Contrary to most gymrats, I enjoy pulling exercises such as lat pulldowns and chinups over the bench press. I believe a back as thick as a gorilla's is essential to occupying more space in public transportations and protecting one from backstabbing. Sadly mine is still as thin as a sheet of paper but I'd say its getting stronger!
Here's what I did today:
1. Pull-up: Max + 2 sets of 80%
2. Barbell row: 3 sets of 8
3a. Lat pulldown: 3 sets of 12, 10, 8
3b. Single arm shoulder press: 3 sets of 12
4. DB pullover: 3 sets of 12
5. Incline DB delt raise: 3 sets of 15
6. EZ bar curl: 3 sets of 5
7. Hammer curl: 2 sets of 20 ea arm
8. Finisher: Barbell pushup descending from 20 to 1
As you can see, this is a long workout. The picture above is taken during my last set of Barbell pushup. I added chains to my last ten sets. Love the clanking sound.
That's it for today. Stay strong and get stronger.
Yes I tried, and it was successful. To lose 5lbs in 3 days, you should do the following: 1. have as little sleep as possible; 2. skip breakfast and eat as irregularly as possible; 3. stress till you sweat.
No, I'm not kidding. But if you know me, I'm always about gaining weight and never losing. It took me almost a month to go back to 175lbs from 167lbs, now I have to eat like a pig to try to put back some weight which I suck at. As regards the sh*tty lifestyle I had last week.. well I was working my arse off for my end of term thesis, literally didn't sleep at all, just took a couple naps here and there. Finally got that crazy 9000 worded bastard over and done with. Literally stressed myself dry. To be fair though, we had a whole year to consult our supervisors, do our research and actually write the paper... I don't even want to mention WHEN I started..
The whole point is, however, not about how I deal with my school work. Its about how everything comes with a price. There's no shortcut in life, I can't procrastinate and be rewarded for my procrastination. You always have to pay your dues. Similarly, you cant lose weight without going through some physical hardship, in most cases, following some strict diet and going to the gym. The thing is, most of us pick the easier path at the expense of our potential to becoming a better individual. And that sucks. That is why you see Mike Chang everywhere on Youtube. Whereas Dave Tate is only getting 10% of the views Mike Chang receives.
As I mentioned earlier, my current training is quite unstructured because of the approaching of exams. I'll just try to hit hard whenever I get the time to train. Going for 1RM or 3RM PR for bench and squat/deadlift, and maintaining my upper back strength. This week I only benched a bit and did some upper back stuff.
Tried a narrower grip for my bench press. a bit wobbly at first but i think i can handle more weight later with this grip than a wider one when im used to it.
By the way, we didn't win this year. We beat CUHK but lost to HKU by a couple points. I was proud of my team though, everyone poured their heart out and did their very best. My parents and girlfriend came and I'm glad that I scored some 20 points in a game.
I tried iMovie on my mac for the first time. Took me fifteen minutes to figure out which button is the one to upload video clips with. I know the video looks amateurish, technologically speaking I'm still a caveman. In fact, just couple months ago I was still using one of those Nokia black and white phone which you have to constantly delete texts cus there's only space for 100 messages..
Here it is. Enjoy.
We had different programmes cus I was deloading as mentioned in the earlier post but Plato was doing a lot more work cus I wanted to teach him as much as possible during those 2 hours.
He started with:
1. some easy machine flyes: 4 sets of 8
2. Bench Press: 3 rep max
3. Incline DB Press: 2 sets of 12
4. Stretch Pushup: 2 sets to failure
5. Side Raise: 4 sets of 8
6. Rear Delt torture: 30,25,20,15
7. Wide Grip shoulder press: 3x 12
This should be the last 'detailed' post before mid-May because I'll be having my final exam.
This week, I'm gonna make some adjustments to my training since I have a one day inter-law school basketball tournament this Sunday. It's gonna be quite physically demanding since we'll be playing 3 matches within 6 hours. We won the same tournament last year. This year, I'm lighter yet stronger and more explosive, so I'm looking forward to scoring more points and defending our title!
So this is what my training this week looks like: Tuesday:
1. Dynamic Effort Squat (slightly above parallel)
--> my theory is that u wanna mimic the way you jump on the court, personally i bend my knees really slightly when I jump. This is how I adjust my squats before a game coupled with a light weight so as to focus on being explosive. did 6 sets of 3
2. Chin-ups
3. Lat pulldowns
4. some shoulder prehab with dumbbell
Wednesday:
1. Bench (maintenance work)
2. some arms work as well. will post a detailed log tmr.
Friday:
1. Dynamic effort Box Squat
2. shoulder mobility
3. some core work
As you can see, other than the typical push/pull/legs split im having these days, it becomes kinda like maintenance for the upper body and explosive legs. This is the first time for me to really plan ahead in order to maximize performance for a basketball game. Usually I just take a couple training sessions off and replace them with balling. Additionally, I've started to incorporate band stretching into my warmup routine. Still on the testing stage. Will update on whether I'm keeping it in the next couple weeks.
It's been a while since last post. Had a super hectic week and fell sick. Only had couple hours of sleep last week working on an assignment. Glad that its over, it was a hell week. Slept like a dog last night. Woke up at 3pm. Finally hit the gym today after not training for almost a week.
Didn't post my log last Sunday, since I didn't really have the time and it was really arbitrary. Did some max squat and tried out some goodmornings. Also did some band pulldowns and easy deadlifts.
Today I went easy, did only two worksets for bench press: 50% x 5 and 60% x 5 and some easy supplementary work. I usually deload every 5th week of my training cycle so that I can allow my body to rest and come back stronger. Never quite like the feeling of leaving the gym knowing there's so much left in the tank though. but hey, thats what deloading is all about.
So, that's it. its intended to be short, next week there'll be more intensity.
Contrary to most gymrats, I enjoy pulling exercises such as lat pulldowns and chinups over the bench press. I believe a back as thick as a gorilla's is essential to occupying more space in public transportations and protecting one from backstabbing. Sadly mine is still as thin as a sheet of paper but I'd say its getting stronger!
