Gamechanger: Gain 30, Pull 500.

I think I am going to try isometric holds and negatives after my regular lat workout. I have had great success in the past doing isometrics for my quadriceps, and I have a feeling it will work well for the lats. After I do my regular sets, I will hold the weight in the flexed position for as long as possible.

On a sad note, my lower back injury flared up again. :( it's always the same side, right side at the hip attachment, it's always there because my right leg is shorter, which causes it to be tight and also does more work. I can't afford to see a doctor about it, poor as heck right now, trying to support my family in one income. I may just have to come up with my own sort of corrective shoe lift, do some rehabilitation.

Oh well, at least I can focus on upper body and build a killer torso while I am rehabilitating my f*d up legs.
 
Damn, that sucks.

I find that any form of row exercise isn't great for negatives. Being perpendicular at the torso will convert a lot of strain to the lower back. Might be fine for a lying down supported row, and obviously that kick ass looking machine you use might be fine.

Weighted hangs are the ****. No two ways about it.
 
AlexAustralia said:
Damn, that sucks.

I find that any form of row exercise isn't great for negatives. Being perpendicular at the torso will convert a lot of strain to the lower back. Might be fine for a lying down supported row, and obviously that kick ass looking machine you use might be fine.

Weighted hangs are the ****. No two ways about it.
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Yes, the isometrics/negatives would just be for pulldowns/pullups.
 
I ordered an orthopedic quality adjustable foot lift. Designed for people with my exact problem...(Low back pain stemming from a short leg.) Also, I prayed for healing and got some bedrest, already feeling better! I am psyched because last time I injured my lower back it was really bad and took over a month to heal. This time, I've got faith it will heal quickly.

Nevertheless I'm going to take a break from deadlifts for a week or so. Probably I'll start with some leg isolations, then ease into some hip work with the leg press. Once I get the foot lift measured and custom-fit, I'm going to focus on very light squats and deadlifts, and work on rebuilding my hip balance. I should have gotten the orthopedic foot-lift years ago, but no regrets, I'm still relatively young and springy. Thank God I haven't done any major damage yet...it could always be worse!
 
Today I just did an upper body smorgasbord! Bro style.

Dips
Chins
Pulldowns
Machine rows
Landmine presses
Machine Flyes
Machine curls
Pushdowns

For legs all I did was leg extensions, as my posterior chain is still healing up.

Great workout, just warmed up to a decent working load and blew out 3 sets of everything. Really fun, change of pace.
 
Foot-lift came in. Holy moly, its amazing. I can't even begin to go into detail about all the benefits and subtle nuances off having balanced leg-length again! To put it in a nutshell, I can finally walk, run, squat and lift weights with balanced force on each leg/hip!!! Hallelujah!

Its been a full week since my lower back/hip injury and its basically all healed up. Time to ease my hip back into training, this time with balanced legs.

Leg Press: 50x10, 140x10, 230x10, 320x10, 410x10,10,10
Felt great, again I can't even describe all the benefits and differences I could feel by having the foot-lift, but its like a miracle! Finally my legs are working equally.

Dips: 220 3x10
Wide-grip, incredible pump of the pectorals, upper and lower both!

Pulldowns: 160 3x10

One-armed Standing Cable Rows: 70 3x10

DeadLift: 185x5, 225x5, 255x5, 255x6, 275x6
I wasn't planning on Deadlifting this early after my injury, but the footlift allowed my right hip to work properly and in balance with the left hip, and after warming up, I was able to get an easy 275x6 with no pain at all! Again, a small miracle in my book. I should have obtained a footlift to fix my leg-length discrepancy 20 years ago.

Military Press: 105x6, 115x6, 125x5
I don't Normally do standing barbell presses, but the guy I was lifting with convinced me to give it a go. Not bad.

Incline Laterals: 15s x10,8,6
Deltoids completely fatigued, couldn't even complete the reps after the Pressing.

Bodyweight is around 213 lb.s, people at the gym are starting to think I'm juicing. (I'm not) :)
 
Sci said:
Foot-lift came in. Holy moly, its amazing. I can't even begin to go into detail about all the benefits and subtle nuances off having balanced leg-length again! To put it in a nutshell, I can finally walk, run, squat and lift weights with balanced force on each leg/hip!!! Hallelujah!
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That's GREAT news SCI! You will, no doubt, start making serious progress toward your deadlift goal.
 
Sci said:
Foot-lift came in. Holy moly, its amazing. I can't even begin to go into detail about all the benefits and subtle nuances off having balanced leg-length again! To put it in a nutshell, I can finally walk, run, squat and lift weights with balanced force on each leg/hip!!! Hallelujah!

Its been a full week since my lower back/hip injury and its basically all healed up. Time to ease my hip back into training, this time with balanced legs.

Leg Press: 50x10, 140x10, 230x10, 320x10, 410x10,10,10
Felt great, again I can't even describe all the benefits and differences I could feel by having the foot-lift, but its like a miracle! Finally my legs are working equally.
...
DeadLift: 185x5, 225x5, 255x5, 255x6, 275x6
I wasn't planning on Deadlifting this early after my injury, but the footlift allowed my right hip to work properly and in balance with the left hip, and after warming up, I was able to get an easy 275x6 with no pain at all! Again, a small miracle in my book. I should have obtained a footlift to fix my leg-length discrepancy 20 years ago.
...
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Well done for getting the foot-lift sorted. A fix as effective as this is fantastic to hear about. At least you know never to be without it again. All the best for this cycle, Sci.
 
Thanks guys. Although my long term 500 pull is a long way off still, I am determined more than ever to pull 405 and weigh-in at 220 by the end of this cycle. In fact, I am not going to SD until both of those goals are met.
 
Sci said:
Thanks guys. Although my long term 500 pull is a long way off still, I am determined more than ever to pull 405 and weigh-in at 220 by the end of this cycle. In fact, I am not going to SD until both of those goals are met.
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"Pull" meaning deadlift or rack pull ?
 
I start with the bar just below my kneecaps. More ROM that way. Above the knee and it turns more into a shrug type trapezius exercise. I do them primarily for my Lower back, so I like to start a little lower, a little more bent at the hip, to make it as much like a Deadlift as possible, minus the lower floor portion which is a lot of hip power.

I say experiment and see what it feels like.

I might start trying some above the knee pulls, just to see what it feels like. I could probably work up to 500 pounds soon, if I started that high up. Might be good to get the feel for holding onto 500 pounds.
 
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I feel like I didn't really reach any major RBE with the 2 weeks of 10s, so I decided to do 2 weeks of 8s before I jump into the 5s. I want to extend this cycle as long as possible and squeeze out as much hypertrophy as possible during this last phase of my bulk.

All exercises done for 3 sets of 8 reps.
Leg Press: 410
Pulldown: 170
WG Dip: 240
Landmine Row: 105 (60+Bar)
Landmine Press: 95 (50+Bar)
Machine Fly: 240

My legs were still really sore from Saturdays workout, but f*ck it, DOMS doesn't matter according to HST principles, so I pushed through with leg presses.
Not too keen on the landmine stuff, both movements felt a bit awkward. Though I will say that my front delts and upper pectorals got pretty strained during the presses. Also the rows seemed to hit my biceps harder than most rows do. Interesting alternatives, though I think I'll stick with my favorites for shoulders/upper back next time: machine rows and seated dumbell presses.

I think I am going to keep the machine Flyes in there along with the wide-grip dips too. Between those two I should be able to build a formidable chest.
 
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Too much chest volume. CNS doesn't need the extra work, and science comfortably tells us that the muscles don't either 48 reps is a LOT.

Landmine row = one-arm BB row, yeh? Just YouTube'd 'Landmine row' so I figure that's what you're talking about.

Re: Landmine Press - definitely takes a couple of sessions to get all the positioning down pat, probably no different from when you did bench for the very first time.

I like the pulldown inclusion, maybe even more than a chinning movement. I keep coming back to these for the fantastic activation of lats. The only issue can be that the load doesn't go high enough on some machines. I might even mix these up w/heavy chins on my deadlift days.
 
AlexAustralia said:
Too much chest volume. CNS doesn't need the extra work, and science comfortably tells us that the muscles don't either 48 reps is a LOT.
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??? Where did you come up with that? 48 reps is a lot? My CNS is hardly fatigued by this workout.
Now if I was trying to copy Jay Cutler's workout, well that's just insane. The guy does 30-40 sets just for back. And that sets of 10, so that's 300-400 reps for back in one workout. Of course he's built up to that over the years and is juiced to the gills.
But I'd like to see where you came up with 6 sets of moderate load being "a LOT"???
 
I don't worry about the # of sets you split it up into.

I would classify 48 reps being a substantial amount of work.

You (as in Sci, not random newbie on the web) know the that much volume isn't required to induce hypertrophy. I'm not saying you're shooting yourself in the foot or anything, mate, rather that you seem to be doing more than you need. Obviously load x volume = X, and load has a threshold, volume has a threshold etc.

However, there's also an upper limit for each (load being what you can physically do, ofc). You don't need 48 reps of a 'moderate load'. And given your trained state, you aren't going to feel massive DOMS from nowhere, similarly you probably need more than 8 reps to induce growth, but 48 is over-shooting it IMO. Those aren't insignificant loads you're moving there.

No need to get fired up etc. I'm merely coming from a view point of risk vs reward. The 'hypertrophy' reward for that volume is v.v.low, and the risk of fatigue is moderate, especially when we factor in that volume over an extended period and general 'life' factors to boot.

As I said, the place I'm coming from is a) we know those extra reps aren't necessary for hypertrophy and b) risk vs reward. Don't get me wrong, the one (sometimes fatal re: stickign to the program) flaw of HST is that for those of us who love pumping iron for 90mins a day, it's not satisfactory.

It's just food for thought.
 
Well, obviously if the workouts start getting fatiguing, the extra chest work (Flyes) will be the first to go.
I get far more fatigued from working legs and back. For now, I think that dips and Flyes make a killer combo, and as long as I can handle the volume, I believe it WILL make a difference in extra hypertrophy stimulus. You are right, the difference between doing dips only vs. doing dips and Flyes is probably not huge. But as long as I am not overtraining, I'd rather be sure I am maximizing chest growth. ( it's my main priority along with lats)
 
Check out this jay cutler back workout... This is sick. I would probably be in a stretcher for a week after this workout. This is the one I watched which has him doing 300-400 reps for his back in one workout. My joints would just explode.
http://youtu.be/Jeq2PJpawsI
 
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