Turning 30

It is great that you realize that you need to get those meals in and you can do better.
One question is why are you only giving yourself 30 sec inbetween sets. This will make it so you are not able to use that much weight. If it is because you are fearful of thumb I understand but if you think that shorter rest periods will result in better gain that is untrue. Try to stick with the rest periods that are laid out for you

Keep up the great work and I love the long detailed responses to your daily activities
 
The 30 sec intervals is just the seated rowing (I edited the text to make that clearer), I'm sticking to the specified intervals :)
 
My triceps are sore today? I have no idea of why. I'm eating better, eating more, not really doing any new exercises, hitting my triceps less than my old routine. I'm used to doing 3 exercises 3x8 for triceps. It's weird.

Offday today

Meal 1: Oatmeal, blueberries and protein powder
Meal 2: Shake and chocolate skimmed milk
Meal 3: Tune with ezekiel bread
Meal 4: Lots of chocolate skimmed millk
Meal 5: Chicken with rice and indian korma sauce, a beer, and a bit of chocolate cake and fruit (we had friends over and the gf made desert :) )
Meal 6: Salmon steak and brown rice. I dry fried the salmon for way too long, it tasted like crap and I felt full but I ate my way through 2/3 of it, then it got too disgusting and a little bit came back up :( Chucked down some protein powder to compensate and figured the cake probably accounted for the carbs I didn't get.

Also added some olive and flaxseed oil during the day.

I'm at a point right now where I'm hungry before meals but still feeling full. It's going in the right direction. Before all of you "3 meals a day is fine" crowd jump in, I'm not capable of eating more than 600 calories in a meal unless I eat something real fatty, and I don't even like fatty stuff. 5 meals a day I could do, but the best bulking results I ever got was on 7 meals a day. I have a real small appetite and naturally go really skinny.

I had my first full day at the office since I started the diet, and it became obvious I can't do 3 lunchbreaks during office hours (which is why there's so much chocolate milk in there today). I now remember why I dropped this stuff back when I started working. So I'm going to do 1 real meal during work, and 2 meals of shakes and almonds. The almonds was suggested by BigStew and probably better than the chocolate skimmed milk I normally use.
 
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Sometimes you have to work through soreness. Your body will get used to being beat up after a while, but you'll have to endure some soreness for the time being. Doing new exercises with different ranges of motions, and different weights will cause this, as you know.

Smith machine squats? I know your knees are bad but you gotta get off that thing. If anything, you can do box squats or single leg stuff, both of which are far superior to smith machine squats.
 
Your triceps get a lot of stimulation from compund movements like presses for shoulders and chest that is probably one of the reasons.

Great job with your eating. I am glad that the shake worked out well for you
 
Smith machine squats? I know your knees are bad but you gotta get off that thing. If anything, you can do box squats or single leg stuff, both of which are far superior to smith machine squats.

It was because I had an injured thumb, I couldn't handle a barbell on my back with it.

Btw, my gym doesn't have "squat rack" (don't know the name), so I'll have to do squats by getting the barbell off the floor. I hope that won't be a problem (I never did squats or anything for legs really).
 
Working legs are pretty important for stuff like body recomposition (as opposed to the importance of leg training for climbing), and squats are probably the biggest/best leg exercises out there, so it'd probably be in your best interest to plan on getting to a squat rack sometime in the near future.
 
Yeah, my gf got me to go to this gym, it's all very nice and polished and brandnew technogym equipment, which they like and I don't really care about. But they lack so much equipment, probably because they don't want body builders. Heaviest dumbbell is 65 lb, way too low for proper lowrep bench press. Heaviest lat pulldown load is 220lb, I can't do that yet but I'm getting close and I'm only 171lb.

I probably need to find a new gym.

On the good news side, x-ray results came back, the thumb isn't broken! So it's just a sprain, I won't have to get it cast, and it's sort of ok for most things now, it'll just take a few more weeks for it to heal up properly.
 
Btw, my gym doesn't have "squat rack" (don't know the name), so I'll have to do squats by getting the barbell off the floor. I hope that won't be a problem (I never did squats or anything for legs really).
Run like crazy and get out of that place! A gym without a squat rack is as much use as a car without wheels.

You could of course ask them why they don't have a squat rack?
 
I take it you guys think that barbell-of-the-floor squats suck?

If you can clean as much as you squat then great, but that's pretty unusual ;) and you'd only really be able to do front squats.
I think a lack of a squat rack and the light dumbells shows that the gym has a bad attitude in general towards weight training.
 
Well, I'm a bit unusual in that I stopped training my legs 10 years ago and kept on working on the upper body. I can't really remember what I had on the smith when I squatted, I think it was 120lb, which I could get on my shoulders. I was more worried about the dismount, I don't think they like you dropping barbells 5 feet at that gym :)

But of course I'm going to progress fast with the squats, so I'll have to find another solution.
 
I think I'm losing fat. My stomach skin at least seems thinner. Since I'm supposed to be bulking, that worries me.

Maybe I'm getting too few calories, maybe my trained-hard-for-the-first-time-in-a-decade legs are sucking up any and all nutrients AND then my body fat too, maybe all these complex carbs are magical, maybe I'm just wrong.

I need to get some calipers.

Or how do you guys keep track of whether you're gaining or losing fat vs muscle?
 
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DOnt worry brotha you are starting to eat healthier so your Bodyfat will come down a little as you probably are not holding as much water becuase you are not taking in a many junk calories. You are eating plenty of calories if you follow what I laid out for you
Keep up the great work
 
Meal 1: eggs and oatmeal, some berry I don't know the name of (no blueberries at the store
Meal 2: The Shake plus almonds
Meal 3: tuna with ezekiel bread
Meal 4: The Shake plus almonds
Meal 5: steak with brown rice and cabbage (not feeling full anymore, adding veggies again)
Meal 6: steak with brown rice and cabbage

No time for any more today, bedtime. Got a long day tomorrow, final training day for my hunter's license. It'll screw up my diet bigtime :(
 
Your abdomen might look skinnier because your abdominals are tightening up, which isn't necessarily a bad thing...your transverse abdominis, to be more specific. It's kinda the "hold it in" muscle.

But looking skinny and actually being lean is different. You might be able to suck it in more, but as long as you're getting bigger muscles and eventually losing definition (if you keep the bulk up), you're doing the right thing.
 
Yesterday's diet was a mess, I won't even bother typing it up. I spent all day at a hunter's course, shooting skeet, practicing the firearm safety drills for the exam, range estimation exercises, a lot about deer hunting, and so on. That was the last of the 3 day course, and hopefully I'll pass the exam in 10 days :)

But I couldn't really eat proper stuff there, and afterwards I got a nice 3 course gourmet meal with some friends, and a few beers and drinks.

Today probably won't be optimal either, since I got a bit of nausea and didn't get up until 9.
 
Yep, me too, was out late last night plus beers, not feeling optimal today - then again it is Sunday. Good luck with the test!
 
Yesterday's diet was a mess, I won't even bother typing it up. I spent all day at a hunter's course, shooting skeet, practicing the firearm safety drills for the exam, range estimation exercises, a lot about deer hunting, and so on. That was the last of the 3 day course, and hopefully I'll pass the exam in 10 days :)

But I couldn't really eat proper stuff there, and afterwards I got a nice 3 course gourmet meal with some friends, and a few beers and drinks.

Today probably won't be optimal either, since I got a bit of nausea and didn't get up until 9.

Sometime you just need those days off but try to do your best to get back on the horse and eat the best that you can today. Dont let one bad day turn into 2.
Good Luck
 
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