Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log
You know you who it is already. Can't recall my old password or even what email I used so here we are. I promised I'd st
Belt squats absolutely goated. Shoulda been doing these in my barbell lifts obsession days. Can be done for quads, glutes, or both. Maybe I'll write out a full program later idk. Kinda funny bc I was obsessed with optimizing my 4x per week upper lower but with this new gym being such a fast walk away, 6x per week very short micro sessions that will be around 45 to 50 minutes for push and pull and around 60 to 65 minutes for legs is a viable strategy. Biceps and machine delt raises all 6 training days 2 or 3 sets.
Belt squat sldl and rdl great for training glutes and hams without getting erectors involved. Tbh I shouldn't barbell sldl at all but it's the last remaining ego lifting I have and I will even do that conventional block for 6 to 10 weeks later on off-season as I recover and get fatter. Prob just a top set and back off set of conven deadlift every 3rd leg workout followed by ham curls and leg extensions then leave the gym 40 minute session
I think your lower body may already be better than the champ guy. How far "behind" him do you feel you are?
Honestly, I somehow thought you'd appear further behind (to a fairly untrained eye like mine).
Surely that’s not the full line up on the stage in that pic?
You look to be between 3rd and 4th on there and clearly better than the others. No way 6 of them were ahead of you?
Winner is the best by quite a way imo
Bro.... I don't want to think about 14 year olds undergoing anal sex training sorry.... 😔
in England we called that....boarding school
Surely that’s not the full line up on the stage in that pic?
You look to be between 3rd and 4th on there and clearly better than the others. No way 6 of them were ahead of you?
Winner is the best by quite a way imo
2nd call-out. In first call-out I was last. My crew did not take a pic of me in first call-out bc I was mogged so hard. First place guy was also in both callouts.
I was hoping we'd return to random observations and ramblings when you started eating more.
body update at least?
I clicked this thread to share a review I wrote for a really excellent new album I'm sure none of my readers are weird enough to appreciate. But maybe there's a lurker out there who doesn't post and loves this stuff. I probably get super excited and obsessed with a new album maybe 3-4x/yr nowadays. Last year it was the latest Ingurgitating Oblivion album, which didn't have quite as much staying power and was still fairly uneven in quality.
Even though you probably aren't a fan of this style of music, I'd strongly encourage you to give it a try as it's quite unique even by the standards of extreme metal. It1 is much less accessible and more weird than the Emma Goldman album I posted that I liked a few pages back. But despite it's giant length I've probably listened to it 14 times start to finish in the past 5 days. How can an album be 1 hour 24 minutes and contain so little repetition and so many different ideas but almost all of them are actually compelling or interesting? And how can a musician do like 12 full lenght releases and 20 EPs in a span of around 7 years? Well, the answer to the last question is because most of his output is actually terrible but then he randomly strikes gold about 15-20% of the time, and this is one of those times.
Esoteric Visions in Auditory Form: A Review of Esoctrilihum's Ghostigmatah – Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm
In the shadowed annals of extreme metal, few endeavors eclipse the audacious scope of Esoctrilihum, the one-man French visionary project helmed by Asthâghul. With Ghostigmatah – Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm, released on September 5, 2025, via I, Voidhanger Records, the composer transcends mere sonic assault to weave an intricate tapestry of sonic storytelling. This double-disc opus, spanning over eighty-three minutes across ten sprawling tracks, unfurls a terrifying yet mesmerizing narrative of dark cosmic fantasy, evoking the inexorable pull of eldritch forces and the fragility of mortal souls ensnared in rituals beyond comprehension. Far from the reflexive misanthropy of a social pariah's anguished lashing out, the album manifests as a vivid apparition from the musician's psyche: a cohesive chronicle of cosmic demon-gods, sacrificial thralls, and warlocks bound in pacts with incomprehensible entities, rendered in the unforgiving vernacular of black and death metal, yet elevated by profound symphonic and gothic strata.
The production envelops the listener in a reverb-drenched, cavernous expanse, where every riff and rhythm echoes like incantations rebounding off abyssal walls. Asthâghul's mastery lies in this atmospheric alchemy, black metal's frostbitten ferocity and death metal's guttural viscera serve as skeletal trappings for opulent orchestral swells, choral phantoms, and psychedelic flourishes that evoke the grandeur of a forbidden grimoire illustrated in blood and starlight. The result is less a barrage of extremity than an immersive diorama, where gothic grandeur tempers the genre's inherent savagery, inviting one to inhabit its mythos rather than merely endure it.
Central to this narrative propulsion is the kaleidoscopic array of vocal styles, each a distinct timbre in the album's polyphonic drama. Harsh, serpentine growls conjure the utterances of cosmic demon-gods, their syllables dripping with primordial malice; ethereal wails evoke the laments of lost souls teetering on sacrificial altars, fragile and forsaken; while resonant, ritualistic chants summon the incantations of mystical warlocks, their voices laced with the hubris of those who dare commune with voids they scarcely fathom. These "lines" in the story, delivered across tracks with seamless, almost operatic transitions, imbue Ghostigmatah with a theatricality reminiscent of a shadow-puppet epic, where each archetype advances the plot toward an inexorable, apocalyptic crescendo.
Standout passages illuminate the album's narrative peaks with particular luminosity. "Kneeling Before the Keeper of the Golden Key to the Absolute Void" (9:06) serves as a pivotal supplication, its symphonic undercurrents building to a cataclysmic revelation, the vocals fracturing into a chorus of obeisance that blurs the boundary between reverence and ruin. The ritualistic frenzy of "Orgiastic Sacrificial Mass to Conjure Abxulöm, Psychopomp Supreme" (8:34) erupts in bacchanalian chaos, layering frenzied percussion and dissonant choirs to depict a carnal rite summoning otherworldly intermediaries, its gothic excess both repellent and riveting. Culminating in dread, "Mauled, Swallowed and Dissolved into Nothingness by the 8-Eyed Psychopomp" (9:16) delivers the saga's visceral denouement, a swirling vortex of atonal shrieks and orchestral decay that devours the listener whole, leaving only echoes of dissolution.
By the exacting standards of heavy music, where black metal's orthodoxy often prizes raw abrasion over artifice, Ghostigmatah stands as an outlier, a profoundly weird artifact not suited for the faint of heart or the impatient ear. Its labyrinthine structures demand repeated immersions, rewarding the initiate with layers of nuance that elude superficial spins. Yet therein lies its profound allure: eschewing immediate gratification for a deliberate, enveloping experience, it transforms the act of listening into a participatory rite. For those willing to surrender to its mystic undercurrents, this album emerges not as an assault on the senses, but as a compelling odyssey through the musician's shadowed reveries, one that lingers, haunts, and ultimately enchants. In an era of ephemeral extremity, Ghostigmatah reaffirms Esoctrilihum's singular vision: metal as myth, sound as sorcery.
Work been busier than expected despite low courseload. Not necessarily much admin work, it's just they have a very particular teaching style and homework protocol that you need to adhere to 100% and I'm still adjusting from being able to just do my own thing. Doing my own thing really only worked super well at the public school where kids are already loaded down and pre-selected for very high IQ, so them asking me to adjust and conform to their way of doing things where we turbo-micromanage students and their in and out of class academic habits to compensate for lower IQ students is imo perfectly reasonable, even if it is time consuming to literally check the notes of every single student to make sure they're adequately taking notes and arbitrarily needing to both grade and assign homework 3x/wk. No complaints though, just taking some time to adjust and get into the routine. Already seems like a very tightly run ship and extremely efficient and well run school delivering what parents want at a shockingly discounted price.
After agonizing about programming all the time, I decided to just stick with upper/lower 4x/wk. Higher volume and lower intensity than I was doing toward the end of prep where I was going in the JP direction. Enjoying training a lot again. 91kg so only up around 4kg which is great. weight is stable here and I'm eating around maintenence off cycle just waiting to start working with Chris Tuttle my new coach in November/December. Training at a gym just 500m from my house I initially shyed away from because their equipment is "weird". But it's all super new and modern and much more optimized for bodybuilding than a lot of the classic pieces of equipment you'd see in most Chinese hardcore bbing gyms or even most American hard80core gyms outside of the super famous ones like Destination Dallas or Total Recomp or Muscle Factory. The technology for machines has come REALLY far as bodybuilding has become more mainstream since 2019 or so. The free weights vs machines debate might have been closer back in our day just coming up in the iron game, but no it's basically settled now: Machines>>>>free weights for people who train to look good. Obv not for athletic performance, but 99.x% of people are in the gym to look good and of those 99%, 80%+ want to look good to be more successful with the opposite sex (that 20% is the people, mostly males, who have gone well beyond the level of muscularity the typical woman finds attractive and are doing it for love of the process as well as nichemaxxing for musclemommies or girls nichemaxxing to get the covetted 180cm+ 200lb 8 pack guy with 17 inch arms who walks around sub 10% year round) . But this demographic needs to pretty much train like a hypertrophy athlete to get what they want, just don't do the cycles or large surpluses. Barbells in 2025... LOL. I mean they work, but there are just better options now.
oh let me put that in a seperate post that isn't wall of text in case I forgot last page:
Hired a coach. Chris Tuttle. Industry vet around since the 2000s era. Master's in dietetics, worked as a clinical dietician for several years and understands the science of this a lot more than the more "bro" coaches. Was never a super successful IFBB pro but did earn his pro card in the hardest era. Just genetically wasn't meant to be a big guy. Lots of successful clients over the years, but some of his more notable modern ones are Jordan Hutchinson, Adam Beveridge, and Gionvanni Del Biondo (AKA Johneffer AKA Emperor Effer).
Jordan won the 2021 NPC USAs and was considered one of the weakest/worst overall winners of a national show in many years, especially comparing him to the really stellar Justin Shier and Carlos Thomas Junior at NPC nationals the same year. He leapfrogged both of them very easily just adding muscle slow and steady over the years and delivering omgwtfbbq conditioning on stage every single time. His youtube channel is mostlty eating/cooking stuff and I've learned a lot about how to make great tasting bodybuilding food from watching him, which I really think is like 80% of the battle. If you actually like the food you eat as a bodybuilder, you don't eat off plan bullshiet food nearly as much. He's likely to win top 10 olympia this year after taking down 2 back to back 1st place finishes in men's open, beating Quinton Erya twice despite Quint having superior size and superior black genetics and superior skeletal structure.
Adam Beveridge just a genetic freak he's gonna do well with any coach barely matters.
Johneffer was coached by Dave Palumbo for many years and would always get tremendously fat following Palumbo's offseason dieting strategy. He'd get in good shape every year, but it was always 16 week crash diet of dropping 50lbs and he had a flat stringy look to him and a really physically traumatic contest prep dropping so much weight. As soon as he got with Chris Tuttle, chris slowed him down and just kept him way leaner during offseason, had him cutting for a larger % of the year, and started his contest prep at a much leaner state and he immediately looked much better and won his pro card after many years of unsuccessful tries
Despite this, Chris charges dirt cheap prices literally not much more than I charge... I'm in good hands. Plan is to take 2 full years before next show and do a very long offseason.
I got a ninja creami after way too much deliberation. It was one of the best investments in my bodybuilding ever. Just skim milk+whey+dash of xanthan gum powder and I get amazing tasting protein ice cream. Obv don't use trash ON whey. There's tons of companies that make much better tasting protein with similar or even lower calories per gram of protein.
couple of random notes, one that I hope Loco tries to disagree with me on but I think he knows its true:
PEDs are important, but it's more important as a binary than as a continuous variable. I am living proof that being on a ton of PEDs and training with barbells just moving weight from point A to B and not eating a bbing diet at all just won't build very much tissue in most people who are not Sam Sulek. Even the genetically gifted who do build muscle with this approach usually have poorly balanced physiques that are huge but not aesthetic and can't place well in pro bbing at all. Once PEDs are actually in, then eating like a bodybuilder and training like one instead of barbells+dumbbells wieght from point A to B become the much more important variables. Despite using PEDs, I didn't start looking like a bber until I started meal prepping and optimizing my training for hypertrophy rather than sorta having a "powerbuilding" approach. Higher PEDs are better, sure, but if training isn't optimized for hypertrophy and diet isn't in place then the much lower hanging fruit for looking better is optimizing those variables rather than increasing PEDs. When i say "optimized for hypertrophy", I don't mean just programming but most especially execution. Are you moving weight or are you using weight to stimulate muscle fibres? Having come up in olytard, I was just moving weight for the large majority of my gym career and this only changed just around 2 years ago.
oh let me put that in a seperate post that isn't wall of text in case I forgot last page:Hired a coach. Chris Tuttle. Industry vet around since the 2000s era. Master's in dietetics, worked as a clinical dietician for several years and understands the science of this a lot more than the more "bro" coaches. Was never a super successful IFBB pro but did earn his pro card in the ha
My wife got me the ninja creami for my birthday last year and we use it every night. Prob the best purchase we have made in the last two years. Amazing how delicious it is and each bowl of ice cream is like 100-130 cal and 20g protein
Is it possible to make ice cream with 100-130 cals and 20g of protein in a traditional ice cream maker?
Is it possible to make ice cream with 100-130 cals and 20g of protein in a traditional ice cream maker?
Probably not but idk lol. You can make sorbet or froyo with just a blender though. I've been enjoying low cal raspberry sorbets with stevia and lime juice post show and could easily be eating that in prep too.
Mango needs 0 fluid or sweetener, just frozen mangos and lime juice and it blends to perfect consistency. I imagine some 40p/20c fat free Greek yogurt and a bit of stevia and xanthan gum will work without an ice cream maker.
Is it possible to make ice cream with 100-130 cals and 20g of protein in a traditional ice cream maker?
You can try, not sure how it would turn out. I think the difference is the ninja creami has a “light ice cream” setting for the low fat versions. We use 2 cups Fairlife skim milk, 2 scoops whey, 1-2 tbls tourani sugar free syrup. This make the whole thing around 400 cal and 80g protein but it’s enough for 4 big bowls. The ice cream itself is only 100 cal but if we add mix ins it adds calories. We crush up Cinnamon Toast Crunch and mix in to vanilla ice cream or crush up Oreo thins and add to cookie and cream ice cream
I think they are around 250usd in the west. With tariffs and shipping I paid around double that
I think they are around 250usd in the west. With tariffs and shipping I paid around double that
I think it's like 190 at costco near me. Not sure I want another thing taking up counter space though...but damn, I love ice cream but am actually tracking food now and am not going to F everything up eating it all the time unless it's like what's being talked about.
I think it's like 190 at costco near me. Not sure I want another thing taking up counter space though...but damn, I love ice cream but am actually tracking food now and am not going to F everything up eating it all the time unless it's like what's being talked about.
Most important weight loss/diet for body composition advice: 1. Make sure you enjoy your diet food and can eat it year round. 2. Develop a white fish/chicken breast recipe that tastes good and can prep 5lbs at a time easily in a way that isn't time consuming. 3. 400g frozen berries of choice daily.
Nail those 3 and you become unstoppable. Stuff like the Creami helps a lot with the first one
3) I have 250g-350g of frozen berries in a smoothie every morning.
1 and 2) I have not nailed. I have developed no infinitely sustainable recipe for anything except the smoothie I eat every morning. Can I borrow yours and/or do you have advice on a list of recipes I should take a look at?
Right now for lunch I eat kirkland chicken nuggets and for dinner i have tuna salad over romaine lettuce (tuna has 13-15g of mayo and I put salad dressing on top of it all - disgusting I know). But I am not sure those are very optimal. I've been very hungry and I don't think I'm at too much of a deficit either.
I just want my daily RPE to be like 6 or lower for this but it's definitely not - especially in the afternoon/evening when my kids are stuffing their face with stuff not in my plan lol.
Guy - Can I post my 'baseline' in here or DM you or put it in my log and then tell ppl here to go rip it apart? I'm not really afraid of criticism, but I'm also some amount of embarrassed I'm so bad at this compared to ten years ago or whatever (when I still wasn't that great anyway).
Sad to see the Yugoslavian so entrenched in dadbod, pounding his face with nuggets, tuna, and mayonnaise (+ dressing).
Sad to see the Yugoslavian so entrenched in dadbod, pounding his face with nuggets, tuna, and mayonnaise (+ dressing).
Well, or you could say something like "hey, it's great you're logging food and staying in a caloric deficit, next we gotta fix your shiet food choices" - you know, it's roughly the same amount to type 😀.
But, yeah, I don't think I want to eat tuna + mayo every day long-term but it is what it is. I spent a year tracking like 5 days out of every 30 and now at least I'm tracking every day, so it's a pretty big win anyway.
Also bought a creami for $150. Now to try various protein ice cream recipes and pray some turn out elite and I can pound them for even more dadbod.
3) I have 250g-350g of frozen berries in a smoothie every morning.1 and 2) I have not nailed. I have developed no infinitely sustainable recipe for anything except the smoothie I eat every morning. Can I borrow yours and/or do you have advice on a list of recipes I should take a look at?Right now for lunch I eat kirkland chicken nuggets and for dinner i have tuna salad over rom
This is bad. We want the berries whole for the food volume and satiety signals, not just the micronutrition. Don't blend them. Just the act of chewing them up sends satiety signals.
Kirkland chicken facking nuggets?!
Brother, wait for about 5 more hours I'm uploading a video called "meal prep speedrun" where I show myself cooking 5lb of chicken from start to finish. It takes me about 24 minutes to prep and then another ~30 minutes of air frying in 3 batches but I can do other things while that's going I'm not chained to the stove.
You presumably have an oven (Chinese homes don't) of large size and we could get that time way down or have you pop it in the oven the night before, wake up, and it's had time to cook+cooldown and you just pop it open, cut with scissors into your meal prep containers, stick some quinoa/brown rice/microwaved sweet potato in there, some green beans, and you've got a healthy day's worth of food that took you like less than half an hour of labour. make the carbs fresh every morning and the chicken will last around 3 days before it starts tasting noticeably worse.
I'm going to save you a ton of time and health rn yugo. Grading RN, video already recorded 2 nights ago but bitch-ass school kept me at work 14 hours on Friday so I still haven't had time to edit and upload.
"Meal Prep Speedrun episode 2: Fish, Rice, and Pineapple The Revenge of Gh15" as soon as my tilapia gets delivered because stores here only carry little bitch ass 140g filets and I need to order 400g filets off taobao. Groceries have been one of the worst parts of living in China because Chinese people despise healthy high protein food and love disgusting tasting unhealthy food.
Oh yeah I'm moving my timeline forward and getting out of teaching Aug 2026 not 2027. I don't hate my new job but I'm just more and more passionate about this whole thing and don't want to waste more time doing something else.
obligatory "mayo!? diet confirmed 100% crap" reference for the OGs.
Guy - Can I post my 'baseline' in here or DM you or put it in my log and then tell ppl here to go rip it apart? I'm not really afraid of criticism, but I'm also some amount of embarrassed I'm so bad at this compared to ten years ago or whatever (when I still wasn't that great anyway).
Don't bother bro. Your baseline probably sucks anyway and doesn't need to be ripped apart or adjusted, just reconstructed from scratch entirely. But do send me a DM and tell me what foods you enjoy and what foods you don't enjoy and I can make you a 1 time diet on the house for free (not full coaching service though sorry). It's a "diet" not a "meal plan" so that means there's still some freedom built in; I don't expect somebody like you to do lean meat and rice 5x/day and ppl 6x/wk 12k steps per day, daily fasted AM cardio, ECA stack etc. Just a "baseline" of normal meals and then "as long as you consume these options in one day, you can consume whatever else strikes your fancy on top if you have random cravings or hunger".
3) I have 250g-350g of frozen berries in a smoothie every morning.1 and 2) I have not nailed. I have developed no infinitely sustainable recipe for anything except the smoothie I eat every morning. Can I borrow yours and/or do you have advice on a list of recipes I should take a look at?Right now for lunch I eat kirkland chicken nuggets and for dinner i have tuna salad over rom
