Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
The Testosterone Monologues
Options
Comments
-
-
-
Gintonious wrote:has dragan died from the cut?
SOrry guys, just been a little busy is all, i will do up a summary post of the last little bit later and put it up! The cut is going well though!
0 -
-
Okay so,
The last time I posted here was about 2 to 3 weeks ago!!! I have been keeping a journal over on Team Test, but I just never seem to have the time , or remember, to update it over here!!! Anyway, I will get back to doing so on Monday properly and my apologies. However, if you do want a day by day breakout then just check it out on Team Test.
Now then, this is in bullet point the last few weeks.
1) My strength is still going up, which is nice. I have also been told I have added some arm and shoulder mass as well, which is once again nice. Now I hear you say, how the crap can you do that on 66% of your maintenance calories and less than 50grams of carbs a day on average. The answer is I am not entirely sure yet. I am taking some BCAA's ( well, a lot of BCAA's ) on a daily basis which really has to have something to do with it. I am also taking one or two other things, so don't want to make assumptions just yet. I will break everything down in more detail when I finish the cut!
2) My energy levels are all over the place. One minute your up, the next minute your down. For anyone who wants to do something like this….think carefully. Be at a place in your life where you can run through on automatic. It's hard to work, it's hard to remember stuff, it's hard to think. This will test you in every way.
3) I went to Leeds for the weekend with G'em and T-ha and that was a MAJOR test! I passed though, and according to my traveling companions my mood was good the whole time. Don't get me wrong it was torture to sit there and watch others eat but hey, I decided to do this so I gotta deal with that stuff when it happens.
4) I damn near broke at one point. It was a Thrusday ( I think ) and I was just run down to hell. I was tired, hungry, cold and just miserable as hell. I was looking through the freezer for my chicken fillets to cook some dinner and found a bag of oven chips. Oh you can bet your ass the Jessica Alba scale kicked in!!! For more than a little while those little buggers were the rough equivalent of….
Just for you Brian!
Fortunately Dragan stayed strong and did not break!
5) When your on a heavy cut you get run down, your tired and your emotional. Me, I'm normally a pretty steady kind of guy and while this cut has made it's dents and I have had some depressed/angry/upset moments that would normally just role off me I am now starting to get a really good idea as to where the whole "roid rage" garbage comes from. Now don’t get me wrong, if you up your test you become more Alpha orientated, no doubt, but if you doing that while cutting your calories to a large degree and all the stuff that that entails then your going to be running a fine line and might just end up snapping and people you don't normally snap at. I haven't….but that’s because it's just not me. Just something to watch out for if you thinking about something like this and have a bit of a temper?
Well that’s about it, I will be back to regular journal keeping and odd picture posting on Monday.0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
I really can't argue with you over this coz you're so right...Dragan wrote:I think anyone who know's us would describe myself and G'em as , well, not quite right in the head so to speak. If it's a challenge that’s broken other people then we're up for it!
ah well. There's worst ways of being described than "not quite right in the head". I'm not entirely sure what they are though... 
0 -
Workout : Shoulders/Arms
Location : Westwood
Status : Super Funkified
Shoulders :
Dumbbell Press : [18kilos by 12 for 2] 32kilos by 8 , 28kilos by 10, 24kilos by 10
Cable Lateral Raises : 3 sets, 2 plates to failure.
Standing Barbell Presses : 40kilos 12,11,10
Dumbbell Front Raises : 2 sets
Lateral Dumbbell Raises : 2 sets
Rear Raises : 2 sets
Arms:
Tate Press : 10kilos(10)12.5kilos(9) 12.5kilos(8)
Alternate Dumbell Curls(20 kilos)/Hammer Curl Superset(12.5kilos) : 5/10 , 5,11 , 6/9
Overhead Dumbell Extension : 32(10) 34(9) 36(7 - PB)
Concentration Curls : 17.5 kilos (10,10)
Decline French Press/Close Grip Bench Superset(38kilos) : 5/6 , 5/6
Bar Push Downs : 2 sets, full stack plus a plate
Cable Bicep Curls : Half stack to failure at about 15 reps.
Thoughts :
1) It's been a while since I have done a really high volume workout, and last night I had some extra time as I was getting a lift home so I said "**** it, give it socks bujha!" By the time I was done my arms and shoulders were literally pumped up beyond belief. The top I was wearing with the sleeves rolled up was literally cutting into my arms when I walked off the floor. It was deadly, everything felt like a rock!
2) Hot girls in the weights area are a major boost to workout intensity I have to say. I'm actually surprised that Trinity is not the new Hercs, given the presence of our G'em in there. Obviously those student lifters are not the best at harnessing environmental variables to aid workouts! There was this cracking girl in the weights area last night, and while her strength would be nothing special she was putting in some major effort, and I'm sure her strenght will increase over time! Anyway, we got chatting a little bit about form for arms and she seemed very enthusiastic about lifting, which was nice.
3) The anabolic kick back after coming out of the cut is RIDICULOUS!!! I mean seriously scary! My mojo stayed good the whole length of the cut, due to the high fats etc but man, upping the calories post cut seems to have driven my test through the rough. I actually found myself watching "Into the Blue" the other night, purely for Jessica Alba and at the risk of losing all credibility I watched 30 seconds of Mean Girls while channel flicking last night. Now I know what your thinking, your thinking "Dammit D, why!!!!!".
When she's not being too skinny she's being pretty damn hot.
I think that covers me? Besides, it was just one scene where she was running in a low cut top, I really couldn't help it! Like I said, the test kick back is really quite ridiculous!
4) While it was nice to venture back to high volume after a few weeks of more low volume TBT style workouts I will be sticking with the TBT. Don't get me wrong, the pump was brilliant, and I felt fantastic, I just feel that TBT can offer me more than a bodypart split can right now.
5) Can anyone here tell me why you would wear a weightlifting belt and simply round your back? There was this guy and his bird in last night. The fella has trained for a while now, and thinks he hardcore as **** even though he's really just fat and weak and recently he has started bringing his bird along. So last night they were doing back and were both wearing belts, but they were both COMPLETELY rounding out there back on just about everything. And I wouldn't mind only the weights were really LIGHT! They could easily have maintained proper form. Grrrrrrrrr! Now you guys know I try and see the good in everyones gym efforts, but these two take the cake!!!
6) Very, very excited about Micks new gym. I imagine that he just wants to get it done and stop having to worry about it but for me it's like someone is purpose building a playground for us!!! Lets face it, if you can have a corporate gym, or a gym that has been planned out by an actual lifter then your gonna go for option B!!!!! Bring it on I say!!! Especially that Titan Gripper!!!! Getting a 200 kilo deadlift with no wraps or chalk or nothing was sweet but 220 is calling my name so I gotta up my grip strenght again!
Dragan Out!0 -
-
-
You know, it occurs to me as I write this that sometimes it's best to just keep your mouth quiet, hope for the best and pray that no one notices whats happening. Then, afterwards, should things turn out to be a success you can be good and loud and say how great you are. Below I will go into detail about my new routine and my reasoning and thinking behind it. I hope no one is expecting rocket science here, but you might get something along the lines of a clever interpretation of kinesology.
The Plan :
Okay, for a clue yesterday I gave "undulating rep schemes, alternating set numbers and cyclical recovery" or something along those lines. That’s not so much a clue as the basis for the whole program but hey, what can you do!
So here is the plan.
Now then, at first look it seems like simple A,B,C TBT workout plan. But I have included some different techniques and a kind of shifting rep scheme. As came up in a thread earlier today I think we all know the importance of deloading, having different days of different intensities etc when it comes to building power and strenght. But what about size? What can we alter on a daily, TBT program to help us to grow? The rep scheme of course!
Now I have mentioned before ( and it recently came up in CP's last article on T-Nation ) that it is quite obvious that oly/powerlifting rep ranges and loads induce hypertrophy. However, for me , the king of Hypertrophy falls within the 8 to 12 rep range. I myself have had good results operating in this rep range. So this is where I would plant my flag and hope that flag would grow!
As you can, the reps vary for each bodypart from day to day. Why? Well, the whole point of TBT is that you are training each bodypart 3+ times a week, with a far less workload than a split bodypart routine. As such, what do you think would happen if you walked into the gym and attacked your whole body with good heavy weights, for 8 reps over 3 to 4 working sets each and every day? In my mind anyway, you would not make it very far, you would be takeing the whole point of a TBT program and ignoring it. As such, I have applied a rolling rep scheme to my workouts, each day having a different bodypart that is on it's "Heavy Day" so to speak, following that with an effective "active recovery day" and then third day being almost a warm up into the heavy lifting day.
Basically it's a Heavy (5-8 reps) , Recovery (15 reps) , Lead In ( 12 reps) days for each bodypart, but when one body part is on a heavy day, one will be on it's active recovery and the other will be on a Lead In day. This way, you do not have the whole body needing the same degree of recovery, nor do you have the over excessive strain on recovery caused by a split routine. I have adopted supersets as the way I will really target the bodypart that is having it's heavy workload day, as I find them to be a fantastic way to really fry a bodypart over a TBT routine.
Now then, I did have other considerations when I was planning this program. First of all it had to have a main goal, you can't really make a "Maintain your mass" program so I opted to try and emphasis muscle growth, I mean, why not? As such, GP 1 stands for "Growth Program 1" as I change and refine it the version number will change. It just makes life easier. The second was that I wanted to work in a progressive loading increase for my high rep range benching. So the recovery day suits me fine as I pick my weight for 15 reps, and each week add 2.5 to 5 pounds to that. I deliberately picked the 15 range for recovery days for two reasons.
A) I don't think that an active recovery day should inflict a large amount of fibre tears. It just makes no sense to me. Your looking to flood the muscles with blood and nutrients, not cause more micro tears.
I would like to work on my muscular endurance, so the 15 rep range is suitable for that while also falling in line with other goals.
Another important consideration was my legs. I will be slowly working them back into action, as my knee is still a little dodge and I want to be very, very careful. So my program would be upper body dominant. Perfect. You may notice that I have not really applied the rolling rep scheme to arms and this is because I feel they respond best to a steady battering. The great thing about doing a program for yourself is you can choose the exercise that you KNOW work for you and apply the rep schemes that you KNOW work for you. As far as I am concerned, if you have been lifting for more than 2 years with any degree of seriousness and you don't know what works for what bodypart then your not paying attention to your body.
As I said I's really quite simple and basic and was inspired by various articles from various people, so there is nothing I can really claim as my own. I'm just giving it all a structure that suis me, so maybe that is the biggest lesson people can take from it? Sure, it's great when CT or Dave Tate says "do a,b and c to achieve d" but sometimes you just gotta apply your own knowledge of your own self and hope for the best.
Anyway, program starts on Monday coming. I am looking forward to it!!!
Dragan Out!0 -
Workout :
Deadlifts : 60(10) 100(6) 140(3) 180(1) 200(1) 205(miss) 180(1) 180(1) 180(1) ** funny story?
Flat Plate Loaded Bench Pree : 40(12) 80(8) 120(5 - PB!) 80(11) 40(15)
Seated Barbell Shoulder Press : 40(12) 60(8) 60(6) 70(2 - PB!)
EZ Bar Curls(38) : 9,8
Cable Curls (55) : 12
V-bar Tricep PushDowns : fullstack(12 reps) fullstack+2 plates(10reps) fullstack+4plates(10-PB) fullstack+6plates(10-PB) fullstack+7plates(10-PB)
Thoughts :
1) It's funny how close people come to great personal misfortune and terrible agony without realising it. Last night, as I was warming up for 205 ( my target lift) and JUST as I was about to pull 180 ( I mean literally just, I was actually standing up and beginning the pull ) I was tapped on the shoulder. That’s right. Someone actually tapped me on the ****ing shoulder at the start of the movement. Needless to say it completely threw me and I stopped the lift and turned around. There was these two French guys standing there. The conversation went something like this?
Me : "What the hell are you doing?"
French Guy 1 : "I was just wondering what that lift is you were doing."
Me : "You ****ing what? You actually interrupt me mid lift for that? I could have blown my back out you moron."
French Guy 2 : "Hey man, there is no need for anger we were just curious…."
Me : "There is everyneed for anger you ****ing tard, now get the **** out of my face."
** At this point I am boiling, and the only thing keeping these two alive is witnesses
French Guy 1 : "Hey man, I don't like you attitude, the gym is for to relax and have fun."
Me : "No mate, the gym is for me to move big heavy weight and be left alone…….."
** at this point a guy I know walked over and told the two boys to leave, that it would be for the best. One of them said "why, what will happen should we stay" and he simply replied "listen, this guy will get to a point where he really won't care that we're in a public place and he really will hurt you." so off they went. In fairness to my mate he then went down to the front desk to make a complaint that he had seen the two guys physically interrupt me mid lift.
I have to say, in all the gyms I have been in, over all the years I have lifted no one has EVER been stupid enough to do that. Im quite sure I was very close to murder. Stupid cheese eating surrender monkeys. But anyway, I was so pissed off that I never put the 2.5 plates on either side with the 10's when I moved up the weight and it was the easiest 200 pull I have ever done. Rage is a great supplement. So by the time I went for 205 my CNS was a little taxed and I missed it ( barely) so it was 180's for singles then on to other things.
It's a Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey......geddit?
2) Very happy with the PB's on both my chest and shoulder pressing, it was well tasty!
3) I know people bang on about Dave Tate a lot, but it would seem he really, really does know his stuff. I have only been doing the Tate Press for 4 weeks but already I can feel my tricep strength is on the up. I mean just look at what I was pushing today? By the time I was done on Push Downs the stack just looked ridiculous with all those plates sitting on it! It would seem that slow burning rage stayed with me the whole night and pushed my number ups. Gutted I didn't put those plates on for the deads but hey, what can you do?
4) Really looking forward to starting my plan. As I said to G'em on the phone last night this is really the first time I have ever done a plan with the anticipation of growing. In the past I really just grew as an after effect of what I did in the gym. Hopefully some clever progression will see my weights on the major lifts go up as well as I will be rocking it Milo style.
5) I was gutted last night after finishing my workout and going down to the shop to find they had no chocolate Pro Flap Jack Bars. "hot Polish Girl" did promise they would have more in tonight though, and also promised to keep an eye on them and hide them under the desk should the levels drop again.
6) Song for the Day time, and todays comes from Tool. Tool are one of my favourite bands on the planet. Formed in 1990 they instantly blew the top off the metal scene with the EP "Opiate" and quickly followed up with first album "Undertow". They have been labeled more times than I can think off, with more names and descriptions than any other band but the reality is that they are just Tool. Some of the greatest music ever written, one of the most distinctive and talented singers in the metal scene and of course the videos. Fronted by Maynard James Keenan , his voice and lyrics are just unbelievable. The entire band is like some kind of collection of intelligent wasters, and their newsletter reads like something from a "metaphysical meets the philosophical" conference. They have some odd views of the world, and wrap them up in odder songs and even odder lyrics. I actually found it impossible to just go with one song, so instead I went with three.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94i5PxWftfE - Aenima
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpckgQMtrUY&mode=related&search= - Schism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljC2ODA9JaY - Prison Sex0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
Advertisement