obtaining manimal status

[Manimal]

BW 212

Volume squats kicked my ass today. I knew after set 1 it was going to be hard. Although, I didnt require more rest than usual, recovery between sets seemed fine. I got through and decided against RDLs. My legs were toasted and we took 2 hours because we were arguing so much about random lifting stuff. I might switch to a biweekly DL progression to help with recovery during the diet. I might do some lower volume work in place of Intensity DLs then on week 2 do the IDLs.

Workout

Squats
345x5x5

[Manimal]

good day, couple of program changes to compensate for the lack of energy. Im going to change all volume to 5x3 and move on a justin lascek type of TM program. If i fail at 5s i'll move to 3s then to 5 singles then reset. I want to keep the intensity up and apparently need to keep the volume down. This became pretty apparent after how hard my volume press was last friday and that I failed intensity press today.

Workout
Squats 225x5x2

Press 187.5x4

Bench 225x5x3

Chins 5x1+35 5x2+20

video of presses, I barely attempted a 5th, I just knew I didnt have it

[Manimal]

Sigh another program switch in the works. My brother is cutting way to hard and refuses to admit it, instead he wants to change to standard template TM from the 4 day split we are on. Thus, starting next week we are going to be following TM as written, rotating bench and press weekly.

Todays workout went really well, squats felt really solid, I knew i had at least 4 in me after I did the first rep. 5 was a bit of grind but I never stopped moving. DLs are wrecking me, I got all 5 this week, no bitching out this time. Maybe DLs are supposed to feel like creeping death.

Workout

Squats
410x5

DLs
350x5

Video of squats, yes they are high leave me alone


Video of DLs, havent watched it yet and dont have time, so no analysis

[Manimal]

So, Im sitting here bored at night because I cant sleep, got alot on my mind. My dear friends mom died and the funeral is in the morning, rough stuff. I figure I'd expand on a couple things I've posted about recently.

Diet
A couple posts back I talked about being on a standard caloric deficit etc but thats not the whole picture. Pretty much since i was a preteen and cooked for myself I've eaten 1 meal a day. I had alot of stomach issues and didnt want to eat before or during school to prevent a potentially embarrassing bathroom break (bullshit middle/high school mentality, although those bathrooms were so gross that'd Id rather shit behind a dumpster). Im also obsessive and find it much easier to eat the same thing everyday. I spent years before learning how to cook eatting nothing but grocery store sub sandwiches. I was a germafobe and my dad forced me to cook some ground turkey 1 day. I like it and got over my fear pretty quick. Since then I've probably consumed more ground turkey than any human walking the planet. I've added a few things in, but mostly thats going to restaurants to eat out when my brother and I dont feel like cooking. Sometimes I go on an egg kick and eat a dozen or so eggs with a shit load of cheese to satisfy my calories for the day. Mostly my dinners are as follows. 1.75lbs of ground turkey, 1 can black beans, hotsauce, worchestire sauce, and a little pasta sauce. Sometimes I add ground cheese to that as well if I need the extra calories. For the rest of my calories I drink a glass or 2 of milk with a scoop of ON whey protein. That adds up to be about 2000kcals a day. I know it doesnt seem like a lot but I dont have a fast metabolism and this works out to be about 1.5lbs of weight loss per week. I started my diet about 4 weeks ago in earnest and have gone from 217.5 to 211.5 at my lowest. I intend to get to 200lbs and sit there for a while. Id like to drop lower but alot depends on how I look and feel at 200. According to the navy body fat test and my scale they both put me at 25% BF. That gives me a lean BM of around 160. So at 200lbs Id be at 20%. My brother and I are contemplating doing a full day fast on Saturdays and a small refeed on Sundays to see if we cant cheat out some extra poundage. After the diet I'll boost my calories up to 2500 a day. The calorie calculators tell me I need more than that as maintenance but I wouldnt turn down cutting a few more pounds. After doing that for a while and seeing if I cant satisfy my horrible body image, Id like to do a small surplus and see if I cant get some of my lifting goals for this year.

Goals
I posted 1200 in Calladors goal thread but honestly I'll be disappointed by not breaking that barrier. nearly 2 months ago I hit a 290 bench (recently i hit 265x4), thursday I squatted 410 for 5 and deadlifted 350 for 5. Giving me a training total of 1050. Using the Brzycki equation that gives me a 1rm of 461 on squat, 394 on deadlift, and a 290 bench for a total of 1145. I dont plan on testing maxes any time soon but I do want to do a mock meet sometime in late september, that will mark 1 year of lifting consistently.

Programming
OH boy. My programming is all over the place. Since ending SS I havent been on a consistent program for more than a month. I started with 5/3/1 and didnt like the lack of volume and didnt feel like I made any gains. I ran that for 2 cycles on my upper lifts while I finished SS for squats and deads. I went on to TM after that but I wanted to do weekly bench and press progression. So we started with a normal squats and deadlift set up and had volume bench and intensity press on monday and the opposite on friday. this translated to like 3 hour workouts. From there we went to a 4 day split to cut back on the time and anticipation of starting our diets soon. While being on this diet weekly progression of bench and press is just not possible and we plan on going back after our diets are done. Hopefully for me that will be in another 7 weeks. Until then we are going to do a standard weekly TM template but (to try and keep the workouts short to help with energy levels) we are going to rotate bench and press on wednesdays. That will still land us overlapping the 2 movements but neither of us have had problems doing both movements in the same workout. To enumerate it better.

Monday
Volume Squats
RDLs (still not sure if im going to add this back in until the diet is done)

Wednesday
Recovery Squats
Volume Bench/Intensity Press or Intensity Bench/Volume Press

Friday
Intensity Squats
Intensity DLs

[hamburgerfan]

I think you may find that your upper body needs to be trained more frequently than that. Maybe you could add a fourth workout as a lighter upper body day?

[Manimal]

Id be more than willing to, any idea where it should fit in? I know normal TM has a middle day of the opposite movement. Would Friday or Monday be better for this? I cant do saturday because of work but sundays would be a possiblity.

[Manimal]

Yesterday before refeeding after starvation day I hit 210.5. I didnt really starve, really I ate 1300 calories and for the refeed I ate 2700.

Workout
Volume Squats
350x5x3

[Manimal]

BW 211.5

Wow shit programming is shit. Had the worst lifting day so far. Hamburger was completely correct that my upper lifting frequency is too damn low. I hit 2 reps on bench today, with recovery as good as it could be. I am also going to add in a bit more warmup just to be sure even though I felt really good after warmups. Going to switch to the standard TM template, no more messing with it. Ya workouts are going to be a bit long and we are going to lag due to lower energy levels but that can be easily rectified with a bit of caffeine or some food. Did some light pressing today after deciding to make the switch. No progress can be made with constant program switching, so this will be it until we are done dieting which is at least 8 to 10 weeks out.

Workout

Squats
245x5x2

Bench
barx8x2
95x5
135x3
185x2
235x1
270x2

Press
barx8x2
95x5
135x5x2

[Manimal]

BW 211, looking good for sunday weigh in

What a shit week, I failed every lift this week, bench squat and deadlift. I had to run a bunch of errands today so we trained a little later than we would like. I felt good still. I got under the bar for squats and every warmup felt damn heavy. When i did my first rep of working set I knew I had 3 but I was gonna wait to feel it out before I made the call for 5 or not. On rep 2 my speed fell of alot even though I knew i was going that rep 100%. Rep 3 was about the same speed but I knew I didnt have 5 in me. 4 would have been a serious grind and 5 wouldnt have happened so I called it on 3. Deadlifts went about the same way, I did PR double overhand pulling 315 as a warmup for 1. Workset felt like a max effort, I was surprised that I pulled 4. Again i was feeling defeated and was going to quit on 3, my brother started yelling so I kept pulling. I hit 4 but it was slow. I took too long between 4 and 5 and never really set up correctly so the 5th rep barely broke the floor. I might have been able to get it a little higher but I was done at that point. Plenty of time to fight and make my lifts, olympus wasnt built in a day.

Workout

Squats
415x3

DLs
135x5
225x3
285x1
315x1
355x4

[Manimal]

No workout today just really excited weighed in at 208.4 today. Maybe a bit dehydrated after using my minimal amount of calories on drinking last night but I'll take it none the less. Im really looking forward to getting into the 190s and ending this diet. Although if the weight is still coming off this easily I might not stop. Im 8 lbs away from my original goal weight and I still look really soft. Dont get my wrong I wont look a gift horse in the mouth and be ungrateful for what I've achieved in such a short period of time. When my numbers really start to suffer is probably when i'll end the cut. My goals shift back and forth so much between wanting to get stronger and wanting to be healthy and lets face it vain for once in my life.

My goals are a bit lofty and depending on where I land weight wise Id like to compete. The SPF record in Georgia at 181 is quite obtainable for me within the next year. the current total record is 1366 and the squat record is 529.1. Id be pretty disappointed if I cant reach near that squat number barring a complete brick wall in my training. The DL at 595 and bench at 400 are a little bit more out of range. Although Im very confident that I'll bench in the mid 300s by the end of the year. If i break the squat record and hit a mid 3s bench I would have to pull 500. That above the other numbers is the most intimidating to me. At 198 the squat number is not far off 181 at 534. The total record would take me several years if ever to hit at 1543. Both totals were set at the 2012 regional championships and both guys missed a couple of their 3rd attempts, so the totals will probably go up this year. I know it seems like Im being a bit disrespectful to the guys that hold these records and the barriers that I have to cross to obtain the numbers but Im just talking out of my ass and dreaming a bit. I like having goals laid out no matter how unobtainable they may seem.

That brings me to my next point goals. I kind of shorted the goals section in my last post by not actually discussing what they are.
There are 39 weeks left in 2013. Absolute best case scenario on TM is 5lbs a week on each lift or 200lbs. Id like to make about a quarter of that or 5 lbs a month on my working sets at least. I think thats pretty reasonable to shoot for on my squat and DL, Id like 30 on my bench. That gives me a 465x5 on squats, 405x5 on DLs, 300x5 on bench. Thats about a 523 Squat, 456 on DL, 338 bench for a 1326 total. If the SPF calendar follows this years calendar at all there would be a meet in april and the championships some time in november. Id do the noob thing in april and hope to do just enough to qualify (whatever those reqs may be) for the november meet and then try my hardest there. Again dreaming, Id like to total near 1400 in the november meet.