Gotti's Journal

Thursday

Leg press superset with lat pulldown superset with preacher machine curl 7 sets
Goblet squat superset with straight bar pulldown superset with DB curl 4 sets

I was super worn out yesterday. Maybe I need time away from the gym or a few days of extra rest. Don't count on that happening. But part of me was just going to skip lifting all together and just do cardio. I forced myself to do some work but in the back of my head figured if at any point I just felt too beat up that I would stop. I started slow but the workout wasn't horrible, I didn't go heavy or anything but I didn't feel like complete trash. Once I hit the treadmill for some cardio though I was out of it completely. At one point I thought to myself, I could fall asleep just walking on here.

I'm out of town for the weekend for a bachelor party so no rest in site but I did take Monday off from work. I'm going to play it by how I feel, if I still feel drained I might take the day to just sit around and recover a bit. Maybe go for a walk around town but nothing crazy. However if I feel better I'll be back on the routine. We will see

Tuesday

Squat superset with pull ups
Standing calve raise superset with chest pad t bar row 2 sets

So I took the weekend off for the bachelor party and decided to take Monday off from the gym just for an extra off day since I felt like trash last week. I did swim a bit on Monday and cut my grass just to get a sweat going. Yesterday at the end of the day I had a terrible customer and her husband going crazy on me so I got out of work later than I wanted to and then on my way to the gym two people at a stop light started flipping each other off and got out of the car. Nothing happened but it slowed everything down. Needless to say I got to the gym late. I didn't pay attention to how many sets I did and the weight was nothing crazy but I was fired up from being late that I went super fast, I just stuck with the squats and pull ups until my lungs were burning something fierce. Decided to throw in a few sets of compliment lifts and did my cardio. Legs felt like jello at the end probably because my breaks were super fast.

Wednesday

Hammer strength press superset w/ side lateral raise 4 sets
Decline Hammer strength press superset w/ reverse peck deck 4 sets
Incline press (smith) superset with wide grip high row 4 sets

I'm going to go with hammer strength machines anytime I only work my chest once a week. I feel the stretch the squeeze a whole lot better than I do from bench. Now once I'm back from vacation I may change that but until then I want something that's going to give me that tight squeeze. Strength on the chest movements was pretty good the side laterals were weak though, they felt pretty difficult, not sure if I wasn't fully warmed up or what but they felt like a struggle on weights that I'm used to using. I wanted to do some low cable crosses at the end but one of the 3 ppl in the gym last night hopped on the cables right before I could so I say the smith machine already set up with an incline and decided to jump on it.

Today is my brothers birthday so my parents want to go to eat with all of them. Wonderful, no gym again, I need to find time to get extra work in, I'm hoping Sunday I can spend the day outside doing some things and getting a good sweat on, hopefully work on this tan too.

Thursday

Went out to eat for my brothers birthday/parents anniversary. Ate pretty good though, had chicken breast, broccoli, and zucchini. So it wasn't a disaster like it could of been but I need to get in the gym. Usually Friday is my day off and I have a lot to do after work today but I brought my gym clothes to work to hopefully get in a quick cardio session, farmers walks to get some weight in there. I've been tossing around doing arms today so that tomorrow I can hit a bigger muscle group, we'll see what happens.

Friday

Went to the gym and just did cardio, some farmers walks, I've been missing the gym here or there lately so I wanted to get in there and get some work done.

Saturday

Arms, it was a decent workout for what it was. I had some guy who seemed to follow me around and then steal the equipment as soon as I left it. When I superset stuff I don't really care if someone takes something because I'm using multiple pieces at a time but he did this like 3 times then he would do like 1 or 2 sets and move onto something else. So the workout was scattered without set numbers, basically just tried to get work in.

Sunday

My plan was to spend the day doing things around the house and outside, and I accomplished that. I was outside cutting grass, cutting some bushes, washing my car, washing a swing that I got from my grandmothers house. I also did a ton of work inside the house so I stayed active, not a workout but I'm trying to be more active as we go into the dogg days of summer.

Monday

Deadlift 7 sets
Leg press superset with lat pull down 4 sets

I think I did 7 sets of deadlifts, I wasn't really counting. Because my gym schedule was so hectic I didn't know if it was leg or chest day so I decided to do deadlifts since it's been awhile. So what I did was I did 2 sets of each weight with a different stance each time, one time was more sumo style, the other more of a traditional style. My normal deadlift is sort of in the middle, my hands inside my legs but my legs are not super wide like a sumo so the traditional hands outside the legs lifts were rough, they felt super awkward to me. The last set I went with my normal style just because I pumped up the weight a bit. I was moving fast so I was able to get in some extra work on the leg press and lat pulldown for good measure.

Woke up today looking lean and I have a wedding this weekend which is a good sign, even though I wont be shirtless, unless I get drunk I'm confident that I'll look pretty good for it.

Tuesday

Hammer strength press superset w/ side lateral raise 4 sets
Decline hammer strength press superset w/ reverse peck deck 4 sets
Cable cross with low cable superset w/ wide grip high row 4 sets

I really love this workout for whatever reason. Always been a free weight guy but I'm really feeling a better stretch and squeeze using the hammer strength. Also my side laterals felt a lot better than last week. I was almost falling asleep at work, my co worker left for the military which leaves me the only one in charge of about 20 people and checking their work. So I've been running around like a maniac and at about 4pm just felt worn out. However the workout itself was really good. The last set of each exercise I really pumped up the weight and didn't worry about the amount of reps I was doing. I figured I'm almost done with the total "cut" so throw some heavy stuff on just to show the body, keep the muscle, your going to need it.

Wednesday

Farmers walks 5 sets
Weighted Rope Crunch
Farmerks walks 5 sets
100 sit ups
Treadmill 10 minutes
weighted crunch machine
Treadmill 6 minutes

Once again I was super tired towards the end of the day at work. But it grinded my teeth and tried to do some heavy farmers walks. The heavy sets actually were not that bad, the second set of 5 is when the forearm pump really kicked in and felt very difficult. After those 10 sets I didn't use weights on the treadmill, slight incline and just walked.

I'm super tired this morning, I did not sleep well at all last night and I'm not sure why. I was tired and I fell asleep fast then woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep. This should be an interesting

Thursday

Leg extension superset with lying leg curl superset with chest pad t bar row 4 sets
Leg press superset with lat pulldown 4 sets
Standing calve raise superset with hammer strength low row 4 sets

I was on autopilot yesterday. I couldn't get untired and was just in a funk. I actually kept getting compliments on how well I was explaining things, probably because I was so blah that the information was just flowing out in a monotone straight forward way. Either way I wanted to squat and pull up but I was so tired I decided against it, I figured my form would be awful so why risk it. Plus my legs and back were still super sore from deadlifts. So I went with the workout I posted and it was decent. My hamstrings were probably the most sore and the lying leg curls were difficult but also felt like they relaxed the muscle a bit and felt good at the end. I also was introduced to the owners grandson and hes a talker like the owner so he kind of was following me around so the workout wasn't as fast as I normally go. It was humid though so I was dripping sweat from the beginning of the workout until the end. Had to cut the cardio time short because it took me extra time to do the actual lifting

Saturday

DB curl superset with rope extension 4 sets
BB curl superset with side handle extension 4 sets
Double high cable curl superset with single hand underhand extension 4 sets

Really solid workout. The weight wasn't mind blowing but the pump was. By the end of the workout my arms felt like bricks. From the elbow up it felt like I was carrying around extra weight with the pump that I had. I'm not taking any pump supplement so maybe I underestimated my carb intake Friday or something because I haven't had a good pump on both my bi's and tri's like that in a while.

Went to a wedding that night so my Sunday was groggy. I wasn't hungover or anything but I didn't get home until late and my body is used to getting up so I didn't get a full 8 hours of sleep. I still cut my grass and did my housework but at one point I hit the recliner and was stuck there for awhile.

Monday

Total body workout

I found out Monday afternoon that I had to pick someone up from an airport that was out of town. So I took the day off from work and had to head down to get them. Didn't get to the gym. That's why I decided to do a full body workout Monday. I will do the same today and tomorrow. I decided I'm going to try and get to the beach for a few days this weekend so I'm going to really hit each muscle 3 times this week. I'm usually not a big fan of full body workouts. I've done them in the past and they are always whatever to me but I had some fun just mixing and matching body parts on Monday and hopefully can do the same today and tomorrow.

Looked super lean in the mirror this morning which made me happy. I'm sort of hoping to destroy the muscles from hitting them 3 times and then let the time at the beach act as recovery. Hopefully looking good for the longer I'm at the beach as the muscles recover and become fuller again. We will see.

Wednesday

Full body workout

I did a lot of landmine work in a row. Landmine squat into press and when I was done I would drop the barbell and do a meadows row. It made me winded pretty quickly. After that I did some decline hammer strength into straight bar pulldowns and curls. I just wanted to try and hit a little bit of everything but I went with two back exercises. So today when I do full body again I'll concentrate more on something else and maybe just do one thing for my back. During the day I'll figure something that I want to do. I sort of want to hit calves one more time before I go to the beach but I think doing a leg press may be more beneficial overall so we'll see. I'll put together a plan as the day goes.

Thursday

Full body workout

Again went and tried to hit everything even just a little. Chest press, shoulder press, pushdown machines, vertical leg press, db row, rope extension, hammer curls, standing calve raise etc. I was super tired at work. I didn't bring my coffee with me to work so I got some at work and whoever made it had it all jacked up. After I drank it I crashed hard and felt like crap. At one point I thought I was just going to leave and not work overtime but I stuck it out. At the gym though I felt at one point like I was about to fall asleep.

This was my last workout before I leave for the beach. I was alittle disappointed in the mirror this morning. I'm still lean but my abs were washed out a bit. Maybe from hitting them hard 3 times this week and they need to recover before they will look better, I'm not sure. The plan was to deplete myself and let it recover as vacation goes so we will see.

Monday

Hammer strength chest press superset side lateral raise 8 sets

I'm back! however I wanted to squat yesterday. A wrench got thrown in my plans because I was informed that I had an interview today. I just got back from vacation and had less than 24 hours to prepare for the interview. So I cut the gym session short....a job I've wanted for a long time is more important than a training session. It was still a pretty solid session, I got a crazy pump and felt good to get my heart rate ramped up. Back to the gym tonight

Tuesday

Squat superset pull ups 4 sets
Leg press superset chest pad t bar row 4 sets
Standing calve raise superset with close grip lat pulldown 4 sets
straight bar pulldown 1 set

First day squatting after vacation and the weight and movement felt good. The lung capacity during the supersets did not. I got winded fairly quickly and was taking more time between sets that I wanted to. At that point I decided to bang out 6 or 8 sets of the combo probably wasn't the best option with the amount of time I had. My legs and back did get a nice pump which seemed to carry through to the rest of the workout.

I've heard people say when they take a week off from the gym that they come back stronger. I find that when I take time off the first week back is a little sluggish, not that the weight isn't possible but that the movements take a bit of time to get the form down. I've experienced this the last 2 days. Usually for the me the 2nd week back in the gym is when the fun happens.