My training log and thoughts

 27.02.2021 Crazy day. Woke up at 4:30 Am after, I think, baout 7 hours of chaotic dreaming. My dreams were quite metamorphotic this night. I'm in "normal" sleep schedule state, so if I stay awake at nigh i'm inveitably going to crash, like I did yesterday. Today I had decent time, eveything is a bit blurry. Decent breakfast from old leftovers. Early workout - I was done with the majority of it by 4 PM! Rare for me. Did a lot of recording Bannerlord footage after that - just played a bit. Bench press Warmup 132 - 4 sets of 4 - easy enough 70 - 3 sets of 15 Squat 70*10 90*10 nice Floor supported ring pullups - 3 sets of 15 - got my right arm nicely pumped, lol Drummed a bit in between sets, tried some linear drumming - pretty hard. I made sure to keep bass and snare on bear and tried adding different elements on "ands". After I was too tired of Bannerlord, I switched to my old laptop and jammed a bit - I think I'm coming up with a groovy bluesy doomy new ...

 23.02.2020 Well, I got a new cable, and I'm writing these words from a new PC. Immensely hyped! That's about it for now. I'm installing Steam and all the other things.  24.02.2020 Nice day. I downloaded Bannerlord and multiple other applications, including OBS (Open Broadcasting Software - an app that allows you to stream and record videos from the screen of your PC (Personal Computer)). Deadlift Warmup 190*5 200*5 205*5 210*5 270 got it to my knees - silly me Drummed a bit - I've been sort of copying jazz drumming style, with the curious patterns on the ride, so I repositioned all of my cymbals, so, from right to left it's china - heavy 14 inch cymbal (top hi hat) - my cheap crashy ride - and my 14 inch super light cheap crash used as a top hi-hat, on top of the second heavy cymbal. I really like those chesp heavy Brahner cymbals as a ride - but I think I'll definitely have to use them sparingly. Drummed for quite a while and enjoyed it, slowly moving from lig...

22.02.2021 Well, it's technically monday, but it's still sunday for me. Did a couple things, felt good, then I fell dead asleep til evening. My little brother woke me up playing drums downstairs. That put a smile on my face. I received an unexpected gift from someone - felt immense (for 23rd of february, Defender's day in Russia, and for many people it's just the "Men's day". Curious, isn't it?) They gifted me two packages of tea, one of instant coffee of decent quality, and one massive mug, which is great, cause we never have enough of those. Anyway, I made myself one cup of instant coffee from one teaspoon of powder, and then i suddenly spent a lot of time being musically productive. I recorded more than 2 minutes of drums for my current song (work title "prayer_doom"), and then I played all bass part for them, and then I played guitar until about 3 am. Felt massive. I should play on bottom string more, ha ha - the "higher octave"...

 20.02.2021 Nice day. Still in my cycle of "wrong" sleep schedule - but, at least, I was able to record some nice music at night, just like in the old days. Guitar isn't too loud when I plug it into the interface. I really wanna buy monitor headphones, but are they really worth it? Anyway, today I showed some of my recent music to my mother and my little brother, I think I started writing so heavy that even my little brother doesn't like it too much. But at least my expectations regarding the overall tone were confirmed - it's heavy. Can never be too heavy, am I right? And I have a very deep voice with my weightlifting chest sreams. Goota utilize the diaphragm, amirite? Well, you can listen to my song in the presious post. Hopefully, by the time you're reading this, Bandlab isn't dead. Perhaps I'll be posting this song on Bandcamp as a single, maybe even later in this post. I hade a couple "covers", using old artwork. I like to keep it simple...

18.02.2021 Nice day. Recovery 5/7. Deadlift Warmup 160*8 overhand - nice 180 for three and a half reps overhand, 4 with straps 180 - 2 sets of 8 - all dead stop Felt tired. I think my CNS is worked up nicely. After all, monday was very heavy, and yesterday too. Unloaded the plates. Floor supported pullups 2 sets of 10 Legs raised - 10 reps Some bicep curls 31*3 very strict right about the same, but less strict with left. Now, for the actually important revelation of the day - my new single release! I posted it on bandlab, so I can embed it here. It's good enough for quick music sharing, imho. And the embed feature is pretty awesome. And I'll reserve Bandcamp for "more serious", full releases. Soundcloud is also somewhat acceptable, I guess. Then again, maybe I shouldn't take everything so seriously. I'm not Manowar, I'm just one man. I'm not making any money from this. Bandcamp shall be mine! Ha ha ha. Well, I'll have to be careful. I must promote ...

 17.02.2021 Nice day. Sleep schedule, once again, is a bit broken. Yesterday I spent two hours after midnight recording three minutes of guitar for my new song. Well, recording and learning. It's really nice and moody, the first part is just pure doom. Then it goes into my typical "melodic part", then it will go into something else, I guess. Had a somewhat moderate amount of coffee today - two batches of three small cups, both about 90 beans. Right now I don't feel too caffeinated. I'm probably gonna end up tunneling the internet for a few more hours. Actually, i can't believe it's not midnight yet. How quaint! The sun started going to bed much later. It's still bright on the street at 6 PM. You know these scientific facts, yet you enjoy noticing things like that. Overhead press Warmup 90*5 100*4 107 - 2 sets of 4 - then I realised I'm supposed to do 4 sets of 3, not 4. Pushpress 120*2 120*3 nice - much smoother. I imagined I'm just gonna press...

 15.02.2021 Nice day so far. Did some work. Yesterday I assembled an old metal shelf, and put it behind my desk, so I can put my new monitor there. And now I also have way more storage space, ha ha. One week left until my new PC is delivered. Yesterday I made an impulse purchse and finally ordered new drumheads for my mounted toms. I ended buying thinner, cheaper heads than the blue one that I currently have on my floor tom. If something doesn't feel right, I can just retune some of them, or so I think. Having a 100 beans coffee cup, with some butter and sugar. Butter is basically like cream, but it has more fat, it's pretty great. I'm thinking of making another cup, since nowadays I bew coffee in a way that doesn't extract as much caffeine into the liquid. Perhaps, seeing how today is a relatively heavy day, I should consider letting more caffeine into my system?.. We'll see how that goes. Well, I made another pot of coffee with 135 beans, and brewed for a little l...

 13.02.2021 Nice day. Once again, my sleep schedule is a little bit broken. Decent breakfast, a lot of "espresso" style coffee - i.e. I didn't boil it for long, so the taste would've been weak if I hadn't used a lot of beans. I have a rather insane amount of beans today, actually - almost 300 overall, so if I were to actually extract all caffeine from them, that'd be 570 mgs of it. But it was quickly brewed, so there was much less caffeine. Floor-supported ring pullups 10 50 - rest/pause, massive muscle burning, moderate pump. Bench 70*10 bad warmup, didn't feel good 90*10 120*10 127*9 didn't bother too much, stopped here. I definitely worked my shoulders hard enough on thursday. Bench is still sort of a support movement. 90 - 2 sets of 20 70*20 Practiced drums with my little brother. Had a lot of fun in between sets. All the family seem somewhat joyous for some reason. That feels great. After the session I sang a lot - got my vocal cords really tired....

 11.02.2021 Nice day. Overhead press 100 - 4 sets of 5 Pushpress 70*3 70 - 2 sets of 7 I decided to curb my enthusiasm and not combine heavy press and pushpress on the same session - because it effectively doubles my training stress, because, inevitably, I have to warm up properly. Also, quite crucially, the pushpress is a significantly different exercise in comparison to simple overhead press. It's much more of a compound movement, and thus more technically demanding (to a degree, at least). And I think I delivered a certain amount of damage to my knee during the last few pushpress sessions. I need to work on a smoother technique - my back is way more tight nowadays, so I can't fix the bar "behind my head" so easily. On a pleasant note, I think I've been growing in size lately and I've been looking more and more impressive in the mirror. Which reminds me - I think I would enjoy doing some bicep curls right now. Maybe even something heavy. Well, I finally orde...

 10.02.2021 Nice day. Mostly empty. And I just found out that tomorrow is also empty. (I.e. no work - not very good, lol) But at least I might have found one new client today, which is splendid. I work as an english tutor. It's a lovely occupation, but I'm hoping to obtain myself another freelance occupation some time soon. I keep dreaming about it so much I fear disappointment. Which is why I still should "go hard", so I avoid the trap of evading disappointment. You have to expect something to get something. Not necessarily true, of course, but it's more of a psychological trick. Deadlift Warmup 120*5 160*3 straps 200*2 230*2 easy enough 240 - 2*2 242*2 - braced incorrectly, so my second rep was lame 245 - planned to load 250 to get roughly 92% of my estimated max, but forgot to change a 5kg plate on the right side for a 10 kg plate. Still, the lift was super easy, cause I finally amped myself up - screamed a tiny bit, listened to some fast tempo music, it's ...

 08.02.2021 Nice day. Recovery = not the best. Overhead press Warmup 70*5+1 pushpress 80*5+1 pp 90*5+1 pp 100*4 poor technique - my throat started to feel sore every time I entered the garage. I thought the air in the garage must be vile and cold. Then I remembered that I sand on saturday, and calmed down a bit. The arteries in my lobes weren't feeling too swell, however. 100*5 better + 1 pp Pushpress 110*5 115*5 115*5 last rep - didn't lock out the right elbow completely, so not sure if it counts. My technique is still not very good. I think it was better today. Thrusters 50 - 4 sets of 5 - felt good Some bicep curls. Random pic S of the day https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/2871-photo-review-7893-passenger-plane/ An ancient lego set. Inspiring.

 06.02.2021 Nice day. Did a lot of drumming! Finished recording, basically. Mixed it all up very well in the Cakewalk. Mostly adjusted the fader. Made it simpler, made reverb simpler. I don't need a bus for reverb tail. Not for my songs anyway. Not right now, at least. I'd love to experiment more later. There are very simple addons to make a single mic drum track "bigger", I think most DAWs come with stock spatial/panner addons. Took me quite some time to record everything perfectly, especially once I started grooving and headbanging, striking silly poses. It was lovely, but it distracted me from judging my own perofrmance. Anyway, now I have it. I "augmented" many single hits with additional cymbal samples, and even augmented a couple fills in a nice manner (my own samples, just for clarity). I think I really want to buy a new crash, something a bit heavier and more sustained. The crash that I have has a slightly more "splashy" sound, especially i...

 03.02.2021 Nice day. Overhead press Warmup 95*5 kinda hard 97 - 2 sets of 5 - easier Pushpress Warmup 112 - 2 sets of 5 - really hard, I need to get used to it better. A much more compound exercise than anything I've done recently. Barbell thrusts (front squat + pushpress) 70 - 4 sets of 3 04.02.2021 Light day. Energy levels moderate. Pullups (rings) Warmups with rubbers 2 sets of 10 - floor supported 2 sets of 10 - legs raised, from seated on the floor, dead stops 10 reps floor supported - kinda hard to get high volume today Some light curls with dumbbells EZ bar curls 29*15 29*30 some light cheating, gotta do them more often perhaps? And some bodyweight squats, 5 sets of 10 Random pic of the day

 01.02.2021 What a lovely day. Woke up relatively early. Had some things to do. Did those things. Had some fun with the guitar and drums - I can play single pedal faster than before, but still have some problems staying in rhythm. I think I'd have less problems with an 8-beat metronome (2 times faster), but I only had my phone today (I should consider searching for more versatile metronome apps). Decent high-fat breakfast - rice and pork. A lot of sugar throughout the day. Many cups of thick Earl Gray. Also, I scribbled out a riff for yet another song - this time in D (melodic) Phrygian. Had some coffee - the first batch tasted quite poorly, the second batch was quite nice, yet my stomach started to hurt. Had one antacid or something pill, I think it helped a bit. I remember when I had quite excrutiating stomach pains in the army, and a year after that, when I was stressed for a week. And now it's been gone for a very long time, except sometimes I make a silly mistake like this...