rantOgram

 As usual, things keep changing, the Chest and Myorepping article was a spinoff from the Creatine series... Today is the second writeup on Chest program at the gym. It turns out to be more difficult than first thought. As such, I added another table that removes any warmup and machine exercises data out of the equation. Overall the raw data table... Orange = last rep close to failure. Red = ...to failure point   Chest Day Main Course Progressive overload on BenchPress myorepping is via increasing reps and sets rather than weight now.   For DumbellPress its all three :- weight, sets and load but it won't be happening all at the same time with each successive session. Yesterday just happened to be a good day to nail all three.   PullOvers aren't exactly a main exercise but has been inserted to open up the various muscle and help re-set the shoulders and scapula after all the pressing motion.    The Round the World ( RTW ) is really more of an endurance-...

  Arms Day and creatine talk again... Still going by comparison by weight moved, sets and reps... Table is getting longer by now.... going forward it probably make more sense to just compared most recent 2 workouts like this... Although everything is still subjective but sets and reps looks to be even less useful. Only the total load moved per session is a better indicator when evaluating. E.g. in the last line if it was 5 circuits of Round The World-- that will only still count as 5 sets. but break it down-- it's actually 15 sets of 3 different exercises in total. Or for that matter-- 5 sets of RTW would have a way higher count when tallying total reps. The key difference is therefore on the load/ weight moved around that can directly be related to energy expenditure and as a better indication of progressive overloading in training. In any case, yesterday's session was after a rather heavy dinner the night before with lots of meat which no doubt would have filled the body wi...

  This one follows up in the same style as what I have done with 2 previous articles to compare on Arms Training and Creatine . But with a different bodypart and a training method for benchpress called Myorepping , that I came to learn recently, from the youtube channel Renaissance Periodization .   What's the point? Like so many other training methods, often it is about slotting in a quick workout with the least amount of time involved. I have been experimenting with dropsets, supersets and trisets, the last of which is also a part of my current chest workout at the gym but based on bodyweight exercises as the finisher with the Round The World triples of Pullup, Dips and Push   Quick cap of MyoReps  Not going into too much details here as it can be read up or watched with a search or the links above. Use a weight/ load that is approx 40-60% of your 1RM (1 Rep Max) Hit first set to 1-2 reps short of failure, rest 15-30 secs and continue repping out about half ...

 Continuing my very unscientific observation from the previous writeup , this is how it went yesterday. All 3 Arms Days in the gym were full on workout session on biceps and triceps. Normally my mostly body-weight daily workout doesn't see this kind of exertion on particular muscle groups as compared to gym/ weight days. Had the creatine an hour before the workout. Tried to keep it similar as much as possible but deviation even at the "warmup" and while walking over to the gym was already making it hard to "clone" an exact workout for comparison. Last comparison session on 30 Sep, I was relatively fresh at the start. Yesterday was pretty tiring considering last week's activities.  At the end of the session, could not find the strength to do my usual bodyweight-finisher  circuit routine of Push/Pull/Dips. Finisher super/ triset was aborted. A chunk of yesterday's load would be noticeably from the first row which I consider as each session "warmup...

DISCLAIMER : A heuristical analysis comparing 2 very similar Arms Day session with the latter after a dose of creatine an hour before commencing. Lacking in any kind of big data and good sampling size. Reps and total weight moved increased on 30 Sep 2023 over 02 Sep 2023. A positive correlation to usage of creatine. However fatigue level accumulation of last few days before each of these cannot be objectively factored. Recovery from strain injuries leading to possibly better performance on 30 Sep cannot be quantified. No specific conclusions can be drawn at this point. 02 Sep - No creatine.  30 Sep - ~3.5gram of creatine 1 hour before workout. Workout session ~similar on both days (11:30am - 1:45pm). Fonts in red yesterday indicate working to FAILURE either in reps and or weight used (similar indication not available for 02 Sep log)   Tried to replicate 02 Sep routine yesterday but walking on the way to the gym was some Elbow Dips and followed by a set of pullups before star...

Last year Sep was the first week long overseas trip after 2 years of pandemic. It was the fifth month since starting "daily" workout. With the right elbow medial epicondylitis  being pretty bad, I was taking the opportunity to recuperate. But at the same time wasn't all that prepared with the much less than usual workouts that week. The hotel gym's heaviest dumbbells were a pair of 20kg. Same time last year, that was about what I can handle at home for dumbbell chest press, with the adjustable Nuobell setting at 44lb. Was only just about to move up to the next setting at 53lb... Fast forward...  a year later. The place was a little more run down this time. Signs of poor economy hitting everywhere. No change to the equipment, the same rack of forlorn looking dumbbells were staring at me. By now, the 20kg pair is almost just enough for my warmup sets. Being all there is, I crank out 3x the reps in a set to make up for the lack of the usual loads  Repeated day one upon a...

No idea what to write as I fired up this monthly article... that's where training logs once again come in useful.   Signed up at the nearest Anytime Fitness on 2 Jul.  Finally back in a gym after almost 30 years !  Been there a total of 7 times this month... more than half of the workouts there are calisthenics and running on treadmill. Probably turned a few eyes with my unconventional approach even when using weights in the gym.  Not sure if anyone else had ever held a 110-135lb barbell while lying on the floor and swinging the legs in both directions at the same time since the gym opened for business :) But not that I care so long it's not obstructing or inconveniencing others. Important thing is getting a good worthy workout.    Running It's still mostly the usual 6km loops that's been honed these few months to improve on pace while keeping to my usual fetish of maintaining as low a heart rate as possible. 29 Jul was particularly exhausting after a 2hr ...