29/1/13

Press

70x11x4

Superset with:

Lat pulldowns

Behind neck press

50x8,7,6

Delt raise

10,12.5, 15x12

Superset with:

Single side lat pull

50x3x12

Delt raise

7.5, 10, 12.5x12

Superset with:

Chin ups

BWx3x8

27 & 28 jan

27/1/13

Bench
102.5x9x5
Superset with:
Seated cable rows

Narrow grip bench
80x2x9
Wide grip bench
65x2x12
Superset with:
Barbell rows
60x5x12

Push ups(feet elevated)
BWx3x12
Superset with:
Supinated lat pulldowns
65x3x12


28/1/13

Front squat
100x7x3

Sumo deadlift
160x5x3

Good mornings
worked up to 50x8

Rear delt raises
5x3x20
Superset with:
V crunches
BWx3x20

backlog

21/1/13

Bench
97.5x8x6
Superset with:
Barbell rows
60x5x12
Dumbbell rows
30x3x12

Incline smith machine press
60x18
70x15
80x12
Superset with:
Neutral grip lat pull
90x3x10

Dips
BWx16, 12, 12
Superset with:
Incline pull ups 
BWx3x12


24/1/13

Squat
145x10x3
Rear delt raise
5x5x20


25/1/13

Press
67.5x8x5
67.5x1x8
60x7
50x10
40x16
Superset with:
Lat pulls

Delt raise(30s-1min rest)
7.5, 10, 12.5, 15, 17.5, 15, 12.5, 10, 7.5 x 12
5x2x30

Pull ups(clusters, 10-30 sec rest between each cluster set)
BWx3x5x5


26/1/13

Squat
140x6x5
120x10
100x15
80x20

Barbell curls
20x5x12

Hamstring curls
60x3x12

Bicep curls
15x2x12
17.5x1x10
20x1x8
12.5x1x20


SCHOOL SUCKS.

20/1/13

Squat
140x5x5

7 Sec paused squat
110x3x5

Squat 
88x1x20

V crunches
5x20
Superset with:
Hammer curls
20x12
Incline curls
15x15
Barbell curls
30x8,8,8(like 21s, except 8 reps per range of motion)
Isolation curls
10x20

19/1/13

Press 
65x7x6
65x1x8
Superset with:
Wide neutral grip pull ups
BWx8x8

Lat raise with hold at top
7.5x12, 13, 14
Superset with:
Lat pulldown
60x3x16

Cable delt raise
22x10
18x2x16
Superset with:
Single side lat pulldown
30x3x12

Be water, my friend

17/1/13

Squat
150x3x3
150x1x2

7 sec Paused Squats
60, 80, 100, 120 x 5

Squat
87.5x1x20

Hamstring curls
64x8, 68.5x7, 73x6, 77.5x5, 82x4, 59.5x15

Rear delt raises
10x3x20

Core superset
Leg raises, Cable crunches, V crunches
3 sets
AMRAP


K these were taken ytd. forgot to upload

Failed on the last rep of the fourth set for squats. Was aiming for 5 sets of 3. The fail was quite funny, cause the squat rack at thomson doesn't cater to failing on squats. Srsly, thank God for my spotter man. Oh well. Now that i know what to work towards, hope i can structure my training accordingly.

17/1/13

Warm up:

Push ups, Face pulls

Supinated barbell rows

60x5x12

Bench

92.5x6x7

92.5x1x9

Superset with:

Dumbbell rows

40x3x12

Supinated lat pulldowns

80x8, 72.5x10, 65x14

Incline dumbbell press

40x3x8

Superset with:

Cable rows

Dips

BWx12, 14, 16

Superset with:

Incline pull ups (feet elevated)

BWx3x12

15/1/13

Squat
130x4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Hammer curls
20, 22.5, 25 x8

Cable tricep ex
40x3x10

Incline bicep curls
15x3x12

Overhead cable tricep ex
40x3x12

Barbell curls
30x3x12

Single side cable tricep ex (supinated grip)
27.5x3x10

Isolation curls
12.5x3x12


Glutes and hams were still sore from saturday. Must be cause of that four day break to malacca, mustve screwed up my recovery rates. So instead of trying to hit more weight, i tried for more reps on squat today. 9 was the absolute limit for the day. Then did some douchebag arm training. Hope i get back to squatting heavy shit by thursday.

13/1/13

Starting on smolov jr again for bench and overhead press. You might notice that my rep scheme is different from the smolov jr one. Yes, i'm being retarded. No,  i don't care what you think. Basically what i'm trying is:

7x7, 8x6, 9x5, 11x4,

a large increment in weight,

7x6, 8x5, 9x4, 11x3,

a smaller increment in weight,

6x6, 7x5, 8x4, 10x3 (a.k.a the prescribed smolov jr rep scheme)

So what i did today was....

Press
62.5x6x7
62.5x1x9
Superset with:
Pull ups
BWx7x8

Rear delt raise
10x3x20
Superset with:
Wide grip lat pulldowns
60x3x12

Lat raise drop-set
(12.5, 7.5, 3)x3 (didn't bother counting reps, all were above 16)
Superset with:
Single side lat pulldown
50x3x12

Bradford press
20x20, 18, 16
Superset with:
Stiff arm pulldown
60x3x12


Felt too relaxed today, like i wasn't in the mood to press, to the point that i was grinding the last rep on about two to three sets. Managed to snap out of it for the last set at least. Hitting the rear delts before normal lateral raises didn't feel too bad, and should be a good idea, seeing that my rear delts are practically non-existent. School starts tomorrow. Hope i can keep up this daily gym routine for at least two more weeks before everything gets real and shit hits the fan.

12/1/13

Was in malacca from tues to fri. had about five meals a day. some really good and cheap food man. 

Today's session:

Squat

145x5x4

145x1x5

Hamstring curls

(40, 45, 50, 55, 60) x 12

Superset with:

Hanging leg raises

BWx5x10

Hyper-extensions

BWx4x15

Superset with:

Cable crunches

68x4x8

V crunches

BWx3x20

Felt weird squatting without music (forgot to bring mp3 player), but was not as bad as i feared. Lost weight on the trip, though i was eating shit-tonnes of food everyday. 86kg today. Might be because i wasn't taking any creatine, and therefore lost some water weight. 

7/1/13

Session 1 (gym)

Squat

140x5x5

Rear delt raises

10x3x20

Paused squat (7 sec @ bottom)

100x5x5

Session 2 (fitness corner)

Neutral grip pull ups

BWx8x7

Superset with:

Dips

BWx7x8

Chin ups

BWx8x7

Superset with:

that shoulder thing

BWx8x12

Push ups

BWx8x12

Superset with:

Incline pull ups

BWx8x12

SUCCESS. 140 5x5 FINALLY. Booyah. Gym session was really short though, the people i trained with wanted to gtfo and go eat. So i did a second session at the fitness corner, since i won't be training tmr through fri (did you hear that. thats the sound of my heart breaking). 

6/1/13

Bench
105x4x5
105x1x6
Superset with:
Supinated barbell rows
60x6x12

Dumbbell incline press
40x4x12
Superset with:
Dumbbell rows
40x4x12

Dips
BWx3x16
Superset with:
Incline pull up
BW(legs elevated)x3x12


Didn't really feel energetic today. Blazed through the bench sets, but when i got to the dumbbell work i felt pretty lazy. Maybe training everyday is slowly starting to take its toll. Good timing though, since im leaving for malacca on tuesday. Also, the pull work felt pretty lame today. Maybe i shouldn't have done pull ups ytd. Did 14 sets of 8 in the night because i thought some pulling would do by right elbow some good. hurh. On the bright side, my right elbow didnt hurt today.

5/1/13

Squat
150x6x2
150x1x3

Paused squat (7 seconds)
60x5
70x5
80x5
90x5
100x5

Hamstring curls
60x3x12


Short workout today cause i trained with ian and that dude still needs guidance in the gym zzz. the 150s really made my right elbow feel pretty screwed up though. Gotta work on that.

4/1/13

Press

70x5x5

Superset with:

Wide neutral pull ups

BWx5x10

Behind neck press

50x4x9

Superset with:

Pull ups

BWx4x8

Seated dumbbell shoulder press

25x3x12

Superset with:

Narrow grip pull ups

BWx3x8

Single side lat raise(seated)

10x12, 14, 16

Superset with:

Wide grip lat pulldowns

55x3x12

Cable lat raise

22.5x12, 14, 16

Superset with:

Standing single side lat pulldown (yeah very long name whatever)

50x3x12

Really tired after the presses, couldn't even hit ten reps on the behind-neck presses. Everything else was okay though. Tried seated lateral raises today, controlled and slower tempo. Felt like i was better able to isolate the delts, but no lactic acid burn like in dropsets. Prefer the latter, so i'l go back to doing them. 

a workout that i forgot to post

30/12/12

Squat
135x4x5
135x1x7

Hamstring curl
60x3x10
Superset with:
Rear delt raise
10x3x20

Leg raise
BWx4x15

Cable crunch (TuT shit. ok from now on i'm not gonna put this label on anymore. every cable crunch i do has that extended time at the bottom thing so yeah)
68x4x9

Bicep curls
20x5x10
Superset with:
V crunch 
BWx4x20


One more thing. I realised that after adding core and posterior chain work (which i didn't do until after smolov and even smolov jr), my form is much less prone to deterioration and breakdown. Also, bar speed on concentric portion has improved quite abit.

3/1/13

Squat
145x7x3

Hamstring curls
40x12
45x12
50x10
55x10
60x8

Core superset
Hanging leg raises, cable crunch (with that TUT shit), v crunches
AMRAP
4 sets


So the squats totally fried my legs today. Legs felt so tired haha. But somehow when i unracked the weight everything felt better. Hard to explain. Focused on getting a super huge breath of air before every rep. Found that it helps ALOT in maintaining form, confidently hitting the bottom and getting out of it stably. Wanted to save time on the core stuff, so i tried what i saw on Twain's blog and supersetted ma shit. Killer stuff. I also found that hamstring curls help my knees after heavy squatting. No idea how or why though haha.

Pretty happy with this month's progress on squats. Disclaimer: i have no idea why i'm doing what i'm doing for them, it just feels good and i'm getting results. Recently i've been playing with some low rep sets, so my next few sessions will look like this:

(Since today was 7x3,) 

150x7x2, 

135x5x5,

Archi trip to malacca, 

 140x6x4, 

145x7x3, 

150x7x2

As you can see, there's some sort of pattern to it, basically 5x5, 6x4, 7x3, 7x2, and repeat. After that last 150x7x2, i think i'll bump all weights up by 2.5kg and see how things go. Looking back on things,  27/11/12 was the day i decided to squat atg all the way, and i only managed 140x3x3 then. This month has been a really fruitful training month for me indeed, wonder how much i can accomplish during the three month long summer break mwahaha. gotta survive another sem before that though. SIGH. 

2/1/13

Bench 
(100, 105, 110, 115)x3
120x2, 2, 1
Superset with:
Supinated grip barbell rows
5 sets (weight was all over the place, from 50 to 80)
Standing single side cable rows
60x3x12

Wide grip bench
80x3x12
Superset with:
Dumbbell rows
35x3x12

Incline bench
60x3x12
Superset with:
Underhand lat pulldowns
78x3x12

Dips
AMRAP


Good shit today. Disclaimer: i have never benched anything above 112.5kg in my life. not even kidding. so pretty damn happy with this shit. further proof that SMOLOV jr WORKS. yeah. Still feel like i haven't trained enough today though. hmm. i might be addicted to training. srs. which is bad.

summing up the year

2012 has been a pretty damn good training year for me. But it didn't start that well. The third year since i've started training, it started with me weighing 78kg. I also started the year working for a&f as some overnight staff, so due to their mindless lean otter-body propaganda everywhere in their store, i felt compelled to be lean. Therefore, i cut out as much carbs in my diet as possible. Which was really stupid, cause if you're already puny and try to cut, you end up looking like you don't train. At all. 

Also, working night shifts screwed up my sleep cycle, food intake, as well as training. I ended up doing alot of 'ghetto' workouts as i could not find time to go to the gym. These were really time effective, gave me a good pump, and definitely leaned me out abit, but to be frank, ain't nobody gon' get no gains from just ghetto workouts. It was hard to get quality nutrition too. Working at night and sleeping in the day meant all shops would be closed, so i had to pack my food, but when i forgot to, or it was inconvenient to, i had to do with mcdonalds, or shit from 7 11. REALLY BAD for gains.

My training programming was ridiculous too. I was trying out T-nation's Chris T-whatchamacallit's program, basically sets of three reps, cycling the weight within each workout. So an average squat session at the start of the year would look like this: 

(sets of 3) 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 

110, 112.5, 115,

110, 112.5, 115,

110xamrap

The program itself isn't very ridiculous, but it was the fact that i was a noob attempting to use a relatively advanced program to get gains. Look at the ridiculously low amount of weight i was squatting then. I was doing the same thing for press and bench. This got my bench rm up to 112.5, press rm up to 72.5, and my squat rm up to 130. At this point i was 80kg. 

Somewhere in the middle of the year, i started playing with wave loading, and even ran a few cycles of 5 3 1. After that, my squat went up to 140 for 3 reps. What i realise, with the benefit of hindsight, is how i thought my squats were deep even though they only went slightly past parallel. 

Then along came school. Interestingly, it was when school started that i started making pretty incredible gains. And its all thanks to one word. SMO-fkin-LOV. love that shit. Truth be told, i ran it with questionable depth on my squat reps, but the strength increase it gave me was pretty damn insane. I still remember my new year session last year at bishan clubfitt, when i squatted 120kg for 3 reps and thought i was purdy damn strong (compared to all the other weekend warriors in there at least). Today, i squat 140 ass to grass, for 6 sets of 4. Really substantial gains for a year, if i might say so myself haha. Noob gains, probably, but hey, the only way a noob can go is up.

During that same session on the first day of 2012, i benched 100kg for 2 reps, Which was pretty damn near my max at that time. During a recent bench session, i did 100 for 9. So i guess Smolov jr really does work for bench (ran two cycles).

Made some sweet gains on the overhead press as well. Was doing 60kgx6x6 somewhere in the middle of the year. Pressed 77.5kg for 5 sets of 2 yesterday. 

What i've learnt from all this? Take control of your life, be the master of your own circumstances. Never, NEVER let your circumstances dictate the direction of your training (or job/results/family life, for that matter). Tried some pretty crazy shit this year (crazy to me at least) like having smolov squat session on less than 4 hours of sleep, or benching 105x10x3 after 2 hours of sleep (still remember the session because i was so fkin happy my crit was over and done with). I don't regret pushing my body, and i doubt anybody ever regrets that. 

Today, i weighed 87kg after training on an empty stomach. Gained 9kg over a year, which seems pretty slow, but cut an asian some slack, i've only recently started actively trying to gain weight. Really hope to hit 90kg soon, and then see where training and eating (alot) take me. 

So...... if i had to sum up shit the year taught me:

-No-carbing cuts you up pretty damn fast, at the expense of gains.

-Ghetto workouts are good as an inter-rim measure to prevent loss of strength, but they cannot be used to gain strength.

-I need carbs to get strong. 

-Thus far, i've responded pretty well to high volume training. So, for me at least, volume is the way to go.

-When you go to the gym, leave your ego outside. Quarter squatting 160 is far less respectable than atg squatting 120. But of course, this is just my opinion. 

-Choose your program wisely. There's a reason why programs are categorised by level of experience.

-A training partner helps, but don't become too reliant on one. If the quality of your workout depends on the presence of a training partner, thats just retarded. 

-Same thing for training environment. Try not to let it affect you. I'm still working on that. 

-Listen to the old dudes in the gym, especially those who have the strength or size to back whatever they're saying up. Some people say oh, even the noobs can teach you a thing or two. FK DAT SHIT. no noob can teach you nuts. i swear. thats just patronising BS. 

-If you want to get stronger, don't be afraid to eat like you mean it. want inspiration? go watch frank yang's bulking vids. if you say you're trying to bulk, but your weekly food intake is less than what he ate in that one video, stop lying to yourself.

-Core work and posterior chain work help your squat more than you think. 

-SLEEP. omg this point. YOU NEED SLEEP. sleep 9 hours a day if possible. love sleep. Does wonders for your cns, really important to sleep if you want to avoid burning out, or shitty sessions. 

-Coffee is the only pre-workout you need. It's cheap, too. 

-Stretch/do warm up sets with just the bar. Treat that shit like a mini 're-learning' of the lift for every session. And treat every rep like you would your rep max. That way you're not just warming up your body, but your mind as well.

Ok thats about all i can think of right now haha. Aww sheet. long post. oh well. Hope, with all the shit i've learnt this year, i can get bigger, faster and stronger in 2013. Benching tomorrow. yay. 

1/1/13

Squat
140x6x4

Hyperextensions
BWx3x20

Barbell bicep curls
30x3x21s

Pretty fast workout,  bout 75 minutes. Was intending to do three reps on squat, but first set felt good, so bumped it up to four. Reps on the hypers were pretty damn controlled, slow and deliberate, mad burn. Bicep work was just for some ego boosting mwahaha. Good new year's workout haha! Oh and my weight is now 87 (empty stomach, post dump). Hope to hit 90 soon.