Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Push day
Internal rotation prehab
DB prone raises: 8kgx22, 3 more sets failure
Machine press: 62.5kgx18, 12, 10
Incline db: 25kgx18, 13, 10
Machine incline fly: 22.5kgx16, 9, 9
Pushdowns: 25kgx22, 3 more myo rep sets but I had to lower weights by 2.5kg each on sets 3-4. Next time I'll do a custom rope attatchment i boughtg, time after that I'll try 25kgx22 and 3 myo rep matching sets.

Cardio was 30 minutes stairs in the morning, 18k steps.

Had a good pull workout. My cals yesterday were probably too high hence why this workout was suspiciously good and I also woke up at 93.9. There's no rush... just gonna keep dieting until shredded then most importantly come back up very slowly. I set a goal last time and didn't meet it very well, but ideally I'd like to be around the same bodyfat I am now (but at a heavier BW) around December/January, which might mean I only weigh like 97-98 then. I feel better when leaner. The level of bodyfat which is suboptimal for a bodybuilding offseason can vary a lot between individuals, and I tihnk from a digestion, sleep, cardiovascular fitness, and insulin sensitivity standpoint, my "optimal“ bodyfat for putting on muscle is fairly low.

Pullups: bwx20, 15, 12 (pronated grip, straps)
Machine rows: 62.5kgx17, 12, 10
Mag bar pulldowns: 50kgx17, 13, 10
EZ curls: 20kgx24, 3 more sets myo rep matching
Bayesian curls without the stretch: "3"x14, 12, 10

Decided I'm not going to row on the pulls following SLDL. My hamstrings were still toasted from 2 days ago. It kinda works out well to only do rows as first exercise on the day I have them, then don't do them at all on the day I do pullups first. So I still hit pullups twice per cycle, but one of them has me doing them as 2nd lift. I obviously can't do it twice with sets to failure without fackign up elbows/forearms and less axial loading from rowing only once every 8 days will mean less systemic fatigue. Tomorrow's a day off but I actually really wanna train and might go in so I can justify taking wednesday off.

Touched 92.2kg this morning. did 45 minutes fasted cardio on stairs and about to go train legs. 0 Carbs after 4pm yesterday and first meal was chicken breast+green beans only. I really should probably refeed but I just don't feel the hunger and training performance hasn't really gone down or anything yet so I'll keep being fairly aggressive with the cut.

No show and I'm basically going to be dieting until mid/late june regardless but I might throw in some anavar the last 4 weeks, do a little water manipulation/peak weak and go for a photoshoot.

Biceps+Legs

Hammer curls: 15kgx21, 3 more sets myo rep matching
Hip thrust machine: 2ppsx20, 14, 10
Leg press: 3.5ppsx25, 17, 13
Leg extensions: 22.5kgx21, 2 more sets myo rep matching.

Going to swap to another bicep excerise. Hammer curls i'm feeling it too much in delts. Need something more isolated that doesn't bug my tendon. Concentration curls or braced+leaning supinated curls or the double cable curl thing. I'll play around with it and see what feels best.

Yesterday hit 20k steps (but that's including my cardio), ate 3k calories, and training went perfectly. Scale weight went up to 94.8. Sooooo much water weight from leg training.

I'm feeling pretty invincible though. I don't feel inflamed, I don't feel tired, I'm still super motivated and look forward to each training and cardio session. Not struggling with cravings or hunger at all. Fatburners are still low. Just 40mcg clen and 10mg yohimbine, no caffeine as it seems to affect my sleep more negatively than other stimulants. I have a ton of room to increase them as I go along, but i might very well be able to get shredded glutes using this little stimulants this go around for having started leaner, better cardio habits, and better meal prep habits.

Made a pretty cool new recipe where I blend up egg whites, oats, bananas, cinnamon, and truvia. Then I dump that batter into my pressure cooker and it comes out as a sort of "banana bread protein souffle" cake that's super delicious and filling. Pairs well with some plain greek yogurt or almond butter or frozen berries on top.

Another great bodybuilding cutting meal I've been using a lot that tastes great and is super filling and micronutrient dense is 200-250g chicken breast, 2 hard boiled eggs, brown rice according to need, and a bunch of air fried green beans. Suppperrr delicious and filling combo. Brown rice is so underrated for dieting.

So you made a standard asian meal of rice/protein/veggies with some moderate subs and the optional egg (doubled!!).

I eat a lot of variants of this. But brown rice is ****ing gross, so I never eat that. Like yesterday I had rice, pork, veggie (no optional egg).

I had a "clean cheat" today because we had a work schedule change and I found myself without food. Pesto chicken breast sub. Definitely fits my macros but probably not the best thing for digestive system.

Push
Internal rotation stuff
Machine press: 62.5kgx20, 12, 10
Incline db: 30kgx14, 10, 8
Machine incline fly: 22.5kgx18, 10, 10
Special rope pushdown with a new attachment i bought: 4 sets myo rep match

I didn't like the tricep attachment but I also did it "kickback" style rather than 'pushdown" style. I might try it again, might just do straight pushdowns, might experiment with db skullcrushers. Of all those, good old fashioned straight bar pushdowns feel the best.

I may end up taking a few days off over the next week or so because it's exam season and I usually like to just knock out a few 14 hour workdays and get all my grading done upfront and be free later instead of spreading it out.

Cardio 40 minutes stairs 15k steps for the day.

Standard Chinese meat+rice dish is 10-50g of meat, 100g of recylced low quality to begin with oil, 200g of nearly rotten vegetables, and then 400g of short grain rice. Meat is a condiment to these people.

I was just thinking the same thing. I'm dieting right now and have got a little obsessive about daily weigh ins. I was over 1kg heavier post leg day on Mon

I also think marijuana is (maybe this isn't news to others?). I always feel bloated on mornings after gummies

Well yes. We're not striving for an authentic Asian meal. We'd probably also like our meals to not be rife with bacteria and served on clean dishes.

Leg training definitely causes some special inflammation (not the bad kind, just as an adaptation to training) that results in more water. But I'm also on a lot of test and growth hormone and have a lot of muscle as well so all of these combine to make the amount of daily water variation pretty intense.

It's been nice being on real hospital pharm grade GH. I mean it's Chinese pharm grade but at least its made by a company licensed by this country's FDA and bought at a hospital rather than some random entrepreneurial guy who happened to have 60k usd worth of equipment laying around and decided to make sum gh with it but without any real quality control or expertise. It's way more sophisticated than making steroids so I do like the assurance of having something from a real hospital pharmacy now. But I'm also noticing more classic gh side effects now.

Pull
Internal rotation stuff
Barbell rows strapped: 90kgx13, 10 same last week but stricter form and less rest
ring chins unstrapped: bwx13, 9, 7
Mag bar pulldowns: 50kgx18, 12, 10
EZ curls: 20kgx26, 3 more sets myo rep matching.

30 minutes AM fasted cardio, 15k steps.

I'll be 11 weeks out on Saturday. Can't remember if I posted about it before, but the 4 weeks precontest pharmacology is so intense i just don't wanna do the show. The diet and cardio are "easy" or at least not really suffering. I don't mind getting down to that super low bodyfat and you could even say I find the process enjoyable. But dropping test down to 0 and nuking estrogen with AIs and taking a bunch of anavar, winstrol, superdrol, and/or halotestin is more or less a necessity to be really conditioned and that part just straight up sucks. Given that there's nothing on the line for this show my options are don't do it at all or don't peak for it with pharmacology and just go to a competition knowing I'm not actually trying my hardest.

Tren is definitely optional. DHTs really aren't.

So basically get down to contest bodyfat but don't do the actual contest.

Nationals are usually final weekend of october. So my target show date is end of October 2025. It helps to have a deadline and # of weeks out for me psychologically in terms of staying on track and giving me the feeling of working to a more specific goal rather than "get jacked lol". So I guess I am now 18 or 19 months out. In addition to this dieting phase, there will be at least one lengthy 12+ week dieting phase within that 19 months not including the 16 week contest prep. Possibly even 2 diet/reset phases.

I am probably slightly overtrained. Had a weird night where I woke up with my heart racing feeling like I was about to get in a fight. BW crept up to 95kg and I can feel tons of water.

I'm not going to deload, I'll just reset instead. I think that's one of the things things Rip was right about. Dropping 10-25% off of either working weight or reps and then just working your way back up doing meaningfully challenging weights that are still well within your capacity seems to work well. Cutting back volume 50% for a week and then suddenly going back to your old training intensity... I think that's more effective for peaking strength but not ideal for sort of everyday offseason strength and hypetrophy progression.

Did my 30 minutes of cardio in the morning and planning to not go over 10k steps tonight, make some nice salmon in the air fryer with some green beans, maybe enjoy some mangoes or tastier fruits for dinner tonight.

October 2025... I am going to get first callout even if I don't win and I'm more or less okay with putting other aspects of my life on the backburner and throwing everything into that goal. My bbing success has not gone un-noticed among the fitness foreigners in China and I'm getting more and more coaching opportunities. The things I need to do to make progress in bodybuilding (consistent sleep/wake schedule, regular cardio, prepping all or most of my own food and not eating restaurant or ultra-processed foods，being mindful of vegetables and fruit intake, training more like a bb and less like a strength athlete etc.) all make me feel really good physically and mentally. As I may have expressed in this thread before, my window to earn an IFBB pro card and eventually step on a pro stage is only a few more years as it'll be kinda hard to make progress after age 42-43. Given that I'm still doing it with a career it's going to be slower, but I think I can absolutely grind it out given that I'm 35 now. I'm not trying to win a pro show or get to the olympia stage and plenty of people with worse physiques than I have now have managed to earn pro status in classic physique.

One thing that I'm discovering is how common it is for apparently normal kids to be on GH. I've come across 3 in the last year. And one of those had two siblings that were on it. Maybe they only look normal because of the GH. But it seems like everyone is doing it.

Because in 3iu and below doses it's basically like fish oil level QOL enhancing. And yes, kids on GH will almost certainly grow taller than if they had not taken it.

So that job in Shenzhen that said they were going to do a second interview with me and the principal said he really wanted to hire me but I need to go through the HOD first straight up never got back to me on scheduling the second interview after I told them "I'm available any time you guys are. This is important so I will make time for it". Then when I asked for an update "we decided on another candidate herp derp". The headmaster mentioned he'd had huge problems with the HR staff during our first interview.

Whatever. See you in Macau, boyos. It's probably for the best long-term to get this hy00ge British brand on my resume that every single UK person recognizes if I ever hope to get that job in Thailand. The city is a "cooperation between guangdong province and Macau" but it officially no longer belongs to Zhuhai even though it did before and it is much closer to get to the Macau airport than the Zhuhai one. Some people tell me it'll likely be fully absorbed into Macau in the future and the lower taxes are kind of a big deal at this stage of my life. So technically I am out of mainland China starting in August. If the job isn't canceraids I'll probably end up buying a few thousand dollars of gym equipment and doing most of my training there if there isn't a walking distance gym. There's one about a 20 minute bike ride away and depending on my schedule this could be very doable + it's free cardio. Depends on traffic/schedule. This is the most important thing to me in the next ~2 years so if I gotta build my own, I will do it. The gym on the school already has some equipment but i haven't seen it just yet. In addition to a full dumbbell set, I need a hamstring curl/leg extension combo (cheap), leg press, machine press, and cable apparatus. I can do my rows and sldls on dbs instead of barbells, not a huge deal.

I was feeling stressed about this news and kinda worried about going somewhere that'll be very different from where I'm at now. As a result I had a pretty poor session and also had some weird heartburn. I made the best of it and still set a few PRs.

Biceps+hamstrings:
EZ curls: 25kgx20, 20kgx12
facing away cable curls: 5 sets failure
Tried to do some ffess but my pubic bone and balls started hurting even with just bodyweight.
Hamstring curls: 47.5kgx20, 12, 14
Paused Toes Elevated SLDL: 100kgx17, 14

Wanted to do leg press but heartburn got bad so I just left the gym.

I'm gonna drop FFESS/lunges because of the weird testicle/pubic bone pain. I'll just leg press as 3rd exercise and do it lighter than the other leg press session... maybe do sets across for 20-30 reps, limited rest, and less weight than the quad focused session. Leg press basically gonna train quads more and glutes less than FFESS but I get such a good glute pump from the SLDLs anyway and I'm hip thrusting first on my quad session. Split squats and lunges also gas me out so hard on cardio and require such long rest times to do well so leg press henceforth.

November 1 2025. Gradually removing distractions and other priorities from my life and just focusing on this. I also decided I'm going to just keep the dieting going all the way until the final week of June. When I get to Thailand I need to stay disciplined and either get a full customized meal prep or buy an air fryer and a rice cooker and don't go to crap. The first 1.5 weeks last trip I was pretty good, but after that I kinda fell apart and was lost to the nomzies.

Can you translate this to normie speak for me? I don't appreciate any QOL benefits of fish oil. There are some potential long-term health benefits, but I would not really call that "quality of life". I associate QOL with things that make me feel better right now.

Downsides of just doing it for every kid?

Villagery pop in:

https://nypost.com/2023/03/13/parents-sa...
Height, status-obsessed parents rush to inject kids with growth hormones

--My son is a fairly good basketball player. He is in 6th grade and starting on his schools 8th grade team. But he doesn't have the genetics (athleticism or height) to be anything more than a high school basketball player at most. If I was a better parent I should probably be trying to figure out a way to get him on this stuff, to at least give him a chance to be big enough to play basketball through college, or at least be a very good high school player; which would probably have +EV downstream benefits for the rest of his life (confidence, social status, etc.).

But I am not, so I wont.

People are very much blackpilled in their revealed preferences but seldomly in their stated preferences.

Sounds like he is pretty tall already if he's in 6th grade playing with 8th graders. Unless he's the PG. If he is already tall, my understanding is that the GH probably won't make him much taller.

What about depriving him a career as a fighter pilot or jockey?

Or conquering the world?

Fair enough, although even 1-2 inches could probably make a big difference on the margins.

It is interesting how elites are generally so self-conscious and conscientious about doing the little things on the margins to increase their own and their children's social status; and generally how oblivious everyone else is.

If I were to put one of my kids on GH, it would actually be my daughter. She's only 10th percentile in height. Pediatrician tells me not to worry about it. Her window is rapidly closing, so if I want to do it, I need to do it fast. I'm not thinking of doing it for any sports or other social benefits. I just think her life would be a more physically convenient if she were a bit taller.

My son is about 60th, which probably works out to an end result of manlet, but I'm fine with that. Arguably, the social benefits of an inch or two of height would be greater for him than her, despite the fact that he is relatively taller.

My boys are both around 75th percentile for height, though given I was literally sub 20th percentile until I was 14, it seems like a victory? They're almost certainly not going to have to lie on their respective Tinder profiles, which is all that matters.

With that said, neither of them either a) start on the 8th grade basketball team or b) still cosleep with us, so it appears that the MMR vaccine may have had some adverse effects. I will monitor and report back in the next few years.