Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Yeah, I think unilateral free weight squatting motions are good for knee health too. Even if I feel fine now spamming leg press 2x per microcycle, that might lead to problems down the road as I get stronger. Given my very dominant lower back muscles, I could also consider doing the split squat first or second in the workout and doing a hinge movement as the last movement. Doesn't matter much right now, I'll make an effort to figure it out once I arrive at the new place.

okay I feel like it really didn't take long to develop a great gameplan to bring up my lats. Pullups are absolutely a valuable exercise and they're my most direct ab work along with sldls and rows, so all 3 of them will definitely stay in the program. The problem is that they don't do a great job of sufficiently stimulating the lats due to all the other musculature involved. I found today that just hammering unilateral work on machines totally fried my lats without too much bicep/trap/lower back/rhomboid/rear delt involvement. I'll figure out a way to make it work with whatever equipment is available at my next gym, but obviously at the Friday nights gym its really easy to get things working. I'll keep one pull day as "overall back work" where I do both pullups and barbell rows along with 1 other lift, and then one pull day of mostly lat isolation. Pullups and barbell rows are great for overall back development and for core training, they just aren't the ticket to growing hy00ge lats.

Something like this:

Pull day 1
Pullups:bwx4xfail
Machine of choice, pick a good overall back developer like ng pulldowns, machine rows, chest supported rows
Underhand rows: 3x0-2 RIR
EZ curls

Pull day 2
Unilateral lat emphasis machine row
Unilateral pulldown variation 1
Unilateral pulldown variation 2
Pulldown machine bilaterally for lower lats, something like mag bar
EZ curls

I did pull day 2 today but that was my last session at that gym probably ever with the move coming up. Next Friday I have a thing going on and won't be there, Friday after that is the day before the move.

The next chapter is going to come with a lot of life changes. "Vaguebooking" But I guess that's been my life up until this point... lots of crazy pivots and changes of direction/location. Even among expats in China I move around a lot more than anyone I know. Feels like one of the few constant things I've had in my life that past 15 years was going to the gym 3-5x/wk consistently. Beyond that I've been pretty flexible to drop what I'm doing and try something new and I think this time is going to be a big change for the better. Coming here to Chengdu was overall a mistake and for the first 2 years I regressed a lot on a personal level, but then the third year I really hit a personal growth spurt.

My motivation level is high. I don't think I'm going to even really bulk. At most add 2-3kg over the course of the next ~14 weeks before I start the next hard cut from a very lean state. It's part of the game if you want to get to a much leaner baseline.

Speaking of change I'd really like to get into half time econ half time PE at some point in my career. I've known one close friend who successfully transitioned from Math to Biology and then Biology to Bio+PE half/half and then PE full time. PE teachers generally have the least pressure, the most enjoyable job, and get paid the same as everyone else. For the type of bodybuilder I want to be it's extremely conducive to my lifestyle. If somebody was trying to get to a huge mass monster superheavyweight men's open bodybuilder status, no obviously not. But a guy who wants to be a low level classic physique pro and walk around lean+athletic and be able to hop into a competition on 8-12 weeks notice because he stays lean and active throughout the year it'd be perfect.

The post- "show" pumps have been just unbearable. Dropping down to cruise doses and lowering carbs/upping fats/lowering overall cals significantly. My body composition is still excellent as you can see from the most recent pics which makes it tempting to keep pushing food, but clearly I need some time to recover from 7 long months of dieting before I can really think about bulking or adding tissue if the day-to-day side effects of doing so are this bad. My bloodwork as far as kidney function, liver enzymes, hemaglobin/hematocrit are all excellent with only AST/ALT being barely out of range which makes it tempting to continue full blast, but I feel like I can't walk unless I take a 25mg HCTZ and end up peeing 7x every 8 hours.

Today did 12k steps and 2 hours liss bicycling outdoors. And I'm "only" at 350g carbs with my last meal waiting to be eaten. It's just steak and vegetables, no direct carbs.

When you training for strength, sometimes life hands you a deload. When you enhanced bodybuilding, sometimes life hands you a cruise. I'll keep training 5x/wk and hope to get back up to my baseline 12k steps/day and reintroduce the PEDS slowly. I was more around 6k this past week from debilitating tibia and lower back pumps.

You look great, very symetrical, really good proportions.

Been reading last 100 posts and wanted to recommend unilateral lat-work, but you already added it.

Did you try unilateral cable tower rows? Those at least felt great for me, in the lower lats with very low weights, focusing on peak contraction, with 2-3 second holds.

Dont you like pullovers for lat, of any kind?
I've trained with a german ex-pro bodybuilder who alternated in between doing pullovers as first and last movement on back days, doing cable pullovers mostly, but also DB and Nautilus machine. His last we're insane, but he had very low insertions, too.
Maybe an isolation movement could serve you well.

No I feel pullovers only in serratus really. I've never tried a good pullover machine though and different cable machines can feel a lot different, maybe the one wherever I end up next will feel better.

Push
15 degree incline dbs: 35kg19, 11, 10 omg why wasn't I doing this movement before? Felt amazing, so well connected and feel my upper chest perfectly.
Machine press; 42.5kgx16, 13, 11
Cable xovers (30 sec rests): 7.5kgx13, 9, 9
Db prone raises: 8kgx4 sets
Pushdowns: 25kgx24, 3 more sets myo rep matching
curls in between

Trained in the late morning after 2 meals instead of at night because I have half days these days at work. Feels a lot better and cable machine isn't infested.

I'm gonna cycle through 30 degree, 15 degree, and flat for db presses and I think doing it this way I'll end up with a reps or weight pr every sesh. It's not noted anymore but all of my presses and flies are paused; I haven't done a tng rep in almost a year now.

Fasted morning bodywieght was 98.x. I'm taking weekends to get into a hypocaloric state around 400-600 cal deficit each day to restore insulin sensitivty, protect digestive system, take an opportunity to get some cardiovascular work in, and slow down fat gain during offseason.

Still mentally waffling in my head about how much weight I should gain. If I just increase insulin and carbohydrates I can easily be at 107-108 by November, but in my head this feels unhealthy even if it results in my body composition being in an acceptable place. Maybe 103-104 is a better target before we start the cut.

Post cut I think I've had exactly 1 restaurant meal of chicken breast with pesto risoto (Chinese sized, so probably like 300 cals) and then 2 "cheat" meals of protein pita bread air fryer pizzas. Macros on those cheats were probably around 50c/25p/12f so barely even a cheat.

Stuff like toast with honey and gummies are in the plan but might be considered a cheat by some.

Pull

Chins (supinated, unstrapped): 12, 10, 8, 6 new grip and no straps tanked my reps haha
Single arm pulldowns on selectorized machine (not plate loaded): 20kgx12, 10, 8
Underhand rows: 60kg20, 13, 10 okay I'm ready to bump this up to 70kg
ez curls: 20kgx25, 3 sets myo rep match

I was super gassed and sleepy after my first set of underhand rows. I did unstrapped chins because pressing motions were giving my elbows greif and working that part of the forearm seems to alleviate this kind of elbow pain. If I stick with training pullups only 1x/wk I can probably just do it unstrapped. I feel like straps changes the lift in a negative way and paradoxcially gets less stimulus in lats but protects forearms from overdoing it. But it seems elbow pain can be caused by either over or underdoing forearm stimulus.

oh forgot to mention I missed Tuesday due to a school field trip to the aquatic museum. It was a splendid time and totally worth skipping a trainning day. I'm most likely going to miss Friday as well but maybe not because push is my favorite muscle group to train.

Legs

Hip thrust: 2px23, 17, 12
Hamstring curls: 47.5kgx20, 11, 9
toes elevated paused sldl: 100kgx15, 12
Leg press: 4ppsx27, 17, 11

97 minutes but equipment was zerged down and i had to take a break and sit down after hip thrust b/c of lower back pumps. Wanted to do leg extensions but once again zerged.

This gym used to be around 40/60 female male and not too many people or lines for equipment. Now it's around 20/80 and so much difficulty using the equipment I want to use bc some 2 digit iq drooling ego lifter is monopolizing it.

Basically what I was saying. The health benefits you'd get from extreme dedication to exercise and nutrition are more or less offset by steroid use. Or putting it more positively, whatever damage you're doing via steroid use is mostly offset by the habits required to be an elite athlete. Classic physique cycles are probably more similar in dosage to the thrower/strength/power athletes in the study than men's open bbers.

One thing he doesn't mention is that steroid use could absolutely elevate suicide risk even among people not facing huge competitive pressures. These things definitely have psychiatric effects and that's why I no longer use nandrolone at all.

Is there a reason you don’t go up in weight when you are doing 23 reps the first set? Is there a certain number you want to hit before you increase the weight or a rep range you want to be in?

I was wondering, too.
Been doing 30degree 37.5kgx12 dumbell incline 3 years ago, naturally.

Guess it's due to GTGTDG doing those pauses in between each rep. Making reps at least 30% harder, i think.

Quads looking to hit around 30 on first set of leg press. 15 on first set sldl before moving up. Hip thrust maybe 20? 25? Not really sure yet tbh.

Push
flat db: 40kgx12, 10, 8 longer pauses than normal, but still harder than expected
machine press: 42.5kgx17, 14, 12
cable flies: 7.5kgx13, 12, 10
prone raises: 4 sets
tricep pushdowns: stackx26, 2 more sets myo rep matching curls in between as always

https://www.instagram.com/kanulift/

This guy smart AF. AFrican American aspie high iq anime nerd.

He's got a lot of good insights and we have very similar bone structure. He's miles ahead of me in the lower body, miles ahead from behind upper body, but I'm not behind him much at all front upper body/delts/arms. It's weird that I am actually in the same universe as a guy who's getting 3rd place in pro shows and could very well win won and step on Mr. O stage. He probably wouldn't place high in the mr. o... yet... he's not gassing it hard but he's only 30. Then again, you look at the crop of new 22 year old Europeans and Brazilians who qualified for the Mr. O classic physique recently and you lose all hope because the level of competition is clearly getting higher as bodybuilding starts to proliferate outside of the WEIRD world.

Anyway back on track, here's how he sets up his leg days.

Leg day 1 (Quads focus)
Ham curls
Leg press
leg extension (order of leg press and extensions doesn't matter, but ham curls always first)

Leg day 2
ham curls
sldl
leg extensions

That's it.... it's so easy to overdo things on leg training. I'm guilty AF on this. This week I started trying to scale up. I should do the opposite. It's okay/productive to go in and do leg extensions as your only quad training on one of your leg days. Leg extensions are really effective, even if they aren't "hardcore". One of my IRL friends from Arizona got 5th in NPC nationals in heavyweight men's open bbing. This is way more hardcore than classic physique. His only quad training for like 1.5 years was leg extensions; the rest of his leg days were all hams and glutes. All that mattters is how you look on stage; you don't get extra points for having been more hardcore and done beltless ATG paused HBBS with no sleeves and yelled a lot and had blood coming out of your eyes. You don't get extra points for having developed your quads with 2 hour leg days and tons of hard exercises. He might be right that scaling back actually ends up with BETTER results because you aren't in such a fatigue hole you can't recover from.

So naturally I'll take this and add hip thrusts to the start of each sessions. I can probably make it work still if I just moderate the volume/RPE/number of sets/session duration. Session duration I think is very underrated for a fatigue management tool... you're probably not going to overtrain if you GO HARD but leave the gym after 50 minutes. Some people like me are so ******ed we can't help ourselves on GOING HARD, but placing a duration on the workout limits the amount of junk and fatigue burial.

He's also one of the renaissance periodization/team evil gsp athletes. I thought it was all jews, asians, and dyel aspies. Here's what happens when somebody with good bbing genetics does that approach. they look amazing.

I feel compelled to summarize the team evil gsp/broderick chavez protocol. He's really smart, but has debilitating autism. If somebody tried to ask him "okay so what do I take gimme a cycle" he'll tlak for 3 hours without giving a speciifc cycle. Here's the general outline. I'm very certain that if you approached your PEDs this way the harm would be about as much as TRT, and a lot less than however much beer montecore is currently consuming per week (unless he's at 0 obv).

Testosterone: "sports trt", supraphysiological but not by much. Not looking for your main muscle building to be here. Need this for the other anabolics and non steroid PEDs to do their jobs. around 3-4mg/kg of bw.
Masteron or primo: main anabolic muscle builidng compound. Both very well tolerated in human studies, used in the range of 1000mg/wk IN FEMALES and still well tolerated. Both anti-estrogenic properties; masteron is like a SERM, primo is like an AI. If you pick primo, maybe run test higher because you can run into nuked estrogen problems. Primo slightly more anabolic, less androgenic. Expensive, often faked, high volume of shots. Masteron enanthate a better substitute that comes in 200mg/ml, won't nuke estrogen into the ground but will prevent it from binding at the receptor site instead. Use around 700-2000mg/wk of either or some combination of both.
NPP or deca (OPTIONAL): around 200-300mg per week. Low side effects as far as penis and brain at this dose, joint support and extra anabolism.

gh: a lot
insulin: 10-25iu lantus with first meal for blood sugar control and GH/aas synergy. For big boys eating a lot of carbs offseason, maybe little humalog shots 3-8iu pre and/or post workout.
Telmisartan: 40-80mg, blood pressure and blood sugar. Synergy with metformin
Metformin: 500mg/day, blood sugar/insulin sensitivity, general helath and longevity.

Pre contest: Start about 24 weeks out with a cruise/health phase. Drop to sports trt, reduce training frequency to dissipate fatigue, increase steps and reduce food slightly. Around 16 weeks out get back on cycle but replace the npp/deca with tren ace starting as low as 10mg/day. Titrate up to no more than 40-50mg/day. Drive the deficit mostly through steps, but keep in moderate intensity cardio around 20-30min 4x/wk for health and performance. At around 10-12 weeks out, add fat burning stuff like clen, yohimbine, caffeine in fat burning doses, ephedrine, etc. Around 4 weeks out, add orals for peaking. Pick either 25-50mg anavar/day, 25-100mg winstrol/day, or 5-20mg halo/day or some combination of these not using too much. Low dose of the orals and only 4 weeks.

That's basically it. I did something like this but no orals and peak tren dose only got up to 1/3rd of a cc per day because I knew I wasn't stepping on stage. Bloodwork was perfect. Felt great.

If you wanted to start roids but were scared for your health, this is about what you'd work up to at peak. start with just 1 cc test/wk, add in 200mg mast or primo per week after about 8 weeks, gradually titrate up to something like 300mg test/wk and 1000mg masteron/wk over the course of 1 year, then start adding stuff like npp/deca and bringing masteron/test doses up based on response/aromatization rates.

The above is for looking good. For strength athletes, just take ***** everything. pl/strongman/oly/strenght is way more dependent on high dose roids than bb. BB doesn't need high dose roids but does need food/insulin/gh.

Antecdote: My homie here in Chengdu used to work with Pete Rubish for pl. The baseline offseason cycle (not meet prep..) was 1g test, 300mg tren ace, and 300mg npp per week. Not a ton of mgs, but harsh cycle. His DL went from 220-250 weighing just over 100kg doing the cycle and training program of Pete for 1 year. Pete gives no diet.

He stayed with the polish coach who has him on a strict diet year round even when in a surplus and a much milder cycle of test+eq with low dose ment in there as well. Despite not training conventional deadlift, his DL went from 250 to 290 in just under a year around the same bodyweight when the 290 was done but much better body composition. 0 conveitonal dead lift training, just sldl, hip thrust, leg press, hack squat, cheat rows. Not even free weight squats for the stabilizers/lower back to transfer to deadlifts.

It goes back to what I was saying with fatigue holes impeding progress. I've known it for so long that doing too much is positively destructive in strength/bb. But I have such trouble really sticking to my own advice.

You guys got to witness my deadlift disaster using a program from a well respected authority in the youtube strenght world, Alexander bromley. In the first 10 week cycle fo the program, my results were underwhelming and I went from 220x4 DL to 220x5, very disappointed. Ran the program again and actually with more PEDS too... worked harder and did more accessories. Went from 220x5 to being unable to lift it even once on the peak day after a deload.

I'm moving and changing gyms. I have bolded the above to look back on it when I construct my new training program based on equipment. It is very very critically important I do not do too much. I could literally go to the gym and do 3 sets of free weight dumbell presses, delt raises, and tricep pushdowns and go home. Maybe a flie, pushup, or machine press after the db press, but that's it. I could do the leg days I mentioned above. And for back... pullups, pulldowns, rows, curls. 4 lifts only, go home and recover. I've had so many times in my training career when I got worse results or EVEN REGRESSED from training too much and too hard. Take it the **** easy. I need to be tryharding at my job and with my PEDS and shovelling clean food into my mouth and with my steps and cardio. NOT WITH LIFTING WEIGHTS, DON'T LIFT TOO MUCH OR TOO LONG OR TOO HEAVY PLZ JUST STOP.

I remember being a young master's degree student natty training oly and doing some hypetrophy exercises working part time in the school gym. This little 5'7 latino dude.. exceptionally handsome and well groomed with perfect hair would come in. He was jacked out of his marbles. Enormous peaked biceps and you could see how hard his muscles were though his very modest hockey jersey. Not even a tight tank top with arms/shoulder exposed. You could still see the density and hardness. His back workouts were like slow ass pulldowns with the two single handles, underhand barbell rows done really slow and paused, and then single arm cable rows. Super light weights and ultra slow controlled reps. Never in the gym more than 45-60 minutes. I scoffed at this, attributed it to roids, and took my soft pudgy body with abs in the right lighting and did a set of 11 on pullups with 55lbs added via a belt with full ROM but jerky bouncy momentum form and thought "if I was on roids and trained as hardcore as I do now I'd look way better than him, even as an oly lifter who ins't mainly doing hypetrophy".

That was literally 12 ****ing years ago and I realize that no... it was not the roids... even on roids training "hardcore" and "heavy" often leads to worse results than how our well groomed handsome short latino king trained.

Be that latino dude where idiots are just amazed at how little effort you seem to be putting into your lifting and how "un-hardcore" it is.

The harm is less than 2 bourbons per week? Seems unlikely we'll ever actually know that, but if true I suppose my face will be pretty red (from embarrassment, not tren, unfortunately).

by feel wrath P

% chance this guy is natty?

Who is this guy? Probably roided up, these guys turn red. But need different angle to see aliens on his shoulders.

See I think this guy close to a lock to be on roids.

But mccafreey/Metcalf? No, no, no. Freaks natty athletes.

Is it true that shoulders, neck and arms benefit the most of PEDs? A friend told me these have the most receptors.

He’s some Facebook guy claiming natty. No idea who - it just popped onto my feed

by feel wrath P

% chance this guy is natty?

20%. This is attainable but almost nobody is walking around at this leanness without fairly extreme lifestyle habits. Steroids don't magically maintain this level of leanness, this is pure high activity+smart food choices year round and probably very little muscle gain. If he's natty, he's not walking around like this year round and still getting erections.

Probably not a turbo user though; could be a sort of "sports trt" 300-500mg/wk and sum growth hormone.

Neurotoxicity and hepatotoxicity of the above cycle, lower. Higher cardiovascular/hairloss/acne risk for the cycle. Probably neither are life shortening.

Here he is. Snake oil salesman I’m guessing

Roids might have gotten him that large (def roids if he were legit untrained until January), but the crazy training volume is what kept him lean. If you did that but without roids you'd be a much smaller but just about as lean version.

Went outside and did SUPINATED paused chins 5x5. Pausing at the top and the bottom for 1.5 seconds. Lats lit up just from a 5x5. I know I ranted autistically about having one day focused around unilateral work, but I'm going to try my same formula as before just change the chins to paused and supinated. Prontaed/ng is just too much delts/rear delts/rhomboids/traps. I really feel biceps and lats a lot more supinated. I never really trained supinated all that much when I was first coming up; all pronated with occasional neutral grip. At one point I was even able to do significantly more pronated pullups than supinated chins just from having practiced that grip so much more.

Let's try this:
Paused chins: 3 sets
some sort of machine or easier exercise focusing on the squeeze, unilateral if possible: 3 sets
underhand rows: 3 sets
ez curls: 3-4 sets myorep matching.

If I'm still not feeling the great lat pump I'll mess around with fancy unilateral work.

Yeah I didn't do that.. bicep/pec tendon was bothering me on unilateral pulldowns.

Chins: bwx13, 11, 9 +1 on each set but somebody came to talk to me between sets 2 and 3.
underhand rows: 70kgx13, 10
underhand pulldowns: 45kgx14, 11
machine chest supported rows: 62.5kgx21, 14
ez curls: 20kgx24, 2 more sets myo rep matching

66 minutes

nutrition a disaster today. Been anxious af about moving. Feels like I just upend my life and start over like every 3 years... In the past decade I think I've moved something like 8 times total. 4 different jobs, longest being 3 years. Hopefully this next one is it, but with the Taiwan situation that seems incredibly unlikely unless XJP has a heart attack and dies or something. Nomad life is finally starting to wear me down at age 35... most people have pretty much settled with partners/careers/locations now. Not me, I constantly change all of these.

My mental state is not conducive to serious training and eating right now, I might not be back in a consistent routine for a month or so.

I'm back baby!

Had some pain in my hip from the flight/new bed/being out of the routine. Bicep/pec tie in weirdly got ****ed which I think is actually because of the mob work I was doing on it rather than lifting itself, so trained pull this first day back. New gym is empty but it is a legit hardcore bbing gym. Dungeon style rather than megaplex style. Lacking a leg press but has v-squat and hack squat machines. I'll ask the owner if I can bring in a leg press but it might be a space issue. They have a hip thrust machine and a standing hamstring curl and obv my hams and glutes are the main issue over quads, so worst comes to worst I can just lunge+leg extensions. Still lots of other gyms to check out in the area about 15-20 minutes taxi away. The back machines at this gym are incredible though, tons of great kit and a huge step up from my previous gym. Same with chest.

Pull
Plate loaded high row: 80kgx3 sets failure honestly forgot to count because was wandering around looking at equipment trying to theorycraft program
Single arm cable row: 2 sets failure felt good
Chest supported t-bar row: 25kilo platex15,12,12
underhand bb row: 60kgx9, 10
"tik tok high row" ??x3 sets failure each side
Ez curls: 20kgx23, 2 more sets myo rep matching bar is totally different than what I previously used and has a way more acute angle on the curve.

Tik tok high row is a chest supported on an incline bench all the way up unilateral row from just above your head with a cable. Its my first time doing it and yeah this is the GOAT lat isolation exercise. I can see my back workouts being nothing but chins, underhand rows, "tik tok high rows" and chest supported rows. Don't need anything else. But I also do like the plate loaded high row too so I could easily include that too. I actually have too many good options for my pull days now. The leg days are the only thing that went back slightly, but that's alright I think.

It's going to be very lonely training in there, nobody to talk to and most nights even at prime time I'll be the only guy in there.

The area I've moved to... holy **** is it low population density. Not "low desnity for China" but even growing up in suburban phoenix or visiting my cousin's farm in a town of 30k, it's still extremely low population density relative to those. But what is here is highly modern and developed. It's mostly vast open fields, greenery, mountains, trees. I got exactly what I asked for in getting out of the urban slum hellscape. Things are less convenient. I can't get chicken breast/groceries and have to get in a taxi 30 minutes to shop at sam's club. This sounds normal to all of you, but getting your groceries deliverred is the standard in China and very few areas within big cities don't have this ability (I am still in a big city). I talk about how circumstance and environment affect mental health a lot.... the area where I was living was not good for anyone's mental health... I remember in a korean documentary about their falling birth rates, they saw that one of the things that seems to crush birthrates is putting people in big high rises with hundreds or even thousands of other people. I felt that too... every time I wanna go downstairs to take out the trash I gotta wait 6 minutes for the elevator and I'm on the 22nd of 33 floors? That just ****s with your head somehow... I can't explain why but it does. It was so dreary, grey, polluted, old, worn down, noisy, and filled with xenophobic asssshole elderly people. Here is the opposite of that.. ultra modern, bright, sunny, colourful, clear skies, only young people but very very few people. Like around 1/100th of previous population density dead srs.

I have a feeling this environment is going to be very conducive to bodybuilding monk mode and really reaching high level goals.

I stayed a lot leaner than i thought I did. All that water weight, calf pumps, lower back pumps, etc that I thought was from ment was just from clenbuterol withdrawal. Clen is a helluva drug I gotta be responsible with this stuff next time jfc the rebound was intense. Now that all that clen rebound water is gone I look at myself and think I'm no more than 8 weeks out from being stage lean again, despite the fact that I'm now like almost 6 weeks "post show". My rate of fat gain has been very good, but I really kept the diet tight and didn't eat like an asssshole.