Natural drug free bodybuilding and weight training blog

Bench with 5/3/1 week 2

Admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:29:00 -0700

Week 2 of 5/3/1 for flat bench. I naused up and left my percentages at home, I remembered my max set would be 117.5kg but couldn't remember what I should be doing leading up to this, so I improvised.

Wasn't sure how it would go today as I was properly knackered due to looking after my 8 month old who has diarrhoea at the moment, explosive is an understatement - I wish they could invent a leak proof nappy, saying that she has been a very good girl. The rest of my crazy gang went out to the cheeky monkey's tea party and had an awesome time.

Due to the baby sitting, I didn't get to the gym till late afternoon and was having a real problem staying awake - unfortunately it was too late in the day to be necking coffee if I wanted a decent night's sleep later on.

It actually went ok but not great as I was hoping for 8 reps and only managed 7, my form still sucks big time but I think it is improving slightly and the more I flat bench, the more it should hopefully improve.

After the benching, I started to wake up a bit and luckily my back was feeling good, so managed to do some squats - 2nd week in a row! I decided to max out on reps, got a bit excited on rep 7 and thought I had an easy 10 and preceeded to really f*ck up rep 8. Tipped forward, nothing major but only just recovered the rep and decided to leave it at that. Hoping that my back is OK next week so I can see whether I was correct in thinking I could do an easy 10 or whether I am talking shi*t.

Flat bench press
20kg x 10
60kg x 5, 5
80kg x 5
100kg x 3
117.5kg x 7

Back squat - breaking parallel
20kg x 8
60kg x 6
80kg x 5
100kg x 5
120kg x 2
140kg x 8

Stiff legged deadlifts - using 10kg plates so I can go lower
60kg x 5
80kg x 5
100kg x 3
120kg x 3
140kg x 6

15mins foam rolling

Junking

Admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:01:00 -0700

Time for my favourite posting - junk days.

I started junking Friday night, so back on the healthy stuff tomorrow (Sunday instead of Monday).

Awesome, I treated myself to some nice Sushi, I've not had any in ages and it was TASTY!!! The problem with sushi, is you need to eat a truck load of it, to fill you up and it is relatively expensive. The good thing though, is it is also quite healthy, so wasn't sure whether to put it into the junk section. I have decided to include it as I classify it as a treat and the amount of soy sauce I used probably negated any health benefits. I also had some fried noodle dishes which can be classified as junk.

8 pieces of mix nigiri and 6 pieces of spicy tuna cut roll, an extra 6 pieces of tuna roll, salmon hand roll, Pork yaki soba and 1/2 plate of chicken yaki soba.
2 Toffee crisp bites
Ham hock and butter roast potatoes
Cadbury dairy milk chocolate bar
2 Thornton's toffee cakes
Ribeye steak with chips

AMENDMENT + 1 Garlic bread ate today (Sunday)

By the way the gout has been really good recently (touchwood), not sure why it is though but am really grateful.

Deload week

Admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:18:00 -0700

This is my only workout till Sunday, as I am trying to deload this week. A new approach for me, usually when I deload I do nothing or do some really high rep stuff to get a pump. Today I followed Wendler 5/3/1 percentages, not much to say apart from it was easy and quick. Basically the weight is light and you can do loads of reps but you bail after 5.

Got on the exercise bike afterwards, as it literally took no time to get through the deload, managed to do 12mins before I remembered how much cardio sucks (got to start doing it again though for health purposes).

By the way, the highlight of my day was finding a nutritional calculator on the Maccy D's site. Basically you select your food from the drop down and press Add Item and it builds a grid of stats below, how cool is that? My McDonald's meal at the weekend yielded more protein than I thought, 90g in total & 1920 calories.

Bent Rows
60kg x 5
70kg x 5
85kg x 5

Curl grip pulldowns
50kg x 5
60kg x 5
75kg x 5

Technogym Incline Machine Bench
50kg x 5
62.5kg x 5
77.5kg x 5

Technogym Flat Machine Bench
55kg x 5
70kg x 5
85kg x 5

Stationary bike
12 mins (heart rate monitor bust)

Good weekend on the junk front

Admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:30:00 -0700

I had a pretty good weekend on the junk front and am now recharged to eat healthy food for the next 5 days.

Off the top of my head, this is the junk I ate:

1 Big Mac, 1 Quarter Pounder, Double cheese burger, regular fries, regular coke
Full English breakfast - 3 fried eggs, 5 rashers bacon, 4 sausages, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes. 2 buttered white toast, 1 slice of bread & butter
Sausage sandwich with brown sauce on white bread
2 Gu chocolate bars
2 Cadbury's caramel cake bars
1 tub bbq pringles
1/2 tub sour cream & onion pringles
Small bowl of tortilla chips with dips - guacamole & sour cream and chive
1 snickers bar
1 double decker bar

Erm - hope I'm not getting some kinda eating disorder???

Bench with 5/3/1 percentages

Admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:25:00 -0700

As the 5/3/1 percentages have been so good for my bent rows, I am going to resurrect my crap flat bench press with it. Touchwood I will see some progress for a change, by the way I just wanted to say I am currently not following the 5/3/1 programme but am just using the percentages recommended.

I am basing these 1st weeks percentages on a current 1 rep max of 145kg based on the 4 reps @ 125kg, I flat benched last week after doing close grip benching. The theory here is that I could have got 5 reps, even maybe 6 reps if I started on flats and actually warmed up on them.

The plan now is to flat bench consistently as opposed to once every 5-8 weeks and get my technique better. Funnily I couldn't get properly set today and am actually more stable doing close grip benches with an 8inch grip than with a regular grip? The bar was wobbling all over the place, so really need to get tighter and address my form. Also on my working set, my wrists started to bend back really badly after about rep 6 and I had to bail on rep 10 as the bar felt like it was going to slip out my hands (my wrists were also in agony). To be honest I probably only had 1 additional rep left though, so no big deal. These are all things I need to get right before I can really get anywhere, so from next week I will do a lot more sets warming up to dial in the technique.

I think one of the problems is because I do chest so early on a Sunday morning, I have to go in the power rack (no spotters) and the adjustable benches that go in the rack are a good 2 inches narrower than a proper flat bench station. Therefore the surface area, for your back to lay on and ultimately push off, is a lot smaller making it harder to stabilise. I suppose when I move to a proper flat bench, I should feel a lot more stable straight away and be able to push more weight.

Finally, I managed to get a squat session in. I think these are averaging at a rate of 1 session every 2 weeks due to lower back issues. Not really going to push these until I can get some kind of training consistency in. By the way does anyone know why I can do bent rows and stiff deads but as soon as I push upward to straighten my leg i.e. bottom of squat, legpress or regular deadlift that I get a sharp pain in the right side of my lower back - sucks man, I can even feel it when running up stairs?

Flat benchpress
20kg x 8
60kg x 5
85kg x 5
97.5kg x 5
110kg x 10 (had to bail prematurely due to reasons given above)

Back squat
20kg x 5
60kg x 5
80kg x 5
100kg x 3
120kg x 2
140kg x 6

Stiff deadlifts with 10kg plates for greater range of motion
60kg x 6
80kg x 5
100kg x 5
130kg x 6

Dips
Bodyweight x 23 (failure)

Wendler 5/3/1 Calculator

Admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:46:00 -0700

Had a spare 30mins during my lunch break today, so I knocked together a 5/3/1 percentage calculator web page and spreadsheet - I knew being a computer programmer would come in handy one day.

Hopefully you can get some use from it, it should work on mobile devices. It works on my Nokia so am assuming it will ok for iPhone and Blackeberry too.

Click here to use 5/3/1 calculator

Playing the percentages part 3

Admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:30:00 -0700

Another awesome workout. I got 8 reps @ 135kg, which according to critical bench's weight charts means my strength has increased on this by the tune of 9kg.

Deload next week. This Wendler 5/3/1 has surpassed all expectations for my bent rows, so much so, that I will use it for my shitty flat bench press. If it can push the numbers on this, then it really is the real deal. By the way I am not doing a full 5/3/1 at the moment, not sure why - probably as I can't consistently train legs at the moment but am still more than impressed.

Bent rows
60kg x 5, 5
80kg x 5
105kg x 5
120kg x 3
135kg x 8

Barbell Shrugs
60kg x 10
100kg x 10
140kg x 6
150kg x 11

Curl grip pulldowns - shoulder width grip
1/3 stack x 10
2/3 stack x 8
stack (100kg) x 10, 8

Cable rows with pulldown bar - wide overhand grip on bent part of handle
35kg x 10
50kg x 10
75kg x 12

Before I forget

Admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:42:00 -0700

After a week taking it easy on the diet front, I am back on it. As of the start of week, I am eating the same old shit again for 5 days a week and then eating what I want in moderation for 2 days (usually weekend). The plan is to maintain this till the end of the month and then have a week of taking it easy.

This is what I eat for my 5 days on:

Protein Shake
Rice milk with 2x shredded wheat
Boiled chicken breast, brown rice, brocolli, green beans, tomatoes
Boiled chicken breast, brown rice, brocolli, green beans, tomatoes
Whatever the Missus makes for dinner
- i.e. roast chicken, baked potato & veg or grilled fish, rice and veg etc
Protein Shake + 10g Leucine

Snacks - bananas, apples, peaches and oranges
Condiments - Encona hot pepper sauce and lots of black pepper at the moment

On training days I have a post workout shake (50g whey isolate, 100g dextrose, 10g Leucine) - will go into more details about this in future post.

Protein levels are still about the same i.e. approx 275g non training days and 325g on a training day

During the weekend I tend to junk out for 2 to 3 meals and eat healthy for the rest of them (this keeps me sane).

Easy chest day

Admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:27:00 -0700

Good news - my back didn't get any worse after Sunday's session, it isn't too bad at the moment but still not good, although manageable.

So today was meant to be my kick arse back day, all out max effort on Bent Over Rows using 5/3/1 before deloading next week. I have postponed this till tommorow or Friday, so I can give my lower back an extra day or two's rest.

Anyways back to today, it was my easy chest machine day and I managed to get the workout done in about 30mins. Upped the weight on the hammer style chest press and that made it super heavy, only just got 4 reps, not sure whether to drop the weight down next week. Will make a judgement call after this weekends first proper flat bench session in months.

Hammer style chest press machine
25kg per side x 10
50kg per side x 6
75kg per side x 4
100kg per side x 4

Technogym Incline machine
1/3 stack x 10
2/3 stack x 6
full stack (102.5kg) x 12

Technogym chest flyes machine
35kg x 10
50kg x 6
85kg x 7 (a bit too heavy)

Dips
Bodyweight x 20, 13

Dirt - back twinge

Admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:33:00 -0700

Been relaxing at my Dad's for the last few days. I wasn't expecting to train today as we weren't scheduled to leave until late afternoon/early evening, for some reason my missus change her mind. Anyway's been a bit dehydrated all day as I tend to cut back on the water for long car journeys to avoid toilet diversions and have also been sat in a car for 3+ hours, didn't really think anything of this, till I felt something pop in my lower back picking up some dumbbells for front raises. I am hoping it isn't too serious as I managed to complete the set and then do a set of dips. Have taken some Naproxen and keeping my fingers crossed, at the moment it hurts - throbbing style of pain.

Back to today's session, as per Wednesday's post, my elbows still are still sore. To try and help things I have widened my grip for the close grip benches from 8inches to 16inches, i.e. only the index finger on the smooth part of bar. As the grip width has changed so much, I increased the weight to 125kg. Unfortunately I could still it in my elbows. Decided to switch to a standard bench grip on my final set as this level of discomfort is not sustainable for long before a bad injury kicks in (lucky I didn't strain a pec or something as I didn't do any warmups with the normal grip). It actually felt pretty good albeit my triceps were knackered and I had trouble locking out (felt strong off the chest though). I think I will try and establish my 1 rep max without actually maxing out next week i.e. picking a weight probably between 120kg - 130kg and see how many reps I can do. After this I will check on the charts and then start a Wendler 5/3/1 programme from this calculated 1RM figure for conventional flat benchpress.

Close grip benchpress (16inches between hands)
20kg x 10
60kg x 5, 5
80kg x 5
100kg x 3
125kg x 3

Standard grip benchpress
125kg x 4

Seated DB laterals
15kg x 8
17.5kg x 12, 10

Seated DB laterals
17.5kg x 15 (back went pop, lifting DB's off floor)

Dips
Bodyweight x 20