrusts are getting retired. The setup at this gym is super uncomfortable because it uses the belt instead of the pad. The other gym where I will actually sign up has a hip thrust where I max out the number of plates that will fit and it's still too easy where I could do 60+ reps. I don't think I even actually have weak glutes or hamstrings; just fat storage patterns puts most of my fat there. I might have one of those bodies that will just never get striated glutes no matter what. Samson Dauda, Andrew Jacked, Flex wheeler have never had glute striations and none of them have a lot of lines in hamstrings either.

If I deadlift 200kgx5x5 or 230kgx3 and just squatted 140kgx12 without a belt, chances are my glutes are good enough. Just I store more fat there and less fat around the midsection. I'm not going to stress out about bringing up hamstrings and glutes so much.

I'll do either kickbacks or just the adducter machine for glutes in the future. Cable kickbacks involved a lot of lower back for me, I'll play around with different form. I'm already doing front foot elevated split squats, leg press, paused SLDL, and hbbs. All of those are heavily recruiting the glutes too.

I'm also going to replace one of my push days with an arm day. I'll do one tricep dominant pressing motion on that day.

Green apples? I thought kiwi was the secret optimal fruit for BBing.

I'm still in my 40s for...not very much longer!

Looking forwards to reading why green apples are superior to other apples.

--Villagery pop in. Basically just scientifically explains what is very obvious, that is Africans (of predominantly West African heritage) on average have the most functional fast twitch muscles (as signified by a lower % of the non functional allele), and South Asians the least functional.

And the difference between Africans and everyone else is much bigger than the difference of everyone else combined*

If I had to guess, it would be that at some point among the founding Eurasian population, there was some fitness advantage to having the non functional fast twitch allele and it was selected for, probably because it was less calorie intensive during a time of severe caloric restriction. And South Asians and American Indians had slighter further selection towards the non functional fast twitch allele, probably again due to caloric restriction.

Whoa, bro. You're totally wrong. It's all about how hard you try and not giving up. I read it in Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers. Michael Jordan just outworked everyone. It's nature AND nurture, not just nature, bro. If you train every day really hard and believe in yourself you can do anything, even become president or become GOAT of the NBA.

You're sounding like a nazi with all this crap, LOL. Go read a book, racist.

Lower cals, higher fiber, less sugar. I'm talking about dieting here, not muscle gain. They're a great weight loss food because they taste good, have few calories, high fiber, great micronutrient profile, and high satiety. And when you're a precontest bber its common to have difficulty with movements; apples contain pectin which really helps with that.

Kiwis idk, I don't really have them in my diet ever. They're delicious but not really sure if they're a good bb food for bulking or not. My favorite fruits for bulking are cherries, pineapples, and mangos. Relatively higher sugar, lower satiety, and still great micronutrition.

I didn't realize green apples were lower calorie than red apples.

Kiwis - I dno, it's a semi-meme for Nippard afaict. Not completely sure b/c I've only watched a few of his videos but he has one at least talking about how it is the holy grail diet food (I assume partial comedy)...

Hem, these are the numbers per 100 g I found for granny smith and pink lady.

Granny Smith: 49 cals, 2 g fiber.
Pink Lady: 49 cals, 2 g fiber .

Numbers are from the biggest fruit distributor in Broway.

No numbers for micronutrients unfortunately, too lazy to google more.

Looks like a micro rock?

I prefer green apples for cooking. I'm sure they make apple pie healthy!

I've never heard of pink lady. There's a lotta different apples out there, I'm sure some of them have higher sugars than greens. Pick whatever you like, it doesn't matter much tbh.

Legs
FFESS: 15kgx15 felt awfully easy, 20kgx15x2 whoa big pr
unilateral hamcurl +5kgx20, 15, 7 each side
paused sldl: up to 110kgx20 (toes elevated as normal) this was close to failure so I will repeat 1-2x the next workouts before bumping it up again.

BW down to 100kg with oly shoes in the evening, normally I'm around 103-104 with oly shoes and 102-103 with normal shoes. So basically dropped 3kg of water and bloof in like 5 days of dieting.

I will go to HK on Saturday for a day fun trip and enjoy some cleanish cheats. Stuff like beef noodle soups, not pizza.

NEw overall diet template tailored around work schedule

Breakfast 100g oats, 2 scoops whey (replace with meat as the diet gets deeper), frozen raspberries, ~10g fat from almond butter (optional)

Meals 2, 3, 4
75gish of protein from meat, favor fatty sources over lean sources (salmon and flank steak). It'll come out to around 280-310g of meat
75g carbs from potato/sweet potato

meal 5
200g greek yogurt+fruit

Snack on fruits throughout the day in the amount of around 60g added carbs. Cals will be right around 3600 to start and I'll drop things out but don't go any lower than around 2800 near the end. Weekly step count 70k and don't bother going over around 120k as there seems to be pretty harsh diminishing returns on calories burnt through activity beyond that.

Training not going to monkey around with new stuff as when I look back at end of prep pics my physique is very balanced minus glutes and hams carrying a lot of fat and erectors mogging the rest of my back, especially lats. Still just normal ass PPL 6x/wk. Smith machine as main pressing motion at the start of each session probably until prep is over, but I do want to keep DBs in. I'm doing them 3rd. So smith incline->machine press or machine fly>db press. I may experiment with starting my pull workouts with something other than chins, but I was actually doing pullups through most of my ppl journey and found chins activated a lot more lat so maybe just keep starting with chins since I haven't been doing it long

Still nfi where I'm training regularly, and probably this won't be too well settled until Oct 25 when a new 24/7 fitness place opens up on the Island that's gonna have good equipment. I'll have 2 weeks at the very nice AC gym, but I need to see how the AC is in the 24/7 gym. If the 24/7 gym has great AC, I sign up there. If it's not good, I'll have to pay the extra money in transportation and go to the further away gym with the great AC. It's a good 9km drive and costs about $6 usd each way getting there which is a bit wasteful but wgaf because I can afford it and I almost can't put a value on being able to train at stable temperatures which has been a huge issue literally the past 9 years because most Chinese seem impervious to extreme heat. But that happens when you are housecat sized and never train beyond RPE Negative 3/10

Pink Lady is the better version of Fuji apples, which I think are prevalent in the US? The fruit distributor specifies them same numbers for Fuji btw.

Either way, obviously a small rock - which is why I was slightly surprised you specified green apples as GOAT dieting food.

But this is already waaaaay too Melkerson for my tastes, so let's put this to rest.

good to know, bro. I am factchecked, thought green was legit like 80% of the calories of fuji/red, guess not

Legs:
ham curls: 5 sets failure on shitty unilateral machine
hbbs: 140kgx10 (rpe7), 120kgx12, 90kgx25
all felt good and just the right amount of difficulty. +5kg and maybe down a few reps on the final set

Pink Lady's and Fuji's are extremely prevalent in the produce section of every supermarket in USA #1. In fairness to Emoken, I doubt I knew this before I had to start doing family grocery shopping. As a single guy I dont think I ever bought apples at supermarkets.

I dont know if it is a regional (Peoples Republic of CA) thing or not, but suddenly it seems Honeycrisps are all the rage, when I dont remember that ever being a thing before.

I can't buy any of my groceries in the store for produce; only on taobao. For whatever reason most grocery stores in PRC are around 2-5x markup for meat and produce compared to buying it online 24-72 hour delivery. Sam's club is an exception but they don't carry green apples for whatever idiosyncratic reason.

Honeycrisp have been very popular for years all over the US. At least 5yrs, probably longer.

I've been buying mostly honeycrisp for at least 10yrs.

Saved me some trouble. I thought the same thing the moment I read that post.

I know you did ♥