“Don’t stop pulling. Pull more often. Pull more weight. Pull more volume. Unleash the animalistic pleasure of picking up something really heavy and then reminding the Earth that gravity is not strong enough; not today. *That’s the thing about deadlifts. You get stronger and the Earth doesn’t. Pick that shit up.”

Nerd Lifts Weights in the Hood

In September, I began an experiment to obliterate my muscles and central nervous system to see what would happen. I did so with a structured program focusing on volume in the classic lifts with minimal rest times, and I got bigger and stronger as a result even while fighting university-based emotional drain.

It was certainly interesting. After nearly every workout I left the Goldring gym or my basement nauseated and beat-up due to a combination of pushing hard on the as-many-reps-as-possible (AMRAP) sets, poor choices, and combining two workouts in one session: More on that later! Unfortunately, strict scheduling with a variable schedule and workflow kind of killed me, and I ultimately decided to bail on this whole idea 8 weeks in; I think I know what to fix once exams are done. Scheduling this was getting a bit too difficult (I’ll explain in a bit), and I want to lock in for exams now.

What Did You Actually Do Though? 🤓

I barbell-squatted and incline-benched for the first time, then proceeded to set new squat, incline bench, deadlift, and overhead press PRs with clean technique (i.e. I got room in the tank for way more, stay tuned until January [or maybe not if all the gyms are going to be packed that month]). A 57 kilogram S/B/D/P total increase isn’t too bad.

I also gained 3 kilograms in 8 weeks. My ultimate goal of being fat seems doable now.

Tabulating Useful Values (Extra Reading, Not on Final)

“Us engineers love it when we can tabulate useful values.” -Prof. Scott Ramsay

I don’t know about useful for other people, but the incoming tabulations you are about to see are quite useful to me. Terrifically titillating tabulations! Why are the meanings of terrific and horrific opposites if terrible and horrible have similar meanings?

I used a modified version of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 BBB Program which ran in 3-week blocks.

Slurp’s BBB

Day One: Sunday, basement

Overhead Press – 5/3/1

Overhead Press – 5 x 10 @50%

Arms - 3 x max chins

Day Two: Tuesday, Goldring gym

Deadlift – 5/3/1

Deadlift – 5 x 10 @50%

Arms – 3 x 10 curls + 3 x 10 rope pushdown

Day Three: Thursday, Goldring gym

Bench Press – 5/3/1

Bench Press – 5 x 10 @50%

Arms – 3 x 10 curls + 3 x 10 rope pushdown

Day Four: Friday, Goldring gym

Squat – 5/3/1

Squat – 5 x 10 @50%

Arms – 3 x 10 curls + 3 x 10 rope pushdowns

5/3/1 Weight Amounts

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3
1 x 5 @65% 1 x 3 @70% 1 x 5 @75%
1 x 5 @75% 1 x 3 @80% 1 x 3+ @90%
1 x 5+ @85% 1 x 3 @85% 1 x 1+ @95%

Notes: -Percentages are according to a set Training Max, which is not the same as the 1RM. -The + indicates an AMRAP set, where you do as many reps as possible. I tried very hard on these sets. -I did not rest for too long doing these sets, and I would usually finish the 3 sets + 5 x 10 sets in 20-25 minutes total.

1RM Warmup Scheme

I used this scheme from Omar Isuf and I think it works well. Rest times seemed excessive to me but I hit the PRs for OHP and DL comfortably with this so it worked.

100% @Former 1RM

Bar x 5

1 min rest

60% x 5

2 min rest

70% x 3

3 min rest

80% x 1

3 min rest

90% x 1

5 min rest

New 1RM x 1

Results

Category/Lift Former Stats Current Stats
Weight (Height=1.8m) 80kg 83kg
OHP 57kg x 1 66kg x 1
    57kg x 4
    52kg x 8
Deadlift 152kg x 1 160kg x 1
    135kg x 10
Incline Bench 60kg x 1 70kg x 1
    60kg x 8
Squat 70kg x 1 100kg x 3
    80kg x 10

OHP was done standing on knees, muscle-cleaning to starting position

Deadlifts were done with straps, no belt, conventional, touch-and-go reps

Incline bench was paused, 30 degree incline

Squat is low-bar, with parallel depth and a slight pause

My maxes for squat and bench were onservative maxes due to form breakdown when I was testing these movements

The Leverage Lieutenant Gives His Reflections

Ok we are back to civilization now. No more being assaulted by numbers and weird acronyms anymore. Here are some of my reflections about each of the movement patterns I practiced; you may find my amateur training methodologies and reflections interesting. I try to find a balance between nerd-based strategies and “hell yeah” lifting; I will continue to explore this idea of balance and doing what you want to do for fun. I think that is my goal.

Overhead Press

I have always enjoyed lifting heavy things over my head, and I still don’t quite understand why the bench has overtaken the overhead press or even the pull-up as the textbook measure of upper-body strength^^. Due to the fact that I work out in the basement, I have to stand on my knees and pick the bar up to the starting position. Doing this with a heavy barbell isn’t that straightforward especially if you don’t train the movement: In my 145lb PR, getting the bar to the start position was actually much harder than pressing it.

I think my OHP could easily be pushed further. In my PR, I comfortably pressed the bar, held the bar in lockout (more a test of balance than strength) for 9 seconds (yeah I counted I took a video) before slowly lowering it and going for a second attempt which I couldn’t complete and had to let fall onto my poor clavicles. I think I could push the OHP past the sticking point if I got in push press practice. Or even if I wasn’t pre-fatigued from the energy-leaking start.

^^Gymbros that exclusively wear tank tops and pajama pants, bench press, curl, do lateral raises, and joke about skipping leg day are laughing at me right now.

Deadlift

The deadlift is the only lift I think I’m OK at.

When I was originally testing this movement to set my training max, I actually failed 140kg, which was a nasty surprise as I easily hit 152kg back in May when I was a bit lighter too. This led to a bit of a mental implosion, and I coped by readjusting all the nuances about my setup. It worked pretty well.

I watched a video with the World’s Strongest Man Mitchell Hooper made a comment about foot placement: If you are the type of lifter who can always complete a lift once you get it to your knees (that’s me), then move your feet a little closer. He also made a comment about bracing. One common cue is to expand your stomach when breathing in, but Hooper suggested to ensure your deep breaths also slightly expand your lower back, which you can feel if you place one hand on your back and one hand on your stomach. Thanks Mitchell Hooper.

In the name of precision, I have a set setup for every deadlift that feels like second nature to me now. Here it is:

  1. Step into position with legs a bit under shoulder-width, toes pointing pretty forward (works best for me)
  2. Calm your ass down beforehand with some deep breaths
  3. Bend down to attach straps (I have weak hands) (Back can round here)
  4. Simultaneously breath in, get hips/back in right place where theres a bit of tension, shove shoulders down with your powerful lats
  5. Push off with quads and pull that shit up
  6. Don’t breath out until the top
  7. Lock out properly please

When I pulled 160kg, it felt surprisingly smooth. It just went up, but felt a pretty deep stretch on the sides of my neck where the upper traps originate near the top half. I have still yet to involuntarily scream during a lift. As usual, due to straps, I could hold the lift at the top for a while, pondering my existence or something like that. I felt great after with no tweaks or pain, and I was so excited I immediately hit the highest, crispest vertical jump of my life. Hitting some backdown sets after was a new experience.

I think low-bar squatting was a good accessory. I think I can handle high-rep deadlifts well (I was planning to go for 140kg for 10 before all my free time left me due to exams and meetings). I think I should get some more muscle mass. I think I should try using a belt.

Next semester, I’m gonna try murdering myself with higher deadlift volume. I want some ridiculous rep PRs (imagine 100kg for 50, 140 for 10).

Bench

Doing this on an incline felt much better than when I was trying on a flat bench. But honestly, I can’t set it up right at all. The whole idea of keeping shoulder blades pinned back doesn’t make sense to me as your shoulder blades will naturally move if you horizontally press your hand away from you. I’m not mobile enough for an exorcist arch or an ultra-wide grip because of skill issues. If I spend all my time trying to maintain upper back tightness, then immediately undo this setup to press the bar out of the rack because the rack height adjustments are too close or too far and I have no handoff, I then have to shift around to get a proper start position because I have a skill issue. This is in addition to the fact that I can’t use my legs to drive the bar up because I have a skill issue, I don’t lift my whole ass off the bench or bounce-rep because I have a skill issue, and I’m mentally not there to hit 1/3/5 rep maxes because I’m lying down on a damn padded bench to do this and subsequently have a skill issue. I’m incline close-grip Larsen-pressing with a pause and my mental health is ruined because of it, because I have a skill issue. I think I will unironically stick to doing pushups and saving the lying down part for isolation movements where there are more RIR. Man.

Squat

The first time I tried blasting out squat reps, I found myself struggling to walk around for the next 3 days.

Squatting itself isn’t that hard on my legs, but rather my wrists and upper back; getting into a proper start position requires some good mobility that I think I don’t have from sitting down hunched over pieces of paper for too long, and I found that I ended squat sets because my wrists and upper back were hurting rather than my legs, hips, and back. The tingly sensation I get in my right wrist is probably something I need to fix, as it was the reason why I was ended my squat sets; maybe some wrist mobility drills would help? I do have small wrists and forearms. Also, I would like a pair of squat shoes, as I find my depth is quite shaky on squats, and the heel-on-plate thing was fun for the sets of 10.

Recovery

It turns out that my big 4 hour break on Tuesdays was a lie because I had at least 4 midterms occur during that time. It also turns out my 2 hour break on Friday was also a lie because of design meetings for a course I’m taking. It also turns out that the gym I go to will have full racks because the football team likes to reserve racks, but oddly enough the deadlift platforms are always free.

Because of this, I sometimes ended up combining two of my workouts together (Deadlift+Bench or Squat+Bench). This was something I couldn’t keep up doing, as maxing out on deadlift reps followed by 5 x 10 deadlifts following by maxing out on incline bench reps follow by 5 x 10 bench followed by arm work while munching on a pack of Sour Patch Kids was a bit much for me in one session.

This was on top of the fact that I wasn’t eating that well (i.e. eating nothing during the day and drinking a litre of chocolate milk in one go at night) and the quality of my sleep wasn’t incredible.

What Next?

For the future, I will exclusively focus on gaining muscle mass with high-rep work. I will make a list of workouts with no specific day on which to complete them and just pick one to do when I’m free. A more fluid approach with RPE/RIR as opposed to weekly-based percentages is a more sustainable approach, and will likely end up with me being even stronger when I decide to return to maxing out.

To Do:

  1. Study for finals
  2. Make some new, more flexible workouts
  3. Get sizeable 😳
  4. Start cardio grind