THT 4.0 HIT Experiment Week #5

I'm not your typical bodybuilder. I'm an "IT guy", a car tuner, a model train enthusiast and a PC gamer. I'm also a classic "hardgainer". Ask away with any questions you might have! Read more from this author

To be fair, I’m writing these next few entries solely from my logs. I ran into a tornado of fun at work (We’ll call it fun) and I was left without much time for this sort of stuff in the evenings. I did manage to get in my workouts tho.

Day #1:

Hack Squat – 340lbs x 8 (fast week for increases, squats we to below 90 degrees)
Smith bench – 270lbs x 8
Incline bench – 180lbs x 6.5 (positioning is tricky here as the bench can move. It takes time to learn where to position correctly)
Seated rows – 250lbs x 8
Seated calf raises – 210lbs x 7
Seated universal overhead press – 170lbs x 8
Kneeling universal ab crunches – 235lbs x 40 (changing up weekly or so between these and seated universal crunches)
Single cabled bicep curls – 95lbs x 6 per hand
Smith machine trap shrugs – 280lbs x 6
Single cabled tricep pushdowns – 80lbs x 8 (was too light here, big jump for day 2)

Day #3 (bad scheduling):

Hack squats – 350lbs x 8
Smith bench press – 280lbs x 6
Incline bench – 190lbs x 5 (finding the right Range of Motion and bench position is crucial here)
Seated cabled row narrow grip – 260lbs x 6
Seated calf raises – 220lbs x 5 (my Range of Motion here is far better than the last time I worked at this weight)
Seated cabled overhead press – 175lbs x 6 (an interesting thing occurs after this week)
Kneeling cabled ab crunches – 235lbs x 50 (sets of 15, final set of 5)
Single cabled bicep curls – 95lbs x 8 (note: the numbers here don’t matter – don’t be daunted by what I do)
Smith machine trap shrugs – 280lbs x 8
Single cabled tricep pushdowns – 90lbs x 6

Items of particular importance:

I didn’t realize until I reviewed my log for the past three weeks that I had only managed to get three days in the gym for each of the last three weeks. Life gets wonky for me sometimes and this is a textbook example. It’s entirely possible that the extra day of “rest” allowed me to continue and sustain this level of growth where a sustained four-day approach might well have burnt me out. That’s merely conjecture at this point and I’m just happy to have kept progressing all of the way along – except for one area. Not a plateau so much as much slower progress than the rest of my body. Stay tuned and find out.