My lifting history | Poal: Say what you want.

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Throughout my entire childhood, I was a short, small kid. Couldn't do a push-up in grade 8, and was the third shortest of the class in the year after that. I attribute most of this to being a picky eater and subsequent poor nutrition.

At around 16 I decided I wanted to "get ripped", and started working out. I had no idea what I was doing, and did mostly body weight exercises. It got to the point where I was doing something around 100 sit-ups a day, and could do a chin up 20 times in a row. I was still short, skinny, and weak, but now I had washboard abs - big woop. Eventually, I got lazy, and the visible abs pretty much went away.

Fast forward to uni, and one of my (Asian) mates wants to start going to gym again, so we decide to sign up together. Our routine that he put together consisted of a 1.6km run to (warm up) followed by 15 standard curls alternating arms, and then the same thing but rotate the dumbbell 90 degrees, and then the same thing but both arms at the same time. Then bench, then incline bench, then decline bench, followed by rows, planks and finally captain's chair straight leg raises - about 75 minutes total. If you're looking at that and saying it's an absolutely horrible routine, you'd be 100% right, we made next to no progress for the entire year.

The first major problem was the sheer amount of reps we did. The other major problem was having a "gym buddy". Not worth it for one major reason, it becomes a social thing, and if they don't want to go for some reason (work, study, sick or just tired), you also don't feel like going. After about a year of no or very little gains, I gave up.

A few years later, I had my wedding and I remember struggling to lift my wife (50kg), it was fucking embarrassing, and I resolved to get stronger. Not look stronger, but BE stronger. I wanted to get BIG. I finally started doing my research properly, and came across "starting strength", and later strong lifts. The latter of which is an EXCELLENT resource on proper form.

I started off with just the bar, for all my lifts, and focused on technique above everything, sticking strictly to the program. When I finished, I didn't feel tired or like I even went to the gym at all, and was done in half an hour, but that started getting convenient, and stopped it from being so much of a chore. Even if I was tired, I'd still go because it wasn't hard or tiring anyway.

Eventually, it started to get heavy, and I ran into problems: all fixed by fixing my technique. A few key ones were wrist problems during benching (wrong grip), and going too low on the squat. It's incredibly frustrating when you're lifting heavier each session, only to have to go down to a lower weight just to fix some problems that pop-up.

This was also when I first discovered that deadlift, and it was absolute magic. I've been a nerd my whole life, and had the posture to match. No matter what I did, from trying to walk around with "shoulders back" to standing straight against the wall for long periods of time, nothing worked. But the deadlift did. Once I got the technique right, starting with dual underhand grip, and started lifting just 20kg, I was using muscles that I never knew I had, but when I was done, those muscles would hold my posture where I wish it had years ago. I had to bend at the hip and knees immediately after a heavier lift to reach the water fountain because I couldn't actually arch my back down. Progression was very slow from just the bar to about 60kg, and my brothers could lift more despite bot actually practicing it, but after those first 60kg, it actually got easier.

I stopped running entirely, and started eating as much as I could, of anything that I could. And it worked. I did start putting on fat around my gut, but I also got stronger. A few times I tried to "cut" to lose some of the fat, and it set me very far back. I lost something like 5kg in 2 months going on a full kepo diet, but my lifts suffered massively. Some of that was due to the diet, but my living situation is shit, and the diet change was the "straw that broke the camels back" and I was too depressed to go the gym for weeks at a time. Since then I've decided "fuck it", and I'm just going to keep bulking and getting bigger until I reach my goal weight of 90kg, and I've prepared myself to deal with my depression.

After a few years of this it got to the point where I was squatting 5x5 sets of 120kg, and I entered "T-rex mode". All my pants were way too tight around my thighs, too loose around the waist and everywhere else. The problems I've found with with stronglifts 5x5 in particular is that there are too many squats, and if you're lifting heavy, you're absolutely wrecked after the squats and it's hard to lift heavy for the other lifts.

I've since switched to greyskull amrap. And my routine is as follows:

Day A: -3x5 bench press -3x5 preacher curl -3x5 row -3x5 squat, or 1x5 DL

Day B: -3x5 shoulder press -3x5 chin-ups -3x5 tricep extensions -3x5 squat, or 1x5 DL

Alternate between day A and day B, with a rest day in between. Squat twice, deadlift once. Last set is as many reps as possible (AMRAP). 2 min rest between sets, 4 if failure.

I put bench and shoulder press first so that I'm most fresh when I do them, and can push myself harder, seems to be slowly paying off. Squats are down to only 75kg, mostly because Chinese gyms are uncomfortably hot and I just want to gtfo after 30 minutes.

The main thing holding me back now is just diet and consistent sleep. Pizza hut, Starbucks, and McDonald's are the only restaurants with food in this god forsaken shit hole (China) that won't give me the runs, with the exception of one other restaurant that sells steak and veggies (I eat there every other day). Once I get back to my home country with a kitchen and real, clean, meat, I'll be able to fix these issues.

Lifting has been a huge positive for my life, and has helped my confidence immensely. It's one thing to hide abs under your shirt, it's another to be heavy, strong and command space around you. It's hard to describe, but especially in subway traffic in China, people can't push me around like they do to others, and if I walk through a crowd, people tend to get out of the way. I caught a girl staring at me, and responded by "flexing my chest" at her - if you don't know what that means, check out the outro of any of "The Golden One"s YouTube videos - she immediately went bright red in the face and turned around to hide it. I'm far from "big" in a western sense, and am looking forward to the hard work to get to what I consider to be "big".

I hope at least some of what I've written may be of benefit to someone here, or inspired you. Remember, lifting is a journey that last your whole life, not a destination.

I have some time to kill, so I thought I'd write up my lifting history this far, got a long way to go, but it's a huge improvement from where I started. My current stats: 5'8, 84kg, ~20% bf. Squat: 120kg, DL: 160kg, BP: 75kg. Throughout my entire childhood, I was a short, small kid. Couldn't do a push-up in grade 8, and was the third shortest of the class in the year after that. I attribute most of this to being a picky eater and subsequent poor nutrition. At around 16 I decided I wanted to "get ripped", and started working out. I had no idea what I was doing, and did mostly body weight exercises. It got to the point where I was doing something around 100 sit-ups a day, and could do a chin up 20 times in a row. I was still short, skinny, and weak, but now I had washboard abs - big woop. Eventually, I got lazy, and the visible abs pretty much went away. Fast forward to uni, and one of my (Asian) mates wants to start going to gym again, so we decide to sign up together. Our routine that he put together consisted of a 1.6km run to (warm up) followed by 15 standard curls alternating arms, and then the same thing but rotate the dumbbell 90 degrees, and then the same thing but both arms at the same time. Then bench, then incline bench, then decline bench, followed by rows, planks and finally captain's chair straight leg raises - about 75 minutes total. If you're looking at that and saying it's an absolutely horrible routine, you'd be 100% right, we made next to no progress for the entire year. The first major problem was the sheer amount of reps we did. The other major problem was having a "gym buddy". Not worth it for one major reason, it becomes a social thing, and if they don't want to go for some reason (work, study, sick or just tired), you also don't feel like going. After about a year of no or very little gains, I gave up. A few years later, I had my wedding and I remember struggling to lift my wife (50kg), it was fucking embarrassing, and I resolved to get stronger. Not look stronger, but BE stronger. I wanted to get BIG. I finally started doing my research properly, and came across "starting strength", and later strong lifts. The latter of which is an EXCELLENT resource on proper form. I started off with just the bar, for all my lifts, and focused on technique above everything, sticking strictly to the program. When I finished, I didn't feel tired or like I even went to the gym at all, and was done in half an hour, but that started getting convenient, and stopped it from being so much of a chore. Even if I was tired, I'd still go because it wasn't hard or tiring anyway. Eventually, it started to get heavy, and I ran into problems: all fixed by fixing my technique. A few key ones were wrist problems during benching (wrong grip), and going too low on the squat. It's incredibly frustrating when you're lifting heavier each session, only to have to go down to a lower weight just to fix some problems that pop-up. This was also when I first discovered that deadlift, and it was absolute magic. I've been a nerd my whole life, and had the posture to match. No matter what I did, from trying to walk around with "shoulders back" to standing straight against the wall for long periods of time, nothing worked. But the deadlift did. Once I got the technique right, starting with dual underhand grip, and started lifting just 20kg, I was using muscles that I never knew I had, but when I was done, those muscles would hold my posture where I wish it had years ago. I had to bend at the hip and knees immediately after a heavier lift to reach the water fountain because I couldn't actually arch my back down. Progression was very slow from just the bar to about 60kg, and my brothers could lift more despite bot actually practicing it, but after those first 60kg, it actually got easier. I stopped running entirely, and started eating as much as I could, of anything that I could. And it worked. I did start putting on fat around my gut, but I also got stronger. A few times I tried to "cut" to lose some of the fat, and it set me very far back. I lost something like 5kg in 2 months going on a full kepo diet, but my lifts suffered massively. Some of that was due to the diet, but my living situation is shit, and the diet change was the "straw that broke the camels back" and I was too depressed to go the gym for weeks at a time. Since then I've decided "fuck it", and I'm just going to keep bulking and getting bigger until I reach my goal weight of 90kg, and I've prepared myself to deal with my depression. After a few years of this it got to the point where I was squatting 5x5 sets of 120kg, and I entered "T-rex mode". All my pants were way too tight around my thighs, too loose around the waist and everywhere else. The problems I've found with with stronglifts 5x5 in particular is that there are too many squats, and if you're lifting heavy, you're absolutely wrecked after the squats and it's hard to lift heavy for the other lifts. I've since switched to greyskull amrap. And my routine is as follows: Day A: -3x5 bench press -3x5 preacher curl -3x5 row -3x5 squat, or 1x5 DL Day B: -3x5 shoulder press -3x5 chin-ups -3x5 tricep extensions -3x5 squat, or 1x5 DL Alternate between day A and day B, with a rest day in between. Squat twice, deadlift once. Last set is as many reps as possible (AMRAP). 2 min rest between sets, 4 if failure. I put bench and shoulder press first so that I'm most fresh when I do them, and can push myself harder, seems to be slowly paying off. Squats are down to only 75kg, mostly because Chinese gyms are uncomfortably hot and I just want to gtfo after 30 minutes. The main thing holding me back now is just diet and consistent sleep. Pizza hut, Starbucks, and McDonald's are the only restaurants with food in this god forsaken shit hole (China) that won't give me the runs, with the exception of one other restaurant that sells steak and veggies (I eat there every other day). Once I get back to my home country with a kitchen and real, clean, meat, I'll be able to fix these issues. Lifting has been a huge positive for my life, and has helped my confidence immensely. It's one thing to hide abs under your shirt, it's another to be heavy, strong and command space around you. It's hard to describe, but especially in subway traffic in China, people can't push me around like they do to others, and if I walk through a crowd, people tend to get out of the way. I caught a girl staring at me, and responded by "flexing my chest" at her - if you don't know what that means, check out the outro of any of "The Golden One"s YouTube videos - she immediately went bright red in the face and turned around to hide it. I'm far from "big" in a western sense, and am looking forward to the hard work to get to what I consider to be "big". I hope at least some of what I've written may be of benefit to someone here, or inspired you. Remember, lifting is a journey that last your whole life, not a destination.

[–] • 0 pt

Yeah, I wasted a lot of time figuring out what doesn't work. I trusted people who had no idea what they were doing, and if I had to go back and start all over again, I would have just done Stronglifts from the beginning.

My back has always kinda been shit. I've been told that I should see a chiro about it, but meh, I deal. Deadlifts do make it feel less shitty, though.

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