Life Without Leg Day

Some people don't like training legs. I can't.

Since I started rehab for my IT band syndrome, I haven't trained my lower body once, and I've stopped long-distance rides too.

Not being able to train legs killed my mood and my drive for the gym. From June on, I didn't set foot in a gym once, and didn't do a single full workout.

But now I've realized that rehabbing IT band syndrome is a long game. I can't wait until it's completely healed to start training again. So after I got back from Shenzhen last month, I decided to start working out again.

No lower body. Upper body only.

I've trained six or seven times in the past two weeks, and right now it all feels really bland.

Life without leg day is so bland!

Every time I go to the gym, it's either chest or shoulders, or arms, back, core and so on. I've always trained on a three-way or four-way split, very organized. But now that I can't train legs, my brain feels scrambled. I keep not knowing what to train before I go to the gym.

I'm genuinely curious: how do people who skip legs plan their training??

But sighing about it won't fix anything. I still need to find the fun in where I am.

One part is pull-ups. I've set myself the goal of conquering the pull-up, so every session I do some dead hangs and assisted pull-ups. The intensity isn't high, and I'm progressing fast. At first I couldn't even hold a dead hang for more than ten-something seconds. Now I can hang steadily for thirty.

With dead hangs, at around thirty seconds, the calluses on my palms hurt a lot, and that pain is basically what makes me let go. So for the first time ever, I bought a pair of training gloves to protect my calluses, and now I can hang for the full thirty seconds.

I don't know what thirty seconds means for unlocking the pull-up, but at least the progress is clear.

The other part is shoulders and chest. I've started focusing on building strength on the bench press. I'll be honest: after a year of training, I can only do sets at 40 kg consistently. That's not much to show for it. Never mind doing sets at 100 kg, I at least want to get to a 100 kg 1RM. By that math, I should be able to toss around 60 kg pretty easily.

Shoulder training is really just a substitute I found once I couldn't train legs.

Building wider shoulders is genuinely worth it. After all, looking good is a big deal these days.

So now I have a separate shoulder day. Shoulder training mostly doesn't use very heavy weights, and weight isn't the top priority anyway. I mainly focus on my rear delts and side delts, and don't care much about the front delts. In practice, though, only the side delts can be trained properly with lateral raises. The rear delts are a bit hard for me to train.

Usually you train rear delts with cable face pulls or bent-over reverse flyes, but I'm not good at either. On face pulls, even with a very light weight, I tend to cheat with my lower back, which is dangerous, so I'm not doing them right now. As for bent-over reverse flyes, I tried a few times and found that maybe because my shoulder abduction is a bit limited, I can't really feel the target muscle working.

So lately I've also been deliberately doing some shoulder abduction and adduction drills, hoping to make some progress on reverse flyes.

There's one more rear-delt exercise I think is good: the cable crossover face pull on the cable tower. When I do it, I can feel my rear delts working clearly, and my lower back doesn't cheat. It's my go-to rear-delt exercise right now.

So those are roughly my main storylines at the moment.

First, unlock the pull-up.

Second, get stronger on the bench press.

Third, put some real work into my shoulders.

I think it's going pretty well. At least that lost feeling of not being able to train legs is slowly fading.

Training is training, whatever you train.