The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Got here this morning and won't be gyming until I get home. We are staying at Mandalay Bay. It's hot like fire here

 

I have always went as heavy as I could, but usually after 14 sets I was burnt out and just pushing the weight I could. I guess I thought more was better, but I'm definitely changing it up.

Anyway I hit back today:

Lat Pull Down: 165×12 180x10 180x10 195x4
Incline Bench Row pivot thingy: 115x10 115x7 105x10
Dumbbell Delt Fly: 20x15 25x10 25x8
Dumbbell Row: 85x12 95x8 90x10
Pull ups: 3 sets 8 reps

I felt like I was halfing my workout, but no sense in doing stuff that ain't working.

 

I'll be at the MGM is it over 100?

 

It was earlier but has cooled down a bit. It's forecasted over 100 all weekend, but it's only like 8% humidity. I'm from NC where we have 95% humidity. I'd take this dry heat anytime over that mess

 

Yeah. Lived in NC for a few years... Know all about that humidity!! Vegas heat isn't so bad.

 

Are you going as heavy as you possibly can? For instance, on lat-pulldowns, if you're doing 165x12 and you could've gotten 13, you need to get 13. Go until failure on everything every time. If failure takes you above 14-15 reps, add more weight until failure falls within the hypertrophy range.

That workout looks good, although I dunno what the "Incline Bench Row pivot thingy" is. This?:

 

Leg day. It sucked ass.

Squats
8 sets of 2-8 reps at 225-275

Deadlifts
6 sets of 4-10 reps at 225-315

Wide stance back squats
4 sets of 10

Narrow stance back squats
4 sets of 10

Calf raises

Intervals
30 sec on, 60 off, 11 mph for 30 mins

 

Your squat numbers look like mine. Get that shit up boi, you've only got like half the distance to travel.

 

yea, my squats suck. 335 max

 

This^^^^^^

I started doing this is on leg press and leg extensions doing individuals to start and then combined and its hilarious to see me stand up or try and walk but my legs have gotten so much more defined over the last few weeks. Definitely going to be doing this when I get cleared to lift upper body again and start my bulk. The goal right now is 200 then back up to 225 and keep going back and forth until I'm in that 10-13% bf range with minimal loose skin.

 

I just had to share .....LOL

 

I do go as heavy as I possibly can for my desired rep count. The Incline bench pivot thingy is like the picture you posted however there is a bar running underneath the bench that is fixed back by your feet and you slide the plates on the front of it.

 

Like this?:





t-bar rows. Good exercise. Are you sore today?

 

Little article about lifting to failure...

http://qz.com/730915/lighter-weight...-new-research-says/?utm_source=YPL&yptr=yahoo



When it comes to building muscle, it’s probably not the size of your weights or the number of repetitions that matter.

Research (pdf) from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada argues it’s actually the degree to which you exhaust yourself during your weightlifting session.

“It isn’t about the weight that you lift, but instead it’s about how much effort you’re putting in,” Robert Morton, a graduate student in kinesiology at McMaster University and lead author of the study, said.

For their work, Morton, who is also a weightlifting coach, and co-author Sara Oikawa worked with 49 men who had been lifting weights for at least two years. The men were divided into two groups: One lifted lighter weights with 20 to 30 repetitions, and the other used heavier weights for eight to 12 repetitions. Participants pushed themselves to lift until they couldn’t complete another repetition, and had a minute break in between sets. They met for full-body training four times a week, and didn’t do any outside exercise. At the end of three months, researchers found that both groups’ muscles (the thigh, which was tested) developed to a similar extent.

Morton and Oikawa trained each participant individually. “We were the ones, who, every single set, made sure that they were spent,” Morton said. If the coaches saw that participants could do another rep of an exercise in either group, they would force them to do so—and would increase the weight slightly on next set.

The team also sampled participants’ blood. They found that before and after workouts, all of the men had similar amounts of testosterone and growth hormones, suggesting that adding muscle is unrelated to different hormone levels.

Although this was a relatively small study, Morton is confident that these results could translate into anyone looking to put on muscle. This study is the latest in a line of work challenging the conventional idea that building muscle requires lifting heavy weights. Preliminary workpublished by the same research group in 2010 showed that lifting lighter weight with more repetitions could actually help build muscle better than heavier weights at low reps. In 2012, the same group showedthat men without previous training could also develop muscles using either strength training regime, provided they exercise until they’re totally exhausted.

“If you exercise until you’re completely wiped, you’re going to be in good shape,” Morton said.

 

Weighed in at 194 this morning, an all-time low since I started my cut. Looks like everything is working well so far. I've got a final exam Mon, so I definitely won't be out partying and eating like crap this weekend. Prob still around 13-14% bf. Starting to see middle ab definition if I flex in the right light (the laundry room, of course). Shoulder and biceps veins are visible under my skin and there's starting to be pretty good quad definition going on...I just wanna look like like @tacopaulo, but you know, with more muscles....

Pretty cool study. I go up to around 20-25 reps on leg day and it seems to be working.

 

Man I hate when I get spaghetti legs doing the extensions and leg presses
I try and act cool but dann it's hard for the next 10 mins

 

Maybe I am blindly defending my training methods and @zacharypaul89 's recommendations, but the thing that makes me question this study and its relative applicability to @KenpachiZaraki is that all of those in the study had been lifting for over two years. I guess if his goal is just to look really strong, then high (20+) reps would not be a bad approach. Just starting out though, I think it would be better for him to go lower in reps, and build a solid baseline of strength, before moving on to the more "aesthetic" rep schemes. WTF do I know though? Spoiler: The answer is nothing. I know nothing. I can't even figure out how to eat carbs. Time is a flat circle.

 

Haha my training philosophy is D.W.I.D.: Do What Arnold Did, which was 5-12 reps. Science is irrelevant b/c Arnold

 

People putting the treadmill on the highest incline and then holding onto the machine to allow their whole body to lean back...

 

So lets talk Ahhhhnuuuld! So he loved heavy weight, with low-moderate reps yes? Without his "help", I wonder what his size would have been?