u/Greedy_Author3855

You need to find the pain & stay in it

The first step is actively building the skill of having a good mental connection to your muscles. I’m limb dominant, it’s harder for me to grow my chest & back. When I realized I don’t naturally connect well to these muscles I started passively flexing them a lot just trying to contract my pecs or lats as hard as possible so I could translate that to the gym. No I don’t mean “walk around flaring your lats.” Just work on being able to activate them at will. Grease the groove type thing

Like I said the next step is translating this mental connection to the gym & trying to keep it established throughout every set. Put the tension on the muscle from the very first rep, before you even begin the set, & focus hard on not losing it. When you feel that pain right in the target muscle, stay in it. Maintain that feeling until you know you’re getting close to not being able to do more reps, & then make your eccentrics excruciatingly slow.

One good example of this that comes to the top of my head is rear delt training. Nowadays it’s easier for me to find the mental connection but in the past it was harder. So I’d lay chest down on a bench & start doing rear delt flies with light weight. Would initially feel nothing because I couldn’t activate them at will, but after doing a bunch of reps I’d start to feel some burning in my rear delts & upper back. That’s the cue to lock in on the burning in your rear delts, stay in it the best you can, & finish off the set.

I’m dead serious about this

Like a week ago this guy my age, 19, early 20s came up to me while I was training back & gave me a compliment, “bro you’re crazy“ something like that. Then he asks me “do you looksmax by chance?” Which caught me off guard & also made me internally cringe but I just told him ”yeah bro I guess so haha”. He asks me what I did, tell him I lost a bunch of weight, took steroids, fixed my skin/eyebrows/whatever. Then he starts going on about how “god made me in his image & I don’t need to do any of that, I look great already” etc. I was dubious about his sincerity, halfway thought he was trying to fuck with me because I seemed autistic or something but I just said thanks bro appreciate it & left it there

Anyways he comes up to me again today & we chat about gym stuff for a few seconds then he asks me if I’m still taking steroids. again I told him straight up yeah man I just started a new cycle I’m tryna bulk up. This time he goes off on the same tangent but even longer. Telling me that steroids shut down your test & sperm production like yeah motherfucker I know that lol. apparently his mom competed in the IFBB & saw people end up with health issues from gear use. When he said that I took him more sincerely & told him that I take care of my health, my blood pressure’s great etc. He says again anyways that I’m the best looking guy in the gym & I need to stop lol.

At this point I lost my pump cuz he’d been talking for 5 minutes so I’m like let me hit my set first. Then he asks if he can say a prayer LOL. Dude legit put his hand on my shoulder & prayed like “Lord please help Greedy_Author understand he was created in your image & make him stop injecting himself” etcetera etcetera

Takes the cake as the new strangest gym interaction I’ve ever had & also shows me what I get for being honest instead of lying like most people would lmao

Suicide fuel

Mom I want to be a freak

Freshman year I was in this chick’s car & saw a package of those “diet pills” / ”fat burner pills“ / whatever on her floorboard lmao. Some sketchy gas station shit. I have autism so immediately I’m intensely interested in this & reading the ingredients & asking about it. It had a bunch of caffeine in it, Yohimbine, green tea extract etcetera plus some “proprietary blend” shit so I knew off the rip it was probably panic attack & cardiac event in pill form

She tells me it flared up her autoimmune condition & made her break out in hives or some shit like that so I’m even more interested now. Ripped em before hitting back. Immediately drop an explosive missile in the toilet. Walking to the gym I’m already feeling cracked the fuck out & my dick is the size of a baby carrot. Crazy tunnel vision. Way stronger than anadrol + caffeine + ephedrine lol. Of course I start dumbbell rowing the 130s with shitty form & heart rate is through the roof. Never felt it higher than that even fast forward a couple years later when I’m messing around with clenbuterol, Tren, thyroid hormones. I’ve also taken DMAA & adderall before the gym before

Chest was also feeling tight. Remember having to sit down multiple times during that workout because I was actually concerned something might happen. Was definitely a good workout tho. Crazy that this shit is getting taken by girls who are 5’3

& Listen

I’m a legit fat guy so this isn’t me trying to act like I’m too good to consume slop. No joke I’ll bust down an Arby’s fish sandwich 7 days out of the week. This is not like someone performatively saying “ughh McDonald’s is so gross!1”

Full sugar soda just seems gluttonous on another level that’s completely unnecessary because there’s a diet option for everything. & the diet/zero sugar options taste good. Like there’s no fucking way you’re going to order a fast food meal and get 32 ounces of full sugar Dr Pepper with it. Straight liquid carbohydrates with zero buffer. Slamming glucose into the bloodstream as quickly as possible before sitting on the couch to eat & watch Netflix so you can become insulin resistant & get your feet cut off with maximum efficiency

Get the fuck out of here bro

Beast mode is a term that people like to throw around ironically or as a joke but it’s a real thing. It’s the mental state you have to enter to accomplish anything impressive and difficult if you weren’t born with the ability to do it effortlessly. If you want to get really good at anything & you weren’t born talent you have to get obsessed with it. Everyone knows this 

Yesterday my boss (obese) said I used to be such a nice person when I first got hired freshman year & now I have no personality or some shit like that. She likes to fuck with me to try & get a reaction so initially I was like yeah whatever lady but I was thinking about it & she’s right. I used to be a lot nicer before I started taking steroids & got tunnel visioned. The flip side to that is that I was also an emotionally reactive bitch. It’s a lot different now. I just don’t care about shit. It doesn’t affect me & won’t knock me off track. I don’t really have a conscious focus where I have to make myself do whatever needs to get done, it’s embedded into my psyche. Doing shit I don’t want to do isn’t a mental battle like it used to be. I just meditate & do it. When you’re unhappy but you need to do something to achieve your goal… you just meditate & you work 

This is what you need to develop when you’re trying to achieve something hard over a long period of time. Especially something like building a really good physique where all of your actions matter 24/7.. how you sleep, every set in the gym, what you put in your mouth. Your mind should be like a steel trap. If whatever degenerate loser friends you have get upset that you don’t want to drink tonight & that’s enough to knock you off track then you better tighten up or you’re not going to achieve anything impressive

All of the great bodybuilders had this kind of resilience to a high degree. Look at Ronnie Coleman… constitution of a horse. Nothing bothered the fucking guy

u/waxcaba requested an updated daily routine which I didn’t really want to do since I’ve been dieting so it wouldn’t be that interesting but I do want to talk about my plans for the next 4-6 months. 

In early July I was a big bloated jackass clocking in at 230-235lbs. Even though I got too fat for my liking I had fortunately pushed my food up relatively gradually so the metabolism was firing nicely & the process of dieting wasn’t terrible. By the very end of August I ended up in the low 190s with ab veins, lat veins, uncomfortable to sit on the toilet because I don’t have much fat on my ass, etc. So I was pretty happy with the results of that cutting phase. 

That was accomplished with 45min of incline walking pad every morning, fasted, after taking 37.5mcg T3, 80mcg clenbuterol & 200mg caffeine. I started at 25mcg t3 & 20mcg clen then pushed it up over time, by the way. Lowest my food got was 2600 cal on training days and 2400 on rest days. Protein stayed at 230-250g from quality sources the entire time, split up into 6 meals. Anabolic support was 280mg test prop per week then 70mg per week of tren ace got added once my food got lower. 6mg of retatrutide weekly, injected e3d.  

Mass cycle will be 600mg test E, 300mg equipoise, and 25mg Anadrol preworkout twice a week when I train the body parts I want to make the most progress on. 200mg NPP will come into play after probably 10-12 weeks. Total length of the cycle I want to be 20 weeks.

Ancillaries/health support/peptides: 

• GHKCU @ 5mg every day to every other day. Skin quality. 
• Retatrutide @ 1-2mg e3d.  Insulin sensitivity, cholesterol support
• Melanotan 2 @ 500mcg once weekly before tanning bed. To not be a pale pasty Timothy. 
• Baby aspirin @ 81mg daily. For hematocrit purposes
• Tudca @ 1 gram on days I take anadrol. Liver support
• Empagloflozin @ 10mg daily. Insulin sensitivity & kidney protection. 
• Eplerenone @ 25-50mg daily. Aldosterone blocking & water retention control. 
• Cialis @ 10-20mg daily. Mogger vascularity & blood pressure support. 
• Ashwaganda @ 500-1000mg daily. Sleep & neurosteroid support 
• Dutasteride @ .5mg 3x weekly. Hair loss & skin quality 
• RU58841 @ 1ml topically every night. Hair loss. 
• Ezetimibe @ 10mg daily. Cholesterol support.
• Doxepin @ 5mg daily. New sleep med I’m going to experiment with 
• Isotretinoin/accutane @ 20mg EOD. Acne prevention

 

Yesterday was my first time pinning test E/EQ. Those drugs both take a while to start working so the bulk is not in full effect. While waiting on those to saturate I’m continuing with 280mg test prop & beginning the process of slowly pushing my food intake back up while tapering down all the fat loss agents. I added 200 cal to my training & rest days (from carbs) & will be keeping an eye on the scale. Cardio got cut in half 

In terms of diet, general structure will be the same with 6 meals and 230-250g good protein divided up throughout. Like I said before, carb intake is going to get slowly pushed up as my metabolism & body composition allows. I’m also going to start using a real carb cycling setup with a mild deficit on rest days & placing my high carb days on the body parts I want to improve the most. 

Also going to just start eating a can of sardines every day in one of my meals for the EFAs/omega 3s since I hate spending money on OTC supplements. Between this, Reta, & ezetimibe hopefully I don’t plaquemaxx my arteries too much. Going to be aiming for 1.5-2 gallons of water daily since hematocrit is now a bigger concern with boldenone. 

This time around I also plan to focus harder on making sure my digestion runs smoothly.ive already implemented a serving of natural sauerkraut with meals 3x daily & will continue with that along with eating Greek yogurt & fibrous veggies like I’ve been doing. Also going to work to diversity my diet further - different carb & protein sources including a variety of fruits & vegetables every day. Don’t have the specifics of that worked out but will get on top of it once my food intake gets higher to allow for it.  

Fasted cardio is going to stay in. Probably 25 min every morning. I have no excuse to be a fatass now that there’s a walking pad in my living room. It’s routine now so I want to keep it going. I’ve also come to appreciate how good it makes me feel. If you’re in a hard deficit & doing 45 minutes of it then you feel wiped out physically afterwards but mentally you still feel good. If it’s a shorter duration & you aren’t in a deficit you feel good physically too.  

Last but not least, training. This entire cutting phase I’ve been working hard on not training like an asshole & learning how to stimulate the muscles properly. Not that I’m now following some gay Mike Israetel training methodology. Just trying to make the muscle move the weight instead of putting myself in the most mechanically advantageous position to lift the weight from point A to point B. I think this will make one of the biggest changes in my physique once the calorie intake & hormonal environment is there to support it. 

The new split I’ve been running is chest/biceps/triceps, delts/back, legs. Back & delts are going to be the Anadrol days 

The new trend in the “fitness community” is low volume training & everyone seems to be excessively worried about fatigue

I’m not saying that low volume can’t/doesn’t work (see: Dorian Yates) but it’s not probably going to be the best approach for you if you’re a novice, beginner, or intermediate for various reasons. For low volume to make you grow as well as possible, every set needs to be very stimulating. Your sets become more stimulatory over time the better you get at training.

The better you are at training, the better your mind muscle connection becomes. This is the conscious aspect of it. When your muscles are too small or you don’t have enough training experience it’s hard to get a perfect mental connection with a given muscle & really destroy it when you’re doing a minimal amount of sets. This is more common with certain muscles across the population (chest, back, rear delts) but also varies person to person. Some people never struggle to find mental connection to their lats while others need to work really hard to achieve it. Also- training intensity in general - the ability to push to & past failure while maintaining the proper muscle tension - is a skill that develops over time. This is why you don’t do “reps in reserve” until you’ve been training for a while. You need experience to know where your absolute limit is

The non-conscious aspect is that consistent training for years allows your sets to be more intense because over time your body can recruit more motor units.

Lastly, the load being lifted also plays into total volume. To put it another way, you doing a set of behind the neck press with 100lbs & failing at 5 reps is not the same as Dorian Yates doing it with 405lbs & failing at 5 reps even though his muscles are bigger & he’s able to lift it. When your muscles are small & weak the amount of fatigue generated per set just isn’t the same. Also, since I’ve mentioned Dorian Yates twice now, let me just say that when you’re observing a guy like that or Ronnie Coleman or Kevin Levrone it’s good to keep in mind that all of these guys are genetic freaks & would have been jacked as fuck no matter how they trained

If you “can’t eat enough,” “can’t hit your protein goal,” or you just can’t consistently stick to a clean meal plan, however loose or structured that may be, almost 100% of the time your problem is that you don’t plan ahead. I don’t care if you’re a truck driver, if you work in an oil field or if you pull 10hr shifts on a jobsite every day or whatever. You’re on rs_fitness so you probably have a WFH job where you lackadaisically alternate between reading Dostoyevsky & talking to ghouls on zoom calls all day but anyways

• You need to have protein & carb sources pre prepared at a bare minimum. There is a 100% chance you have time in your week to do this. Cook a week’s worth of chicken breast, ground beef, fish, baked potatoes, rice, etc & throw it in Tupperware. When you need to eat you pull these Tupperwares out of the fridge & take what you need. It would also behoove you to keep around cans of tuna, whey, Greek yogurt, sardines, boiled eggs, a container of quick oats, minute rice, so that you have options if there’s a gap where you run out of food or need the quickest possible meal. 
• As far as fat goes- you can get by without added fat if you eat salmon, eggs, sardines, beef, etcetera but getting added fat is pretty easy. Store bought guacamole is great - most of it is just avocado with seasoning & maybe some onion, tomato. No extra cals. Avocado obviously takes no preparation. Same goes for Natural peanut butter or almond butter. Same goes for MCT oil. 
• As an add on to the last paragraph you need to figure out how to make the food taste good. Learn how to cook. eating sawdust chicken breast with no seasoning is not necessary, it can be flavorful & tender without being calorie dense. keep multiple pre mixed seasoning blends around as well as basics like MSG powder, garlic/onion powder, cumin, chili powder, etc. Put some butter & cilantro in your rice. Shit like that. 
• Condiments are huge as well. Mustard, spicy brown mustard, sugar free bbq/chili sauce, whatever hot sauce floats your boat. On the sweet end of the spectrum you have cinnamon, sugar free maple syrup, sugar free caramel, apple pie/pumpkin pie spice, stevia powder. All of this can go in oatmeal or Greek yogurt & actually make it taste good. 
• Meal timing. This is huge. 4-6 meals or “feedings” per day with protein evenly distributed throughout. This is how you get your protein down. Again, planning ahead: people think eating 200g protein is hard but it’s really not hard at all when you plan ahead. Yes it’s hard if you eat 100g protein at once twice a day like a jackass. Don’t do that. Eat smaller portions of protein & carbohydrate every few hours. 
• Note that I also said “feeding” and not just “meal.” If you actually do have a job where you’re traveling around a lot, doing long manual labor shifts, or just not in a good position to sit down & eat solid food then bring prepared shakes including whey, yogurt, peanut butter, bananas/fruit, oats, etc depending on your goals. 
• Food selection. This is another area where people majorly fuck up. A piece of advice that’s commonly given to people struggling to gain weight or eat enough is adding in fatty/calorie dense foods like peanut butter, whole milk, cheese, etcetera. This isnt at all a bad strategy & does work for a lot of people but for others it’s going to make the issue worse because of the way that fat slows down gastric emptying. It’s easy for digestion to become sluggish & kill your appetite if you’re trying to force feed food that’s too rich. If this is the case for you then play around with keeping fat content low-moderate & still spacing out your intake into 4-6 feedings. Carbs & lean protein that digest well for YOU PERSONALLY. Cream of rice, rice cakes, pasta, white rice, cream of wheat are probably the best possible options here. people were debating about this in another post here saying that rice & pasta are terrible for people who struggle to eat, but they aren’t if you TIME THE MEALS PROPERLY
• Again, everything you eat needs to digest well for you personally. Physiological response to food varies so widely. There are people out there who can’t digest white rice. If your digestion isn’t moving along well you need to experiment with different macro sources until you find a combination that works
• Careful with fiber if you’re struggling to eat enough. Fiber is great for your health but is going to create the same issues with bloating & slower gastric emptying that fat causes. Do not try to cram down oats, potatoes, & vegetables with your protein if you have poor appetite

 

Last chest day I walked away from the smith machine to take a piss. Bar was fully loaded & my shaker bottle of water was sitting in plain sight. Come back out & this Chinese guy has started taking over the machine. He hadn’t removed my plates yet, I just saw him putting his stuff down. I informed him I had a couple more & he walks off. This fuck had apparently adjusted the bench/moved it backwards somehow but it was subtle enough that I didn’t really notice since I was in a rush. So I bring this heavy ass weight down to my chest & then fail the set because the bar being too low threw me off

day before yesterday Im hitting legs, same situation, leave adductor machine to piss, my shit is sitting right on top of the machine. Come back out & a Chinese lady is sitting on it doing partial reps with 55lbs on the stack. Like, 30 degree arc range of motion. I‘m standing there waiting on her to be done & her set must have lasted 2 minutes

Yesterday was chest again. I was at the beginning of the workout so I’m walking towards the back of the gym where they keep the resistance bands & TRX bullshit so I can warm my shoulders up. I’m walking across the aisle & see this Chinese guy in my peripheral vision walking in my direction from like 10-20 feet away holding 2 kettlebells. I’m prepared to move, but as he got closer it looked like he was turning to walk behind me so I’m like aight we’re good. At the last second, this fuck makes like a 90 degree turn & walks right in front of me. So I’m forced to abruptly stop in my tracks to avoid him

Is there a conspiracy going on?

- John Meadows/Mountaindog1. Formerly one of the best coaches in the game (RIP) & a prime example of a guy who didn’t have good genetics but worked his ass off to get freaky jacked & shredded. Has like 2 million instructional videos about training every different body part on his channel. This is the guy to defer to if you’re trying to learn how to execute movements, structure workouts, etc. Also has a bunch of good programs available online if that’s your thing.

- John Jewett. This guy is a little gay sometimes but he’s still a great resource for anything bodybuilding related & his training instructionals are valuable.

- Chris Tuttle. One of the best coaches in the game. Does a lot of podcasts & is a great source of knowledge on everything from training to diet to drugs etc… believe he’s a registered dietician. Also a good personality/entertaining to listen to. Doesn’t make instructional vids like Jewett or John meadows but give some of his podcasts a listen.

- Seth Feroce, Evan Centopani, Nick Walker: these are more guys that are great to watch as examples of how you should be training.

First time since the diet started. Theres been zero cheating or slip ups on this one but I got fixated on the idea of a chipotle bowl for multiple days straight. So I ate that & then had a full tub of nonfat Greek yogurt with sugar free syrup & cinnamon plus some chicken & baked potato. Straight bullshit but it was good. Hopefully it’s out of my system. We’ll call it a refeed

On a side note I quit kratom completely like 2 weeks ago so that’s been good. 

The diet is reaching that point again. Getting out of bed is harder, cardio is hard, going to w*rk is hard. All I really feel like doing is laying down. Lately I’ve been zenned out. Can’t afford to let shit get to me & spend most of the day in my own head. I’ve started treating the day like a cardio session. I do 45 minutes on the treadmill each morning. When I’m doing that & the stopwatch reaches 15 minutes I’m 1/3 of the way done. Then at 30 I’m 2/3 done. My day is similar in the sense that it’s 3 blocks of time. In the mornings I clock into the pissing me off factory. After getting off I have to go train. Then I come home, eat, & go to my second job. After training & eating I tell myself “15 minutes left” 

In regards to being more zen, the strategy I’ve been trying to use to lessen some of my neuroticism is going places with the mindset of not absorbing any energy. I don’t care what other people are doing, I don’t have any emotional reaction towards it. I imagine myself walking around surrounded in a reflective translucent bubble that bounces shit off of me. Especially in the gym. I’m only there to output energy, can’t absorb anything. My brain needs to turn off, the analytical processes need to go quiet, that’s stopping me from outputting energy 

I’m not present for most of the day, even if I’m engaged in a talk with someone I like it doesn’t feel like I’m fully there. I think about reaching my goals around the clock & I visualize the mutation I want to have. I already achieved something like this & sometimes still feel surprised when I look in the mirror especially during times when I’m lean & striated. I’m going to stay locked in for 2 more bulk & cut cycles

There’s a lot of people online nowadays who say things like “bulking is cope” “food isn’t a stimulus” as a reaction to the older gym/bodybuilding culture of GOMAD type of activity & becoming obese on your bulk. Theres also a lot of dorks online who think that things like meal timing & eating a clean diet are “bro science cope” because IIFYM & CICO and etcetera even though guys that got huge have been utilizing nutrient timing & eating clean bodybuilding diets for decades (meaning there’s many years of empirical evidence behind doing this.) 

First thing I want to talk about is the “bulk cope/food isn’t a stimulus” thing. The statement “food isn’t a stimulus” is objectively false. There are two pathways in your body that are relevant to muscle gain- MTOR and AMPK. The former is the “growth” pathway. when MTOR is active your body is in building mode, this pathway comes on only when it senses that you have enough nutrients to justify letting your cells divide. Whereas AMPK is more like the repair & conserve pathway. This pathway is active under conditions of caloric restriction, whenever you’re doing cardio, when glycogen stores are low, etc… helps mobilize stored fat & glucose so you have energy. It also inhibits MTOR. 

There are a few things that activate MTOR.. like resistance training, testosterone, but also INSULIN and PROTEIN… leucine specifically is good at turning on MTOR which is part of why it’s important to eat clean food & not proteinslop bars all the time because it “fits your macros.” Also, when is insulin released? When you eat carbohydrates. We all know insulin is anabolic. Protein & calories are like drugs by themselves. Food & nutrients increase IGF1 production in the body, they give you permission to grow & divide. 

What does this mean in practical application? It means whether you’re trying to conserve muscle or trying to grow, you should be eating frequent meals, bodybuilding style- 4-6 meals per day for women and 5-7 meals per day for men. Each meal should have a solid hit of QUALITY protein from meat, poultry, fish, eggs/egg whites, whey, etc… anything high in leucine. I just divide my protein intake evenly up throughout my 6 meals except a bit less is allocated to the preworkout meal for digestion purposes. If you’re trying to get bigger, obviously these meals should also contain enough carbohydrates to elevate your glucose/insulin levels. 

This also means that when you’re trying to grow, you should give yourself an abundance of nutrients. You don’t get big “maingaining.” Make sure that MTOR is turned ON as often as possible. I’m not saying eat junk food & get fat. Don’t do either of those things. I’m simply saying you shouldn’t go for long periods of time without eating & that you should be in a solid caloric surplus, not a fucking 150 calorie surplus that might or might not be a surplus depending on your step count for the day. If you’re on PEDs and you want to get BIG… like mutation… you need an excess of nutrients for that. You need the insulin and the IGF1 signaling constantly. 

Lastly, in practical application this means that you should take advantage of nutrient timing & manipulate your insulin production on purpose. Bodybuilders who use drugs do this to a more extreme degree by injecting supraphysiological amounts of insulin around their workouts & cramming hundreds of grams of carbs into the body. If you’re natty then you obviously aren’t going to achieve those supraphysiological insulin levels, but you can still take advantage of insulin by spiking your blood sugar before, during & after the gym. Eat the sugar when it benefits you. Get the glucose & the insulin circulating in your blood when you’re about to train & jam that blood into your muscles.