sleepygymcat

Hi lsu777, just wanted to check in and once more to thank you.

After doing some runs more of greyskull and renaissance periodization. I am now settling with a minimum bare bone GS protocol, with medium amount of knee over toes guy stuff for injury prevention and a ton of indoor and outdoor rock climbing.

Just this weekend climbed my first intermediate sport route on rock; made me think of all the effort put in and all the people that i am grateful towards, you are one of the names that immediately came to mind.

Cheers and again a ton of gratitude towards you.

Would love and appreciate some advice about where to go from here. I am still a good bit below intermediate but have made great progress in core and dips which were terrible weak spots for me, next in line for strength is improving squats and learn oly lifts for explosiveness.

Will also be learning to climb Sundays with my wife and whenever the opportunity rises, and want to train a bunch of rowing for cardio, just got the hang of it and feels like a great exercise.

But that will force me out of my 5-6 days a week heavy volume bro split, and since I am finally starting to look not skinnyfat or DYEL, I am very hesitant to change that, especially because i finally reached 20% BF after a ton of effort.

So far think for strength days a classic GS program 3-4 days a week, off days one light weight form focused oly lift and rowing around 30 mins at 140ish heart rate, 2-4 accessories every single day regardless rotating between focus on arms, delts, core and legs, climbing whenever happens. Eating either at maintenance or cutting till 12% BF at least, which will probably take me a year since it took me a year to go from 32% to my current 20%. Sounds good? Dumb?

Thanks in advance. Goal is not to lose too much STR and cut slowly because whenever I try to go nuts on my cuts my brain literally can't handle the office work.

Roger, will strengthen those

I got it googling "renaissance periodization fitnessmaterialheaven". Probably will buy a couple templates, I am liking the high fequency, high intensity, low volume templates they have because they fit my avilable time better atm.

RP has helped me a ton because as a noob I lack enough knowledge to properly build a routine; but its not earth shattering. Would suggest you give some of their content a try and then see how it goes from there to see if its worth the money for you.

The BEST part for me, the one I really like and will probably keep doing even in other methods, is the reverse pyramid scheme, either in reps or in weight. I really, really, REALLY love it, and it feels it allows me go reach better quality in my training.

Will probably go back to GS in a month or two when i finish a template, to focus again on pure strenght and intensity for a bit, but even then ill probably do reverse pyramids istead of 5, 5, 5+.

Dear @lsu777, kinda confused now...

Went on to do the Renaissance Periodization based training, and my aestetics just went off the charts. After a month every muscle feels bigger and stronger, look way better in the mirror and managed to get 0.3 pounds of muscle while losing 2.4 pounds of fat.

I think i was severly lacking volume trying to go as intense as possible and also lacking accesory work. Though I also changed to a much more nutritive and cleaner diet.

Anyway, now I am much more aware that the routine does matter, but would love to hear your wisdom on knowing when to change routines. Think about diet i am kinda attuned to keep cutting, with some mantinence weeks when i feel too weak, till i get my 15 bfp at least.

TYVM

Anecdotic stuff to keep motivation up. Was finishing shaking sheets with the missus the other day and got a puped up all upper body, incredible stuff 10/10 would reccomend, first time ever at my 38 years young lol, missus noticed big pup too and was totally flattered.

Never tought being strong would feel as good, never understood how weak I was, still a long way to go but I feel no weak spots thanks to following GS and just going strong at compounds watching form and doing LP.

Thanks a lot lsu777, you rock.

Thanks a ton. Will give that a read.

Well... still need guidance. 4 lifts are still going up, I am feeling great, have been DLing for half a year now no issues...

Till yesterday. Half a month ago switched from vanilla DL to stiff leg DL because I wanted something new and to focus on lower back, went 20% less weight on the 10 to 12 rep range, was peachy first 3 times.

Then yesterday I felt something move on the left side just above the gluteus maximum. Was perfectly on control, midset, and with contol I went down.

I know i must be crazy, because it felt like an old injury, 7 yo, finally got solved leaving my left leg more free. So far nothing hurts and just feel like a constant relief on my leg, like my glute was trapped and now its liberated. My Doc told me it feels a bit swollen but fine otherwise.

Not dumb enough to go gungho, but I am thinking this week just keep to upper body machines, next week going back to squats doing a 20% reset and two weeks from now, if thinks keep going with no sharp pain, going back to stiff legged DL with 20% reset over my last session.

Does it sound solid? Can an old old injury really fix itself like that?

tyvm

Thanks for the reply. I am very cautious on that sort of situations because literally can shoulder press her weight, any sort of sudden movement on my part can be seen as an aggression.

But yeah, after a min or two carefully explaining she was plain wrong it was like talking to a wall, had no more resources than to tell her to frick off, hands on my back just in case.

While still making progress; have a recovery question. How beat up am I supposed to be the next day?

Office work has been hard this month, with lots of stuff to do; and while I always have energy and time assigned to the gym, yesterday was particularly tired and did a couple of fewer plugins, and today though I feel yesterday's work on my muscles, I don't feel like dog puke.

Got me thinking, with my usual routine, even when I hustle, end up doing around 1 hour and 15 mins, and many times the day after I feel slightly feverish, with an abbreviated routine end up doing 45ish mins, can go up in my barbell lift's intensity with couple more reps and feel just tired not sick next day.

Maybe that indicates I'm overextending in volume, probably because started weaker than assumed and have been compensating with effort? Or because got this ammount of volume fine when was working from home and now it's not sustainable?

Would it be better to do less work at the gym and more LISS outside?

Well, I keep lurking, but progress is going well enough so...

As an update, my inbody is still the same as a month ago, which is baffling because photos look better, my waist is 2 cm smaller and I lift heavier, yesterday got new PR on press

Everything is going swell and following the book to the letter, except on the bench where I am going with DBs but doing the weight increase like it were Barbell with 1kg jumps each side per week, you know, no spotter.

Thinking about switching from DL to stiff leg DL since right now lower back is the limiting factor there and want to focus on the area.

Lastly, I think got good enough at the intensity part to do the "evolve" from 2x5 1x5+ to 1x5 1x5+; biometrics, results, and gymbros all tell me I am doing very well on the effort side. Thing is, the basic one has served me very well, dunno if it's worth messing with it.