Felt good to get back to the gym. But I cannot lie that the week off was good for my body.

I’m now taking a different approach to my training. Still working towards my 3/4/5 goal, but I need to take a side-step and shed some fat. Yeah, after the big effort and 66 lb. dropped, I let myself get too big again. Some of it was expected and allowed, but for sure the past couple months I let the holidays get the best of me. I was already planning on doing a cut at this time, just that now I’ve got further to go. Sigh. Oh well, my own fault.

I’m working back with Renaissance Periodization, but instead of 1-on-1 doing the auto-templates to see how they will go. I’ll stay on this for about 12-14 weeks.

My gym work will be primarily hypertrophy-oriented work, since that’s best when cutting. I’m going to roughly follow the “5/3/1 for Powerlifting, off-season for mass” template, with minor adjustments for me. Keeps the main strength movement in, but everything else is geared towards hypertrophy. And I’m trying to really focus on that.

So for instance, when picking weights for today I really dropped things down because it’s not so much about the weight and the movement as it will be about the muscle and trying to chase that pump. One BIG thing I’m going to try is on all assistance work to move at roughly a 3-0-1-0 tempo — really work that eccentric. Really work to feel and make the muscle work.

Boy, I felt it today. 🙂

The main movement was fine. It’s programmed to have a drop set at the end, with the only guidance being to get 10-15 reps. So I went for 60% and figured to keep that straight for all the weeks to see how things go. Easily hit 15 reps today, so I’ll bump the weight up. I may keep it at a straight weight, or I may do things first-set-last style.

I forgot that during the main pressing movement I’m to superset lat pulldowns — I had avoided the superset because of the arm pains. So after a couple pressing sets I remembered and started doing the pulldowns. I have opted on at least 1 pressing day to do behind-the-neck pulldowns. Why? Because I expect it’ll be good for my shoulders to explore that range of motion. 🙂 I’m thinking Press day I may do behind-the-neck for straight, higher-rep sets (up to 15 reps). Then on bench day to do to the chest and pyramid up to sets of 8. Anyways, I kept it light today just to get the feel and make sure my shoulders would be happy — and at first it was a little awkward, but things loosened up and felt good by the end.

DB Presses were a little on the light and easy side, but again I was aiming for that 3-0-1-0 tempo and ensuring that the pressing was coming from shoulders contracting, not arms pressing. I’ll bump the weight up next session.

BB Curls were loads of fun. Really dropped the weight and worked on being super strict with 3-0-1-0 tempo — Only 50 reps, but that eccentric really became tough towards the end. Very nice pump for what it was.

Then the lat raises were a superset, again dropping the weight down so I could focus on the eccentric. Also really light on the bent-overs so I could ensure I was contracting the posterior delts: no swing, not using back muscles.

My intention is to stick fairly much with the template for at least 3 weeks, then in the 2nd 3 weeks I might up the intensities a bit with say making the main movement back-off set into a couple rest-pauses or maybe a 50% — just add a little something more. But still, try to keep things conservative. Because I expect in the 2nd 6-week cycle I’ll generally keep the same program so to up the intensity I’d do something like say on the curls and raises, end with partials or just something else to help jack things up a bit. Don’t do this all at once, work up to it, give myself somewhere to go over these 12-14 weeks.

Finished with about 15 minutes of fast elliptical work (130-150 strides/minute). My off days will be heavier on the cardio, but I do want to end every gym day with 10-20 minutes of cardio. I mean, if that burns say 100 more calories, then 4 gym days, 4 more sessions, maybe 400 more calories each week burned — over time, that will add up.

Based upon 5/3/1 for Powerlifting, off-season for mass

• Press (superset with high-rep behind-the-neck lat pulldowns)
  • bar x whatever
  • 65 x 5
  • 80 x 5
  • 100 x 3
  • 105 x 5
  • 125 x 5
  • 140 x 5
  • 100 x 15
• DB Shoulder Press
  • 40e x 10
  • 40e x 10
  • 40e x 10
  • 40e x 10
  • 40e x 10
• BB Curls
  • 45 x 10
  • 45 x 10
  • 45 x 10
  • 45 x 10
  • 45 x 10
• DB Rear Raises (superset with lat raises)
  • 8e x 10
  • 8e x 10
  • 8e x 10
• DB Lateral Raises
  • 15e x 10
  • 15e x 10
  • 15e x 10