Coach Nicholas Weir

Legs from last Friday

Probably the best hacks have moved for me.

Eccentrics felt controlled, I was able to maintain position well and concentric velocity was noticeably better across both sets.

Pretty much the exact opposite to how yesterday‘s leg session went… the same loads felt considerably heavier.

I also regressed by a rep on both sets and rep velocity was worse. The eccentrics didn’t feel as controlled, concentric speed was down and the entire movement just felt “off.”

Initially, that was frustrating because on paper there weren’t many obvious variables that had changed. But looking back, there were two worth considering.

First, I had more knee pain during yesterday’s session.

Pain isn’t simply a sensation that exists independently of performance. Nociceptive input from the knee can alter quadriceps activation, force production, rate of force development and motor control. Even relatively minor discomfort can change the way you load and coordinate a movement.

Second, last week I did my cardio until after both leg sessions (not before). Yesterday, I performed cardio roughly an hour beforehand.

Aerobic work performed prior to resistance training can acutely reduce subsequent lower-body strength-endurance, power and movement velocity, particularly when the same musculature is being used.

Neither of those variables allows me to say, “this definitively cost me one rep.”

But combine some residual peripheral fatigue from cardio, an irritated knee, poorer bracing/mechanics and suddenly the difference between an exceptional session and an average one becomes pretty easy to rationalise.

Something I think is worth remembering when analysing training:

Performance ≠ strength

Your underlying strength and hypertrophic progression don’t suddenly disappear because one session produces a worse number.

So rather than emotionally reacting to a single regression, identify what changed, control what you can and see what happens at the next exposure.

So, cardio is staying after training on leg days from now on, the knee will be monitored and we go again Friday.

SA preacher x2
Inc. DB curl x2
Seated ham x2
Laying ham x1
Leg ext x2
Hack x2
Glute drive x1

Weekly update.

Not a particularly exciting one this week. Just continuing to tick boxes and live out the glamorous hobbybuilder lifestyle.

Appetite is fairly non-existent at the moment, although given my body fat is quite high relative to where my body would physiologically prefer to sit, I can’t exactly act surprised by that.

I’ve included a slightly less “classic” front double biceps in this week’s update as well.

You’ll notice I’m not really bending the knees and trying to manufacture more quad sweep or exaggerate the lower half. That’s intentional.

I was talking to my friend TBK about this the other day and we were discussing the idea that, ideally, the X-frame should do most of the talking for you.

Obviously posing exists to accentuate what is already there. That is quite literally the point of posing, but there’s a difference between presenting the physique well and trying to pose your way into proportions that the physique itself doesn’t actually possess.

At some point the tissue has to do the heavy lifting.

If you need to contort yourself into oblivion to create the illusion of an X-frame, the solution probably isn’t another posing cue; It’s probably another few years of growing the areas responsible for creating one.

Which, conveniently, is also where I’m at.

There’s still quite a bit of tissue missing from my physique, particularly if I want the structure to look the way I’d eventually like it to look without having to manufacture it through posing.

Fortunately that problem has a fairly simple solution.

Time.

BW: 106.7kg

Nutrition:

HD: ~200P / ~750C / ~35F (1)
TD: ~200P / ~600C / ~45F (3)
NTD: ~200P / ~450C / ~60F (3)

Fluids: ~5L
Na: ~3,700mg
K: ~10,000mg
Mg: ~1,200mg
Ca: ~1,800mg

Training: Upper/lower 4x/week

Test: 150mg Dr. prescribed (same as the past 25 months).

RHR: 42
BP: 105/54
FBG: 3.9 mmol/L
Steps: ~20k/day
Sleep: ~8 hrs

Cardio:

TD: 30 min elliptical (~120 bpm)
NTD: 30–45 min elliptical (~120 bpm)

💻 Coaching ➡️ NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪

Or

www.universalperformancecoaching.com/coaching-enquiries

The Original GymPin STATUE
DRIVEN NUTRITION STATUE
Medibolic - Health Supplements STATUE
International Protein Official STATUE

Step maxxing
Digestion maxxing
Health maxxing
Melanin maxxing
Pump maxxing
Glucose maxxing
Work maxxing
Life maxxing

Monday: legs + biceps.

Another productive outing with 4.5 plates on the Cybex hack. Five relatively comfortable reps, and arguably the best this load has moved to date.

Touch wood I don’t somehow manage to jinx what has been a suspiciously good run of training lately.

Also committed the heinous crime of adding one set of reverse EZ-bar curls at the end, purely to give the brachioradialis a little more direct attention.

One set, one slightly different function/line of pull, very little additional fatigue. Given muscle growth is fibre specific, sometimes adding a strategically different exercise is a more sensible way to cover a muscle than simply doing more sets of the same s**t.

Anyway, long may the current winning streak continue.

Session

SA preacher x1
Incline db curl x2
Rev EZ-bar curl x1
Seated ham curl x2
Laying ham curl x1
Leg Extension x2
Hacks x2
Glute Drive x1 (best hip thrust machine ever invented).

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these. A few weeks, actually.

Things have been travelling well, although I do have a confession.

For reasons that seemed completely reasonable at the time, I’ve been tracking my “fasted” bodyweight in possibly the most unnecessarily autistic manner imaginable:

Wake up ➡️ drink 2L fluid ➡️ fasted cardio ➡️ weigh myself ➡️ subtract 2kg ➡️ record as morning weight.

‘ScIeNcE’ haha!

This morning I went back to how I used to weigh myself, the way I ask every athlete I coach to: toilet, then weigh in before fluids/cardio.

Turns out I’m actually ~106.5kg, not ~104.5kg.

So I’ve been understating my bodyweight by ~2kg for 3-4 months, while convincing myself I’d developed a sophisticated method of measuring it.

…Excellent.

Regardless, training is progressing, body composition is somewhere I’m happy with despite carrying a decent chunk of fat through my lower back. Health markers remain excellent and I’m SLOWLY accumulating more tissue.

I’ve included two front double variations to show how significantly posing alone can alter perceived muscularity, shape and overall look )worth remembering before diagnosing yourself with 14 ‘weak points’ after one s**t photo).

The health-maxxing hobbybuilder era rolls on.

BW: 106.5kg

Nutrition:

HD: ~200P / ~750C / ~35F (1)
TD: ~200P / ~600C / ~45F (3)
NTD: ~200P / ~450C / ~60F (3)

Fluids: ~5L
Na: ~3,700mg
K: ~10,000mg
Mg: ~1,200mg
Ca: ~1,800mg

Training: Upper/lower 4x/week

Test: 150mg Dr. prescribed (same as the past 25 months, no other androgens).

RHR: 41
BP: 107/55
FBG: 3.9 mmol/L
Steps: ~20k/day (15k at 7° incline)
Sleep: ~7.5 hrs

Cardio

TD: 30 min elliptical (~120 bpm)
NTD: 30 to 45 min elliptical (~120 bpm)

💻 Coaching ➡️ NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪

Or

www.universalperformancecoaching.com/coaching-enquiries

The Original GymPin STATUE
DRIVEN NUTRITION STATUE
Medibolic - Health Supplements STATUE
International Protein Official STATUE

Solid upper session today.

Today was meant to be a rest day, but I swapped yesterday’s training day with today.

Tuesdays have become one of my busier work days lately, with more client check-ins falling on a Tuesday than a Wednesday, and right now my athletes are the priority. I’d rather move my own training around than rush through check-ins or have my attention divided between the two.

So, Tuesday became the rest day, Wednesday became upper, and it actually worked out pretty fu***ng well.

If anything, the extra day between legs on Monday and upper today probably contributed to how good the session felt.

Something people underestimate is the amount of fatigue that carries over between sessions, even when you’re training completely different body parts.

Legs Monday and upper Tuesday might not have much local muscular overlap, but that doesn’t mean Monday’s session exists in a vacuum. There’s still fatigue as a cost of training hard.

An extra 24 hours can make a difference.

A few nice progressions throughout today’s session as well.

Nothing in the form of more reps or more load, but on a handful of movements I matched last week’s performance while finishing the sets with what I’d estimate to be an additional rep in reserve.

Progress isn’t exclusively adding another plate to the bar or beating the logbook by a rep every week. If the same performance costs you less than it did previously, you’ve improved.

Very solid session all round.

Bench supported pushdown x2
BTN pulldown (frontal) x2
Pulldown (sagittal) x1
T-bar row x2 (1 set transverse, 1 set sagittal)
Lateral raise x2
Pec fly x1
Incline smith x2
Pullover x1
Calves x2 (not shown - nobody cares about calves)

Legs + biceps to kick off another week of training.

Wasn’t feeling particularly great going into this one, but ended up being a very productive session regardless.

First set of hacks moved better than I expected 4 plates/side x8 and with ex*****on staying pretty much identical to last week, but one rep up.

So naturally, I got a little greedy on the second set…

The sensible move would’ve been match what I got last week (4¼ plates/side x5) but after how that first set moved I had to give 4½ a crack.

Ended up getting 5 reps, and had I not fu**ed up my bracing on the fifth, Trav and I were confident there was another rep there.

Appreciate Travis John being there for the spot 🤝🏼

That puts me back at my recent all-time best, which is a nice little milestone considering how the knee/hips have been the last couple months.

More importantly, it makes the goal of getting to 5 plates/side (for reps) by the end of the year look like it’s still very much on the cards.

There’s obviously a balance between being patient with progression and knowing when to take the opportunity to push.

You don’t want to add load for the sake of adding load if ex*****on starts falling apart BUT when everything is moving well and you’ve earned the opportunity to take a bigger jump, sometimes you just have to fu***ng send it and see where the chips fall.

DOMS have already set in though, so I’m definitely paying for that decision today 😂

Very productive start to the week.

Full session across the slides.

SA preacher x2
Incline DB curl x2
Seated ham curl x2
Laying ham curl x2
Leg extension x2
Hack squat x2
Glute drive x1

Athlete recap: CHLOE SULLIVAN

Week 1 vs Week 100 of us working together

Bodyweight (left): 63 kg
Bodyweight (right): 51 kg

There’s a lot more represented in these two photos than simply 12 kg of scale weight….

When Chloe and I first started working together, despite competing always been the ultimate goal, it wasn’t the immediate objective. The initial priority was getting her into a better position to actually leverage the kind of progress we wanted her to make as an athlete.

We initially spent time working through digestive issues and improving body composition before moving into an extended improvement phase. From there, we used a brief tidy-up phase and subsequent pre-prep to establish the starting point we wanted before committing to her first contest prep.

Across those 100 weeks, the biggest change wasn’t simply getting leaner. Chloe built considerably more shape and muscularity, improved the quality of her training and ex*****on, and ultimately developed her physique to a point to which a commencing her first contest prep was feasible.

For a first-time competitor, she handled prep exceptionally well. She was consistent, coachable and had an admirable degree of mental fortitude throughout, and we left no question surrounding her level of conditioning when it came time to compete.

Despite being a true novice natural competitor, Chloe earned first call-outs against competitive lineups that included seasoned athletes crossing over from other federations to IFBB for the first, and she held her own.

The judges’ feedback was equally useful. Conditioning wasn’t the limitation. The recurring theme was simply the need for greater development in a few key areas.

And that’s probably the best feedback we could have received.

Her first season gave us an objective benchmark of where the physique currently stands and, more importantly, a very clear picture of what needs to be built next.

I am excited for the improvement phase that is to come and to see the day that Chloe steps on stage again to beat her best.

📈Offseason/Contest Prep Coaching NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪 (link to website in bio)