Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

Praise Allah.

I'm sorry to hear about your father that's sickening. Truly.

All I asked was your goal. Pro card. Cool. Good luck. You'll get it. You're obv S&F's most consistent and longterm exemplar. You're obv in good shape. I'm not knocking that. I am simply wondering if you have an off ramp planned.

Re: aging, I am talking about your face. You look FANTASTIC in 2024. Your recent pics look like you've been harvesting coffee beans at ten thousand feet in the mountains outside of Medellin. Face aging on gear is something I see both online and irl. But if you're this close to pro card obv wrap that up.

I'm gonna guess his face also benefited from some kind of slight cosmetic enhancements. But I also could just be wrong. His face would make aesthetic gainz based on his body transformation anyway. Guy is looking ultra chad last couple of years.

I had awful mental health starting in 2020 until more recently. I'm happy with how my last several months of training have been going but my diet is just whatever and barely decent. I seem to have no idea how to actually get myself to properly meal prep or find things I can make myself that dont't taste awful that I can make over and over. My breakfast is the only thing locked in - lunch is sorta okay, and dinner and after is just a dumpster fire.

Goatee is goated, bring it back and only shave it before claiming your pro card brother.

Yep, having a cosmetic surgeon GF for a while had its perks. That relationship wasn't so toxic; she wasn't an awful human being like the Chinese muslim, just flawed, young, and still figuring out how to regulate her emotions. I was in the same spot 26-28...

Anyway yeah front double bicep flexing camera at wait height overhead lighting and leaner than usual, you're gonna look aged to some degree. But I plan on continuing to compete well into middle age; I'm sure at some point that will involve dropping to 125-250mg test per week and no harsh stimulants, but it might be later than you'd think (mid 50s maybe). But that yearly structure of ~7 weeks maintenance, ~20 something weeks of moderate surplus, and 16-20 weeks of getting shredded is staying no matter what I do. I wish I were articulate enough to describe why that hard cutting process is not just this simple visual appeal process and how there's something that alters your thinking and results inevitably in life breakthroughs during this period. But here we are...

I can see myself returning to some unfinished business in olympic lifting once I start regressing a lot in bodybuilding, but that may not happen until mid 50s. My training, eating, and PED use are all very much moderate these days.

I'm really grateful both my maternal grandpa and my dad were non-sedentary and remained competitive recreational athletes into old age... Grandpa up until around 87 or 88. It set a good model for me. blah blah blah bodybuilders aren't athletes ok but let's not forget it somehow got me a 48 inch box jump and that posing itself requires quite a lot of athleticism and is a huge part of the sport-pageant.

Did a lower deload day

Cable curl//tricep pushdown: 3 sets each
leg extensions: 55kgx20, 12, 12
Lying ham curls: 60kgx12, 46kgx12
Paused SLDL: 80kgx10x2
RFESS: 10kgx10x3 each side

I also discovered that my body simply doesn't tolerate caffeine over 200mg. I just never develop tolerance no matter how long I"m on it and I consistently run into sleep issues that make it super easy to overtrain on top of steps+training+deficit if I go any higher for more than 2-3 days. So morning cup of coffee and that's it, clen still at 40mcg, t3 25mcg, and alpha-yohimbine 2.5mg. I may end up keeping stims at these very low levels the entire way through as I've still got 8/11 weeks to go. Orals for peaking will be just 25mg anavar. I don't plan on taking clen past 80mcg if I do raise it later.

you're def at your peak now imo and face def massive improvement imo

do your students/colleagues know how jacked you are or do you try to disguise it at work?

As someone who routinely overindulged in my caffeine when I was in my early 20s, welcome aboard. Can always use nicotine pouches for additional stimulants. (Unsure if that has invaded China's pervasive smoking culture tho.)

One nice thing is that if you limit yourself to one in the morning. You have some leeway for the occasional afternoon cup. (Assuming you sleep at a normal human hour and not 8PM.)

Supplementing with nicotine in contest prep is used by a small minority of coaches. Generally the willpower required to successfully complete a contest prep is way larger than the willpower required to quit nicotine. I'm gonna stay away; the longer I stay in this game the more I realize that sympathetic nervous system dominance is more counterproductive to strength and bodybuilding goals than most people realize. Low mental stress, good sleep quality, and being generally chill is just super important and just adding a different kind of stimulant doesn't seem like a great idea. I might look into SLU-PP-332 but overall the answer is probably very unsexy: Jack the steps up because they are not very fatiguing, eat less food, wear your cpap all night, and continue going to bed and getting up very early in accordance with Guangdong summer circadian rhythm.

Well, as you might be able to tell from some of the pics it's entirely impossible to disguise. A good % of them will watch the show on livestream and another teacher even told me a tale about one of them who bought a membership at the gym I go to hoping to run into me by chance...

I mean the students are super interested. The staff are more indifferent overall, with a handful of fatties being dismissive.

There's no real value in limiting your caffeine intake outside your own tolerance for it. Bombs away.

Nicotine is different. I've been mainlining zyns lately but don't have any trouble quitting them. But I've realized I do it more for "fun" than a productivity bump and I should probably just stop.

Incoming student study group orgy with the jacked teacher story arc?

They already made a pornhwa about EV's life that just ended, here's hoping yours drops soon with great art.

Disgusting.

I know it's hard to keep up with but I'm forced to teach a bunch of grade 6 and 9 when historically I've had admins who were smart enough to speak to me for less than 5 minutes and realize I should only be in front of grade 11 and 12. It was probably obvious during the interview too, but they just needed bodies because of outrageously high staff turnover and didn't care that I obviously wasn't a good fit for the school. But we literally don't have any grade 12 students and there are only 5 grade 11 students and none of them chose economics, so instead I ended up teaching 6, 9, 10 with a brief stint in 7. Grade 7 I got to be the English teacher to the students who are on 0 English because I'm the only Chinese speaking Native English speaker, but I told them "look I"m not an english teacher I've never taught the subject and I've never taught this age group" and they relented on that because they knew I was close to quitting back in october already.

TLDR They run the high school like a middle school because in the British system it's "lower school" grades 1-5 and "upper school" grades 6-12. They aren't aware of the timeline of Chinese kids development and don't realize that keeping grades 9-12 on the same timetable as grades 6-8 and not having the older students allocate their time primarily to exam subjects rather than assemblies, activities, and "house time" (british style house system, harry potter and all that) is dooming them to failure.

I'm going to reduce volume to 2 working sets per exercise, but keep lat/back volume the same by adding a non-fatiguing lat move like 1arm cable row or cable pullovers so it's still technically 6 sets of back but lower fatigue (and less stimulus overall). No more heavy/light on the pullups like I was doing either, just 2 sets of ng chins to failure each upper day.

I'll also add a hip thrust machine or bodyweight glutes or glute kickbacks on lower day, but everything gets reduced to 2 sets there as well.

I may even keep this structure in offseason too. I think I was doing too much overall, as usual. I've basically never been worse off when reducing my session length/volume, so let's see just how far we can push that. 8 sets of chest, 12 sets of back (but really only 8 hard sets and 4 easy bullshit exercise sets), 8 sets of quads, 8 sets of hams, 10 sets of glutes, 8 sets of bis+tris, and then delts whatever doesn't really matter already a very strong bodypart I could probably drop to 0 if I really wanted.

kc,

I have no idea what you're talking about. They're basically identical.

I was also consuming 600-1000mg on an empty stomach in a 2-6hr window on a fairly routine basis. This would occasionally results in the shakes.

This is the same as waking up and throwing in a horseshoe of extra strong packs. Anything over a 40mg dosage is absurd. (I do know people who do this.) Tho tbf you do develop a tolerance fairly quickly for most people.

Guy,

Considering its been widely available in a reasonably affordable non-tobacco form for a brief time, I wouldn't rely on "most people don't" in this case. I have no idea what the Zyn availability is in PRC, but perhaps try one out but it isn't gonna help you get more jacked or leaner without absurd usage.

For some reason I thought you were teaching kids who were over 18. Oops. Pornhwa is cancelled. Well, actually, it would probably have a higher chance of selling if all the girls are underaged :/.

I think the perception of face aging may be subconsciously influenced by the gray hair. Take the same face, throw some gray hair on there and everyone is going to guess you're way older.

Lower
bayesian curls: 11.75kgx22, 15
pushdowns: 36.25kgx22, 12
machine delt raises: 3 sets

Leg extensions: 55kgx22, 14
lying ham curls: 60kgx16 (pr), 46kgx14
paused sldl: 140kgx8, 100kgx12
ffess: 20kgx20, 15 each side
glute kickbacks: 2 sets, 20, 8

Heavier weights/lower reps on sldl just don't work because erectors take over; I can't keep tension on glutes+hams unless I'm doing higher reps and less weight. I'll either go back to a single set of 15-20 or do 2 sets of 10-12, leaning toward the very high reps single set twice a week approach as it's the easiest to progress and probably the most time efficient. I'll do 110kgx20 next workout I reckon, then just add 5kg each week (2 sessions per week) until reps are under 15.

Pump was otherwordly having been so depleted+overtrained previously and then refeeding on around 800g carbs and sleeping around 11 hours and taking stims out for a day yesterday. I had no desire for the cheat meal because I got these new frozen potatoes on taobao... they're coated with rice flour and egg white mixture to make them crispy and macros are 4.7g protein, 1.0g fat, 18g carb per 100g and they're like way more delicious than any french fries or fried potatoes I can get at any restaurants near me so that coupled with dates, pineapple, english muffins+no sugar added blackberry jam, and rice was more than enough to satisfy my tasty food cravings. Those potatoes only taste good fresh where the sweet potatoes taste good even after cooking and refridgeration, so that's the main carb in my diet. I also am experimenting with some overnight oats with greek yogurt (each 400g yogurt has 40g protein 20g carbs 0g fat), diced apple, cinnamon, tiny bit of milk for consistency, and brown sugar artificial sweetner (unfortunately although it has the brown sugar texture, the taste is identical to normal artificial sweetner despite being 5x the cost). If your normal diet food tastes really good and you really like eating it, you don't really want to have a cheat meal and you don't want to suddenly start gorging when the contest is over; you just want more of the normal clean food you already eat. This is a perpetually ongoing refinement process but I've reached some sort of threshold of "I can eat these foods year round and be both psychologically satisfied with the taste while getting what I need in terms of macros/micros/satiety" which is a great thing. The new dates I got from sam's club are the best I've ever eaten and I've tried about 8 different imported brands of sorta meh quality.

Surprised I'm still setting lying ham curl PRs given how in the toilet my SLDL strenght is but when you've lose 11kg over 13 weeks, a lot of those lifts that benefit from strong stabilization by higher bodyweight are going to tank. I'm in no rush to get back to old strength prs, and with more comittment to staying lean offseason I may not be seeing those numbers until December, but at a lower bodyweight. and upper body pressing? That might be not until next spring as db/bb bench are heavily a function of just bodyweight rather than overall muscularity due to rom and stabilization.

As of yesterday, 8 and 11 weeks out. Getting serious now.

2 weeks from now I will hopefully have a satisfying permanent living arrangement in Shenzhen, in addition to a gym with a posing room less than 20 minutes away. Just praying the next job is better... this year really did provoke a lot of existential crisis, which is perhaps obvious as I have started sharing more and more despite several years of being relatively more quiet. But that was largely a function of complete dissatisfaction and a lack of meaning with my work, which is something I simply hadn't encountered in 9 years. We'll find out around October whether the new job is sane or another clown circus.

I want to be less personable with my students and keep a bit more mystery. For instance, I should probably not let them know off the bat that I can speak Chinese very well, that I take bodybuilding seriously, or that I have a lot of awareness about modern teenage Chinese pop culture. You do need to be seen as more of an authority than a peer in many cases...

a lot of it is because when i speak chinese, although i'm conversationally fluent (doubt i'm as good as you though) i sound like borat, in the sense that i'm coherent, you know exactly what i'm saying - but my choice of words and inflection sound comical

but... i've been pulled aside quite often whenever there's an important inter-departmental meeting or even meeting with people in another company not to speak chinese if i am going to share any insights or ask any questions in the upcoming meeting - in my mind it's better to speak poorly in a language that 100% of the room understands rather than fluently to the 20% who understand clearly, 30% who get the gyst and 50% who have no clue what i said but they say i lose all gravitas and credibility once i open my mouth and speak chinese

probably similar for you even if you don't have the borat problem i have

No. I might be much further along than you. I do not have this problem, and more often I'm mistaken for a foreigner who was raised in China due to my usage and pronunciation being so native sounding. The problem I have is that it doesn't match my vocabulary; I probably only have a 5k word vocabulary but my pronunciation and usage would make somebody think I have a 50k vocabulary. My cousin, a professional social media personality all done in Chinese, has much weaker less native sounding pronunciation than me but his working vocabulary is several fold larger than mine. Cab drivers in Macau basically all point out that my pronunciation mogs their own as native cantonese/mandarin second language speakers. Same with older HK people but not younger ones.

My meaning was more that too much familiarity between student and teacher is generally bad in a society that so strongly emphasizes hierarchy in the Confucian way. Maintaining some distance and not having excessive familiarity helps preserve this hierarchy and thus compliance.

In a public school this isn't an issue; zhongkao requirements basically act as an IQ test such that you simply don't have any students who are sub 120 and most are much higher IQ than me. They're going to be compliant because in a public school you can get removed for non-compliance or even just poor performance. At a private school you're dealing with a far lower average; meaning a real English only environment is important for their language development. The high IQ kids are going to be fine with language development even if the environment slips into Chinese more often. Kids here have enough local staff to where they can get by not saying a single word of English outside of ESL class which is a huge problem. 3 years in a public school and this was my first return to a private school. Even though the next place is dominated by HK passport holders, in practice what this really means is HK father mainland mother, not "real" hong kong locals.

I may have posted this before, sorry for redundancy if so. HK has one of the worst dating markets for women and best for men. The men all get poached off by SEA migrants and mainlanders; but obviously the women do not want mainlanders or SEAS. The ratio of single women to single men is something wildly out of balance like 1.3:1. I had a thing going with a HK local woman (the only one I bothered to censor out) and even though things didn't work out for reasons outside of either our control, she treated me exceptionally well in our time together. It was such a shock because I'd been used to the demeaning, condescending, controlling, and "prove to me you're good enough" treatment of mainland women.

That prompted me toward a realization I found disturbing and saddening; maybe there was nothing unique about this woman. Maybe her overall very pleasant demeanor and good girlfriend behaviour was solely the result of the fact that she's in an enormously disadvantaged dating market. The mainland women are in an enormously advantaged dating and marriage market, particularly if they aren't from a big city and just live there but still have connection to more rural origins. In that case, you have to consider "how much of your treatment is because of your own features and that of the woman and her character, how much of it is because of perceived or real attractiveness differentials, and how much of it is just because of what markets you both exist in and your respective number of quality suitors and how much competition there is for the two of you respectively?"

You being treated well might only be because the other person has fewer options overall, not because they're a good person, there's a lot of attraction, or you're a good person or the two of you share some particularly special intimate connection. Validating this idea we can see here

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...

Think about what happens to foreign couples who move to Thailand. Do their relationships ever last? Do you think the man continues treating his wife/gf well?

Even for a person like me who doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths and refuses to cope by denying reality, this makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and sad. This time I'm going to just believe this idea isn't true, I actually can't handle this one if it is. Marriage, dating, and sex might be even more explicitly of a "transactional" marketplace than I'd imagined, but obviously we don't always transact with currency directly.... It's a very bleak view that probably isn't functional or helpful toward one's life, even if its true...

what do your girlfriends think about your being half black, is it something they would disclose to their friends and families?

nothing really. Just "your white gene is strong" and "well that explains the d size"

interesting, i would have thought it'd be a third rail issue for a few

definitely never met some girls parents because even just being a foreigner was too much for them to handle and given how openly racist so many are towards foreigners, especially blacks, i would have figured there'd been a "just don't mention you have a black dad to my parents" type conversation where the girl you're dating is fine with it but is worried about what her parents would say

Well, there is probably some self selection going on before it gets to that point. Guy probably interacts and dates in social circles where everyone is more open minded, including their parents.

Also, in respect to your sexual marketplace thoughts, I have been making this point in different forms in this subforum for the last 15 years. But probably an important reason why what you would call traditional patriarchal societies worked so well for so long and outcompeted other social organizations is because they blunted a lot of the harsh realities and vagaries of an open sexual marketplace. Which was especially beneficial in getting low status males engaged and providing positive value to a society.

Sure I guess in aggregate, but could market conditions have such a profound impact on individual interactions as to be responsible for going from amorousness to outward hostility? Could somebody having more options cause them to go from treating a person really well to treating the exact same person really poorly in romantic interactions? I hope not. Were women happy being married off to ugly schlubs and being domestic servants in the old more patriarchal system? I don't think so... We've moved beyond creating a society based solely on what's genetically competitively advantageous on an individual level; can we do so on a collective/nation state level? I hope so, but I'm not optimistic and you'd likely be correct that a society with strong patriarchal norms will outcompete societies with modern norms. That doesn't mean it'd be morally right or conducive to human flourishing, however...

Basically what caused more unhappiness? women married and bearing the children of ugly men they weren't attracted to or low status men (often through no fault of their own, I might add) left out of the dating market? I can't answer that question, but I'd suspect the former was more negative EV to human happiness overall. Things that are evolutionarily advantageous aren't always good for happiness and well being.

At least I seem to have found my own path, it's probably not worth worrying about humanity and society broadly.

1 refeed on Saturday with sodium+potassium both too high and then Monday only 150g carbs and I was peeing all night again and barely slept. I might skip the gym and move the workouts to wednesday/thursday.

Crazy fullness though. First photos I've taken where I wasn't super depleted in a long time. Morning weight shot up from 90.5 to 92.5 just from filling out and "over-hydrating".