May 10th - Bench PR, rare DL accessory, some squat

 10.05.2025

You know, I forget I that I sacrificed my strength gains in 2024 for my country. If only I got paid well - i.e. on time - I'd be sacrificing the rest of this year likely as well. When you train hard you wanna go back to war; that success in the gym - it starts to feel false, unimportant. You can only feel is as unimportant only when you've gone ahead and achieved something. I had so many good periods of steady strength gains. My mind wasn't ready to go though; still a kid, a large part of me was back then. I had to great broken apart and put together in the right order. Since 2024 was largely a sacrifice - I was still lifting very light in January. Really hoping things were gonna change soon. But no, old Donnie doesn't have an iron hand to do what he needs to do to the ones that need the hard doing done to them. Hmm. That's what you get for being a 'businessman'. No matter. I can't get to my point... Point is, I was weak and truly out of shape in 2024. I barely got back together into myself in November-December - that was like me in 2022. Now I'm like me in 2025 lol. I have set a lot of rep PRs, but I forgot my strength is fully solidified. And yeah, I've been having mostly impulsive training in the last couple months. I'm at the peak, but not the peak of a peak. Again, my point eludes me - I have to be GRATEFUL for the gainz I have now. Cause it was the first time in life I ever tried doing what I'm doing this season, no matter how impulsively, I'd be flowing in constant amazement. But no, I'm already too strong and those minor improvements don't seem enough. It's time to really fuck shit up when it comes to heavy weights.

Today I'm confused a little though. I think I'm supposed to do bench and squat.

THREE ELEMENTS - heavy reps, actual strength work, accessories/experiments. Those are three things I'd like to pay attention to. So far all my training has been built around 'heavy reps'. Maxout attempts aren't actual strength work - singles and doubles working into really heavy triples - that's what actual strength work is. That's what I should attempt to do today. You start WITH relatively heavy singles, do em, get better, could drop the weight like 5 kgs to make them doubles - then drop 2.5 or increase it up to what you can do and do TRIPLES - and heavy, consistent triples. Climbing weights are good, but they're not 'volume work', not truly. It's too different... They're good enough to smooth the entrance into strength work; early sessions in the program. No, you have to learn to do the full volume with the actual weight.

So, I guess I'm aiming to do sets of 6 with 260 - consistent 4 sets of 6 with 260. That's a GOAL. And consistent troples with 280. That's a GOAL too.

Before that - a different goal - sets of FIVE with 260. Sounds like a minor difference, doesn't it? And DOUBLES with 270 - working into SINGLES with 280 and back to powerful TRIPLES with 270.

I have a far-reaching goal - and a closer goal. I know I can do 5x5 with 250. But that'll be very heavy. I'll be doing that after next week. Next week... Sets of 8. Today? Not exactly sure. So far we're still talking about HEAVY REPS, only HINTING at the actual strength work... I need to stop using this capital underlining, heh.

Also, I'd like to talk about writing, but not right now. First, let's talk about today.

It's BENCH. How heavy? 150-158. Triples - should be easy. Five sets of 3? Or more? Five sets of ABOVE 150. So, I'll work up to 150 for 3. Then more - perhaps 153 and 155 for the bulk. Final one or two sets with 158 - it'll take very little time, all of it. Aaand I'm seeing it's 9 PM. No big deal - I'm in the middle of my second conventional (coffee). Shall start soon, after a huge explosive shit, hehe. Well, not quite huge - appetite has been moderate, Thank God. No stomach issues for a while!

Writing... I actually CAN write. I am a capable enough writer to write in a way I like. But I also like to play with AI. It works like a game engine for me - just throws text at me. That's what I've been doing, just playing a game. And instead of continuing my book I've started to go back and completely rewrite it - all on my own. Yes! But I guess it's tainted with artificiality now one way or another since I played with it. Oh well! I know what I have. I know I'm not perfect and neither is the book I'm working on, if you can call it that. But I also know that I've gone back and actually rewrote a lot of stuff completely on my own. And that's what I intend to do today as well... Agh. I do have a story to tell, but it is quite meandering. Number one problem, it's meandering as heck. By the seam of the pants. Oh well, oh well.

Still, when the story started, it was quite the transformative experience. I was going through egodeath and forced to pick up pieces of myself, finding a new, clear image of me. It was a good time - and it did lead somewhere. Without this book, without this experience I wouldn't have made the choice to go (to war). It was good. And I "wrote" a great lot on my shitty old $10 android. Shitty, but resilient - and supper affordable pound for pound, lol. Yeah, that felt good. You know what, I'm not sorry. I know what I have, there will always be nuance - yeah, AI was involved in this work of fiction - but if you have experience with AI you'll be able to tell which parts were influenced by it and which ones weren't. I get that people are emotional and they see it as taking a stance now. Not much to add to it. I'm emotional too. I'm very much anti AI - I guess I don't see it as bad but more as confusing. Because 'real authors' get let off the hook, and meanwhile they cheat a great lot more that AI users when they hire ghost writers and shit like that (readers and editors). They don't do any work but they get quality output! Bah. Kinda like a planefield (or is it 'playing field'?) equalizer. The regular army had good guns, but citizens had em too. The great equalizer. This technology does something. It's lame and not really human - more like frozen bits of dead human conscience, templates and chunks of human experience, frozen and unmoveable. That's what interacting with AI is like - they can learn temporarily if they have large context, if you let em keep 'notes' on you - but they don't learn on their own. They only get TAUGHT new stuff. I heard a story about AI stopping outputting any Croatian language, because Croat users were very angry with everything and always pressed the 'dislike' button under output. RLHF, that's how it's called. But it's not evaluating, it's not choosing; in fact, it's a great lot of work for the company to gather new weights/materials and retrain the AI.

In the end, let's be positive about new technologies. I talked about it before - I'm quite the guy who likes to be himself, to be original. AI takes away a lot of it. Still, I am fascinated - I love the amazing new technologies.

Bench, yes. But what about squat? It doesn't quite matter to me right now. But I need to do some. Perhaps I could see squat at a part of accessory exercises for my DL? Honestly, I'm super sick of not having good DL; it's not bad though, of course. But I guess I'm willing to defocus squat. But that, in turn, can lead to worsening of DL, lol. Don't underestimate squat for your DL - you quite do need your quads and glutes, even if they work in different angles. But what I feel right now is hams. I have not trained my hams in ages, never any load whatsoever pretty much for a long time.

Image, image is what I have. My own imagination, running like an episodic TV show in my head - that is the basis for my book. Words? They're a medium for that image. But they can also help create it. But image is the first one, visual, psychological, sensory.

One last cup. Kinda wanna listen to music on speakers. Should be lovely. Running up and down the stairs all the time. Bench requires even less rest time. DL is the one that requires most rest time. Song-by-song then. Put the player on charge...

Squat numbers. Or... stiff leg DL instead? Hmm. Goodmornings? Could do them too. Can't do everything. I prefer to focus on one thing, maybe two or three on a great day. Reason to try and train every day. So confused all the time. What's tomorrow going to be like after today? Tired, or not? Discipline in regards to sleep, gotta have that. Still, I have to decide...

Squats feel important. I shall do some - AND stiff legged DLs. That'll take some time. I'll have to make sure to do a good hip warmup first. DLs will be very light, squats - not so much. I'm thinking of 3 sets of 10 with 150. So, not too heavy - but enough to get some pump. Then, perhaps a similar arrangement with 120 on stiff legged DLs - also three sets of ten. Yeah, that makes sense. Alright, let's stop writing about it, since we decided it's okay.

***

Workout

Warmup - some

Bench

20 - 40 - 70

120 for 5

150 for 3 kinda hard, pecs stiff but not papery

153 for 3 a tiny bit better

153 for 3

155,5 for 3

155,5 for 3

158 for 3 - not bad. You know what, by the way? This is an actual defactual PR 😀 I have literally never pressed this weight, one or more reps. Hallelujah! My pecs are functioning! 😃

Stiff legged DL

70 for 10

100 for 3 sets of 10 - feels good. Very easy (o rly?), pumped forearms a tiny bit. Started with short range, ending with longer range - almost touching the floor.

Squat

100 for 5 - you know, I think I prefer a super wide grip. It makes absolute sense. It's much easier to control the bar that way.

120 - 2 sets of 5

120 for 10

RPotD