This was good.
Based upon Paul Carter’s Base Building – Mass cycle
- 140 x 8
- 140 x 8
- 140 x 8
- 140 x 8
- 140 x 8
- 100 x 15
- 100 x 15
- 100 x 10
- 40e x 12
- 45e x 12
- 50e x 12
- 55e x 12
- 50e x 12
- 95 x 15
- 95 x 15
- 95 x 15
- 95 x 13
- 95 x 12
- 45 x 21’s
- 45 x 21’s
- 45 x 21’s
Today was pretty cool.
Last night Paul Carter posted something to Facebook showing progress of doing “Meadows Shrugs”. These are from John Meadows and it’s basically a DB shrug with a 3 second hold at the top. After 5 weeks, Paul was showing significant growth in his traps. So what the hey… let’s try them! Paul said to go light, so I did and worked up. If I do 4-5×12, I think 50’s will probably get me by for now. I will say, that hold… it does get to you, so you really have to squeeze and then squeeze harder to maintain it. If anything tho, my grip was getting tired before my traps were, but that’s OK too as grip work is never a bad thing. Afterwards? I can say I’ve never had a pump like this in my traps. I’m going to keep at them for this cycle. Why not?
That said, the methodology spilled over to my pulldowns. See, a common problem I have with my back work is my arms get too involved. So I work to take them out of the equation as much as I can. Cues like to ensure from the hands, it’s the pinky that does the work. Or that really when pulling, I pull from the elbows, not the hands. Alas, these cues do well to keep my arms out, but not always to then ensure I fully involve the back. All too often I do wind up with my arms being the weak link and they peed out before my back does. So when I moved over to the pulldowns, those don’t work for me to do a hold — my arms bear the brunt. So I tried instead that when I got down, to give it a little more pull — like a crunch, like a squeeze, to really get my back/lats a little more tight without getting my arms any further involved. That seemed to help out. So this may be something I have to do for my back — more “tricks” and things to continue to get full-range of motion and less arm involvement, while getting my back muscles actually worked hard.
Funny thing then… my arms didn’t get as much work as usual, so I did some 21’s (7 full reps, 7 top-half reps, 7 bottom-half reps) at the end.
One thing I’m not sure how it factors in… a few changes.
First, sleep seems to be getting better for me. Still weird, but I see increments of progress.
Second, I am cutting out all caffeine. I propped myself up pretty badly over the past 1-1.5 years due to the day job. While I would then taper, I’d still do things like take a 200mg capsule before lifting or drink iced tea. Dropped those.
Third, I’ve cut out creatine. I don’t cycle it — take it steady. While I don’t think this was having a negative impact on me, if I do wind up wanting to get a blood test to see if I may have some deeper issue with my sleep and such, I’d like to not have the artificially elevated creatine levels.
Anyways, today was a lot better than last week. So, we’ll just see how things work out over time.
Stuff From Hsoi 