Block 1

[@liftingweights]

Good lifts ! 👍👍🙏🙌

[@supahliftah7934]

Looking great man!

[@arashlatifi1233]

I feel like you've been lifting the same amount of weight for like 5+ years now?

[@tiagovasc_]

Not that many, but yes, your point holds. Life happens. Injuries, vacations, other goals (for example I do a fair bit of running now), etc. But despite all that, I've put a decent amount of muscle since I began (I'd say around 10kg), and everytime my strength dips, it comes back relatively quick. For example now I've doing hypertrophy for ages which made my lifts drop (even more with the coronavirus which I was without a gym and couldn't do BSD), but I'll likely comeback to my old peak strength in a few months. And in addition, I've competed every year, and every year I have made progress since the previous meet, which is good enough for me.

[@arashlatifi1233]

@@tiagovasc_ I mean you have lifting videos from 6 years ago. I can see them on your channel. Most untrained guys can get a 100 kg+ bench press in less than 6 months of training. Are you eating enough food?

[@tiagovasc_]

@@arashlatifi1233 But I wasn't as strong as I am now, and I was much heavier in the periods where I was stronger. Many people can easily get to 100kg bench, but some cannot. That doesn't necessarily mean there is something wrong with it. People have different strengths. Bench in particularly is something that I always sucked at. And during the past year I gained almost 10kg of bodyweight, which is eating more than "enough" by definition.

[@arashlatifi1233]

​@@tiagovasc_ I think it's your training intensity man, with all due respect. You have a very good squat but I think you can improve your bench if you train harder. 100 kg is a novice-intermediate lift for 99% of the general population. It's not something that is "out of reach" for most people, barring an extreme genetic outlier. I don't think you're a genetic 'snowflake' in that sense. I think it's an Occam Razor situation where the most likely explanation is the answer even though it may be hard to see for the person in question. I think you can make the genetics argument for an advanced/elite lift like a 405 bench. But anything in the 200 and 300s range is do-able natty. Surely in 6 years. Just look at guys like Omar Isuf who weigh the same and are as tall as you and they're benching in the 350s after 6-7 years of natural training. These are also people who aren't particularly "genetically gifted" either.

[@tiagovasc_]

@@arashlatifi1233 If anything I train my bench much closer to failure than anything else. In fact, likely to a detriment. I've always trained closer to failure because I always feel guilty (I'm not "training hard enough") if I don't. But what actually allowed me to get from a 80 to 90kg bench in the past was actually not training so close to failure all the time on bench so I could recover better. Except in a meet, I haven't failed a single squat rep ever. And very few deadlifts. I have failed a lot in bench whenever I have spotters. Even if it is "99%", that's a LOT of people. If there is a million people training, that's 10.000 people. What makes it so unlikely that I am one of them? I hate saying I have bad genetics for bench, because I don't want it to be an excuse. But when people try to argue that it's just because "I don't train hard enough", and they are making that statement out of their asses just because my bench isn't as strong as the average, that's pretty ridiculous.