I have to say, Madcow totally exceeded my expectations. Talk about bouncing back from an injury - I'm now easily stronger than I was before I got hurt in everything but deadlift (deliberately taking it easy there to avoid further injury). At the beginning I was very skeptical about squatting three times a week, but now I can squat my old max for reps and have gained a lot of mass on my quads. I used to always do brosplits but doing these full body workouts it's almost as if I had noob gains again. Never missed a rep although had to end it a week early because of a pinched nerve in my back caused by work. Final sets were 270x5 for bench and 345x5 for squats.

Now Derigin has chosen a push/pull bodybuilding program for spring/early summer. Honestly not too excited about this style of working out, but I suppose I have put off losing the gut for far too long.

Nice, that's what has always worked for me. In any event, switching things up periodically is always a good idea. Your body adapts to whatever external stresses you put on it.

Been getting serious about fitness for the first time the past few months-- previously I'd made a casual habit of hitting the gym, but this is the first period of time in which I've been going 5-6 times a week, counting calories, and really putting in the work. I'm definitely seeing results. At this point I'm lifting more than I've ever been able to before-- yesterday, I was able to hit 185lb for four reps on the bench press, which represents a record for me.

My main goal at this point is just to put on weight, because I've been underweight pretty much my entire life: at 6'1 I've hovered around 135lb for the most part. Last weigh-in? 146. I think this is the most I've ever weighed, which is kind of ridiculous given my height, and it's been a struggle even to make it to 146, considering my body just really doesn't seem to like to hold onto the calories I put into it. Weirdly, it doesn't seem to show (edit: how little I weigh, that is, not the gains), since a couple of people have been surprised to learn how little I weigh, but I'm glad to finally be on an upward trajectory there! Hoping to finally surmount 150 soon.

Visible changes aren't going to be noticeable right away, but the scale never lies.

Got some new 1RMs: 405 for squat and 300 for bench. Figure I'll wait a little bit before trying to deadlift 500lbs (got 455 a year ago) as I'm still slightly concerned about my neck and haven't got back up to my old working sets.

Haven't posted here in a while, so update time I guess.

I was making really good progress on all lifts until December last year, then the holidays hit and kinda borked my gym schedule, which is pretty normal I guess, but immediately after the new year my appendix exploded and there were further complications during surgery and recovery so I wound up spending the bulk of January in a hospital either on an IV diet or, later, a rice gruel diet, then it was quite a while after I was discharged before I was allowed to exercise again. Finally started back up and felt incredibly weak, basically destroyed most of my progress from 2017. Started that climb again, then in April I managed to tear my ACL (not in the gym, at least) like an idiot, so another setback. Spent the next month doing upper body and cardio only.

My knee still isn't 100% but I've been able to lift on it again, so have been making progress on MadCow once again. I think I've just this week finally caught back up to where I was in December. 330lbs x5 for squats, 358x5 for deadlifts, bench still too sad to talk about though I did get that somewhat proportionally better by working on it a lot while the knee was out of commission. I'm on target to hit the 400lb deadlift before too long, and I'd like to try to get to 200kg/440lbs before the year ends, and 400lbs on a squat. We'll see...

Here's my current 1 RPMs:

500lb Deadlift [Conventional]
400lb Squat
350lb Bench Press
200lb Standing Overhead Press

Just got my 500 Deadlift for the first time today. Took 7 months of hard work after 2 years away from the gym (This forum actually inspired me to get back into it). Put my lower right back muscle out 3 times in the first 5 months and finally got a good run at it in the last 4 weeks with 10lb weekly increases. Well done Batman [see above post] for getting through those setbacks.

Damn dude, those are pretty good numbers. Congrats!

getting back into the gym the last two months and rather enjoying it. My shift boss is a semi-pro kickboxer so I've been picking his brain/using his routines etc. It's pretty fun, I can now do 60 pushups in a row instead of 15, which is where I was at back in May. Nice feeling a bit stronger and more agile again, that said leg day can still completely suck it.

So I've not posted in here yet, but I started lifting last October. My numbers are a bit lower than they would have been because I got mono back in April and I was out of the gym for two months, but I've just surpassed where I was when that happened with my lifts, plus I've been getting way more serious about proper eating and all the other stuff that surrounds lifting. I've also started going 6 days a week, 2 hours a day for the last month, and I've seen a drastic, dramatic increase in my abilities from doing so. So, my 1RMs:

Deadlift: 315
Squat: 280
Bench: 170

Been a while, but random progress pic. Bulked up a bit, and got a bit huskier, but eh, doing well.

Finished a Madcow cycle the end of last month, so started up another one. First month is just catching back up to the previous PRs, which I'll do next week (except for bench, which I didn't deload by as much, so I actually PR'd that today). Then it's onward and upward, so I finally bit the bullet and ordered some protein powder (Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard isolate) and creatine. I'll start the creatine load-up phase next week, then it's on to more gains.

Here are my updated numbers as of today:

Bodyweight: 215 lbs. (100 kg weight class)

Deadlift: 350 lbs. (158.757 kg)
Squat: 295 lbs. (133.81 kg)
Bench: 200 lbs. (90.7185 kg)

Total: 845 lbs. (383.286 kg)

My goal right now is to break 1000 lbs. by the end of this year. I think I have a pretty good shot at hitting that.

Pulled 407.8lbs/185kg for 5 on deadlift today, finally hitting that benchmark. Also with that new PR my squat+bench+deadlift total is now 1,003 lbs, which is pretty exciting!

Awesome dude. Welcome to the 1000lb club. What are your PB's for each lift? Also what are your long term goal's for each lift?

I've never trained or attempted singles. Current plan is to push my deadlift to 200kg for five in the coming weeks, which I think should be doable (today's 185x5 felt really good). If I can hit that, various 1RM calculators say I should be able to pull over 500 for one, so I'm gonna do that. I also want to break 400 for five on squats (currently at like 360x5) and get my sad bench up to 300 for a single. All of those numbers should happen roughly around the same time, so as soon as I get where I want with the sets of five I'll do like a week of testing a different PR for a single on each lift.

After that, my goal is just to try to maintain as much of that strength as possible, then go on a cut and start slimming back down. I was at my slimmest/lightest since high school like four or five months after starting barbell training in 2016, but then chasing numbers caused me to gain quite a bit of weight. I'm still nowhere near as fat as I once was, but I'd like to get slim now that I've put on some muscle.

I find myself lacking time so I tell myself I don't have enough time to exercise because there are a lot of other things I would rather be doing. (an excuse most of us have) so I found a way to get in some decent exercise without feeling like I am wasting too much of my precious time. Every day I do a 15 minute core exercise. That way it's pretty intense, and I definitely feel it, and I feel like I haven't wasted too much of my time. I used to go running, and do longer less intense exercises, but I've really been enjoying these shorter intense workouts more, also seeing more results. Every 3rd day or so I'll throw in a 15 minute arm workout!

I know what you mean about chasing numbers and putting on weight. I've put on around 15kg this year. I'm currently trying to get a 400 Bench and a 500 Squat. I had planned to cut after I got my 500 DL but got some good tips from an experienced powerlifter at the gym on how to improve my Squat and I had immediate gains. Large gains. So the "get cut" plan went out the window. If I get a 500 Squat I will then look at my Deadlift to see if a 600 is possible.

I've recently had sciatica in the right leg, put me out for 3 weeks. Started Squating again about 2 weeks ago, 6 sets x 3 reps at 400 today, haven't lost too much strength. Also I've been Benching 4 days a week for 5 weeks now, working on percentages. Not sure how long I can maintain this program, but I did 10 sets x 3 reps at 310 today, form was excellent and no spotter. Putting it up 10lb a week. Gonna keep going for as long as I can, have a week off and then have a crack at a new PB.

I'm interested to see how you go with the Deadlift. Keep us updated with your progress.

Failed today attempting 430x5. Couldn't lock out the last rep. Hopefully I'll get it next week.

To celebrate my failure, here's an updated list of the exciting fauna at my gym:

Korean Psycho - This guy comes into the gym in fancy looking suits and a super clean haircut chattering away intensely into his bluetooth the whole time. He goes into the locker room, comes back out wearing expensive looking workout clothes, still chattering into his bluetooth. He takes lots of selfies between sets and sounds like he's always making important business decisions on the phone.
Reverse Ajumma - Ajumma is the Korean word for like a middle aged or older lady. Lots of really old ladies here have super hunched over posture from bad nutrition and bending over to take care of kids or work in the fields when they were younger. Anyway, this lady seems hell-bent on having that not happen, so she walks with this extreme 70's pimp lean-back strut and always looks like she's gonna fall over backwards.
Gum Giraffe - This girl is super beautiful but always has this dead-eyed, emotionless stare. She's also really tall and lean, and chews gum the entire time she's in the gym (like two hours!).
Neckless Wanderer - This guy always has a towel wrapped tight around his neck and I've never seen him move his head around, so I think he might not have a neck at all. He wanders from one piece of equipment to the next, doing like 3-4 reps at super light weights on each thing, then just walks around aimlessly (but quickly!) for a few minutes before fucking around with the next piece of equipment.
Angry Wanderer - This guy has the same AI pathing as the Neckless Wanderer, but always looks super pissed at the world. He also does sets at weights that are clearly way too heavy for him and does like tiny little mini-reps of random things for like sets of 4 or 5 then just goes to the next thing.
Audiophile - Always works out wearing this absolutely gigantic fucking headphones that constantly get in the way. He's always knocking them off his head and stuff.
Fuckboy - Comes every day. He constantly makes exclamations of "ahhh...shibal! SSHHHHHH...SHIBAL!" which is basically the Korean equivalent of "FUCK! OH FUCK! MOTHERFUCK!" and he also wears this pink tank top that says "KEEP CALM and say FUCK YOU."
Too Tall Guy - This guy looks like a 14 year old boy, but then his legs are like weirdly disproportionately long. Every time I see him out of the corner of my eye, I think he's standing on a bench or something, but nope, he's just got weird long legs.
Zen Old Guy - Likes to go around and use every kind of weight machine to like sit on in some meditative pose with his eyes closed. I don't think he actually exercises. This is the guy who one time came over and took the plates off my bench bar right as I was about to unrack it for a set, then just put them on another bench station and walked away. Later he came back and added them to my bar. He never said a word.
Tactless Talker - This is a middle-aged lady who loves to come over and talk to me at the least opportune possible times. She'll start up a conversation while I'm in the middle of a heavy bench set, trying to lock out a heavy squat, whenever. Usually she talks about the weather and then scolds me for not being more fluent in Korean. Sometimes she'll remark on how heavy the thing I'm lifting is, but she never seems to let these realizations interfere with trying to talk to me while I attempt to lift the damn thing.
Sweaty Sauna Lady - My gym also has a sauna/jjimjilbang (Korean style hot pools/sauna) on the floor above it. This lady I guess goes there first, then comes down to the gym just fucking drenched in sweat. Dripping hair, wearing like a windbreaker style jacket that's full-on soaked, then she gets on an exercise bike and gives it hell. Water weight is fat, I guess?
Model Girl - This girl is one of the most beautiful human beings I've ever seen in real life, and she absolutely knows it. She wears like super skimpy/revealing gym clothes, nips everywhere, camel toe city, booty shorts, abs always, but also wears lots of makeup and styles her hair real nice. When she works out it looks like she's constantly posing for a photo shoot.
Hen Club - This is a gathering of middle aged women who hang out at the tables near the water coolers/coffee machines. There's some chairs and sofas over there. They wear gym clothes, but only about a third of them ever exercise (air squats, 0.5kg dumbbells, walking on treadmills) but mostly they just sit around loudly chatting at the tables drinking tea and eating snacks.
Telepathy Twins - These are weird ones. These two ghost-pale, super skinny guys who always come to the gym together. They work out together, doing pretty light weights but then again they're like skeletal thin, but the really weird thing is their workout doesn't seem to follow set patterns necessarily yet they always seem to implicitly know what to do, trading off sets, spotting each other, etc. yet I've never heard them utter a word. For a while I thought they were deaf but I've also never seen them use any hand signals or sign language. Only answer is that they share some telepathic bond.

That's all for now, if any other interesting ones pop up I'll be sure to keep everyone informed.

As I've sprained my wrist pretty good I'm going to shift into a cut.

Stats: 5'10, 187lbs with some noob strength. Maybe 20-25% body fat? The fact is I still have moobs and I want to get to at least 15% body fat.

How should I go about losing these last 20-30lbs of fat? I've tried calorie counting but I simply can't take the time to weigh and count everything that I eat. Yeah, you can say I'm just not devoted enough but I admire the people who can do it. It just doesn't work in my current situation.

Anyone have good results with intermittent fasting or the 5:2 diet?

Intermittent fasting has worked for me in the past (spring). I lost 20 lbs in 2 months. My advice is not to do it for as long as you can because it does require discipline and focus which will break and fall apart as your need for social interactions with friends reaches that boiling point and spills over (that's my experience, your experience may vary lol). Plan for x amount of time and have a plan for when you come out of it. Make the hours of your fasting relevant for you. I was working long hours in a retail store and would workout and or coach in the afternoon/night. So I fasted during my work hours and would eat at the end of my days. I was doing 1 big meal basically because that was kind of how my life was best scheduled to do. Only a cup of coffee or two in the mornings either black or very little cream. There are a bunch of different ways of fasting, so do what works best for you if you go ahead with it.

Another update: I actually failed the 430x5 deadlift again the following week, so I started a new Madcow cycle. Minus 10% on all lifts. Next week I'll hit my previous PRs again on all lifts, then it's back to pushing, hopefully for just a few more weeks, then 1RM PR testing before finally starting a cut.

I need some help guys.

I've been working out since I was 18 years old. In some form or the other.

I'm now 30.

Yet I don't have the body I want. Nowhere near it.

My problem is that I have zero consistency. I will work out religiously for 3 months. Then a holiday or work pressure will come up and I'll quit for a couple of weeks. After that, getting back to the gym becomes an after thought and I slack off.

I know everything about training. I have a strong core thanks to years of deadlifting, squatting, and bench presses. I know the science. I know the nutrition.

But how the hell do I get some consistency to my workouts? I know the answer is to just "will power it out", but I tend to just slack off after any break. And breaks are frequent because my work involves a ton of traveling and high pressure projects

My new current numbers:

Bodyweight: 223 lbs. (110kg weight class)

Deadlift: 375 lbs. (170.097kg)
Squat: 320 lbs. (145.15kg)
Bench: 205 lbs. (92.9864kg)

Total: 900 lbs. (408.233kg)

100 lbs. to go for my end-of-year total.

If you know everything about training, surely you must already know the answer to this question? I don't know how you expect to get advice from us mere mortals, Mr. Bateman.

Good progress, Subrick. It's really nice to set specific targets for specific dates, but don't sweat it if you take a few more weeks or something. At least, that's what I'm telling myself - I may not get around to testing 1RM PRs until January and I've accepted that. I missed a whole week of gym two weeks ago because I had a nasty cold with a fever and body aches. The week back, I simply repeated the week prior, effectively losing two weeks, which is better than doing a full 10% deload. This week I'm hitting my PRs again from my previous Madcow cycle, so next week hopefully I'll be setting some new 5RM PRs.

So I didn't hit 1000 lbs. for my year-end goal, but I'm super happy with my progress nonetheless and I know I'll hit it in time. All my numbers have gone up (except bodyweight, so good on me for not getting fat), and here they are as of today:

Squat: 330 lbs. (149.659kg)
Bench: 215 lbs. (97.5kg)
Deadlift: 400 lbs. (181.4kg)

Total: 945 lbs. (428.57kg)

Welp. Since my last post I got re-sick with a really fuckin' nasty flu that had me out of the gym for two weeks. I dropped back to only two weeks prior to the first week I was out sick, and had a brutal time back at the gym a couple weeks ago for my first week back. On deadlift day, my form was pretty rough and it was maybe my hardest deadlift set ever, and my back felt super sore like immediately after the set. The following week, I jumped up to my 5RM weight on deadlift and felt the pain coming on in that same spot on my second to last set, and only managed three reps on my top set. This week, I repeated that same weight, and on rep 2 of the top set, I felt/heard something rip or pop in that same muscle group. Dropped the weight right away, hurts like shit, walking isn't fun. So, I guess I'm done with gains for quite a while, so I figure it's as good a time as any to just go on a cut and try to lean down. Maybe next fall I'll try to catch those numbers I wanted. Here are my final numbers:

Bench: 115 kg/253.5 lbs x5, estimated 1RM = 132 kg/291 lbs
Squat: 177.5 kg/391 lbs x5, estimated 1RM = 204 kg/450 lbs
Deadlift: 195 kg/430 lbs x 5, estimated 1RM = 224 kg/494 lbs

Estimated total: 560 kg/1235 lbs

I didn't deload as much as I should have after the flu...I was really just hoping to hit an estimated 1RM of 300lbs on bench and 500lbs on deadlift and test before the end of the month, as the first week of February is a long holiday here where I'll be traveling, so I knew that'd set me back yet again. My back hates me for that stupid mistake right now.

iamntbatman,

I enjoyed reading your descriptions of the people at your gym.

Just for fun, what's your label and what would someone there say about you?

My label is "외국인" (foreigner).

People would probably say that I'm a foreign person. Maybe also fat and weird because I do weird exercises.

Well, I'm reckless as shit and after a few days' rest, I went back to the gym and tried out squats and found that they didn't aggravate my back injury from deadlifting earlier, so I kept at it. Today I finally hit 402.3 lbs/182.5kg for five reps on beltless squats. That's it, strength goals done for quite a long time. When I get back from next week's vacation, it's on to cutting for real.

So haven't posted in a while. Dystopia4 and I are giving 5-3-1 a go. We've grown a bit tired of madcow and have noticed that we weren't progressing as we'd like on it after this last round. So starting tomorrow, it's boring but big for at least the next few months.

Don't think I've posted in this thread. I hardly ever venture outside of the general metal forum.

I've been training with passion and intensity for almost 20 years now, which is nuts to think about. I'm 37. I don't really train for 1rm lifts any more. My relative strength isn't that important to me. My strength to body weight ratio, however, is extremely important. Breathing under heavy loads is extremely important. Overall, having a strong respiratory system is most important to me. All of the above helps me immensely with my Brazilian jiu jitsu. Lately I've been on a few good ones - 1000m ski erg/100 m row, 900 - 200, 800 - 300 etc all the way down and up. I also do this 10-1/1-10 burpee pull up and man maker ladder which is awesome.

I moved out to Utah to train at Gym Jones, a private gym that at one time was probably the best training environment in the entire country. The numbers coming out of that place were absolutely nuts. No, I'm not talking strength, but power endurance like 10 min max cal tests on the Stairmaster Airfit, 2k row all times at sub 7 minutes, 1 min max effort on the Airfit for cals etc. I don't train there anymore because the gym has changed dramatically in the past two years. It's a shame.

Inching ever closer to 1000 lbs. I switched gyms at the end of January since the YMCA kept giving me shit for lifting, and I ended up moving to a full on powerlifting gym just up the highway (the joys of living in Rhode Island, where everything is at most 20 minutes away). The difference is absolutely night and day, as the new gym has competition equipment, real power bars, deadlift/Olympic platforms, a million different bizarre machines to do so many things with, and a giant turf that spans the length of the building that you can do drills, sprints, and, my favorite, strongman training on. It's less expensive than the YMCA was too. Basically, I'm kicking myself that I didn't sign up here sooner. In just one week, I've trained harder here than I ever really did at the Y. I've started Olympic lifting, which is something I've always wanted to do, and throwing in strongman at the end of each session is really beginning to improve my conditioning, which I've always been lacking. Today I broke two PRs on squat and bench, so I'm especially happy about that. Onto the numbers:

Squat: 345 lbs. (156.46kg)
Bench: 225 lbs. (102.04kg)
Deadlift: 400 lbs. (181.40kg)

Total: 970 lbs. (439.90kg)

So I took part in my school's deadlifting competition this week. My top lift was 465lbs, probably could have gotten a bit higher but I tweaked something in my lat on the second attempt and didn't want to completely ruin my body. Was really fun and I'd love to compete in a real powerlifting meet one day. Only thing that was a bit of a bummer was I could have possibly won the competition (no one got beyond the low 500s) if my neck injuries didn't cause me to completely plateau on deadlifts for the last year and a half - my top lift was only ten pounds over my 2017 PR.

I finally fucking broke 1000 lbs. overall today. I did that by hitting a 15 lb. deadlift PR of 425 lbs. Mind you, I'm on a cut right now and am down almost 10 lbs. in the last two weeks, so it wasn't necessarily optimal time to max out, but I did it anyway and now I finally reached the one goal I've wanted to hit since I started powerlifting.

Also, I used smelling salts for the first time for that lift and holy FUCK does it screw with you upon first inhale. I couldn't see shit and I just went in this crazy animal zone.

Squat: 345 lbs. (156.46kg)
Bench: 230 lbs. (104.30kg)
Deadlift: 425 lbs. (192.74kg)

Total: 1000 lbs. (453.51kg)

Congrats!

The cut is rough. I'm currently cutting calories pretty significantly, plus have picked up cardio a lot more. Doing a moderate amount after lifting Monday Wednesday and Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday I'm doing longer HIIT sessions after some accessory lifts. Down 4kg so far with a ways to go still.

I've been doing the same thing in the gym I've always done; I've just been seriously changing my eating habits. I don't eat any carbs that aren't naturally occurring (so just a ton of produce is where I get my carbs from, plus potatoes), I've cut out everything processed (so aside from the fruits and veggies, everything I eat is something I can make with my own two hands), and I actually calorie count now. The latter has made a massive difference, because using MyFitnessPal for that and macro tracking has shown me just how crappy the stuff people generally eat is. Once you start doing that and getting rid of terrible processed crap, it's amazing how much weight you'll lose in just the first month. On February 20, the day I started keeping track of everything, I was 227.8 lbs. Two days ago, I weighed in at 218.6.

The way I do it is instead of trying to hit a specific calorie amount under maintenance, I set the app's calorie counter to maintenance and just eat under it. I find that a much easier way of going about doing it, because it allows me some wiggle room with my food and what I can do that day, but as long as I hit about 1000 to 1500 under maintenance, I'm in my golden zone. I do the same thing with macro tracking; I have the macros in MyFitnessPal set to a specific number, but I won't match them. Instead, I'll hit a target zone for each macro and call it a day. For example, I try to eat less than 100g of carbs every day, while also striving to hit 200g of protein every day. I think trying to hit a target range is just a more flexible, less maddening way of going about counting numbers than trying to hit a very specific target number and not going over.

Yeah, I just don't even bother really counting macros. I did math a while ago for a decent amount of time, and got a good feel for what/how much to eat in a day to come in at a good maintenance level while still getting enough protein. I don't track, though, because despite my best efforts to eat in a controlled way I get unpredictably hit with stuff all the time like random snacks from my boss that it's super rude to not eat, or work lunches where I'm constantly berated for "dieting" until I get a second helping, or friends wanting to go out for drinks or desserts all the time. If I tracked that shit I'd probably wind up an anxious mess, so playing it by feel and watching how the scale reacts has been better on my psyche, heh.

I am currently working in a warehouse, and thus I walk easily more than 10000 steps a day, and I carry a lot of stuff around. A lot of protein and fat, no candies or anything like that. Keeps me fit, and I don't need to pay for working out but I get paid for doing so.

So according to a random 1rep max calculator thingy, I (kinda) cracked the 1000lbs recently, so that's cool

Current x4 stuff (in kgs) is
Deadlifts 4x200
Squats 4x140
Bench 4x 95


The main aim is to crack the 1000 for x4 reps before the missus has the second kid. And get the embarrasingly low bench up a fair bit. Got 4 months, hopefully it's doable! Just gotta add 10kg onto everything, should be easy done.