Back to Basics

First day back in the real gym, first day of new program. I'm starting off extremely light. Doing upper/lower split. Going to try for 4 days a week but it might only end up being twice a week, we will see. I'm having a baby in ten days so I'm not dedicating myself to any set schedule.

Flat Bench 135x14,10,6
Seated Row 140x13,10,7
Pulldown 120x12,8,7
Seated Dips 160x15,9,6
Military Press 95x15,15

Despite using such low loads, I was totally wiped out after the session and nearly puked. I had to swallow the vomit as to not lose the calories. Obviously my conditioning has suffered a bit. I'm sure it will come back quickly. I'm not in a huge hurry to progress the loads, plan to take it nice and slow. In a few months, once the loads are getting heavier, I may test RMs and set up a more strict cycle.

Body weight was 215 as of this morning so obviously I've lost quite a bit of weight over the last few months. Not tracking calories hardcore just yet but aiming for ~3700. I'd like to get back up to 240 within the next few months.
 
Couldn't do it Monday due to work, went today and did lower body.

Squats 225x12,8,6,4
Leg Curl 180x15,14
Leg Ext 120x15,15
Seated Calf 135x15,15
Curl 105x18,15

I can't walk right anymore. I'm still irritated with my lack of conditioning. It better come back fast.
 
I guess I should note that I'm doing triceps on upper day and biceps on lower day. My arms are significantly behind the rest of my body in development and I've never really done a whole lot of direct arm work, and when I did do direct arm work, I never really did that much volume so I'm hoping they grow on this. They've deflated a lot while not lifting and only measure 16 inches right now.
 
Couldn't do it Monday due to work, went today and did lower body.

Squats 225x12,8,6,4
Leg Curl 180x15,14
Leg Ext 120x15,15
Seated Calf 135x15,15
Curl 105x18,15

I can't walk right anymore. I'm still irritated with my lack of conditioning. It better come back fast.

Give it a week.
 
Baby came early. Due date was tomorrow, but she came on the 14th at 2:16 am so just a bit ahead of schedule. She was very small compared to my last son, only 18.5 inches long and 7 lbs 11 ounces.

I'm not enjoying the high volume routine. It just isn't satisfying. Today, I did upper body still, same lifts, but went heavier and clustered to 20 reps for each lift instead. Felt a lot better.
 
Baby came early. Due date was tomorrow, but she came on the 14th at 2:16 am so just a bit ahead of schedule. She was very small compared to my last son, only 18.5 inches long and 7 lbs 11 ounces.

I'm not enjoying the high volume routine. It just isn't satisfying. Today, I did upper body still, same lifts, but went heavier and clustered to 20 reps for each lift instead. Felt a lot better.

Congratulations! Hope everyone is well.

Good luck with the sleep factor! Might need a bit more caffeine to get you through.
 
Baby came early. Due date was tomorrow, but she came on the 14th at 2:16 am so just a bit ahead of schedule. She was very small compared to my last son, only 18.5 inches long and 7 lbs 11 ounces.

congrats!
I'm not enjoying the high volume routine. It just isn't satisfying. Today, I did upper body still, same lifts, but went heavier and clustered to 20 reps for each lift instead. Felt a lot better.

Thats a good idea, a good way to finish the loading cycle anyway, just cluster to 20 reps.
 
Hey, Totz, many congratulations on your new arrival! All the very best to you and your family at this happy (and tiring!) time.

It will be completely understandable if you have to attend to things other than the gym for a couple of weeks; but, saying that, you're a bit of an old hand at this baby lark now, so you'll probably take it all in your stride and be back under the bar in a day or two. :)
 
Thanks guys. I'm not too worried about the sleep thing, I don't get a lot anyway and I'm able to function normally on very little.

She's not as physically strong as my last son was at birth. He was able to stand assisted, hold his head up on his own immediately after birth, dangle by one hand wrapped around my finger for a long time, etc etc. She can lift her head but that's about it. A little disappointed. I'll have to get her into training once she's 3 or 4 to toughen her up.

Definitely going to rearrange my cycle to be heavier/more strength focused. I don't have time to manage my diet right now so I'm just going to focus on getting my strength back to my previous levels before all my time off, the back injury before that and etc etc.
 
Hey, Totz, many congratulations on your new arrival! All the very best to you and your family at this happy (and tiring!) time.

It will be completely understandable if you have to attend to things other than the gym for a couple of weeks; but, saying that, you're a bit of an old hand at this baby lark now, so you'll probably take it all in your stride and be back under the bar in a day or two. :)

Definitely. People I know talk about how having another kid after their first is such a hardship and so on. I just look at them like they are crazy. Your first kid? Yeah, that one is a challenge because you have to rearrange your life around this individual. But once you are a parent and your life pretty much revolves around the children, adding another one is no big deal. I think I'm almost done with five though. Maybe one more. I don't know. I don't really feel satisfied yet.
 
I got genetic testing done. Yielded some interesting results. I have a single nucleotide polymorphism that has been linked to higher muscle performance, which I suppose would explain why I've always been stronger than my size suggests. I'm also 12% neanderthal, while the common amount for anyone with european ancestry is supposed to be a mere 2-4%. I guess that could explain why I have dense bones and crap like that. I'm also genetically bad at endurance stuff, which explains why I hate cardio and high rep work. I also have a lot of alleles that are supposed to reduce my odds of becoming obese, which makes sense I guess. I have several different genes associated with longevity, I even found this tool online that reads your raw dna data and projects your probability of living to 100 years or greater. It seems like it takes some of the studies it references and stretches the logic a little bit... still, pretty interesting. I also learned a lot about my ancestry and it is somewhat different than what my family genealogy would suggest.

Anyway, all this in mind, I've decided I don't really feel like focusing so much on typical bodybuilding stuff. It seems there is a reason why I've been drawn more toward strength oriented training and I believe I will stick with that from here on out. I don't really care a whole lot about becoming significantly larger but I do want to become significantly stronger. If I get bigger in the process, then awesome.
 
I got genetic testing done. Yielded some interesting results. I have a single nucleotide polymorphism that has been linked to higher muscle performance, which I suppose would explain why I've always been stronger than my size suggests. I'm also 12% neanderthal, while the common amount for anyone with european ancestry is supposed to be a mere 2-4%. I guess that could explain why I have dense bones and crap like that. I'm also genetically bad at endurance stuff, which explains why I hate cardio and high rep work. I also have a lot of alleles that are supposed to reduce my odds of becoming obese, which makes sense I guess. I have several different genes associated with longevity, I even found this tool online that reads your raw dna data and projects your probability of living to 100 years or greater. It seems like it takes some of the studies it references and stretches the logic a little bit... still, pretty interesting. I also learned a lot about my ancestry and it is somewhat different than what my family genealogy would suggest.

Anyway, all this in mind, I've decided I don't really feel like focusing so much on typical bodybuilding stuff. It seems there is a reason why I've been drawn more toward strength oriented training and I believe I will stick with that from here on out. I don't really care a whole lot about becoming significantly larger but I do want to become significantly stronger. If I get bigger in the process, then awesome.

Where did you get your testing done?
 
I went through 23andme.com but they don't offer health assessments or anything, just ancestry and it's not that thorough. The really nice thing about 23andme.com is that they are cheap and you can download your raw data. Then you can upload it to other sites such as gedmatch.com or promethease and get more thorough interpretations of it. I also used a tool on stanford's site called interpretome to get some information.

It's actually pretty useful. Obviously it doesn't tell you necessarily what genes are expressed, anything about epigenetics, etc. but it is still helpful. A lot of it makes sense. For example, I have a thing called photic reflex which makes me sneeze when exposed to bright sunlight and promethease identified a single nucleotide polymorphism in my data that causes that trait.
 
VERY interesting! Thanks for sharing... I am more about the bodybuilding stuff and symmetry. I feel that I am strong enough. Years of lifting heavy really burned me out, so I am kind of over the bulging blood vessels in order to lift monumental weight. I guess it is horses for courses all this stuff and ultimately we are better off doing what we enjoy with the weights/nutrition and then seeing what happens.
 
Yeah, I've never really enjoyed obsessively working to get my measurements up. I did it because I wanted to be bigger, but for actual enjoyment, the most I ever experienced was when I focused on strength training. I am really good at moving around heavy stuff in general, which leads to me being asked by friends to help with moving from one place to another, or helping when they need misc junk moved or loaded up into a truck. I've even been drafted to help move a bunch of large rocks because the guy didn't want to rent any heavy equipment to move the stuff. While doing these things, people always tell me I should go into strong man stuff. Just recently, I was carrying someone's couch out of their house on my back and someone else told me the same thing yet again, which reminded me of how often I hear this. So maybe I'll look into it. It could be fun.
Or maybe I'll just start training with heavy loads and relatively lower volume instead of trying this high volume junk I've been experimenting with. I don't know yet.
 
I went through 23andme.com but they don't offer health assessments or anything, just ancestry and it's not that thorough.

That's the one that I'm familiar with, but I have not had the testing done yet. They used to do a full analysis of your test results but they got into trouble for doing that a while ago and had to stop.
 
Yeah, fortunately you can find several free or nearly free services online that will analyze your data for you once you download it from 23andme. I'm still waiting for this other tool to finish analysis to see if it tells me anything new.
 
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