FatBlu's Road to Recovery - A log

FatBluDragon · Oct 4, 2024

Last couple weeks have been a doozy. Work is pretty insane right now. Doing a bunch of further education courses, and simultaneously got put on 6 days a week with extra 2 hours per day. So six 12 hour shifts lol. This should finalize by end of October. Which is good because I don't like burning the candle at both ends.

That being said, I haven't skipped the gym boys! I'm in there getting it hard lately. Just haven't had time to post.

I've never really attempted certain lifts, and now that I have a good base of strength and technique, I'm venturing into some quality sessions.

Last night 10/3/24 was bicep, tricep, shoulders, so I decided to give overhead press a try. I started with 80, cranked out like 25 reps and realized it was way too light. Bumped it up to 110lbs, got 15 reps. Ended up doing 5 sets of OP, ended with 9 reps at 145lbs. No idea if that's good or bad, but it felt really good to think I was pressing a small man's weight above my head for reps.

Diet has been solid, had maybe 2 days out of the last 2 weeks where I strayed from my scheduled diet plan. Hitting 2300-2400 cals a day, increased my protein intake from 175g average, to around 215g average. This change has made a big difference for me. My muscle soreness after working out sets in around 4 hours after working out, and tapers off by the end of the following day. Usually I would be sore at the end of the following day, which persisted for at least 2 days.

Yano · Oct 4, 2024

FatBluDragon said:
Last couple weeks have been a doozy. Work is pretty insane right now. Doing a bunch of further education courses, and simultaneously got put on 6 days a week with extra 2 hours per day. So six 12 hour shifts lol. This should finalize by end of October. Which is good because I don't like burning the candle at both ends.

That being said, I haven't skipped the gym boys! I'm in there getting it hard lately. Just haven't had time to post.

I've never really attempted certain lifts, and now that I have a good base of strength and technique, I'm venturing into some quality sessions.

Last night 10/3/24 was bicep, tricep, shoulders, so I decided to give overhead press a try. I started with 80, cranked out like 25 reps and realized it was way too light. Bumped it up to 110lbs, got 15 reps. Ended up doing 5 sets of OP, ended with 9 reps at 145lbs. No idea if that's good or bad, but it felt really good to think I was pressing a small man's weight above my head for reps.

Diet has been solid, had maybe 2 days out of the last 2 weeks where I strayed from my scheduled diet plan. Hitting 2300-2400 cals a day, increased my protein intake from 175g average, to around 215g average. This change has made a big difference for me. My muscle soreness after working out sets in around 4 hours after working out, and tapers off by the end of the following day. Usually I would be sore at the end of the following day, which persisted for at least 2 days.

Fuck yeah man right on !!

FatBluDragon · Oct 7, 2024

10/7/24

Did back and chest on Sunday. Really noticing some serious gainz in what I'm able to lift and for how many reps. I didn't have a spotter on Sunday, so I had to go with a comfortable weight and just did a few more sets. Feel really good today with kind of an "after-pump", mildly sore, but can physically feel my whole chest.

I will get back into tracking my workouts and diet. I usually write down what I ate/did during that day. But I've been so mentally overloaded that I just stuck to the normal program for diet and added a ton of weight and reps to my workout sets.

A bit of a bummer - They've replaced all the scales at work, and calibrated the big analog scale. So overnight I gained about 11lbs lol. Weighed myself today on 4 different scales and I was 217lbs on each one to the ounce.

However, I am experiencing a decent recomp. My chest and back are noticeably bigger, waist is smaller, and my arms feel like they've doubled in size. Obviously they haven't, but they are certainly larger and more defined.

Also recently read some studies about how creatine use can add 2kg or more in bodyweight due to water retention, and I've been religious about getting 5g per day for several weeks. So the added water-weight, increase in muscle/gainz, and apparent stagnation of weight-loss tells me I'm re-comping at a steady rate.

I have yet to determine what I think my target weight should be. Fully leaned out, on paper, I should be around 180lbs. But I don't think I want to shoot for that as I personally like the look of 15-20% BF vs sub 15%. With my height and frame, 210-215lbs at that range would make me a unit of a man. No where near competition, but way more yolked than the average dude walking around.

I also have a ton of questions, but this post is dragging on a bit so I'll save it for a different post.

Yano · Oct 7, 2024

FatBluDragon said:
10/7/24

Did back and chest on Sunday. Really noticing some serious gainz in what I'm able to lift and for how many reps. I didn't have a spotter on Sunday, so I had to go with a comfortable weight and just did a few more sets. Feel really good today with kind of an "after-pump", mildly sore, but can physically feel my whole chest.

I will get back into tracking my workouts and diet. I usually write down what I ate/did during that day. But I've been so mentally overloaded that I just stuck to the normal program for diet and added a ton of weight and reps to my workout sets.

A bit of a bummer - They've replaced all the scales at work, and calibrated the big analog scale. So overnight I gained about 11lbs lol. Weighed myself today on 4 different scales and I was 217lbs on each one to the ounce.

However, I am experiencing a decent recomp. My chest and back are noticeably bigger, waist is smaller, and my arms feel like they've doubled in size. Obviously they haven't, but they are certainly larger and more defined.

Also recently read some studies about how creatine use can add 2kg or more in bodyweight due to water retention, and I've been religious about getting 5g per day for several weeks. So the added water-weight, increase in muscle/gainz, and apparent stagnation of weight-loss tells me I'm re-comping at a steady rate.

I have yet to determine what I think my target weight should be. Fully leaned out, on paper, I should be around 180lbs. But I don't think I want to shoot for that as I personally like the look of 15-20% BF vs sub 15%. With my height and frame, 210-215lbs at that range would make me a unit of a man. No where near competition, but way more yolked than the average dude walking around.

I also have a ton of questions, but this post is dragging on a bit so I'll save it for a different post.