CK's Journal - Mixing it up to confuse my muscles and shock them into growth

Weighed in at 92kg this morning, so that's a 4 1/2 lb gain in 3 weeks. Happy with that I must say, especially because I've been doing a good bit of cardio.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

CitizenKane


Weighed in at 92kg this morning, so that's a 4 1/2 lb gain in 3 weeks. Happy with that I must say, especially because I've been doing a good bit of cardio.

thats really good mate
 
well done
 
 
Joe

http://www.ugm.org.uk/

the tren of forums
 

End of day totals:

Calories: 3461
Protein: 246.25g
Carbs: 443.95g
Fat: 77.8g

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Pull (sort of)

Worked out at home today. My legs are still in bits from Thursday's leg session, so I felt I was unable to do Deads but I decided I wanted to work out anyway because I am handing in my thesis tomorrow so the next two days are written off in favour of alcohol fueled mayhem. So I did a pull session (minus the Deads) and had to improvise a bit with the limited equipment I have at home.

Chins - 6, 5, 4 (pathetic, I know, but 6 months ago I wasn't able to do 1)
DB Bent Over Rows - 25kg (the highest weight I have at home, normally I would use 32kg DBs for these) - 14, 14, 14
BB Curls - 30kg - 14, 14, 13 (+1)
Hammer Curls - 12kg each - 14, 14 (+1), 14 (+2)

Then messed around with some ab stuff. Did 3x20 weighted sit-ups with 20kg, and also did some Side Bends for obliques. Did 3x20 with 20kg DB for each side.

My bro joined in with the workout today. He doesn't work out at all really except for the odd few sets of chin ups every now and then, and he looks class. Much bigger biceps than me and he's a lot leaner. I still kicked his ass strength-wise though haha.

All in all good session, despite the lack of Deads.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

End of day totals:

Calories: 3619.6
Protein: 260.55g
Carbs: 502.15g
Fat: 51.2g

High carb day today eh? Just bought a giant 5kg tub of maltodextrin which would probably account for that!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Handing in my thesis and going out on the piss in approximately one hour. Commence two days of no exercise and sh1te diet.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Enjoy it lad, have a pint for me!

My Journal 

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CitizenKane


Handing in my thesis and going out on the piss in approximately one hour. Commence two days of no exercise and sh1te diet.

Is always good to do this though tbh mate, not great for you obvioulsy but worthwhile for other reasons.

Anyway on another note your diet looks very good from your daily intake notes, much better than what i bother with lol.

And the 4 1/2 lb gain in 3 weeks shows how your work is pulling off, great work with that gain.

Hi,

Haven't posted in your journal yet (i dont think so anyway)

Enjoy your nights out on the booze.

I see you have a good diet looking at your cals added up. Would be interesting if you could post a typical days food intake.

My Training Journal

Cheers thanks for stopping by!

My diet is pretty simple, and I usually don't change it too much. Usually looks something like this:

Wake Up: 2x Whey w/ 50g Oats
Meal 1: 100g Homemade Muesli w/ 250ml milk
Meal 2: Tin tuna, 100g pasta (or rice), veg
Meal 3: 4 Eggs, 100g pasta (or rice), veg
Meal 4: Chicken breast, 150g pasta, veg
30g Peanut Butter
2x Whey w/ 50g Oats
6x 1000mg Fish Oils

Usually with a piece of fruit or two and a pint of milk thrown in there at some stage. Also pwo on training days I have 2 scoops of whey with 60g maltodextrin.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

SUCH a good session today. Felt really good in the weights room, I fcuking love it. Went like this:

Legs & Shoulders

Squat (+10kg)
70kg x 10
70kg x 10
70kg x 9

Seated DB Shoulder Press
22kg (each) x 10
22kg (each) x 10
22kg (each) x 6 (-2)

Clean and Press
45kg x 9
40kg x 8 (-2)

Calf Raise (Smith) (+10kg)
80kg x 10
80kg x 10
80kg x 10

Leg Extensions (Machine)
Setting 12 x 10
Setting 12 x 10
Setting 12 x 10

Leg Curls (Machine)
Setting 13 x 10
Setting 13 x 10
Setting 13 x 10


Then I did an absolute monster of an ab circuit. All body weight only:

Decline Sit-Ups
3 x 25

Incline Hanging Leg Raise
3 x Failure

Decline Bench Side Twists
3 x 20

Superset:
Bicycles - 3 x 10
Crunches - 3 x 10
Side Serratus Crunches - 3 x 10

Felt like my abdomen was put through a blender. I doubt I'll be able to do all those core exercises after every session, but I'll try and do as many as I can, it felt really good!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

End of day totals:

Calories: 3851
Protein: 248.3g
Carbs: 554.45g
Fat: 71.2g

Lol

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

how'd the night out go mate?

i think im going to cut for a few weeks now. ive been revising like fook this last week (got a mechanics resit exam on friday) so have been eating absolute ****e and drinking a few cans everyday, so i really aint happy with my body atm. im thinking maybe 2-3lbs per week until i get my bodyfat ~13%, then start lean bulking, but im not going to cut for longer than 12 weeks. im guessing im around 190lbs and 20% bodyfat now so 20lbs should do the trick.

Hows the ab wall doing, afraid of laughing yet

TIO - Yep, lol. And this morning I tried to do a sort of sit-up movement when getting out of bed, and it just didn't work! Never had such bad doms in my abs in my life!

jebus - The night out was good man, I think I earned it. Got absolutely sh1tfaced! Personally I don't think you should start a cut yet, just because I think it's more effective to bulk for a good long period before then cutting down, I don't think stopping your bulk short and cutting for a few weeks and then start to bulk again will do that much. Well you will look better of course but you may not yet have enough muscle mass to do it imo. It's your call of course, just my two cents!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

that ab routine looks pretty tough to me!!!!

good work on completing it though.

Cheers beast! It was fun, abs are in ribbons today though! The superset at the end is pretty much robbed from Kevin Levrone's ab routine that he posted on his blog, except with some Incline leg raises and decline situps thrown in cos they're my fave ab exercises!

End of day totals:

Calories: 4172.4
Protein: 254.25g
Carbs: 623.7g
Fat: 73.4g

WTF! Ate waaaaay too much carbs today as you can see! I'm not quite sure how I even managed that!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Push

Bench Press
75kg x 10
75kg x 10 (+2)
75kg x 8 (+1)

Decline DB Press
32kg (each) x 7
32kg (each) x 6
32kg (each) x 5

Incline DB Press
26kg x 7 (-2)
26kg x 7 (-1)
26kg x 6 (-1)

Flys (+3kg)
12kg x 10
12kg x 9
12kg x 6

Tricep Cable Pushdowns
Setting 13 of 15 x 10
Setting 13 of 15 x 10
Setting 13 of 15 x 8 (-1)

Good old session. Delighted with my Bench press. Slightly annoyed about the Incline DB going down but then I remembered the last time I did it before the Decline press rather than after, so obviously my strength was going to be down on it today. I'm officially dumping the Decline from my Push routine too. It's just annoying me, the 32kgs are too heavy to be able to get sets of 10, and the next lowest dumbbells in my gym are only 28's, which are too light! So I'm dropping it for the time being. It's a volume overkill anyway. Perhaps I'll throw it in instead of Flat bench some days just to mix things up.

Also did some Flys for the first time since I took that week off due to rotator cuff injury. Increased the weight to 12kg dumbbells and my chest was smashed at this stage anyway so felt SUCH a burn from these!

Cardio - 30mins Cross trainer. Skipped abs as mine are still too sore from the other day haha.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

sounds like a good night out pal. i did my resit exam today and it went pretty well, but had a night in tonight so going out tomoz instead, not gonna go to mad though.

im gonna weight myself properly on monday, see what my bodyfat % is (im guessing ~20%) and decide whether to lean bulk or cut from there.

your shoulders pretty much fine now then yeh? i can see the weights are coming up nicely, wel done mate. ive never liked decline press, always felt unnatural to me. i find incline really good for building my chest up, a few months back when i started doing it my chest really started to fill out.

End of Day Totals (Yesterday):

Calories: 3791.74
Protein: 290.85g
Carbs: 468.04g
Fat: 84.02g

Today:

Calories: 5561.96
Protein: 287.85g
Carbs: 665.6g
Fat: 194.24g

Cheat day today, had a massive Dominoes for dinner.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

jebus


sounds like a good night out pal. i did my resit exam today and it went pretty well, but had a night in tonight so going out tomoz instead, not gonna go to mad though.

im gonna weight myself properly on monday, see what my bodyfat % is (im guessing ~20%) and decide whether to lean bulk or cut from there.

your shoulders pretty much fine now then yeh? i can see the weights are coming up nicely, wel done mate. ive never liked decline press, always felt unnatural to me. i find incline really good for building my chest up, a few months back when i started doing it my chest really started to fill out.

Yep it was a fun night! Well done on the exam, I'm sure you'll do deadly! Yep shoulder feels great thanks! Felt a bit dodgy after the Decline press yesterday but it's grand now. How's your lifting going?

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Everything looks to be going very well around here, nice one :-)

Back on the Case....

Pull

Deadlift
100kg x 10
100kg x 10
100kg x 10

BB Bent Over Rows
52kg x 10 (+2kg)
52kg x 10
52kg x 10

Wide Grip Cable Pulldowns
13 (of 20) x 10
13 (of 20) x 10
13 (of 20) x 10 (+1)

EZ Curls
32kg x 10 (+2kg)
32kg x 10
32kg x 8

Incline DB Alternate Curls
14kg x 7
12kg x 10
12kg x 10
12kg x 8

Abs + 30 mins cardio. Great session.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Cheers Stevie! Yep things are going well thanks, strength is up with every session and I can see I've put on some size even since the pics at the start of this journal. I'm loving the iron at the moment! Hope your training is going well for you too!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

im gonna start training with one of my mates today. we're gonna be using his home gym which has the lot and im gonna be using my treadmill loads to get ripped . i was gonna be training with another guy but he's training to join the royal marines now so its not really what im after, even though im gonna be cutting. im going back to a four day split now as that what my mate is doing.

What kinda cardio did you do CK?

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Howya, normally I just do ~30 mins low intensity steady state on a bike or cross trainer. I tend to avoid running on account of my sh1t knees!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

I'm going away for a week or so in the morning, down to my folks' holiday home down the country, so I won't be posting for a while as I'm not sure if they have the internet down there.

Also the house is in the middle of nowhere and I believe there isn't a gym within hours of it, so I will not be able to hit the iron for the week. However the house had some work done on it recently so perhaps I could find some heavy construction type objects lying around that I could improvise with (cinder blocks, logs, etc.). I'm going to be doing cardio and core work every second day and hopefully I'll be able to do some strongman/crossfit type improvised workouts using bodyweight and/or whatever I find lying around the garden! Could be pretty fun actually! If it turns out the place does have the internet I will post up my workouts.

Later dudes!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Push

(First workout after 2 weeks off, during which time my diet went to sh1t. Understandably my strength was through the floor. So annoyed. Never again)

Bench Press
75kg x 10
75kg x 10
75kg x 6 (-2)

Incline DB Press
26kg x 10 (+3)
26kg x 7
26kg x 6

Flyes
12kg x 9 (-1)
12kg x 7 (-2)
12kg x 6

DB Seated Shoulder Press
20kg x 6
18kg x 6
18kg x 4 ()

Cable Tricep Pulldowns
130lb x 10
130lb x 8 (-2)
130lb x 7 (-1)

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

I realised I've been doing the same exercises for the last 3/4 months so I've decided to mix them up a bit. Routine will stay the same, just going to swap some of the lifts with other variations to shock my muscles, keep them guessing and hopefully stimulate some more growth.

So on Push day I'm going to replace the Bench Press with DB Press, and replace Incline DB Press with Incline Barbell Press. And on Pull day I'm going to replace Barbell Bent-Over Rows with DB Rows, and Hammer Curls with Incline DB Alternate Curls.

Major DOMS today, but can't wait for the gym tomorrow.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Why not decline instead of incline bench?

My Training Journal

Actually I had thought about doing Decline bench instead of Flat bench, but wanted to try some Flat DB pressing for a while instead. I may substitute decline bench for flat db pressing every once in a while. But to be honest I absolutely love Incline bench so I really don't want to drop it!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Pull

Deadlift
100kg x 10
100kg x 10
100kg x 10

DB Bent Over Rows (each hand)
32kg x 10
32kg x 10
32kg x 10

Wide-Grip Pulldowns
130lb x 10
130lb x 10
130lb x 9 (-1)

EZ Curls
32kg x 10
32kg x 9 (-1)
32kg x 7 (-1)

Alternate Incline DB Curls
12kg x 10
12kg x 10
12kg x 10

Single Handed DB Preacher Curls
12kg x 8
12kg x 7
12kg x 6

Narrow-Grip Cable Curls
100lb x 10
100lb x 8
100lb x 7

Ridiculous session. Felt ok during the Deads and the Rows but strength was down again on all other exercises. I'm never taking more than a week off again. Also as you can see I went a bit overboard on the bicep isolations at the end, and the reason for this is that I simply couldn't get a pump. I reckon it's because my strength was down a bit and as a result the weight was just about too heavy to get into the 'pumping' rep range (7 reps on the EZ curls, 6 reps on the Preacher curls, etc.) No matter, I've been eating everything in sight and I predict that I will be back to my pre-holiday strength by the next session. Until then I'm training Legs on Thursday and I can expect some red minuses is that session too, ah well!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Legs

Squat
70kg x 10
70kg x 10
70kg x 10 (+1)

Standing Calf Raise (Smith) (+5kg)
75kg x 10
75kg x 10
75kg x 14

Leg Extensions
140lb x 10
140lb x 10
140lb x 10

Leg Curls (+10lb)
140lb x 10
140lb x 10
140lb x 9

Good old session. Strength was up from last time I did legs, which is surprising.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Push

Dumbbell Press
32kg x 10
32kg x 10
32kg x 10

Incline Bench
60kg x 7
55kg x 9
55kg x 7

Seated DB Shoulder Press
18kg x 7
18kg x 6
18kg x 5 (+1)

Flyes
12kg x 10 (+1)
12kg x 10 (+3)
12kg x 8 (+2)

Tricep Pulldowns (+10lb)
140lb x 10
140lb x 9
140lb x 8

Great session. I wasn't supposed to be training chest again until Sunday, but I'm working all day Sunday and my gym will be closed by the time I finish, and plus I'm going out on the piss tonight which makes tomorrow a right off as well. Very happy with my session, but some of the lifts were a bit messy because this was my first session doing them. I wasn't expecting to get a full 3x10 with 32kg DB's on the DB Press, so next time I'll move up to the 34's probably. Also on the Incline Bench I wasn't sure of what weight to use, 60kg was a shot in the dark, but was slightly too heavy so next time I'll start off with 55kg and aim for 3 x (8-10).

Now, drinking time.

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Good to see the weights/reps going up mate. Keep it going.

Weighed in at 94kg this morning, so that's a 2kg gain in the last month. Not sure how much of that is lean, but I'm happy regardless

Owen, cheers man, it's always nice to get encouragement like that!

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

Pull

Deadlift
100kg x 10
100kg x 10
100kg x 10

DB Bent-Over Rows (+2kg)
34kg x 10
34kg x 10
34kg x 10

Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowns
130lb x 10
130lb x 10
130lb x 10 (+1)

EZ Curls
32kg x 10
32kg x 10 (+1)
32kg x 9 (+2)

Incline Alternate DB Curls
12kg x 10
12kg x 10
12kg x 10

One Armed Cable Pulldowns (Supinated)
80lb x 10
70lb x 9
70lb x 6

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.

How're the high rep deads for ya mate? Not a fan personally..

Owen


How're the high rep deads for ya mate? Not a fan personally..

Ah I quite enjoy them tbh, my form kinda goes to sh1t on the last rep or two so I usually wear a belt for them to avoid doing any damage. But I'm enjoying them tbh yeah, I've put on a good bit of mass since I started doing them so they must be working anyway! They're seriously fcuking hard though, more tired after three sets than I am after doing an hour long run!

Legs

Squats
70kg x 10
70kg x 10
70kg x 10

Front Squats
40kg x 10
40kg x 10
40kg x 7

Standing Calf Raise (Smith)
90kg x 10
90kg x 10
90kg x 10

Leg Extensions
140lb x 10
130lb x 10
130lb x 10

Leg Curls
140lb x 10
140lb x 10
140lb x 10

Quads are in bits now, just the way I like it

JOURNAL
 
I'm tougher than leather, I'm smoother than suede,
Always never broke 'cos I'm usually paid.