Mike's Log - The Road to Recovery

Lower Body - Day 2, Week 1

Leg Press
No plates x warmup
1 plate per side x warmup
2 plates per side x warmup
3 plates per side x warmup
3 plates + 10 per side x 15,10

High Bar Squat (Vibrams, no belt)
Bar x warmup
95 x warmup
135 x warmup
165 x 15,10

Deadlifts
135 x warmup
225 x warmup
250 x 10

Hip Abduction on Floor
My leg(s) x 15,10 per side

1-Leg Calf Raise
Me x 15,10 per side (short rests)

2-Leg Calf Raise
Me + 90 x 15,10 per side (short rests)

Notes:

Well, I apparently cursed myself by observing I've never had to wait for the squat rack. This time, two guys sat in the squat rack approximately forever, so I decided to do leg presses first, since the squat/deadlift weights are still so light. By the time I thought they were done with their marathon squat session, they apparently turned it into a marathon deadlift session. In that the leg press is the only major lift I NEED from the gym of my core lower body lifts, I just went home and squatted/pulled. I made up the accessory exercises with some other stuff.

Doing leg presses first definitely juiced me a little for squats and deadlifts to follow, but these were still pretty easy. The only slight downside is I felt a touch of hip/sciatic pain in deadlifts. This seems to happen almost no matter what after layoffs, activity itself seems to prevent this from coming back. In that the magnitude of pain is very low and it seems to go away after a while, at this point I can't be bothered to care.

So, week 1 of my new HST cycle is done...felt good.
 
Just wondering if you had any further thoughts re: most/all lifters should be doing push ups for shoulder health etc ... ?
 
AlexAustralia said:
Just wondering if you had any further thoughts re: most/all lifters should be doing push ups for shoulder health etc ... ?
Click to expand...

My thought is that the pushup allows the scapulae to freely move. I.e. with each rep there is some active retraction/protraction going on. With respect to the protraction component, in particular, serratus anterior activity should be higher. This is probably evidenced by my observation that my serratus anteriors got really, really sore by doing pushups for some volume for the first time in a long time. Serratus anterior dysfunction appears to be implicated in the scapular dysfunction that's present in a lot of people with shoulder pain.

That's more or less the logic.
 
Fair enough.

I think your observation is spot on, I notice DOMS in the serratus anterior as well after high-volume push ups.

How would you compare push ups to dips, re: scapulae movement?
 
AlexAustralia said:
Fair enough.

I think your observation is spot on, I notice DOMS in the serratus anterior as well after high-volume push ups.

How would you compare push ups to dips, re: scapulae movement?
Click to expand...

Dips would probably work in a somewhat similar way, though the scapular movement would be a little different. I think the only "problem" with dips is that it puts a lot of people into a shoulder-unfriendly position, i.e. when you lack internal rotation, for example, there's a tendency to roll the shoulders forward in a deep dip. That head-of-the-humerus-translating-forward position is not so mechanically nice for the delicate structures of the shoulder, and can be a problem. It would be similarly problematic to a bench press with forward-rounded shoulders, basically.

Pushups don't require quite as much mobility (since there's less shoulder extension) and as such will probably be easier to maintain a mechanically good position for a lot of people. On the anecdotal side, I've done lots of dipping over the years, and to be honest, it's never really had a noticeable effect on my serratus muscles. I.e. I don't ever recall dips making me sore there.
 
The serratus is activated by protracting the shoulder blades. Obviously pushups are perfect for this. But incline pushups, with feet elevated would activate the serratus even more, since the serratus pulls the shoulders forward and slightly upward. Dips are mainly depressing the shoulders, so lower trapezius and the pectoral minor are more the players here.
 
Having given thought to how to integrate pushups into an HST setup, I think keeping them at bodyweight and working at increasing volume over time is probably a good place to start. E.g. have a block of say ~30-50 total reps to start, and then add ~10-25 reps per block such that the volume goes up throughout the cycle. Over many cycles, volume keeps trending upwards such that you wind up doing a ****load of pushups. This seems like a potentially wise thing to do, imo.
 
You can certainly load pushups (weight on the back), although it definitely takes either a vest/backpack or a spotter for it. I'm not sure how it would affect the movement/form of the pushup.
 
AlexAustralia said:
You can certainly load pushups (weight on the back), although it definitely takes either a vest/backpack or a spotter for it. I'm not sure how it would affect the movement/form of the pushup.
Click to expand...

You can, but it's a bit awkward, and as you say, I'd be concerned about keeping the integrity of the scapular movement in there. If we're doing pushups more from a shoulder/general health perspective, I think bodyweight stuff is fine.
 
I think adding them in as part of an HST cycle would be difficult given the amount of volume most of us can probably do with pushups. I do like them for warmups and post workout when I do my stretches and etc. I feel like pushups really help get everything ready prior to benching and etc.
 
I like them as metabolic work for the upper pushing chain myself, wide-grips are useful as well, close grips are a fairly good approximation for CGBP too ofc.
 
Totentanz said:
I think adding them in as part of an HST cycle would be difficult given the amount of volume most of us can probably do with pushups. I do like them for warmups and post workout when I do my stretches and etc. I feel like pushups really help get everything ready prior to benching and etc.
Click to expand...

Not so difficult, it would probably just require putting them in place of something else. E.g. if you normally do 2 exercises for "chest," substitute pushups for one of those exercises. Or even as the "triceps" exercise.

I am personally experimenting with this due to a screwed up left shoulder, however. If you're fine/healthy, I can see using them more for warmup type work being fine.
 
I am beginning to see why you and a lot of guys do upper/lower splits, and in general, why people like splits for bodybuilding....

...It just takes so much fricking energy to work out my whole body thoroughly once I got past the beginner stage. I tried abbreviated workouts, doing only 3-4 big compounds, but I always end up adding a few exercises, so I make sure I hit all muscle groups properly, and even doing 7-8 mostly compound lifts for a couple of heavy sets is really hardcore. I can see how If, I did an upper/lower split, it would really help with having enough energy and staying more motivated to do a healthy variety of exercises for multiple sets to really stimulate as many muscle fibers as possible to hypertrophy.

I am still doing fullbody, but only because my schedule won't allow me in the gym 4-6 days/week. If I had more time (hmm...win the lottery and retire) I would definitely switch to an upper/lower split, preferably 6x/week.
 
Sci said:
I am beginning to see why you and a lot of guys do upper/lower splits, and in general, why people like splits for bodybuilding....

...It just takes so much fricking energy to work out my whole body thoroughly once I got past the beginner stage. I tried abbreviated workouts, doing only 3-4 big compounds, but I always end up adding a few exercises, so I make sure I hit all muscle groups properly, and even doing 7-8 mostly compound lifts for a couple of heavy sets is really hardcore. I can see how If, I did an upper/lower split, it would really help with having enough energy and staying more motivated to do a healthy variety of exercises for multiple sets to really stimulate as many muscle fibers as possible to hypertrophy.

I am still doing fullbody, but only because my schedule won't allow me in the gym 4-6 days/week. If I had more time (hmm...win the lottery and retire) I would definitely switch to an upper/lower split, preferably 6x/week.
Click to expand...

I'm not huge on upper-lower splits for a few reasons;

-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
-It locks you into 5/6 per week, which I love but lets be real, sometimes life has other plans
-There's so few lower body exercises that are relevant, that I often feel I traveled to the gym for 20mins (I seem to grow a lot from only 2 sets on lower body, so much so that I don't bother with loading the legs anymore, just do a 'maintenance' load)
-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
 
AlexAustralia said:
I'm not huge on upper-lower splits for a few reasons;

-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
-It locks you into 5/6 per week, which I love but lets be real, sometimes life has other plans
-There's so few lower body exercises that are relevant, that I often feel I traveled to the gym for 20mins (I seem to grow a lot from only 2 sets on lower body, so much so that I don't bother with loading the legs anymore, just do a 'maintenance' load)
-Deadlifts don't fit anywhere
Click to expand...

You don't have to be locked into 5/6 times per week. Research has shown that volume-matched training at twice per week is just as good for hypertrophy as thrice per week. As such, bumping up the volume a little and going 4x per week upper/lower, hitting everything twice, seems quite reasonable.

Deadlifts would very obviously go on lower body days, and while they can be a pain to do from the floor after squats (particularly high rep squats), you could always just do RDL's/SLDL's, which are probably superior from a bodybuilding perspective anyways.

I also happen to think that leg presses, leg curls, leg extensions, and direct calf exercises are all worthwhile. For that matter, being able to do direct work for the hip abductors/external rotators in the form of the hip abduction machine is also quite nice and probably useful from a prehab perspective. I know it's internet popular to dismiss these sorts of lifts, but bodybuilders do them for a reason.
 
Last edited:
Don't get me wrong, I've always done leg extension, curl and calves (used to do a near half-metric tonne on calves). And the hip abductor machine is awesome (though sadly it's not a popular piece of equipment across commercial gyms). It still doesn't take me much longer than 20mins to get it done for non-heavy lifts, maybe 30-35 for heavier loads once you factor in all the loading times.

But deadlifts are a breaker for me. I want to do them on the same day as my legs but also as my upper body (back, traps, forearms).

4x a week (U-L x2) is a bit less frequency than I find works optimally for me personally.
 
Upper Body - Day 1, Week 2

Cable Rows
120 x 5
135 x 12,8

Dumbbell Bench Press
140 (70s) x 12,8

Chins
Me x 5
Me + 20 x 12,8

Pushups - externally rotated, elbows in style
Me x 35,15 (short-ish rest between sets)

EZ Bar Curls
75 (incidentally the weight last time was this, I think the EZ curl bars are ~25 lbs) x 12,9

DB External Rotation
8 x 15/side

Notes:

Not too much to report here other than the fact that I'm enjoying the pumps. I'm bumping calories up a bit this week (will be averaging a bit over 3000 daily), so that's fun.
 
nativetroutbum said:
Good to see the shoulder isn't bothering you!
Click to expand...

It's kind of settled at a low level of bothering me. I'll feel it a little during certain lifts and day to day, a sense of pain/instability/weakness, but nothing too scary. I figure it will either heal over time or it won't (in which case I'll probably require surgery), but either way, I'm not going to baby it forever. Don't get me wrong, I'm also not going to do anything overly risky/stupid, but I'm trying not to fixate on it too much, if that makes sense.
 
Lower Body - Day 1, Week 2

High Bar Squat (Vibrams, no belt)
Bar x warmup
95 x warmup
135 x warmup
155 x warmup
175 x 15,10

Leg Press
1 plates per side x warmup
2 plates per side x warmup
3 plates per side x warmup
3 plates + 25 per side x 15,10

Leg Press Calf Raise
2 plates + 10 per side x 15,10

Seated Calf Raises
50 x 15,10

45 Degree Back Extension (3rd hole)
Me + 10 x 15,10

Hip Abduction
70 x 15,10

Notes:

Still going beltless on the squats for no particular reason. I may just belt up starting next week (at 195 x 15 a week from today). Other than that, not too much exciting. I had a couple of candy bars post-workout, and am considering making calories even slightly higher in general, 3500 on workout days and 3000 on off days. This is probably about as aggressive a bulking schedule as I'd go on at this point, but I'm thinking...why not. Shoulder is good enough, I have a productive set of lifts to work on, and I'm early into a solid HST cycle. I will probably defat myself starting in late April or early May, as it's only February, so I have at least a couple of months to go (and/or eat a lot of) bananas, I figure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top