Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Current Body weight: 168lbs (Old Weight: 165lbs)
Height: 5'11 (But I like saying 6, makes me sound taller)
Hair: Receding

Monday:
Squat: 5x5
Stiff Leg Deadlift: 5x5
Weighted “Step Up”: 5x5
Hanging Knee Lift: 5x15 (Or Max)
30 Minute Jog

Tuesday:
Bench Press: 5x5
Incline Bench: 5x5
Close Grip Bench: 5x5
Dips: 5x15
30 Minute Light Jog

Thursday:
Wide Grip Pull up: 5x15
Close Grip Chin up: 5x15
Bent Rows: 5x5
Cable Rows: 5x5
30 Minute Light Jog

Friday:
Military Press: 5x5
Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 5x5
Shrugs: 5x10
Upright Rows: 5x5
Side Planks: 5x15 (or max)
30 Minute Light Jog

I decided to also measure parts of my body to keep a comparison of how far I've come. All of it's in inches

Arms (All around the upper arm)
Right: 12 1/2
Left: 12

Chest: 40 1/2
Waist: 36 (I made an oopsy and put 28.. I wish )

Thighs:
Right: 19
Left: 18 1/2

Calves:
Right: 15 1/2
Left: 14

Nice little routine...no nonsense & to the point

Thanks, though it will change as I fiddle with it and see what I want to take away or add.

I must also make the big point that I'm not a strength specific lifter, strongman, powerlifter or any of the terms or variations (as of yet, who knows in ten years I may want to be). I'm all about speed in my sport so I don't need the "big guns" I just want to look good and be fitter than I already am. Guess I'm more on the body builder side but more a.. Welterweight *chuckles*

Whew, end of the week, training for my new job is nearly done and I've settled into a nice routine of gym before and after that. I've had to fiddle with my eating plan to fit my work training but it's coming together. Btw, does anyone else wake up in the morning SUPER hungry?

Also, forgot my grip gloves today so I thought "screw it I'm not going back".. So today I've developed instant calluses. Yay..

Okay so I've changed a few things up here and there to see if it suits me, if it doesn't, well it can always be changed around again.

I've kept the four big lifts to 90% of the weight I can do and then taken a third of the weight to work on higher reps. Tried it today and my legs were aching for a while but returned to normal pretty quickly after, though my legs have always been better than anything else.

No, how awesome! You're doin' it right. Life is supposed to be fun.

Baby Herc

Okay, so far my plan of upping the weight on the big lifts by 2.5 to 5kg a week is currently working.

However, I may need to move some stuff around.. Look at my other post here viewtopic.php?f=46&t=28513

Nice training - I like your idea of using 1/3 of a 90% of max lift for your higher rep stuff. How's that working out?

I have always seemed to get the best results from cycling my poundages on a weekly basis but I realise verybody is different. Keep up the good work MF.

Well it's only been about a week doing it so I couldn't tell you if there are any physical results yet, however it has had some effect, my muscles are worn out by the time I leave the gym but recover pretty fast so I'm not as tired as I used to be for the next gym visit.

I started doing that in the hope that I wouldn't be tired by Saturday when I have Kendo training.

Wow, three lots of light lifts, that's 180 reps.. my arms and shoulders are on fire, well they were, back to normal now

Well today was a learning experience.

On the plus side my deadlift has gone up to 80kg, though I've realized that I've become a grunter, heh..

Something else that needs tweaks, the 30% thing. I found that my main lifts are quite heavy and 30% of that is still quite heavy, a bit too heavy to get to 20 reps let alone past that.

So I've decided to take the weight down to 10%.. A little light you may think though it means I can actually do the plan of 20-30 reps, it gets pretty hard around the mid 20's.

Well today was good, added another 5kg to my squat.

More tweaking though, I found that taking 10% of my max lift can be a bit too light, 30% is a bit too heavy on some of them. I've fiddled with a few things and I came up with something simple, it looks complex but isn't really.

Going to look at low weight and higher weight, see what works for me.

But you won't be using heavy weight at all if you're looking at doing 20-30 reps?

What are your goals that you want to achieve from your training plan mate, anything else apart from looking and feeling better like you said a few posts above this one? There are elements of it that don't make any sense to me ~ no offense intended at all btw! Feel free to take a look at my journal, it's pretty detailed on the training side of things and might give you a few ideas (possibly). Thanks, and feel free to yell out of you need anything MF.

Just building muscle mate, that's about it. Just looking good really. I had a look around and I took the high rep sets out because I don't really need them to build endurance right now. Training for my sport I tend to do a lot of swings with the sword that ends up being high rep sets with a weighted sword. I found I was doing far too much of that so I could end up just using the sword training for endurance.

I switched it to 4 main compound lifts a week using 90% of my one rep max on a 4x5 then all the other work is done at 70% of my one rep using 3x10 to build muscle. Hoping to build muscle but keep a bit of strength too.

I'm still a bit new to weight lifting for muscle instead of general "keeping fit" so I think there will be quite a few tweaks before I get it right Though all advice will be welcome

Okay today was fine using a more traditional 3x10 at 75% and 4x5 at 90% on the one big lift. The biggest annoyance are the DB lifts as I can't do 75% of my one rep from the main lift on one arm so I end up halving that for the DB so it's split between the two. This may end up being different for things like DB rows.

I should also look into doing more cardio and planning when I'm going to cut any excess fat I put on.