Pumping Iron

So wow, I have a little bit of time to look on here and update briefly.

The Guy is now more of a boyfriend now, which is nice. He officially changed his relationship status on Biblio Faccio last night. Hilarious how significant this act has become. I haven't yet because the El Salavdorean has to be informed first, as does another guy or two. To simply change my status would be disrespectful, and The Guy understands that.

Most significantly, The Guy and I have trained together twice now. He is a bit proponent of High Intensity Training (HIT) and a fan of Mike Mentzer, and a huge fan of Dorian Yates. So his workouts are completely different in style to what I have done historically. I've been used to High Volume Training: usually doing about four or five exercises per bodypart, each with three to four sets on each. HIT basically involves exhausting the muscle through a series of 5-6 different exercises, each with only one working set, and doing warm-up sets early in the workout. There's a shitload more to it, which I'm still becoming au fait with, but the results and my experience of it has been extremely inspiring. I barely broke a sweat in the first session we did (delts and tris), but the muscles were so ridiculously exhausted, and very sore the following day. But a few days later I swear my shoulders looked bigger. No I know that's basically in my head, but it was bloody inspiring.

My old style was both aerobically exhausting as well as anerobically - the former sabotaging a lot of the latter. I was also overtraiing and sabotaging significant gains. I ate well so I wasn't feeling too much fatigue or any of the more serious symptoms of overtraining, but I wasn't really getting anywhere in terms of strength and size gains.

My back workout involved two warm up sets of bent over rows with a barbell, then a working set on a row apparatus I could load weights on. I added a few more reps on to that with rest-pause (finishing the working set, counting to 10, then cranking out one or two more - option to do a second round of that). Then did a warm up on lat pulldown, then a working set (plus rest-pause). Then a working set on bent over dumbell rows. Then a bicep cable curl to blast the arms I'd already been working in my back exercises (one warm-up, one working with rest-pause and static hold). All the time concentrating on the negative portion of the movement (lowering of the weight). In my chest workout I've taken to doing however many dips I can do to failure, then just stepping to the top and doing purely negatives (just lowering to the floor without pushing back up) until failure.

The Guy is going to lend me some of his books (one or two he won't lend because they're well-loved, and ocnstantly revisited - totally understand as a bibliophile). I'd really like to read more.