Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

It has been awhile since I was last on this forum.

I have found a workout partner that is really supportive and inspires me to lift heavy, and get big.

Lately, the shows around here have gone to the physique/fitness and the um.... ugh.... bikini girls. There has only been one girl this summer that has scooped up the female BB first place trophies. The last show that my partner and I went to, if we had the $$, we would have just stripped down to our undies and got on stage and got a 2nd/3rd place trophy at least (though I am not that much of an exhibitionist, but my partner is!).

Today was Back and Triceps. It was a casual 3 hour workout between us (we love to talk in between sets, and a couple of friends showed up to help us talk more between sets). We have our little logbooks this week (last week we just saw where each of us was at and mentally marked it down) and so we pushed it with more weights than last week. We will be going heavy for another week, and then cycle to a high rep/set for the last week in October.

I will enter the exercises next time. Just thought I would put something on the forum for now and come back later with specifics.

I am so glad today is a rest day. My back is so sore, and actually getting more and more painful as the day goes on. Mmmmm...good back workout yesterday!

Since it was a Saturday, we decided to meet around 10:30 and get the workout over with, so we could enjoy the rest of the weekend! My new workout partner was already doing some cardio, so I warmed up on the elliptical next to her for a little over 15 minutes (usually it is only 5-10 minutes for warmup, but we began talking as usual and forgot the time - till I notice that I was sweating - but my workout partner does not sweat - and have yet to see her really sweat).

On to Back:

Started with the Machine Row: warm-up 90/25, 150/15, 180/15, 210/12, and I pushed it for a new weight of 225/8!
(There was alot of rest in-between the last heavy sets. I had a good 5 minute rest before I tried the 225)

Cable Lat Pulldown: warm-up still 75/25, 100/15, 120/8+2 (+means with the help of my partner I was able to manage a couple more reps in the set)
(tried the straps this time and they either really help me physically, or it was just psychological - but it made me feel stronger to pull down the bar)

Deadlift (focusing on the lower back): 35 (plates on each side of the MaxRAck, so really 70)/25, 45 (90 really)/15 for 3 times (four sets total)
(do not like to push heavy for this exercise as I have a protruding muscle in my lower back from this exercise, and it just looks misproportional to the rest of my back)

Front Barbell Cable Pressdown: 30/15, 40/15, 50/6+2
(I do this for thickening the Lats)

very fatigued after this Back Routine, so we rested for about 10 minutes and went on to Triceps

Our triceps are pretty well established already, so we just had the two basic exercises for our routine for triceps

Pressdown: 70/25, 90/15, 100/10 for 2 times

Tricep Extension (lower angle, over the head extend):50/25, 70/15, 80/10 for 2 times.

These were kind of supersetted, in that we did one set of one of the exercises, and then went right next to each other and did the other exercises' set. After 2 sets, we rested for a good 5 minutes, and then finished the last 2 sets.

Quiet in the gym, so we smoothly got thru our routine. It was raining when we entered the gym, but sunny when we left. Good workout overall (especially how I am feeling today).

Even though I am sore, I wanted to at least go for my 3 mile walk on the trail, but thought against it. This is where discipline comes in. My back is sore, the shoulders are a little sore from the day before. But what really is worrying me is my legs. Tommorrow is Leg day, and they are still twinging from the last workout (and the super duper massage I got from my bodywork massage therapist, who had to put her knees into my hamstrings just to get the knots out! I always feel so beat up the day after my massage, but my range of motion improves dramatically with her magic knees and elbows). So I have been a good girl staying calm and not utilizing my leg muscles (except the stairs in the house - and doing laundry today for everybody is a little bit of a workout since the machines are down one floor).

Restraint from exercise is hard, but so is this eating every 2-3 hours again. I just came off a Raw Vegan/Raw 80-10-10 diet for the past 7 months. I feel so bloated eating cooked vegan food again. Sleepy at times also. I am still doing raw smoothies, and eating apples and grapefruits as always. I only know how to build my body with brown rice, oatmeal, and legumes added in my diet. I did lose alot of weight (bodyfat) this past 7 months going Raw, and the weights I was lifting stayed the same. Plus my skin has never looked so good! I can see going Raw for my diet for a comp next year. No bloating, and the skin just sucks right to the muscle. Vascularity did not happen to me on the diet, so I will have to figure that out (though my bodyfat was probably not low enough).

Till tomorrow! Eat, sleep, lift!

Yay another female going heavy.

_________________
Darth Vader from Sandlot once said, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Then he later died.
https://www.facebook.com/BigMeeeeech

The showboating Leg day as one of my friends called me that when he saw the plates I was racking up on the Leg Press! Even though my legs were OK this morning during a level 1 yoga workout, I could feel some soreness during the Warrior 1 pose. Oh well. I still did reach a new PB on the Leg Press. And Matt was even there to see it! He is someone in the gym who I am in competition with (in my own head that is). When I saw him put 11 45's on each side of the Leg Press, and then was adding a stack in the middle of the Press, I shyly asked him if he could do 1000lbs, and he said no. But when I counted the 11 45's, that was 990, and the 45's in the middle made it go over 1000lbs! When I said that he was doing over 1000lbs already, he answered that he wasn't planning on doing it today, but that he has done it in the past! And he was feeling good enough that day, so he pressed on, and did it. He is not bigger than me in the legs, so he has inspired me to reach my goal of 1000lbs!

Leg Day Routine:

Seated Leg Press Machine: warmup 360 (4 45's on each side: total 8 45's)/25, 540/15+5 (15 solid ones, legs extended for one breath, and then finished the last 5), 720/15, and my best last time was 810/10 (8 last time! so I decided to up the ante), 860/8 (last 2 not so solid/used my hands to help push it up) (new PB - only 140 lbs to get to my goal of 1000lbs! my body weight!)

Leg Extension: 180/15, 210/15, 225/12, 255/10 and then I just went to the whole stack at 280/6+2 (6 solid, breath, then 2 more)

Leg Curl (Seated):100/15, 115/15, 130/15, 145/12, 150/8 (new PB) (with the lying leg curl machine -that I had at the old gym - I could do the whole stack of 200+, but seated - only one at my new gym now - is a different story for some reason)

Supersetted: Abductor machine: 110/4 sets of 25 reps
and Adductor machine: 110/4 sets of 25 reps

I was still able to walk out of the gym, and I did not trip over any rug or bump in the carpet this time. And no thing where the leg turns to a noodle for a spllit second and your walking step looks weird - kind of like you were going to fall but you catch yourself at the last minute. So I have been eating enough. It is five hours later, and my quads are feeling it. We also do some static contractions in the up position on the leg extensions with our toes slightly pointed in so we can maximize the teardrop muscle on the inner quad. Hurts so good! I hope I can recover in 6 days for next Leg Day!

My rest day today, now I can record the awesome Chest and Bicep routine from yesterday. My partner and I were both commenting on our leg soreness from the previous day's Leg day routine. The soreness made getting the EZ barbells on the lower rack, very hurtful to squat and pick up the barbell.

I started yesterday with an easy 2 mile walk (1 hour) thru the leaf-strewn trail path (so pretty) just to get the stiffness out of my legs. I opted not to do that today so I can recover a little faster (all over fatigue last night - kind of hard to go to sleep with your body throbbing all over. plus, it is cold and rainy out today. good day for hibernating i guess).

Chest:
HammerStrength Chest Press: warmup 70/25, 90/15, 110/10+2(my partner Amy pushing my elbow from behind to get 2 more out), 120/8+2, 125(we added the little 2 1/2 weights to each side just to push it just that much more)/6+2

Machine Flye: 90/20, 120/10, 135/8, 138/5+3 (that time was a pause/breath, and then continued the reps for the set).
We were working with a trainer and his client on this machine, and the trainer made his client do a hold at a large weight. So we tried it too, after we had already done the sets on the machine: Bring the handles together, and hold it there with 2-3 inch space between the handles: 150/for 15 seconds. Cleavage buster! Yikes!

45 degree Incline Bench Press on Smith Machine: 50/15. 70/15, 90/ 9+2 (Amy's help), 100/8

Cable Flyes (Cables positioned at chest height): 40/15 for 4 sets, supersetted between me and Amy - thrashed the chest fibers to fatigue.

Took a 10 minute break as I was getting to be so fatigued - Talk, Talk, Talk, as usual - before going onto

Biceps:

EZ barbell Curl: 40/25, 50/15, 60/12, 70/8

Hammer Curl: 25/15, 30/8, 35/6

Cable Curl on a Cable Rack, in which I can hold both cables in my hand, forearm at a 45 degree angle from my body, and elbows tight against my sides: 20/15, 25/15, 30/15 for 2 sets. Too fatigued at this point. Went home and ate, and took a really long hot shower.

I really need to recover now. Try and get a nap in somewhere today.

Wow great, I'm so happy that there are finally some girls who lift heavy! It gives me always more energy and power to read these kinds of posts before heading to gym:). Going to start my log soon as well to share the progress and obstacles:) during my "bulking phase".

Keep on pumping the iron hard:)!

GAIA, can I please see pictures of you? Your leg numbers are insane and I'm really curious...

_________________
Darth Vader from Sandlot once said, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Then he later died.
https://www.facebook.com/BigMeeeeech

Well, I am really camera shy on the internet. It has been awhile, but I will see if I can find some stuck in a closet somewhere. Otherwise, when I get to contest time in May, I will post some then. Off season is not a great time for photos of me.

But my legs are the biggest body part on me (the butt is part of it right? cuz that is big also).

So sore today. I will post my delt/shoulder workout tomorrow. Right now I am trying to digest all this cooked vegan food. So bloated and very tired. It is going to take my digestive enzymes to get back up to quantities to process all this food I am eating. I am looking forward to tomorrow morning's BM! Then I will feel as light as a feather again (OK, maybe an emu's tail feather ).

My Delt/Shoulder workout from yesterday:

Smith Military Press: 40/25 warmup, 50/15, 70/10+2 (my partner helped me get those last two up), and after a little bit of a rest went for the 80/10!

Max Rack Barbell Front Raise: 5/25 warmup, 15/15, 20/15, 25/8

Rear Delt Machine (Doubles as a Front Chest Flye Machine): 75/15, 90/15, 100/8

Usually I superset with the Cable Tower, but that was being used by one of the gym's Personal Trainer with two clients, so we opted to go to our last exercise instead:

Machine Dumbbell Grip Press: 100/15, 115/13, 130/8

then we could superset these two exercises:

StarTrek wide Side Cable Laterals: 35/15 for 4 sets
Cable Tower with a 45 degree front raise: 30/15 for 4 sets (elbows strictly at the waist)

and we were nicely tired at the end of that workout. We both commented that parts of legs still hurt. Hope we can recover so we can work them beastly legs on Sunday (in two days!).

Onto today's awesome Back and Tricep workout:

We did the same exercises as last time (we will keep this for the month of October, and then a new routine in November).
New weights this time were:
Machine Row: last one 225/10 (2 more than last time)
Cable Lat Pulldown: 120/10+2 (partner help), and went for a new weight of 130/6+4 (partner got carried away with helping me)
Deadlift was the same, but very hard today! I think the sore hamstrings may have contributed to it.
Front Barbell Cable Pressdown: 50/15 on the last set (could feel the lats getting stronger with this exercise)

Triceps was all the same. Played around at the end by doing some little weights with high reps to thrashed the tricep muscles.

So sore right now at night. The space between my shoulder blades on my back needs to be rubbed to make it feel better! And I feel so tired. The weather was not conducive to energy: gray skies, windy, and rainy (wet leaves sticking everywhere!). Sun is in the forecast for tomorrow! And it is another rest day tomorrow! Yeah! Shopping and a little yoga perhaps. Stretch these muscles out! But baby the legs to get them ready for next days intense Leg day.

i feel ya about being camera shy off season. lol.

_________________
Darth Vader from Sandlot once said, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Then he later died.
https://www.facebook.com/BigMeeeeech

Enjoying my day off. And the sun even came out today! I did a 5K walk for an hour today, and my legs didn't really even work hard, though I must say I did sweat alittle. I have been doing yoga stretches all day, and only felt a tinge in the teardrop area and on the quad outer sweep as I was going up the stairs just now. I am adding back in spirulina to my diet today - just to help in recovery faster. Hopefully I will be ready for Leg day tomorrow. Have one more week of going all out heavy, then onto high reps/sets with medium/low weights for the burn, and then a total switch of exercises for the month of November.

Let me see. I have Nov, Dec, Jan, and Feb, to build muscle, and then March, Apr, and May to diet down. Have to find a contest in June. . . . .

cant wait to see how it goes!

_________________
Darth Vader from Sandlot once said, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die." Then he later died.
https://www.facebook.com/BigMeeeeech

Leg day again today. I forgot my little notebook, so I just wrote down what I did on the gym's only supply of paper - the suggestions notepad paper. It was pretty much the same, except that I did the whole stack on the leg extension machine (285) for a set of straight 8 reps, and then a set for 10 reps.

Pushed it so hard the last time, that it was just work to do what I did last time.
My partner also didn't get much sleep last night, so we went pretty slow today.

Also a friend of mine that was a female bodybuilder during Diana Dennis' time showed up at the gym, and I introduced her to my new workout partner, who was a female bodybuilder from Texas during the 1990's (same time as me, but only I was in Michigan). She is fun to talk to about the good ole days of female bodybuilding when Corey Everson was the role model, and steroids were not so prevalent as they are now. So it turned into a 3 hour workout! We worked our legs and our mouths this time.