Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Being in the industry is pretty aidsy. In that regard, it is very similar to gambling. People tend to focus on the dreamy idealized version of the game instead of the actual stuff that matters (long hours, low pay).

A few things are notable about the East/West divide that you might find interesting. The derisive term "pay to win" is used a lot to describe many Eastern games, but the suitability of pay to win is directly correlated with the degree of repression in a society. In general you can't do much, if any, in the West whereas in Russia its middling and in China people flip **** if they can't just buy a single match golden gun powerup (FPS obv). It is the nature of the beast. They're also balls deep in just bros working 999 so they can crank out content for gatcha mechanics feverishly. The f2p ecosystem is just so heavily dependent on whales (or ultra whales) it ends up like looking at Sophie Rain's user breakdown, where some dumbass is responsible for >10% of her revenue. Same thing with these pay2win mechanics. You end up with some ultra rich derp who derives a lot of pleasure (or self loathing) from having the best guild in the game and gifting equipment to everyone in the guild. Such is life. These are a business after all.

Western users also have virtually no understanding of Eastern games and how HOK is one of the biggest games on the planet and has been for a decade and how Tencent is by far the biggest gaming company in the world. They just live in a little AAA bubble for PC games and view everything through that lens. The media aspect in the West certainly doesn't help since the median "game developer" is probably closer to an outright commie than an absurd shitlib and the journos track left. Obviously living in a former soviet republic makes statements like "I'm a communist" kinda tough to swallow socially, but there are more than a handful of self-avowed commies in the industry here which is completely insane and why I find many of these folks rather distasteful.

JRPGs are great tho. Add in some jiggle physics and we got a winner.

HOK was great partially because it successfully monetized with 0 p2w and largely just cosmetics/acquiring characters faster for newer account. It's overall well balanced and updated with just the right level of frequency and degree to keep the gameplay fresh but still familiar. It gets the balance of appealing to turbo-hardcore former DOTA/LOL players and casuals who have an iphone and have 15 minutes to kill almost perfectly imo. I met one tall and thick fairly attractive women who's full time job was boosting people's account ranking and she was able to make a pretty damn income playing a fkcing video game in a non competitive e-sports way which is super impressive.

I'd probably still be playing it if I were younger and with less things on my plate.

As an older gamer I just like jrpgs for being slow paced and easy to drop/pick up. More narrative/atmosphere focus is also a plus; I generally don't want to need to concentrate and get my heartrate up playing a game like HOK anymore; just wanna chill for 45 minutes after I shower and before I go to sleep.

this is easily the best thread on 2p2

I don't go outside hf basically ever, but yeah I imagine it's probably best thread in the whole forum, frankly. And we're gonna make it even better. It's gonna be the greatest thread. It has pictures of hot girls, a muscular man. He eats chicken breast and potatos with guac several times a day, it's astounding really. And apples, the man eats a lot of apples. His consistency, its something remarkable frankly. The man's been living in China for 9.5 years and is one of the very rare 5% of foreigners who actually bothered to learn the language beyond a survival level. People like that don't become competitive bodybuilders, it's amazing really. He used to be emo and now he's not, he's a super happy guy. Just fantastic, really. Channeling my inner trump.

Arms+Legs

dual cable curl: 8.75kgx23, 2 more sets failure
pushdowns: 26.25x24, 2 more sets failure
Cable curls: 3 sets
skullcrushers: 10kgx14, 11, 9

Leg extensions: 3 sets failure
ham curls: 54kgx23, 11 gotta put the seat in the middle to feel it; not too far forward or too far back.
Paused toes elevated sldl: 130kgx14, 9
lying ham curls: 39kgx13, 25kgx10 yikes, too much fatigue for hams already built up

Original plan was to do 125kgx20. I misloaded and realized it but thought it was going to take too much time and effort to load the bar correctly so I said fk it and just took it for a ride. 14th rep was basically failure.

I'm probably gonna **** off on my diet Friday. And honestly probably the whole following week. Mission is really just to make smart choices in Thailand (ez) and don't undo 3 weeks of fat loss in 5 days like a total tard. Indulge in some cravings and enjoy life, but get the steps in and make sure we can start prep from a low bodyfat to have a smooth and easy ride.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-TeL3Uo-r...

Here is the top set on the sldls today. Quite the opposite of dysmorphia, I look at this video or at the pics I posted last week and I feel amazed and in disbelief that it's me in the pics/videos. Like holllyyyy **** I am huge and jacked. And I feel like I'm huge/jacked/lean without trying particularly hard. But I have come to a zen realization that I am huge jacked and lean BECAUSE I am not trying as hard as I used it; almost all of my problems and unsatisfactory progression in all of my gym endeavours have largely been because of too much effort. Lifting too heavy, with too much volume, or too often. Eating surpluses that are too big falsely believing that bigger surplus=more muscle gain. Eating at deficits that were too large and taking too many stims/fat burners in a cut because "bro you gotta suffer in contest prep, you win by out-suffering the competition that's how you get lean" (complete BS, literally the opposite of true). It's funny, but investing more of my time and energy into work, relationships, friends, and even just enjoying video games has accelerated my bodybuilding progress compared to when I was investing proportionately more time into my actual bodybuilding training and cardio.

Maybe "you gotta train harder/eat more/suffer more on your cut/2-3 hours of cardio" is good for normal well adjusted people who are generally a bit on the lazy side, but for me this was absolutely terrible advice that set my progress back by literal years.

For PEDs, more test and gh is basically always good, but more of literally anything else (deca, orals, tren) often ends up making you worse off. Test is really hard to overdo; you'll end up with side effects from just injecting a lot of carrier oil+solvents sooner than you will from having too much test in your system assuming you are actually living a healthy bodybuilding lifestyle. You're probably not gonna be worse off from too much mast/primo/eq, but even then you can end up with crashed estrogen from too much primo/eq. All tha ntties gonna scream at me for this, but yeah I'm not joking when I say you're doing more harm to your health acutely and chronically from 200mg/wk of trenbolone than 2500mg/wk of testosterone.

I am dead srsly considering just injecting 2 vials of test per week (5000mg) because its just so completely benign compared to the non-bioidentical PEDs. There is some bio-individuality obviously, but I'm lucky in that as I've aged my rate of aromatization has plummeted and I never really retain water from anything other than stopping clenbuterol after being on a high dose for a long time. Some people might get really nasty edema or estrogen symptoms. And then I don't seem to have any hairloss or balding from any androgens because I am blessed by adonis or smth, so may as well just push the test high.

Another thing I learned about PEDs is the importance of injection frequency. I pin daily now. I thought it was bro science, but no they're actually right: injecting daily and maintaining more stable blood levels means you just get less side effects always. Even if I went down to medical TRT I'd still inject minimum 5x/wk.

Ah yea, that's Yuan Sayuki (@yuanyuan.sayuki on IG).

Weird 1st post in here but yea lol. Been following for a while, keep up the good work 💪

Guy,

So some of what you're saying is great and some is ******ed (roids specific). So lets uppack some of these ideas:

1) So your ideas on side effects regarding test and test-near substances (made that up, but I think it works for this) seem v sound. Basically there are two things to consider, first does the substance **** you up and whether the secondary hormone issues **** you up.
1a) As you correctly point out, you can pin infinite test sus but you'll likely die from a benzyl alcohol issue first.
2) You did have bitch tits and related surgery. Handwaving this away as something that wasn't an issue from PEDs is a bit... silly. In your specific case, prob not relevant anymore! But it is an extant issue and p bad. Granted there are a bunch of issues around specific flavors of roids and their side effects and no real way to know what is gonna happen dropping in a certain hormone into a specific person (def a great field of study tbh), but seems worrisome as an off the cuff response.
3) Injection frequency is entirely half-life dependent man. C'mon. You aren't a ****ing ******.
4) That was probably the greatest Trump-esque rant in the history of H&F. Not the greatest in HF, but prob 2p2 history. We are gonna make forums great again!

I didn't know 2p2 had any other active threads.

Not a Trump fan (ldo) but this was really good.

Thanks bro.

You are right about half life dependency, but even something like test c ends up with more stable levels with higher frequency of pinning than the medically standard once a week or the previous bodybuilding forum bro standard of twice a week. Derek mpmd made some 2 hour video on the science behindthis.

That said, if i used eq again i could easily pin that once a week or even twice a month. there are sum very long estered testosterones but raws are way more expensive.

bolded very important. now that i actually know more users irl, imblown away by the variation in individual response.

ok way tmi but one thing that ineed to worry about is that test doesnt work great as male birth control compared to other androgens and ive been known to dole out creampies into women who would make awful mothers.

good catch, homie. I wouldn't put it past Chinese girls to fraud like that; they already photoshop their social media posts into a different human being so why not borrow some celeb's pics?

her other pics are notably different and I attributed this to makeup/angles. Real woman though at least.

Paused SLDL 130kgx14 with toe elevation is a really big lift. What could I do for some sort of AMRAP conventional now? 4 plates for 15? There's no way all of this leg pressing, sldling, ham string curling, and barbell rowing hasn't been silently building my deadlift up in the background. And it's still a pet ego lift for me even if doing the lift itself is not optimal for hypertrophy as an advanced liftah.

My plan RN is to go back down to 120kgx15,12 and work my way back up with 5kg jumps. I'll be SLDLing every 9 days instead of every 7 now. Then around march when I start contest prep and the stims start to hit after being off them for ~6-7 weeks. I'll go for some sort of big conventional DL as first lift mega-set to post to my social media so that other autistic and usually overweight and unattractive men are slightly impressed and girls blow right past that ****.

Oh I missed part of this. Yes I had gyno surgery in 2016, however I still frequently got gyno symptoms even at test doses as low as 750mg/wk if I wasn't using an AI. Age+lower equilibrium bodyfat has drastically reduced my rate of aromatization. I'm def not suggesting everyone should be injecting a vial or 2 a week of test; just that with my particular features and sensitivities I probably should be. Meanwhile, 450mg/wk of deca can make me emo real quick despite the fact that common bodybuilding knowledge would generally approve of a 500 test 450 deca cycle much more readily than a 2500-5000mg test only per week cycle.

I talk about things I should have done differently in my lifting career often; staying leaner is one of them. I think its perhaps more important for an enhanced lifter in order to reduce side effects, but even as a natty accumulating a lot of bodyfat is counterproductive for long run body composition, health, and WOMEN WANTING TO S YOUR D. That first SS mega-bulk from 165 to 195 was worthwhile; after that it probably should have always been 200-400 calorie surpluses both in my natty and enhanced eras.

I should have invested in GH earlier; but to be fair GH has become far more accessible and affordable in just the past 3-5 years and before it was pretty hard to get high quality stuff cheaply.

I'm a bit run down physically. I think it's from poor sleep mostly, but I have definitely done some big lifts in the past few months. My left forearm is pretty messed up and gets a lot of pain from things like underhand rows and pulldowns. Normally I dread days off but I'm pretty okay with taking today (Friday) off and I'm considering not going back to the gym until Wednesday.

Progress has been nuts. I had an extra meal (beef noodles) yesterday and woke up today at 98kg. My bodyweight during these past 10 weeks basically went down like 2-3kg only but I got much leaner and harder. Crazy amount of recomp in a short period of time, which was definitely from getting more recovery and less training, high test, and high gh.

I am thinking I will probably go ahead and stop cutting and just maintain here. My mental fatigue/hunger hormones are still very much under control, mostly just muscle pains and soreness that need time off but mentally I don't feel burned out.

I got access to retatrutide 100mg for 3600 RMB. I'll start around 1.5mg/wk for next cut. I probably don't need as much appetite suppression as most people so I may not end up any higher than 2-3mg/wk toward the end. I needed those gigantic refeeds last cut and I'm a bit scared of the idea of doing huge caloric intake days on a glp1 and ending up puking or screwing up my stomach.

I'm not sure when to bulk and cut for the next few months; it might be something erratic like 2 weeks off diet/stims, 2 weeks back on, then off for 4 weeks, then start contest prep.

I'll see how I feel on Monday; first day back to training could be any time between monday and wednesday and it'll be the chest+back+delts day.

Not to shit on your parade, but you're prob overstating the "recomp". If you are under a lot of stress/etc, you're prob facing the same thing waman do with hormones. Lets be blunt, a dude at your level is not undergoing meaningful recomp over any extended period. You're super lean and super jacked. You carry more muscle mass than 99% of dudes of any size on roids do while also being leaner than 99% of them. Sure there are a handful of NFL athletes and other genetic freaks (who likely also take drugs) that are slightly better than you at this. But lets take stock of the situation. You are v v clearly an advanced "athlete" in the sense of gaining muscle mass, you will not recomp meaningfully except in situations where you are off PBs meaningfully (in terms of LBM). Has your progress been great lately? By everything I've read, its been amazing. But the recomp word is misplaced.

Honestly, maybe taking a page from the N1H playbook is apropos. We've been posting on this forum since we were both young men, but I remember you advocating for feel based bulk/cut cycles previously. Has that view changed? I personally think that if I had pumped the brakes more when younger, that would've been good.

What's really happening is that i lost a ton of fat, gained a microscopic amount of muscle or lost almost none, and the gh and high test kept water in the muscle in a cosmetically pleasing way. So less actual “recomp” and more “look a lot better”.

Yes I've changed my mind on feel based bulking and cutting. Cut for between 2/3rds as long as you bulk at minimum but more ideally about 1:1 throughout the year with no longer than 16-20 weeks in either phase.

So wrt to your view change, I think some of that is due to the level you're at where you prob kinda feel aidsy all the time. There is definitely a whole new set of rules for someone who is aspiring to get a pro card vs even an intermediate/advanced level lifter who just wants to look a little better. It is rather interesting to see how your views have evolved, but I think you project a lot on past foibles which weren't really bad when implemented but you just hung onto them for too long of a period.

On the "recomp", seems totally fine. But you know how the internet is, and considering this is the greatest thread on 2p2, we don't need some n00b n00b thinking they can recomp for 18 years and look like Dorian Yates.

for sure. it isnt that bulking for a year straight is bad for everyone；a noob who weighs 155lbs very lean can and should do this. Its just that when youre 192lbs at 180cm with abs （me in 2011) you really shouldn't even as a strength athlete trying to fill out a class. unless stated otherwise you can assume basically anything i write here proscriptively wrt diet and body comp is for the population of people at n1h level or above bc i literally can't remember what it was like before that.

I'm not really sure whether we're talking about N1H's current fitness level or his mental capacity to learn things or both tbh.

haha, definitely the fitness level. The other one I think might be considerably less malleable.

But yeah, I messed up a lot of things that weren't inherently bad, I just kept with them for too long. Except the oly stuff because I actually remember doing the joe mills 20/20 singles program 3x/wk and getting excellent results. I was dumb and impressionable and switched to pendlay's approach at my detriment. Oh well, I'm on the right track now.

Upper "reload" workout
incline db: 30kgx10x3 long pauses
machine press: 1ppsx15x3
lat pulldowns: ???x15, 12, 10
Barbell rows: 70kgx8x3 long pauses
delt raises 2 kinds of machine

Felt good. I'm still keeping things under wraps letting that bicep tendon heal up more fully before I start pushing some big weights again. Slow and steady.

Next workout ez curl, dual cable curl, pushdowns, db skullcrushers, leg extension, ham curl, ffess.

I can definitely see myself going back to oly in the next 3-7 years after I've accomplished a few of my bodybuilding goals. Just for 16-24 weeks as a "break" from bodybuilding. I don't think I'll ever quit bbing until around 70s or 80s. When I do that it'll be 30 minutes snatch singles, 30 minutes c+2j, Alternate either front squat or push press up to top triple then 2 down sets, then 3 pullups to failure with straps shorter rests around 3 minutes and go home. 3 non consecutive training days. Everything basically autoregulated so if I feel good that day go for a new max, and if I feel bad that day just get in some quality 60-70% singles and a lil'bitch triple on the fs or push press. That's about it.

A giga-brained move would probably be to do machines only for chest henceforth. Before, equipment limitations made this basically impossible; now I have 2 good chest press machines, 1 okay chest press machiine, 1 good ohp machine, cable flies, and machine flies all available. Kinda silly running into this bicep tendon issue over and over again. I'll give it one more try on the upper/lower split and if I run into any pain again I think it's time to give it up and do machines only or at least go back to doing machine pre-exhaust before free weight.

.

Arms+lower

FAcing away dual cable curls: ??x21, 10, 12, 11
long rope psuhdowns: 4 sets failure lol
EZ curls 22kgx12, 9, 11
db skullcrushers: 7.5kgx21, 14, 12

Leg extensions: 3 sets failure
hamstring curls: 25kgx21, 14, 9
FFESS: 15kgx15, 12, 10

I'm gonna drop leg press and focus on FFESS for a while. I will execute it to not allow my knee to travel forward and think about squatting down rather than forward to emphasize glutes more. My quads are incredibly dominant in my lower body so I need to emphasize glutes more.

I'm not surprised I ended up with so much knee pain over the years. It's probably because my hams/quads were hugely imbalanced and I was massively quad dominant. Sure, I put up very high deadlift nubmers but my pulling style and anthropometry made it basically all erectors and not much glute or ham involvement. FFESS I coulda done a lot more weight/reps if I just let me knee travel forward and let quads do all the work, but if I limit knee travel and make the glutes move the weight more I can't use as much weight but I feel it in the target muscle much more.

Loving this split so far. On upper day I've decided I'm gonna do a machine flie (or cable crossover) and then a free weight press. I may stick a machine press in there as 2nd lift and do free weight press as third lift. I'll do that if and only if I can keep session length lower than 75 minutes.

I could probably go back up to 4x/wk. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
15kg = 15kg db in each hand for the ffess in case that wasn't clear.

awww ****, fresh of the presses. Show date picked out. This means I can extend my cut just a bit more and still have time to be in a slight surplus for a while before I start prepping

I will need to start prepping on April 27 to have 16 week prep time. That means I can keep cutting until around mid feb/early march, small surplus for 8-10 weeks, then back into prep. I'll probably start 2 weeks early just to be sure and be very facking controlled on that surplus and try to be ready very far in advance to take stress off. Both of the preps I did previously i started too fat. This most recent cut where I got into show ready shape I didn't start too fat but only had 15 weeks and ****ed off on one of those weeks while on vacation.

I won't do the pro qualifier par.t I don't feel ready just yet. I could eek out a pro card in a weak field already for sure, but the trajectory I would like to take is to be competitive as a pro right after I actually win the card. It'd be really stupid to win the card and then be like "okay I gotta take 18-24 months off to keep improving before I can get on a pro stage". Usually they have a regional qualifer for the pro qualifier the same day as the pro qualifier in China, but this is a different fed.

China is super complicated with bodybuilding feds. Most countries have 1 amateur fed that feeds into the IFBB. We have 2 for mainland China, but a 3rd one for only guangdong province including hong kong and macau. That third one we have also does shows for several SEA countries including vietnam, malaysia (which also means singapore because harsh steroid laws in SG make it hard to compete there), and Indonesia. So the amateur fed that is IFBB affiliated for me is actually the Guangdong+SEA region rather than the China mainland region. Weird, i really don't understand this **** either.

Guys, I'm in Thailand as I said before and I've noticed something. Since my big glowup that's been a continuous process over the past several years, I have had very little interaction with fertile aged white western women. They are extremely scarce in China and I have a few much older ones in their late 40s to early 50s who generally treat me well and occasionally even simp out for me, but I mostly attributed this to just being the only young non-obese non bald western man they ever interact with.

Coming here I've encountered a lot more fertile aged attractive western women and I'm just blown the **** away by how I'm being received by them vs ten years ago. They are actually literally more accomodating and give way more non-verbal and tonal cueues of interest than Chinese women do.

I could make a whole old school Emo post about this and reflect deeply on what all this means replete with recent examples recounted in painstaking detail and the range of emotions this provoked at the time.

Or I could just enjoy it just take the cheap dopamine and stop overthinking it.

So you’re saying…you’re in better shape and are more physically attractive and you’re now getting more attention and positive vibes from the opposite sex?

Well that part is obvious, but I didn't think I was also able to get positive attention from the nightmare final bosses who generally have the highest expectations/requirements from the opposite sex. Plus 10 years ago the gap in reception between foreign born women and western women went in the opposite direction as now, so the changes I've made have probably scored me more points with western women than with Asian women. Granted, women on vacation are always less inhibited and i may not get this sort of reception if I were actually living in a western country. Westerners generally have more time off for xmas than Asians, and the other times i've come here was during Summer holiday and Chinese New year. This is my first time here on xmas holiday so I'm not used to seeing them everywhere. Endangered species.
Well there i ****ing go overthinking and overanalyzing...

I'm excited AF for this show, guys. I might finally get my head outta my ass WRT social media. Forums are basically proto-social media. Doing some sort of "contest prep on retatrutide" 16 week video series just with training clips smash-cut together along with voiceover talking about diet, training, supplementation, PEDS, etc could be very interesting. I don't wanna do sam sulek style vlogs talking to the camera between sets as I find it distracting and too long, and I definitely don't want to do well produced and editted fitness vlogs talking into a camera Brandon Harding style that seems completely exhausting and basically like a full time job.

Nobody has actually done a first hand long/vlog using a GLP1 for a bodybuilding contest prep. Chase has done this for a cut, but not an actual show prep. Usually being first gets you a lot more social media clout.

ommgggg this worked incredibly well. i got crazy doms in my lower glutes near where it ties into the hamstring. Cya later leg press, FFESS baby. But don't just load it and forget, super controlled with a pause and make sure the glute is doing the work instead of all quad.