Weekend's Progress Log

Well, my last thread was beaten to death. So I decided to start a new one. Just gonna post PRs, some workouts here and there, and of course progress pics.

This weekend (ha) got my girl to take some post-workout pics of me...

Current stats:
187-193 lb fluctuates.. this means i got about a 20-25 lb gain from the test cycle.
5'11"
bodyfat 12ish%
Deadlift PR 405x4
Squat PR 365x1
Bench PR 225x3x8
OHP PR 165x5
BB Row PR 225x10

last week I got 2 sets of 8 on 90 lb weighted dips... it was gnarly

Arms Day on saturday (set a PR on weighted chins, 70 lb 3x6):
Attachment 727Attachment 728

Shoulder day yesterday:
Attachment 729

I want to get bigger... hold me to some progress my swole brethren

You sure are a pretty feller. Especially like your smile. Lol.

All kidding aside, you've got a good physique on you and from the way it sounds, you've made some pretty substantial progress and still continue to do so based on your DL increases lately.

If you don't mind me asking, how long have you been training and had you done other cycles (ph or aas) prior to your test cycle?

training for like 7 years, was vegan for a lot of that time... became serious as soon as i tried androhard, that shit gave me a push like no other and made me realize working out was something i really liked. It also turned me back into a carnivore, i had been vegetarian since 7th grade.

once i got on androhard+phytotest(lol) (summer 2011) and subsequently started eating meat (within 2 weeks of being on, totally wasn't planning on it, but started dreaming of eating steaks in closets and hiding it from friends/family so as not to lose my pride of lasting so long??) i gained 18 lbs. went from like 140-158.

over the next 6 months, i put on another 7, got to 165. then (janurary - march2013) i took androbulk and androhard v3 stacked at 6 each a day for 8 weeks, plus another 2 weeks of androhard at 6 pills, tapered it into PCT like you recommended actually. I also did GOMAD for the whole cycle. that cycle took me from 165 to 194. I was pretty bloated and fat though. Slowly, i cut down to around 165 with a complete change in composition over the next 5-6 months.

Then i started bulking and got back to 173 before started my test cycle in october 2012, gained a pound a day for like the first 10 days and the rest is history...

If memory serves me correctly, you gained around 35 lbs on that test cycle and then cut back 20 lbs post cycle.

Since you brought up the vegan thing, was that done for health purposes or because of animal cruelty or something else? Always curious of people's reasons for beginning that way of eating and then find it interesting when they come back to meat again. Sounds like the body was craving meat both physically and subconciously in order to feed that new growth.

So though you've been training for 7 years, it has been in the last 2 years that you have put on ~45-50lbs of muscle. Impressive change in a very short time. Nice going, bud.

i was able to get to 150 while vegan, but lost it all when classes became tough. started androhard in the summer after a big year of school so i was 140 when i started that cycle. it was 6 weeks 18 lbs, really all said and done i gained a huge amount for that time period. haha.

vegan thing was done for animal cruelty purposes only, the environment and my health was a bonus. at first i felt health benefits: my skin, sleep and heart felt great. cardio was great. blood pressure super healthy.

i noticed my nuts grew a lot when i came back to meat, i think i never had fed them properly and being veggie in middle school was really a bad idea, but live and learn.

over time though, i was veggie for 8 years (including vegan), vegan for 2, i felt like my body was hurting, i would lose weight really fast randomly, emotionally it was frustrating to never have anything to eat and everyone pestering me about why i would do that, and with lifting... i couldn't gain shit and my joints started hurting.

to gain as a vegan: 6k calories MINIMUM at the low weight of 140 lb. lol. i think it may be conducive to low levels of natty anabolic hormone too, so that might explain. i was seriously shitting 6x per day for that whole 8 year period.

for anyone who doesn't want to be big or feel like a man... i'd recommend it

Great body ! And very great smile :-)

What are your next steps now? Clean bulk naturally ?

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Originally Posted by Jack O'Neill

Great body ! And very great smile :-)

What are your next steps now? Clean bulk naturally ?

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currently trying to get lean and destroy what's left of the gyno. then i will be clean bulking until...

october i plan to start my cycle of test ace (350/wk) and mast prop (525/wk). gonna run that 10-12 weeks depending how i feel.

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Originally Posted by weekend

i was veggie for 8 years...

for anyone who doesn't want to be big or feel like a man... i'd recommend it

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lol

But seriously, thanks for the info on your veggie/vegan journey. It's interesting and insightful. Some people seem to handle it better than others. I'd say those who lean toward the endomorphic body style with their slower metabolic rates might be able to do better. Even mesomorphs with an endomorphic slant would probably do reasonably well. But ectomorphic or ecto/meso body styles will tend to starve themselves I think, unless they find alternate ways to load additional calories into the body.

i think i am a mesomorph, but not sure if those body types really can be stuck in only 3 groups.

i am naturally not muscular, and have a bodyfat of 16%

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Originally Posted by weekend

i think i am a mesomorph, but not sure if those body types really can be stuck in only 3 groups.

i am naturally not muscular, and have a bodyfat of 16%

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Ecto, Ecto/Meso, Meso/Ecto, Meso, Meso/Endo, Endo/Meso, Endo are the bodytypes, with endlessly varying degrees of each on what would be a sliding scale, really. So the 3 groups, with endless combinations of each.

I'm ecto in my native state, with just a little meso mixed in. Started training at 95 lbs of bodyweight. When I stopped training for several years, I shrunk from 200 down to 140. Muscle melts off me like warm butter if I don't feed and stimulate it.

weekend hit's hawaii 2009:

Attachment 731

here's me after 3 years of roidless training. i got a bit bigger before androhard but not really much bigger lol. was vegan, probably 135 here. also 5'9 or 5'10

surprisingly i could trap bar deadlift 280 at this time. i was benching a whopping 115!

and i didn't really know rows were important by then, definitely was doing assisted pullups.

Pretty cool to look back at the old you and see the progress, eh? By looking at your pics now, you look like a full on mesomorph, naturally muscular. No one would ever guess the humble beginnings you had.

what am i naturally, an ecto? it's easy for me to gain weight now lol, i swear body types are bullshit and change due to many factors.

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Originally Posted by weekend

what am i naturally, an ecto? it's easy for me to gain weight now lol, i swear body types are bullshit and change due to many factors.

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Bodytypes aren't the be-all and end-all of anything. They do help gauge a person's "natural" state when untrained and when fed to satisfy appetite. They don't necessarily gauge a person's ability to gain muscle or fat, but they are indicators. Lou Ferrigno, if you look at his teen pics, was a classic ectomorph, but he did have the ability to gain muscle once stimulated by training and eating. He also responded tremendously to anabolics. Some people will respond better to the stimuli of anabolics than others, as well, which is a whole other subject.

You gain weight now because you eat for it. You have the appetite now because you trained for it and built muscle that requires feeding for it to be maintained. So what bodytype were you? Ecto/meso or meso/ecto with insufficient calories to feed growth.

Can we change our bodytypes? I think to an extent, we can. We can't change the width of our shoulder girdle or the width of our hips (skeletal structure) but we can change the body's muscular set-point to a degree. Even when I stopped training for a period of years, I didn't go back to 95 lbs. I lost 50ish lbs and ended up somewhere in the middle of my big and my small versions of me. I looked thin, in ok shape, but not anorexic like in the beginning.

The other thing that changes over time is metabolic rate and other hormonal functions. Things slow down over time. You have a while before this will affect you. But I began to notice this in the last 10 years and more prominently in the last 5. Fat doesn't melt off like before. It takes a heck of a lot more work to burn it while keeping hard earned muscle. Metabolically, I've shifted a bit more toward the endo side in this area. The good side of that is now I don't have to force feed myself to keep my body from losing muscle like I did 20some years ago.

cool insight. i hope to never lose too much of what i'll gain. it would be nice to feel like i need to lose muscle because i look too freaky hah

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Originally Posted by weekend

for anyone who doesn't want to be big or feel like a man... i'd recommend it

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ill disagree here obviously

Looking great man! Your arms rly dont look 16.5!

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Originally Posted by JM1000

Looking great man! Your arms rly dont look 16.5!

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bodybuilding is all an illusion

Great progress buddy.

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Originally Posted by DJM

ill disagree here obviously

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I honestly cried over nothing all the time while I was vegetarian... It sucked, looking back something was wrong

How long did you go for? I guess you got big but maybe you got at least a little big before you were veggie?

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Originally Posted by weekend

I honestly cried over nothing all the time while I was vegetarian... It sucked, looking back something was wrong

How long did you go for? I guess you got big but maybe you got at least a little big before you were veggie?

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i was vegetarian for almost 7yrs, stopped this past january, that puts me at around 26yrs old, so i was around your size when i started, not as defined tbh......i looked nowhere near what i look like now when im in shape......since adding meat, besides the initial shock and 5lb gain, its settled and only minor change is a slight denser look.......im on my first real cycle while eating meat

i wouldnt say being a vegetarian sucks, you were too young to grasp all the things you can eat.....i know a few who tried and all they buy is the prepacked veggie burgers n hotdogs so no wonder they suffer, i downed alot of shakes, but in that time i saw the whole 'you need all this protein to grow' stuff to be pure nonsense.....id say a gram a pound is more than enough......calories is how you grow.....cutting sucked big time and i saw very few through, and yes some days you feel you lack choice, BUT if you chose it for a reason that that should be paramount......i stopped cause i got really ill over the holidays and for the first time ever i was craving red meat like crazy, i listened to my body

i still refuse to eat processed and fast food as they are the worst animal cruelty offenders, i still avoid products tested on them and so on

Yeah, I'm pretty much grass fed only beef wise, I eat a ton of fish now. And organic chicken.

I was meat free for almost 8, and trust me I knew about everything I could eat. It just slowly drove me mad. I think the 2 years of vegan had me feel a bit different than the prior 6 of straight vegetarian... By the end of being vegan I was dreaming of meat every day.

I was serious, if you don't want to be big and strong, I actually do recommend it. But it made me weaker, and I swear it made me more of a pussy about stupid shit.

But yeah. I ate like crazy as a vegan. I was cooking gourmet meals daily, spending hours on food. And it was delicious too. So that wasnt the problem... The problem, im 99% sure was definitely chemical deficiency despite my high food variety and calorie intake. And I was always on creatine so whatever I was missing was a mystery.

I'm sure I could've done steroids without meat and gotten almost as big. But without juice I didn't see it happening.

Protein wise I was having 200 g a day while vegan at a body weight of 135.. Would take 3 protein shakes of hemp and rice protein every day and eat a fuck ton. Tofu all the time, retarded amounts of nuts and beans, always looking for tasty replacements like Asian food, vegan pizza place, places with fake meat.. In seattle it was easy. But still. Went crazy eventually. Your cravings came about the same time too hah

Shoulders 7/7/2013

Standing Behind The Neck OHP
Barx10
95x10
135x8
135x8
135x6
125x8

Lateral Raise
25lbx10x5sets

Rear Delt Destroyers (Mountain dog): 3 sets
40 lb x 40 rep
27.5 lb x 28 rep
17.5 x 18 rep
5 lb x 15 rep full range

Six-ways
10lbx8x4sets

Facepull
60lb 3 sets of 20

Power Clean
135x10
155x10
185x4
205x5
185x8
185x8
185x9

no PRs, unless you count the behind the neck press which ive never done standing before today, i think i made a rep PR for rear delt destroyers though...

good workout.

189lb weigh in

Nice going. Curious about the powercleans... is there a particular reason you integrate them into the workout? What purpose do they serve for you in particular?

they make my traps and rear delts real sore. should they not be doing that?



to clarify, they make any other trap exercise seem like a joke.

Lol. Ok. Just curious, because they work a lot of different muscle groups up and down the body, they work on muscular endurance, they work on explosiveness and explosive muscle fibers. Wasn't sure about YOUR reasons, that's all.

really, they make my traps and delts sore, and they are one of my favorite exercises.. seems like they fit best on shoulder day

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Originally Posted by weekend

really, they make my traps and delts sore, and they are one of my favorite exercises.. seems like they fit best on shoulder day

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Would be the coolest thing ever to see you power clean 315. :D

Eeeesh. Maybe some day but my friend broke his back doing 225.... Was planning on just making high rep love to 225 so it feels easy lol

10 rep clean and press 225 anyone?

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Originally Posted by weekend

10 rep clean and press 225 anyone?

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When I was young, yep. Easy peasy.

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Originally Posted by weekend

Eeeesh. Maybe some day but my friend broke his back doing 225.... Was planning on just making high rep love to 225 so it feels easy lol

10 rep clean and press 225 anyone?

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I'm in...to watch a vid of someone doing them. I haven't done these since I was 20. I wasn't doing 225 back then likely either. But it makes me wonder hmmmmm....

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Originally Posted by burlyman30

When I was young, yep. Easy peasy.

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a push press or strict press??

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Originally Posted by olddawg

I'm in...to watch a vid of someone doing them. I haven't done these since I was 20. I wasn't doing 225 back then likely either. But it makes me wonder hmmmmm....

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7lr_FtnDf8

this was my third attempt on my workout where i did 225... power was getting low (usually i catch the bar higher on the delt and jump higher off the ground) but for some stupid reason i wanted to try 2 for the camera... that didn't work out lol.. obviously i should have dropped my hips more to catch the second one.

fuck you know i'm gonna have to go out and try that now lol. as the weight starts inching up tiny variations in the technique makes all the difference. good thing it wasn't in planet fitness lol

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Originally Posted by olddawg

fuck you know i'm gonna have to go out and try that now lol. as the weight starts inching up tiny variations in the technique makes all the difference. good thing it wasn't in planet fitness lol

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my gym has around 10 platforms hahah... chalk everywhere!! it's awesome

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Originally Posted by weekend

my gym has around 10 platforms hahah... chalk everywhere!! it's awesome

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Lucky you! There are no gyms within 45 minutes of me that have a platform. I have to do my DLs sandwiched between the front of the power rack and a punching bag. Haha.

that sucks... i hate deadlifting without chalky platforms, even without bumper plates. i'm spoiled.

bro, finally caught up with this.

Weekend, you look solid bro! SOLID!

thanks man! More to come in the years ahead muahaha

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Originally Posted by burlyman30

Lucky you! There are no gyms within 45 minutes of me that have a platform. I have to do my DLs sandwiched between the front of the power rack and a punching bag. Haha.

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I think I might have to take a pic of the lame place I train at..