[TravellingSoldier]

Yeah TBH that was the first time ive used it in months im still trying to figure out my split making it myself) ill stick to a burn out on a hammer strength machine or like you said more bench

Idk for 18 im DL around 400 and squatting up there too (keep in mind i JUST started working out again after a year break) I'd say im stronger than 90% of dudes my age

[TravellingSoldier]

Thanks for the advice ill cut out the machines and use more bench

[TravellingSoldier]

WHOA! 195 thats a big change man thats awesome good for you stay hungry haha

[Foolsgo1d]

Saying that, not all machines are bad.

Cable machines can be useful and leg press as well. They supplement the free movement with DBs or barbells however. Never make them a priority in your workout.

[Bushido]

Squatting with badly sunburned shoulders is an experience in itself. Almost bailed on the bar at one point!

[TravellingSoldier]

(08-19-2014 10:36 AM)dreambig Wrote:  

Squatting with badly sunburned shoulders is an experience in itself. Almost bailed on the bar at one point!

Jeezus that sounds more painful than your middle school crush telling you she just wants to be friends

[StrikeBack]

(08-19-2014 10:36 AM)dreambig Wrote:  

Squatting with badly sunburned shoulders is an experience in itself. Almost bailed on the bar at one point!

It's better if you have a cheese grater bar like Eleiko (IPF competition bar).

[rdvirus]

I feel your pain DB. I made the smart decision to go in the hot tub after my workout with well done calves. Stepped in and started cursing then turned around and got right back out. Couple funny looks and a lot of pain.

[Veloce]

At the gym tonight.

Dudes next to me are doing front squats and deadlifts. Their form is good. It makes me happy when I work out next to guys with good form. They're not putting up huge numbers but they're small-ish guys. Good range of motion.

At one point one of them is kneeling down in between reps and messing with the music on his iPhone. I catch a peek at what he's listening to and it's Bruno Mars.



How could anyone listen to that while lifting?

Unrelated: Afterward I went to El Pollo Loco to get some grilled white meat with rice and coleslaw. In front of me were 3 women, all bangable, one of them pretty hot actually, but all 3 of them with some telltale signs that they were in their early 30s and the wall was approaching fast. Gross fat deposits on their arms and back. All wearing sandals and slutty halter tops; they looked like they were going to a party. Their waistbands were too tight for their body and there was a nice roll of fat out in the open. No shame.

As I was getting salsas at the salsa bar, one of them was telling another, "My god, I FUCKING love sour cream, I FUCKING love it."

I winced. Yeah bitch? I fucking love women with skinny arms.

While two of them got their food, the third went over to CVS and got one of these:


and a 3 pack of these:


As I was eating, they got their food. All three of them got burritos the size of their arm, and they pounded them down faster than I could eat my single chicken breast+wing with two sides.

It was a very strong reminder: I'm not lifting for these trashy bitches. I lift for me.

[Veloce]

(08-15-2014 08:04 PM)redbeard Wrote:  

farmer's walks are a severely underrated exercise

I had to look that one up.

What are the benefits?

[Bushido]

^^ Farmers walks will destroy your forearms. I do them religiously.

[StrikeBack]

Numerous.

Grip strength and endurance
Core stability
Work shoulders and scapula depression
Great conditioning
Good transfer to daily functional strength - it's essentially carrying heavy shit over distance

My gym doesn't have space or heavy enough equipments for it though, unfortunately.

[Foolsgo1d]

(08-20-2014 12:26 AM)thedude3737 Wrote:  

(08-15-2014 08:04 PM)redbeard Wrote:  

farmer's walks are a severely underrated exercise

I had to look that one up.

What are the benefits?

Pretty much any grip-heavy action involving you picking up and holding something will improve your ability to finger bang a girl till her eyes roll.

Or pick her up with 2 fingers like a pack of beer.

[Deluge]

I find it interesting that most RVF lifters seem to be doing strength training rather than bodybuilding. Any idea what makes us so different? Personally I transitioned from the former to the later after 6 months or so.

[redbeard]

strength training vs. bodybuilding...

being a strong, badass motherfucker vs. looking like one

I lift to be stronger, so that I can be more dominant, and so that I can AMOG guys. more importantly, I lift to enhance my working abilities and my basketball skills.

look around the bb.com forums. those guys do it all for looks.

[thedavidgt]

I'm not sure if this belongs here. But there's a blog I used to read with a lot of helpful info on lifting technique, programming, mobility-prehab etc. The author's name is Tony Gentilcore, and he's a great example of what MikeCF on Danger and Play calls an "alpha-beta".

This guy co-owns a very well known gym, deadlifts 570 and is decently jacked but has a very beta, blue-pill approach to women.

I found this article there today: http://www.tonygentilcore.com/blog/an-op...-muscular/

TL;DR: Owner of blog features a women's guest post, in which she urges her fellow women to go ahead and disregard what men think about their bodies. Blog owner proceeds to kiss her ass and spouts off plenty of you-go-girlism.

It saddens me to see otherwise successful men like this pedestalize women who lift. While I believe lifting can be beneficial to a girls physique they can absolutely build too much muscle and become unattractive. Supporting women in being masculine is like rewarding boys for being weak and effeminate

Edit: Relevant article by Jack Donovan http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2014...beast-mode

[berserk]

(08-20-2014 11:11 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

I find it interesting that most RVF lifters seem to be doing strength training rather than bodybuilding. Any idea what makes us so different? Personally I transitioned from the former to the later after 6 months or so.

I would think most do both, but if you're new to lifting, then a compound based simple program is what most agree is the best idea even strict bodybuilders.

Another thing is that natural bodybuilding is quite different than juiced bodybuilding. You get tired a lot quicker as a natural and need more frequent stimulation, so it makes sense to base a program on heavy compounds since they are more value for your money so to speak. It's also quicker to do compounds than a lot of individual sets of isolation.

I would be interested to hear how you changed in terms of routines though.

[kbell]

I hit 305 on my deadlift today. Felt safe and my back felt safe. Couldn't see it in the mirror though I had to do it angled in front, rather than from the side. I did get to look at this girl with a wide load ass doing squats while doing it, and that still didn't distract from the lift. She was training 2 other 18 year old chicks in yoga pants...

[Ensam]

Don't look at yourself while you lift. Develop some body awareness and have someone take a video of your lift from time to time.

I lift stronger when there's a hot chick in the vicinity.

[redbeard]

There was some <3 science <3 about lifting weights and girls:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21983238

[Deluge]

(08-20-2014 12:18 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I would be interested to hear how you changed in terms of routines though.

I basically went from doing starting strength to the standard legs, chest and back day split, with an emphasis on compound movements. I'm glad I did starting strength first, you really do need a solid foundation of strength and proficiency with compound lifts before you do bodybuidling. I'm definitely gaining size much quicker than I would've if I stayed on SS, especially on my upper body. On SS it felt like half my gains were going to my legs.

[RexImperator]

(08-21-2014 12:00 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(08-20-2014 12:18 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I would be interested to hear how you changed in terms of routines though.

I basically went from doing starting strength to the standard legs, chest and back day split, with an emphasis on compound movements. I'm glad I did starting strength first, you really do need a solid foundation of strength and proficiency with compound lifts before you do bodybuidling. I'm definitely gaining size much quicker than I would've if I stayed on SS, especially on my upper body. On SS it felt like half my gains were going to my legs.

At what level did you get your numbers to before you switched (as a multiple of body weight)?

[Deluge]

(08-21-2014 08:32 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 12:00 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(08-20-2014 12:18 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I would be interested to hear how you changed in terms of routines though.

I basically went from doing starting strength to the standard legs, chest and back day split, with an emphasis on compound movements. I'm glad I did starting strength first, you really do need a solid foundation of strength and proficiency with compound lifts before you do bodybuidling. I'm definitely gaining size much quicker than I would've if I stayed on SS, especially on my upper body. On SS it felt like half my gains were going to my legs.

At what level did you get your numbers to before you switched (as a multiple of body weight)?

Not high, I'd have to find my old journal for exact numbers but from memory both my deadlift and squat were somewhere over 1.5x bodyweight for 3x5 (I've never tried a 1RM for anything) with the former being a little higher than the later. I started out very weak, I had stopped playing a sport over a year earlier and hadn't been doing any other physical activity. I didn't switch because I'd stopped progressing on my lifts, but because I felt like I wasn't gaining size as quickly as I should've anymore. 6 months into bodybuilding and I'm still satisfied with the gains.

[StrikeBack]

3x5 is too low to build muscles. It's also rather poor to build strength for beginners. You want higher reps than that.

Switching to BB routine is a smart thing, Deluge.

Deluge Wrote:

I find it interesting that most RVF lifters seem to be doing strength training rather than bodybuilding. Any idea what makes us so different? Personally I transitioned from the former to the later after 6 months or so.

Physically there's no real difference between the two (as natural lifters) if you understand how it works.

Bodybuilding is all about time under tension for muscles: lift weights as heavy as possible for as many reps as you can.

Strength is all about force production. For that, you have two components: structural (bigger muscles move bigger weights) and neuro-muscular activation (the more motor units get activated, the stronger you are). The former is obviously bodybuilding, the latter is indirectly so. A motor unit is a motor neuron + skeletal muscle fibers. To produce more force, you need to activate more muscle fibers. Only fibers recruited during exercises are available for adaptation (i.e they only grow if you use them). The more adapted they are to training, the closer they get to their genetic potential for force production and hypertrophy. In other words, if you get stronger, your muscle fibers adapt and grow into higher quality ones. It's Starling's Law of Recruitment if you want to read up.

Mentally it's a different story. Strength training makes you feel powerful. This feeling can be just as addictive if not more than having a chiseled body.

Having said that, if you train for strength correctly (as I described above) then you will also build muscles just like a bodybuilder. Any difference is just visual i.e body fat % and is down to your diets. Competitive weightlifters and powerlifters look pretty much like natural bodybuilders off stage (i.e before the last gap extreme cut and dehydration). The chubby ones (excluding super heavyweights) are usually not at the top.

In the golden age of physical culture, bodybuilders and strength athletes were the same people called...lifters. Drugs changed the game as you don't need to get very strong to build good muscles and politics made sure that bodybuilders didn't need to show case strength and athleticism anymore.

In the modern age, most people's early exposure to lifting are via 3x5 or 5x5 routines like Starting Strength or Stronglifts, which are rather mediocre for both strength and bodybuilding. This is why it appears to you guys that you either pursue strength or bodybuilding but not both.

More than half of my powerlifting training is basically bodybuilding. And I know that a significant amount of time is dedicated to bodybuilding for Chinese weightlifters esp for small muscles (yes they curl and do tons of tricep extensions).

[RexImperator]

(08-21-2014 08:48 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 08:32 AM)RexImperator Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 12:00 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(08-20-2014 12:18 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I would be interested to hear how you changed in terms of routines though.

I basically went from doing starting strength to the standard legs, chest and back day split, with an emphasis on compound movements. I'm glad I did starting strength first, you really do need a solid foundation of strength and proficiency with compound lifts before you do bodybuidling. I'm definitely gaining size much quicker than I would've if I stayed on SS, especially on my upper body. On SS it felt like half my gains were going to my legs.

At what level did you get your numbers to before you switched (as a multiple of body weight)?

Not high, I'd have to find my old journal for exact numbers but from memory both my deadlift and squat were somewhere over 1.5x bodyweight for 3x5 (I've never tried a 1RM for anything) with the former being a little higher than the later. I started out very weak, I had stopped playing a sport over a year earlier and hadn't been doing any other physical activity. I didn't switch because I'd stopped progressing on my lifts, but because I felt like I wasn't gaining size as quickly as I should've anymore. 6 months into bodybuilding and I'm still satisfied with the gains.

Not quite there on the squat (would need +70 lb.) but past it on the dead-lift. I'm searching around for a program to switch to. Looking at 5/3/1 and some other intermediate programs.