Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Pretty sure it is obvious to everyone where I sit on that chart.

Well I'll take the smug lyfe over the emo lyfe all day baby. My readers' preferences are irrelevant.

I had my first bad session. It was just poor sleep the past few days figuring out how to manage the apnea. I need to see an ENT; mine seems to be probably not bodyweight related but more something internal and respiratory. My doc in BKK did not do any sort of careful examination of that area and seemed more concerned with collecting $ from sleep studies and double priced CPAP machine sales. CPAP probably isn't the most effective treatment for me if I got more sleep gains from the decongestant nasal spray. My city is so small by Chinese standards that probably I'll need to go into HK/Macau to find an actual ENT doctor. Hopefully Macau because that's literally ~20 minutes.

Arms+Legs

Cable curls: 21.75kgx24, 2 more sets
Pushdowns: 32.5kgx18, 2 more sets
DB seated curl: 10kgx14, 2 more sets
db skullcrushers: 10kgx17, 2 more sets

Single leg extensions: 3 sets, this movement wasn't connecting well
Hamstring curl: 63.25kgx18,13 (last time was also this weight but was written as 55kg)
RFESS using the roller from the leg extension/ham curl machine: 15kgx10x3 each side

So I somehow still managed to set prs on cable curls and hamstring curls despite some very extreme fatigue during the session. db seated curls are feeling very good. Cable curls, db seated curls, and dual handle cable curls were movements I literally wasn't able to do without pain a year ago. The internal rotation mobbing has helped a ton with that, even though it's helped less than I'd like on bullet proofing my proximal bicep tendon for pressing movements.

Today I slept a ton better and now I have a day off training. It's Friday and it's Valentines day. So all the emo single Chinese women gonna be out hunting. Nah jk they're going to be indoors watching bad feminist short form tiktok content and frantically swiping on dating apps looool.

really wanna leg press instead of rfess even though I know for my physique and weaknesses I should rfess. Nobody wants to rfess, it's one of the most grueling movements in all of lifting. I'd even say more grueling than proper back squatting or front squatting, but maybe less than a conventional dl. it also seems to get harder as you gain bodyweight in some cases, whereas with fs/bs you gain pure fatness and number on bar go up and you get to feel very alpha. That's how the entire sport of powerlifting functions really; delusional guys thinking they're getting strong because number go up on bench and squat but really it's just shorter rom from better leverages from being obese.

I think we had a scholar many years ago named loco who pointed this out. Like many visionaries of his time, he was mocked and ridiculed. Only years later do we understand he was right. RIP loco

rfess can be very taxing on your knees too. or at least old mean 2x ACL reconstructed knees.
I used to love doing it tbh and it used to give me DOMS like no other lift. but old man knees

this was beautiful btw

yes i lol'd hard

Got it. No more politarding here. Sorry, Thremp apparently has a big mad, I find it funny, and I responded. Melk gonna Melk, I guess. I could post photo/vid to meet both of your requirements, but lets just say they are, um, not recent which I think would violate the spirit of the rule.

Got it. No more politarding here. Sorry, Thremp apparently has a big mad, I find it amusing (especially that last post), and I responded. Melk gonna Melk, I guess. I could post photo/vid to meet both of your requirements, but lets just say they are, um, not recent which I think would violate the spirit of the rule. I guess the 225x10 was lbbs, so that probably would not have even counted.

lbbs would not count unless atg and reasonably close stance. Non politard posts are okay.

God damn, that'd be a good way to allocate voting rights. Arbitrary physical fitness standards just to show you're serious enough about your own life to do anything to influence anyone else's. And it'll weed out the olds nicely. And the olds who stayed in shape physically probably are way more in touch with modernity than those that failed to. Fascist Fitocracy.

Upper
Paused high incline bb: 90kgx8, 70kgx17
machine flies: 40kgx15, 10
v bar pulldowns: 80kgx15, 9, 7
decline machine press: 1.75ppsx10, 9
Hammer rows: 2ppsx17, 12, 10

Triset:
hip height behind the back cable delt raise, ez curls, pullovers: 3 rounds

Felt very good. Paused incline I went very submaximal for the heavy set because it's a new movement and all that. 90kg I coulda done for 11-12 I think. I'm just gonna add 2.5-5kg each week until it feels near-maximal. I went maximal on the 2nd set. I'm actually surprised at how strong I was at incline bb after not having done it for a very long time.

I remember long ago hitting a wall around 100kgx7-8 TNG. I feel like if I even knew how to do tng reps on pressing motions I could beat that tomorrow ez. Even this very submax 90kgx8 paused is probably about eqauivalent to 100kgx7 tng and that used to be like 'omg so hard!1"

plate loaded decline machine actually felt very good. The flat one kinda hurt and incline one felt too much like a shoulder press.

That guy who insulted me and said I had no future in bbing and would never even make first callouts at a local show unless I completely changed my entire approach to every aspect of bbing (lol) is doing his first show in America and it happens to be the same first show as Sam Sulek. Even though he was a dick to me and all that, he did teach me how to flex hamstrings correctly on back double bicep pose. For this reason alone+having lived in Asia, i really hope he beats Sam and gets some more exposure for his coaching business. But both of them are going to get smashed by John C Rivas in SHW and won't even make it to to overall lol.

I'm guessing 90% of my readers are so out of the bodybuilding loop they do not even know who Sam Sulek is now that I made that post. But it's also because you guys are very old and much less in touch with Gen Z and Gen A culture than I am, even for those of you who are similar to me in age.

On that note, since you're my go to guy on PEDs, here's one for you.

Just saw that Sinner (top Men's tennis bro) got busted for clostebol. Setting aside his LOL excuse for how it ended up in his blood, why would someone put that in their stack? Seems like there are better options.

I'm not sure whether I should be honored or ashamed to be in the 10% that know who he is.

depends on how many times you've masturbated to his image

such a boomer comment

Honored for sure. People age at different rates and being familiar with youth culture is a sign of aging slower.

Just came back to ask about Sam sulek just saw the pics on Twitter bro wtf

He won the overall title it seems!

Really? He looked super flat like he missed his peak.

He looked about how you'd expect from his training. Very imbalanced, bad posing, barely flexing legs. This is a great example of a good physique that looks bad from very bad posing and presentation. But stellar midsection, chest, arms, and delts. Gym rat physique for a guy that trains and eats like a gym rat but not quite a serious competitor. He trains at Dragons lair now which has a posing room and doesn't care if you take shorts off, but in his videos he only ever poses upper body.

Everyone including me thought he'd be in shw, but he made classic. Bear in mind he's a self coached 23 year old. A guy like Anton Ratushki recently or young cbum in 2014 had very experienced coaches, so of course they looked way better at their respective outings while being similarly very young.

You're literally more likely to figure out something like oly on your own （clarence) than enhanced bb. People underestimate how complex it is or misattribute the complexity to the AAS （the simplest part where its pretty hard to mess up tbh).

Sam also has some straight ******s like Fouad Abiad around him so it's impressive he did this well self coached.

my “friend” dead last in shw lol.

KC, thanks for checking in homie.

Sam illustrates a lot of concepts in enhanced bb and how it's different from 'enhanced gym rat'. Sam's training is an absolute mess. Is he intense and obviously effortful? yes. Is that enough? to get very big, strong, and put on a lot of tissue, yes absolutely. Is that what wins most bodybuilding shows at either the pro or amateur level? surprisingly, no. Otherwise Marcus Ruhl would have been Mr. Olympia every single time.

Dante's early writings could be summarized as something like "if you can squat 500x10, incline 405x10, and barbell row 455x10, you can't have small legs/chest/back". Well... sorta. But classic physique/men's physique especially, and even open bodybuilding to a lesser extent, are about balance and symmetry still to a great degree. And in the modern era, "to an even greater degree". Post 2018 when Shawn (RIP) beat Phil, aesthetics/shape/balance is only increasing in importance.

Sam has "mirror muscle syndrome". I mean, I did too. I never trained hams or glutes directly in the start of my journey. I'm not even sure what to say was the "start". First show was 2018 but after that I switched back to half-baked powerlifting based on amraps to failure and was shocked when I was always injured and never making progress. He has absolutely huge chest, front delts, triceps, biceps, and really well developed abs with excellent waist control and a great vaccuum. All the things you can see when you're posing in a mirror. His back is overall is really bad, his legs are pretty soft from the front but surprisingly okay from the back. If somebody trained with a bro split, got on a lot of gear early, was overall genetically gifted, and didn't have much intentionality with their movements and just wanted to add weights/reps each session without much care for making sure tension was being directed at the muscles they're trying to train, and only ever posed in the mirror after training but never really did targetted quarter turn+mandatory rotational practice in neutral lighting drilling it over and over again making adjustments, this is literally exactly what we'd expect them to look like.

Sam barely made weight. Anton Ratushki was around 25lbs under his cap. Anton would obliterate Sam because not only was he more conditioned, but his training is way more targetted and balanced. He actually does focused posing practice, and he works on the muscle groups that are important to bodybuilding judges/important for having a balanced physique that you don't necessarily see when you're posing in the mirror.

A lot of problems with "structure" are just that, but sometimes its a combination of execution and programming. But more often its execution than programming. For myself, I always attributed my "flat" looking biceps to just structure and genetics. But once I started training movements that actually train that head of the bicep instead of hammer curls as first movement on arm day, bam magically my biceps have become peaky instead of flat.

Lastly, I'd comment that in enhanced BB there is a spectrum of precontest vs offseason looks. What I mean by that is, some bodybuilders look absolutely amazing in their offseasons; they stay lean and shredded despite needing to forcefeed, they never seem to accrue much bodyfat, and they can often get away with eating trash diets with krispy kreme donuts and whole milk and still never get fat. When contest time comes, they really don't actually improve all that much and don't look drastically better. Often times they end up dropping a lot more scale weight than you'd expect to get in shape. There are other bodybuilders who really don't look very impressive and get very soft/flat/unimpressive when they're offseason trying to add muscle, but when contest time comes they look really radically better, and often times they don't drop all that much scale weight, or sometimes they literally gain weight. Sam is a fairly extreme example of the first category, but people expected the level of improvement of the 2nd category going from his offseason to precontest. Offseason he looks just incredible, then contest time his visual improvements are marginal.

1st category might include bodybuilders like Roman Fritz, Adam Beveridge, Urs, Milos Sarcev in his hayday
2nd category: Lee Priest, Terrence Ruffin, Justin Harris back when he competed, Shawn Rhoden (RIP)

I'm definitely in category two to where I could easily be mistaken for a ****ing MMA athlete or something in my offseason. I really don't look impressive (by bodybuilding standards, not normie standards) in my offseason then some magic happens, i drop barely more than 10kgs, and distinctly look like a bodybuilder.

Unrelated:
The storyline of the 2018 Olympia is a really beautiful thing and anyone who knows what was going on in Shawn's life in 2017-2018 and the controversy it was postumously revealed he was involved in would see why it's a very compelling arc. But it has a pretty tragic end from which I myself have drawn life lessons. It wasn't the roids alone that killed him like it was with Dallas McCarver, it was the stress of the womanizing lifestyle, the roids, and the very sloppy offseason dietary habits that did him in.

Given how nuanced it is and how steep the learning curve is, you can see why i really want to get ahold of some high school or undergrad aged kid who's willing to hop on fairly early in life and mentor him. Hasn't happened yet, all dads who have been lifting several years, usually already dabbled with PEDs, and just chunky and trying to figure out the things outside the gym needed to look like a bodybuilder.

People have asked me "if you knew everything you knew today, how long would it take to get a physique like you have now from your starting point?" and I would have said a decade before, but I think from day 1 it could be done in as little as half that if I could go back in time and micromanage my 19 140lbs 5'11 year old self starting to train seriously for the first time. But of course at the time I had no idea that the enhanced bodybuilding life would be such a source of fulfillment, identity, and purpose for me.

Clostebol isn't even widely used. I wouldn't be able to find a source for it.

But here's the thing about PEDS, when asking "why use xyz compound?" you're implying that they really do anything different. But ultimately all of them really kinda do about the same thing with regard to growing tissue, bone density/joint health, and improved motor learning. I'm guessing he was taking something else and it prob came from a UGL. Maybe a few specs of clostebol were in the pill press making his anavar and only the clostebol detected would be my guess. Silly **** like that. For a sport like tennis which is way more skill than sport it really doesn't matter what he takes it's all gonna be good.

That was a big myth that took me a long time to unlearn. X compound is different because alsdkfjaklsdf. They don't really differ all that much in the rate of building muscle or "real strength". Some of them give "fake strenght" which is just sorta temporary neural overdrive or water and leverages being improved. When your bench goes up 20lbs on dbol after 2 weeks, it's basically the same as gaining 20lbs on your bench from wearing elbow sleeves. When your bench goes up 22lbs over 20 weeks instead of what would have been 15lbs because you took 1000mg of testosterone per week, that kind of strength gain is "real strength", or strength from more actual contractile tissue. Run whatever you want in high total mgs arranged in a way that doesn't cause you a lot of side effects. For people that aren't estro sensitive, this will just mean a lot of test and optional primo/mast/eq. For people that are more sensitive to estro, this will mean lest testosterone and a lot of masteron or primo.

Two offseason cycles from John jewett that he himself used. 1: 900mg/wk test, 1900mg/wk mast enantahte, 9ius of gh, 15-20iu of lantus. 2: 1400mg test, 800 primo, 800 mast, 9iu of gh. He said the results were basically about the same.

The handful of exceptions that do seem to just build more muscle mg per mg would be trenbolone (but even then a lot of it is fakestrength), ment, superdrol (still lotta fake strength), nandroloen to a lesser extent, and probably a handful of others. The ones that are just in the background building contractile tissue faster but offer literally 0 fakestrength would be EQ, Primo, and Masteron. Testosterone is a nice middle between those two.

The only time when you need to worry about compound selection is when you are pre-meet as a strength athlete or precontest as a bodybuilder. Then the pharmacology starts to be important and cna make a difference in your look or your results on the platform. For bodybuilding, this has more or less been figured out. For powerlifting its also figured out but the answer is a very disappointing :As much tren, orals, and nandrolone as you can handle. Testosterone suspension pre workout/pre meet also good. Stim city, 800mg caffeine, clen for stimulant rather than fat burning effect. Probability of injury high because of the "fakestrength" you get in this peaking period.

Arms+lower
Cable curls: 21.75x26, 13, 17.5kgx14
pushdowns: 32.75x22 (?), 2 more sets at 21.25kg

cable facing away curls: 8.75kgx18, 12, 10
db skullcrushers: 10kgx22, 11, 9

Single lex extensions: 31.25x15, 9, 8 each side
Seated ham curls: 60kgx21, 14
Paused SLDL: 125kgx15, 12 god this was hard
lying ham curls: 39x12

To say I was sluggish in today's training would be a huge understatement. I took a full 80 minutes to finish and was in the gym near 2 hours doing all sorts of mobbing after training.

I've kinda hit a wall on SLDL. Each set was incredibly taxing and took a lot out of me. Glute pump was supreme though. I might be ready to start my conventional block and go from now until I start prep. if I do that the workouts will be arms->deadlift->everything else. I'll hit much lower reps and do a top set of 6 followed by dropping weight and backoff of 10. I'll start at some super easy bullshit weight like 185/190 top set and 160 backoff next week if I do it just to get used to the movement at first then jump up significantly the next week.

I'm excited AF to start prep, but i'm also taking this opportunity to live a little. I'm eating some soft serve ice cream and then going out to eat after training at the mall where my gym is pretty much every time. I might even have a burger next time, but mostly it's been meat and rice or noodles type things.

Thanks. Based on my limited reading about it, it seemed that the main benefit would be that it can't be converted to estrogen, which may suggest utility in the estrogen sensitive subgroup that you describe. I guess that's not really that big a deal since there are other effective strategies for those people.