4/19/23
The 19th is late enough in the month to discuss how curling most days this month has worked out.
I did not curl every day, but most, and sometimes it was curls, sometimes reverse curls, sometimes both.
I started with reverse curls, then switched to mostly curling.
It may be one challenging set each day, otherwise something done more in the tone of moderation like 5×5 at what would be 12-20 reps had I repped out.
Now I have a different training history than most american males – I’ve mostly ignored direct arm work over the years, so if/when I do focus on barbell curls it’s effectively new stimulus for me.
Just before typing I curled 21x95lbs, a couple days back it was 12x115lbs, the heaviest reverse curl set was 12x95lbs about two weeks ago, though sticking to 65-75lbs is better stimulus there same as 95lbs vs 115lbs on the regular straight bar curl.
None of this may be “perfectly strict”, but it all passes my standard for “strict enough”, while none of it could be called “cheat curls”.
This month as I more and more closely approach 25x95lbs I laugh that I was once on the gym floor complimented for that as a cheat curl set, whereas now – on the opposite end of my 20s, it is in the ballpark of my current strict PR, soon to be passed.
A week or two back, on my roughly once a week set of pullups I hit 9 at a bodyweight of 290lbs.
I’ve long known more biceps = more pullups, which is something to keep in mind for those on the compound lifts only approach.
All those I’ve known to naturally be good at pullups are long armed and heavy on the bicep development with long bicep insertions.
I have trex arms, my natural proportions being a very thick chest, arms that look small to moderate in proportion, with very short bicep insertions.
The opposite of those natural pullups guys.
My best pullup ability came from moderate to high volume on a daily basis with lots of weighted pullups in there.
That was two summers back.
My bodyweight PR was either 27 or 29 reps weighing somewhere between 235 and 265lbs (somewhere on the lower end – I’d estimate ~245lbs – I was losing weight with a physical job and doing an hour of pullups, a good deal of them weighted, every night, with a rotation of three training partners), and in the same 6-8 week period I pretty regularly hit 20+ at bw+20-30lbs, regularly did moderate effort sets of 8, say 3×8 at bw+45 as a training stimulus, know I hit bw+70, and think I hit a very ugly bw+90 single.
Right now pullup ability is coming back, on a set once every 5-14+ days simply cause all the curling surely has me going the more biceps route while weighing my lifetime heaviest.
Again more biceps = more pullups, and this is going to be pretty substantial/dramatically so when you’ve disregarded curls for the half of your life that is your training history.
Persistence & Tenacity
Lifting Music :
nelly – air force ones (on repeat for the bulk of this months lifting)