THE EMPIRE
Hey Team,
Thought it was about time for an update.
Receently I did my first review of a product in the fitness industry, that was interesting. You can watch the video below. What I wanted to do, which is kinda the main thing we do; was to see if it was as good as the marketing. There is so much misinformation on the internet because of these social influencers who will say something is amazing without any testing or research just for a paycheck, that fucks me off to no end and I wanted to find out for myself.
Something I learned later after posting this was that they had been marketing this as a Version 2.0, as if to say they had done some research and improvements but clearly that’s not the case. the other thing was that there is another company selling the exact same thing for the exact same price, so I’m hoping i get some feedback on the pricing structure behind these to justify that price.
Outside of that, I have been trying a few other bits and pieces,
One of the guys I see regularly at the gym was kind enough to loan me some wrist straps for lifting, they make a huge difference! Basically all the idea is, is it takes the strain out of your grip strength and ties your hands to the bar, this means that where i was doing deadlifts and my grip was only able to hold about 180kgs i can now eliminate that part of the requirements of my strength to get the weight off the ground. I asked myself “is this cheating? ” as its using something to make it easier? as I’ve said in the past I’ve never even had a pre-workout , everything to date has been 100% natural and I was pretty happy with that. I don’t think this actually is cheating tho, I’ve seen all the big strongmen using them so I feel ok with it. But of course grip strength is something that i’ll now train as well to build up to it.
Speaking of which,
My actual training is much the same as its ever been. I mix up days for heavy and days for reps on a 3-4 day repeating cycle so today I did heavy chest and arms, Tomorrow will be heavy legs and deadlifts. However I was trying to pull 200kgs the other day for a dead lift, which I will get back to, but having not pulled what I had loaded up I felt like instead of training the actual lift I would train the muscle groups separately so that for example would be rack pulls to isolate the lower back for that part of the deadlift. The funny twist of that story was that I thought I had pulled 190kgs, but I hadn’t added the weight of the bar itself which according to the people I asked does count so, I actually pulled 210kg. It was a bittersweet victory but a victory none the less. My next target is 230kgs which would be double body weight.
The other piece of kit I hadn’t looked into was belts. I’d seen people use them and I had been doing my core properly on lifts but had never tried a belt before. I was doing my squats ( which I had to earn but we’l come back to that ) at about 100kgs, and Westy ( same guy who loaned me the bar straps came over and we got talking as we often do, hes a wealth of information and experience and motivation for that matter. He suggested trying a belt, seeing how it worked and getting used to it. At first I found it highly uncomfortable and didn’t really understand what I was trying to achieve by having it on. I had an epiphany after a few times of trying it out and it all made sense. Core stability is better than its ever been. Westy suggested that my size and build i should be able to squat 140kg with a little practice. long story short I did 4 more sets of 6 and we got 140kg that day.
IF anyone has reccomendations of quality belts I’d be interested!
The other thing we tried that day was knee straps, when you start adding that much weight on your joints you need to consider protecting them, the thing for me since day one was to have fun and injuries are not fun. This is why my training has been a very slow progression by comparison to others because I’d rather take 1000 baby steps and get there safe, than push too hard and hurt something. My knees are trash as it is from years of abuse on bikes so that’s a point for me that I really want to look after. I hated them tho, they felt way too tight and uncomfortable but they did their job and that’s the important thing.
I’m going to order some knee wraps and some wrist straps, I was considering investing in a lifting belt, I saw there is a belt Larry Wheels sells that has a clip release instead of a buckle which gives instant relief and less dicking around but they are around 400 bucks and that’s more than I’m willing to spend on that right now. Forge Fitness where I train has a good selection tho so I’ve just been using those.
Right now my Motivation is at an all time high, I feel stronger I’ve ditched a significant amount of body fat and I am really enjoying training when I’m there. I wake up thinking ok what needs doing and when can I get to the gym? I also tackled the resting bitch face not talking to anyone that I’d had for quite some time, which gives a more friendly environment to walk into. That said I’m still not there to socialize I’ve been pulling almost 2 hour sessions all last week and other than conversations with Westy where we are learning I’ve not been sitting around shooting the shit, I do miss my old gym that had the sauna tho, that was where the shit talking was for me when I was there, it was a good social atmosphere and no one gave a shit what you looked like, old young fat or thin, which was awesome cause I was still very self conscious at that time.
But I do have a request, I was thinking about trying some supplements and or pre work out? The main reason I haven’t tried pre workout cause down to a story I saw on the news saying it was almost like meth, I’m not into that so I would like to steer clear of anything potentially addictive or that simply isnt’ worth the results. My food intake is probably as good as its ever been in terms of clean and volume so I wonder if I’m getting enough protein that way do I really need anything else? I’d really like to hear from people that know about that please!
Until next time team!
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