A Journey to Remember - Day 4 & 5

Day 4 was a week when I decided to hire Brian as my coach and build muscle to compete in the MABBA Fall Classics as well as it was rest day. It’s surreal that I made the decision to bodybuild and compete in a competition. It’s as if I’m still dreaming and I’m still deciding whether or not to do this, however I am doing it and going through with my decision. It was nice to have a rest day after training pretty hard the three days. Rest days are nice, but I do still have to work harder in order to build more muscle and bulk up a lot if I want to be where I want to be. I know it sounds harsh and I should not be so hard on myself, however I think the reason as to why I am so hard on myself is because I don’t want to give up and it’s a way of motivating myself to keep going and to push through.

Day 5, hypertrophy push was interesting when I was working out on this day. Usually I don’t have a problem with working out, but for some reason I was not able to do well in my opinion. The workout plan called it to be all push, which consisted of incline and flat dumbbell presses, chest crossovers, etc. However, there was one workout that I had to do, which was the rope face pulls. I didn’t question the fact that it was on a push day, maybe it’s because the following day was a pull day. Regardless I still did the workout. When I was doing the rope face pulls I did notice that I’m stronger on my pulls rather than my pushes. This was really interesting and very odd. I’m not sure if it is just me, but I always thought I was stronger on pushing rather than pulling and I was wrong. To give an idea of what I mean on my bench press I can bench two plates (one of each side) of 30lbs plus the bars, which is 45lbs making it a total of 105lbs. With the rope face pulls I was able to pull 110lbs. Mind you rope face pulls consist of using a cable machine. Regardless of the machine my pulls are a bit stronger than my pushes, even if it is just a difference of 5lbs from the example. Nevertheless I’m still improving and plus its only been 5 days since I started.

So far in my journey I have noticed a few things. One is the amount of food I have to consume in order to reach my daily macro goal. Second my push exercises need far more work than my pull exercises. Third, I have a long way to go. Although these seem very minor, they are big changes that I have to make in comparison to what I was use to during the summer and into fall and winter. I am continuing to learn as I go into my second week making those tweaks in my workouts. Going into my second week what I’ll do is I’ll push myself to workout hard on both push and pull days but I’ll workout harder on my push days. Also I’m a little confused as to what hypertrophy days are. I guess I need to do more research.

But I do have a question. Do you find that your push exercises (i.e. pushups, triceps, etc.) are weaker than you pull exercises? Also what motivates you in situations? It doesn’t have to be working out but in other scenarios such as assignments, work, goals you want to reach. 

Let me know write a comment. I’ll appreciate all submissions and reply to each one.