I’ve been at the chins bar again recently. Am up to 10-8-6 at the moment. Aiming for 10-10-10 either way round in the longer term.
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That’s pretty fucking good Guy. 3x10 puts you in a pretty exclusive club
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That’s excellent.
Don’t think I’ve done a set of ten in over twenty years. Was doing eights the other month but haven’t done any since. That’s why I want a bar in the house.
No kidding, basically Guy and Nadia Comaneci
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Ha! It’s a long way to 10 x 3 from where I am. Might be easier if I lost 10 Kg first.
I’m confused 
. When you said 10-8-6 I thought you weren’t too far away?
I would recommend trying 8-8-8 with at least 2-3 mins rest between sets. Then next time 9-8-8, then 9-9-8 and so on.
I’ll try 8-8-8 but doing 10-8-6 the 8 feels like a hard limit as does the 6. That’s why 10 for 2nd or 3rd set feels a long way off.
By hard limit do you mean high exertion / close to momentary failure?
Can’t do any more.
Then there’s merit in stepping back 1 rep away from failure and levelling the volume across sets.
Every set you go to failure you stress your CNS more significantly which then steepens the decline in reps in subsequent sets.
Going to failure is good but there’s lots of evidence to support limiting this to once every two or three weeks.
That’s why I suggested going 8-8-8, but you might even go 7-7-7, it sounds counterintuitive but it will help you add more volume in the long run.
Are you also doing scapular pulls?
Zero energy today. Suspect I overdid it a bit last week.
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Looking at the gearing on that, it could turn Leonard Cohen into gabba.
The ultimate fitness motivation is to stick one of Terry’s feckin’ dreadful prog wank albums on and see how fast they try to pedal through the 20 minute introductory flute solo to make it stop 
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Even a fully replenshed Lance Armstrong wouldn’t get to the end of the first side.
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Work and life has finally settled down enough that I’m feeling motivated enough to go back to a gym 
Push ups at home for now, 4 sets of 5 with 90 second rest is about where I am.
A friend has got into his power lifting so plan to join him, though I wish he would just chill out, pushes so hard at everything all the time I think it’s counter productive.
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World’s your oyster then 
The next thing to sort is what your trying to achieve?
You cannot go 100%, 100% of the time, so why plan to? This way leads to burn out and injury. There’s a massive difference between training and competition in terms of approach, intensity and impact on your CNS.
This is where the guys at Westside Barbell nail it. Do they competition squat every session, every week - no way! Nope they train and do box squats and other accessory work. They might only approach 1 rep max once every month or 2 months.
I’m all for working hard and pushing yourself but its smarter to know when to get the most results.
It’s hard to explain what I’m trying to achieve other than general health benefits of being active, lose some weight.
I’m very lazy, I have a crushed disc in my lower spine so suffer from long term back pain and I don’t sleep. Basically all it takes is work/life to get a little stressful and any motivation for fitness flys out the window.
I enjoy weight lifting, I find it very zen. I never worry how much I’m lifting, when I can do 12 reps I just add more weight until it’s 8 reps or so.
I was at my fittest doing 4-6 hours of judo/bjj a week and when I came back to the UK cycling on average 100 miles a week.
So current plan, lift heavy things with my friend until overall fitness improves enough to get back on the bicycle. The local place does power lifting and functional fitness stuff which appeals.
Then the most effective method is to control your intake, besides as I’ve fond of repeating, you can’t out train a bad diet. However eating less and/ or differently might appeal even less!
Do you have a plan to train around this?
I’d have thought cycling would be a good low impact way of improving your fitness levels and burning up some cals? I’d also have put it the other way around, cycling before lifting.
All the people I’ve ever trained/ coached has been based on the following order of precedence -
*Mobility and flexibility first - if you can’t achieve a reasonable range of motion then you have no business adding a load
*Build a strong base of low impact fitness using walking, jogging, swimming and cycling, this also gets you active and improves cardiovasc baseline and gets the joints moving
*Learn/ relearn good form for any bodyweight or loaded movements
*Sort your diet/ nutrition out and match it to what you’re trying to do
*Lift light to begin with and add small increments gradually and don’t worry about your ego just learn to stimulate your muscles (lots of techniques again based on goal)
*Sleep 8 hours a night
Obviously its not linear, there’s ingredients of each at different levels of emphasis as you progress.
That’s pretty much how I find it. I often don’t count reps either.
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