Taff's quest to strength!

[taff-tastic]

Last year and for a good chunk of this year I had the pleasure of being able to train at a good gym down in Portsmouth (see log here), but having left and come home I struggled to find myself a decent place and lost my drive due to personal issues.

Having sorted myself out, I am now enrolled in a gym! Went for my first session yesterday with my new gym partner, Tom, who's been my best friend since childhood and is a an amateur runner in Meirionydd Running Club. Being an ex-rugby player he is still fairly strong but decided that he wanted to get bigger, and with my fair knowledge of lifting and wanting to drop some bodyfat we've decided to train together.

The gym I've enrolled in is a Leisure Centre gym with a difference, the only equipment there is a squat rack, a bench rack, 1 cable maching, a leg press machine, some DB's and a few bench's here and there. There are 2 oly bars and about 350kg of plates there.

So yesterday we went for our first session to see what our starting strength is on the squat and the DL, and for now I'll spare you the warm up sets and reps and just give my totals compared to the last time I trained heavy 4/5 months ago:

Squat: 130kg, previous 150kg on Smith
DL: 165kg (not the best form), previous best 175kg

The ultimate aim is a 200kg+DL and an increase in my squat. My bench is weak but I didn't have the energy yesterday to attempt it, looking at around 80kg I think as I've never attempted my 1RM bench as I never had a spotter to hand.

Next session is Tuesday.

Could a mod please close my previous thread? Thanks very much and it's great to be back on the iron!

[lowviz]

taff, good luck and I will look forward to the forthcoming updates

[taff-tastic]

Thanks for the replies guys (that's right LH... hehe)

Went yesterday but had to bang out a quick session as we only had about 40mins availible to us. Concentrated on 1RM bench

After 2x20 on the bar we added weight progressively. My total came to a paltry 65kg 1RM!

After that, and feeling rather down about my lacking in the bench, I did 5x5 @ 40kg and started struggling massively on the 4th set, so much so I could only manage 4 reps and then struggled to lift 6 on my final set after a rest.

Bench is definately in need of major attention, as I have always been weak in my upper body.

Just researching at the moment for a good routine for strength training, although I have done stronglifts. Aim is to increase strength this year, and next year cut to bring my BF down, purely for asthetics as I've never seen myself in good shape, always had a good handful of BF everywhere! Lol.

Only time will tell. Next session is Friday, this is where the training will begin properly

[Zig Zag]

Good luck mate, will watch your progress with interest!

[Was_once_fat_dave]

good luck taff, glad to see your back at it. Hows it going with the tomatoes?

regards your training, how many times aweek can you comit to training?

[taff-tastic]

Cheers Ziggy

Alright Dave, yeah I'm back into it now, and I can actually eat tomatoes now, forced myself to like them!

As for training:

My training buddy and I are commiting 3 days a week to fit around our schedules and work, our days are Tuesday, Friday and Sunday but we're flexible (as long as my mate doesn't decide he wants to go out on the lash on Saturdays, otherwise we're having words! )

As I'm more concerned with strength at the moment, I'm following the 3x3 program off deepsquatter.com which I've looked at and modified to my needs, and looks like this:

C.L. = Current lift
A.L. = Aimed lift

Squat
C.L. = 130kg
A.L. = 140kg

Deadlift
C.L. = 165kg
A.L. = 185kg

Bench
C.L. = 65kg (very weak compared to my legs)
A.L. = 80kg

Phase 1 - High Volume
Lifting between 58-64% of my A.L. over 4 weeks

Week 1: 3 Days

Squat 5-8x5 @ 80kg
Bench 6-8x6 @ 45kg
D/L 5-8x5 @ 105kg

Week 2: 3Days

Squat 5-8x5 @ 85kg
Bench 6-8x6 @ 50kg
D/L 5-8x5 @ 110kg

Week 3: 3 Days

Squat 5-8x5 @ 85kg
Bench 6-8x6 @ 50kg
D/L 5-8x5 @ 110kg

Week 4: 3 Days

Squat 5-8x5 @ 90kg
Bench 6-8x6 @ 55kg
D/L 5-8x5 @ 115kg

Phase 2 - Heavy Month
This is where it gets a little more complicated, but every week I will be doing 1 lift for each exercise between 80-95% of my A.L. (which I will highlight bold)

Week 1
Day 1

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 1-2x1 @ 145kg

Day 2

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 1-2x1 @ 65kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Day 3

Squat 1-2x1 @ 110kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Week 2
Day 1

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 1-2x1 @ 155kg

Day 2

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 1-2x1 @ 70kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Day 3

Squat 1-2x1 @ 120kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Week 3
Day 1

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 1-2x1 @ 160kg

Day 2

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 1-2x1 @ 72kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Day 3

Squat 1-2x1 @ 125kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Week 4
Day 1

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 1-2x1 @ 170kg

Day 2

Squat 3x3 @ 85kg
Bench 1-2x1 @ 75kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

Day 3

Squat 1-2x1 @ 135kg
Bench 5x4 @ 50kg
D/L 3x3 @ 110kg

After the final workout in the second phase, I will take a week off and then attempt my A.L. maximum.

--------------------

Once I attain my A.L. I will look towards either continuing this program and start again with a new A.L. figure and adjust the program as I need to, or I may change depending how this goes for me.

As I said in one of my previous posts, ultimate aim is to increase my D/L to 200kg+, my squat to around 160kg+ and I want to break the 100kg+ Bench too. After this, depending where it's at I may decide to continue to chase the higher totals, but I find myself longing for a sort of beach body, sub 18%BF, so I may do that. Who knows eh?

If anybody has any questions or comments, feel free to make them and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

EDIT:
Supplements
Currently I still have about 1/2 a bag of total protein, 2xbottles of thermopure and omega3, recovery XS and 1kg BCAA from the V-Diet that never was.

Thinking about maybe some creapure, tribulus and leucine and vit c in the morning

[Was_once_fat_dave]

thats the ste kortes routine isn't it? if so I did it last year (nov time, its in my log) and saw some great results. Ziggy has just finished it too iirc.

[taff-tastic]

Yeah it's the Kortes prog. Kind of got inspired back into strength training because a mate of mine got in touch and said he'd been training for the Welsh Nationals in Feb, he's a big fella for his age and VERY commited, trains like a banshee and is a sound lad. He'll be in the under 23's category, his name is Thomas Keeble.

Anyway, Dave and ZZ, you rate the Kortes prog?

[Was_once_fat_dave]

for sure i do, i'll be giving it another shot next year.

[Zig Zag]

Hey Taff, yeah it was a good programme and I saw a 25kg increase across my 3 lifts.
I added a bit of variety to the bench by altering the grip width (and doing curl grip and diamond grip during the light days of phase 2).

It's worth experimenting with rest period, I think (and may well be wrong!) that longer rests between sets encourage strength development and shorter rests give muscle size.

The first time I tried 3x3 I think I really overdid by doing the full 8 sets for all 3 exercises from the start. I soon fell ill with colds etc. and stopped training to recover. When I restarted I did 5 sets of each and worked up to 8 and I recommend you consider this approach too.

You tend to feel a bit lazy on phase 2 particularly on heavy bench day as you only do 20 reps in total for all three exercises.

Final tip is to really concentrate on good form throughout, use all that work as a way to get really good technique.

Good luck!