It's been a while since I last posted about my workouts. There's a good reason for that: I had nothing to report.
Last I mentioned, I was switching to high reps, trying to take some time off for my joints, hhen I just took some time off for myself. I didn't work out much at all for almost a month.
Now I'm back, though, and have been lifting heavy for about a week. I'm using a workout based on the October issue of Muscle Mag International's 3 on / 2 off MASS workout, but my gym isn't open on Sundays, my evening schedule is sporadic, and I can't work out in the morning because the workouts are too long, so I'm down to three days at about 1:45 each workout. This is not actually too bad for gaining mass, because I have a lot of recovery tie and it's too cold to bike right now.
Diet-wise, I've upped my calories by about 40%, having two to three 600-calorie gainers a day. There's virtually no sugar in my diet now, and I've almost completely cut out snacks.
Because I'm only on three days, I've moved the MASS wokout exercises into a total-body format -- I just wouldn't get the frequency I needed otherwise. Let's look:
Body part
Monday
Thursday
Saturday
Legs
Leg presses Leg extensions
Free squats Leg curls
Stiff-legged deadlifts Calf raises
Chest
Straight bench presses
Inclined bench presses
Weighted dips
Back
Barbell rows (high)
Dumbbell rows (low)
Lat pull-downs
Shoulders
Upright rows
Dumbbell lateral raises
Free barbell shoulder presses
Arms
EZ bar curls EZ bar skull crushers
Seated dumbbell curls
Overhead dumbbell tricep extensions
Abs
Machine crunches
All the exercises get 1-2 sets as a warm-up, then three sets of 8 reps heavy.
We did a week of testing on teh workout, as usual, but this past week was the first really heavy week.
I had been working out in the morning due to time constraints, but that eased up lately. I enjoyed mornings because I had most of the equipment to myself.
Evenings, though, mean that I have plenty of energy to work out. Plus, there are a couple of new HUGE guys at our gym, and they make me want to push myself further than before. I watched them deadlift 200+ kilos last night. Envious!!
My heavy lifts are down a little from the month of high reps, but I'm doing hard five-day splits now.
Starting in December, I'm moving to the strict MASS program I got in my last issue of Muscle Mag International. It's Push/Pull/Legs. I'll post it later. I think this will be my last gain phase ever (I keep saying that), so I want to make it count. 10lbs of muscle in six weeks!
Today was Saturday, and I went to the gym to play around. I normally do very high-intensity workouts on Monday to Friday, keeping them at about an hour. I really miss the two and a half hour workouts I used to have in Thailand.
Anyway, I will sometimes train on Saturday and take my sweet time. I generally do whatever feels good or strikes my fancy on those days, trying out new exercises or routines. Today I decided (thirty minutes in) to test some max lifts.
Since I didn't have a spotter, I couldn't test the more dangerous ones like bench press and squat, so I did deadlifts, decline hammer presses, and leg presses. The results of my lifts were: Decline Hammer Press: 160kg (+rack ~10kg) x 4 reps Deadlift: 153kg x 1 rep (It took me two tries to get it) Leg press: 330kg (+equipment ~25kg) x 6 reps
I was really excited about the totals earlier, but now I'm just in pain.
45 deadlifts 45 Squats 45 Hack Squats 60 Calf Raises 40 Leg Curls Oh, the pain! The Pain .... Leg days suck, but they're awesome. What a contradiction.
Edit: I've added the boxing we're going to be doing into the schedule. Wow! Looks heavy. Until now, I've been focusing on strength training -- low reps and heavy weight. It's worked wonders. In the last nine months, I've started to look good enough to be proud of my body. It's probably the first time in my life that I can say that.
The constant pain and anguish that I put my body through is taking its toll, though. I'm tired of pain every time I move. My joints are killing me. I'm big enough, and I need to lose more fat so that I can show off a little of what I got.
Because of that, I'm moving to a high-rep routine after summer. Since my spotter was out of the country this week (Hi, babe! Miss you.), I tried out my plan to see how it worked. What were my thoughts on it? Any workout that makes me puke two to three times a week can't be bad ....
The system is three antagonistic super- sets at 10-15 reps per set, three to four super-sets per workout. When I can do 3x15, it's time to bump up the weight. Oddly, my tests with the workout showed that my high-rep weights weren't as different from my low-rep weights as I thought they would be.
As usual, my workout concentrates on compound movements, but I have a few more isolation exercises than usual, and I added an arm and shoulder day at the end of the week. If it ends up being skipped because I'm trashed, it's not a big loss.
Here's the split:
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Upper Body
Lower Body
Boxing
Upper Body
Lower Body
Arms / Shoulders Boxing
Hammer presses / T-bar rows
Dips / Low rows
Military presses / Lat pull-down
BB curls / EZ-bar skull crushers
Deadlifts / Leg curls
Squats / Squat-rack calf raises
Hack squats / Abs
Boxing work with Don
Incline DB presses / High rows
Decline hammer presses / DB low rows
DB shoulder presses / Chin-ups
DB curls / DB reverse-grip presses
Stiff-legged / Leg extensions
Leg presses / Leg-press calf raises
Sumo leg presses / Abs
Front / Side / Rear raises
Hammer curls / Kickbacks
EZ-bar curls / EZ-bar skull crushers
Revers cable curls / Cable push-downs
Boxing work with Don
The workout takes the equipment available at my gym into account, but similar exercises can be substituted (e.g. sumo squats for sumo leg presses)
That's right, don't think of the children: think of your legs.
I had a conversation with my friend at the beach the other day about his legs. He was complaining how he's genetically limited and will never have good legs. I felt bad for him.
Then I went home and woke the fuck up. Sure genetics plays a part in how much or how well a certain body part develops, just as genetics determines body type and that some of us (me) tend toward large guts and pipe-cleaner arms and legs, but dismissing working on them entirely is the weight-lifter equivalent of the overweight guy moaning about his predisposition while shoving Ho Hos down his throat.
My gal hates chicken legs, and I can't blame her. Actually, I don't think she minds if a guy is generally thin and has proportionately thin legs, but too many of them spend a lot of time at the gym working on upper body, then can't wear shorts outside because their legs are underdeveloped.
It's no wonder that most of them have thin legs, though. What's your workout routine? How many times a week do you work legs? If you do a five-day body part split, one of those is for legs, right? Hmmm. You're spending 80% of your time on your upper body and 20% on your legs. Is it any wonder why your legs aren't as big as your chest or back?
This is why I'm for one of two kinds of workouts: full body or upper / lower split. Your legs get the same time as everything else. Throw your lower back and abs into your lower body if you don't have enough time.
Beat those chicken legs! No one likes to see them, and you'll be really glad when it comes time to put on those Speedos.
Our most recent issue of Muscle Mag International had an interesting story which made us want to switch workouts. We're getting busier over the summer, so we have less time for working out, but don't want to lose the gains we've made. In fact, we'd like to continue making them even with shorter workouts. People are all over eating dog crap as a nutritional supplement, so we thought we'd try it, too.
What? We mis-read the article? Dog crap (DC) is the name of the training method? That's seems strange, but OK ...
DC is all about intensity. It is another take on High-intensity training (HIT), which can help people get past plateaus and kick their bodies into overdrive. We though we'd try it, too.
Frequent Body-part Hits Just like the Total Body (TB) workouts we've been doing, DC depends on hitting the same body parts much more often than the standard one-body-part-a-day bodybuilding workout. Since muscles start to atrophy after only 72 hours without lifting, this means that there is little time when muscle growth is in reverse. Our old TB workout hit the body parts three times as often as a one-a-day approach, while DC will hit twice as often. DC leaves room for more isolation exercises, though, which means that I can correct the lack of proportion in my arms and calves that the emphasis on compound exercises has left.
I should note that I'm not unhappy with TB. On the contrary, I recommend it for every beginner in order to jumpstart his or her metabolism and body growth. I have been doing TB or a variant for a long time, though, and emphasized compound movements over isolation in order to grow quickly. It has worked, but my calves and arms have lagged behind. Part of the lag is genetic: my father has toothpicks for arms and legs. Part is history: I was a swimmer growing up, and we all have thin arms and legs with beautiful chests, shoulders, and backs. Still, some of my problem relates to not having days devoted to legs and arms, when I would have burned up my biceps and calves. Really, my triceps aren't in trouble, so no worries there.
Rest-Pause DC training relies on the rest-pause (RP) set. I've never used this method before, so I had to do some research. You train with a single RP set, but it's similar to three quick sets to failure. Choose your 6-7 rep max, bang out seven reps to failure. Rest for 10-15 breaths. Knock out another set to failure -- probably 4-5. Rest 10-15 breaths. Knock out a final set to failure -- maybe 2-3 reps. Your total will be 11-15 reps for the RP set. When you hit 15 reps, increase your weight on the next day. Pretty simple and pretty damaging. Get your body part out of the way in under two minutes.
My only concern with this method is that I'm not warming up. I've been doing two warm-up (Cutler calls them "feel") sets for a long time, and normall spend that time making sure my form is right before I go heavy. I'm concerned a cold muscle will pull on me. Stretching and pre-workout cardio becomes more important in DC, I guess.
The Widowmaker We used to do our last set high-rep. Some exercises in DC are too dangerous to do with RP training, so they generally do a normal, heavy set and one low-weight, high-rep set called a widowmaker. I don't see how this last set differs significantly from what we've been doing for months, and I feel it is a good addition to any training regimen.
The Split Days are split into roughly upper-body and lower-body days, though biceps and forearms go on the lower-body days. There are three different workouts for each, which I've imaginatively titled A, B, and C. Since our workouts are four days a weeks (MTTF), we'll do the upper and lower A workouts on Monday and Tuesday and the upper and lower B workouts on Thursday and Friday. Next week Monday will start the C workouts, while Thursday will see a return to the C workouts. Get it? No? Maybe a table will make it clearer:
Day A
Day B
Day C
Upper Body
Chest
Inclined Smith Presses 11-15
Hammer Strength Presses 11-15
Decline Barbell 11-15
Shoulders
Military Presses 11-20
Machine Shoulder Presses 11-15
Upright Rows 11-20
Triceps
Reverse Grip Bench Presses 11-20
Close-grip Bench Presses 11-20
EZ-bar Tricep Extensions 15-30
Back Width
Chins 11-20
Close-grip Pulldowns 11-15
Front Pull-downs 11-15
Back Thickness
Deadlits 6-9 Straight + 3 mins rest + 9-12
T-bar Rows 10-12 Straight
SL Deadlifts 6-9 Straight + 9-12
Lower Body
Biceps
Preacher Curls 11-20
Barbell Drag Curls 11-20
Dumbbell Curls 11-20
Forearms
Pinwheels Curls 10-20 Straight
Forearm Hammer Curls 10-20 Straight
Reverse Grip One-arm Cable Curls 10-20 Straight
Calves
Leg Press Toe Presses 10-12
Hack Squat Toe Presses 10-12
Seated Calf Raises 10-12
Hamstrings
Lying Leg Curls 15-30
Seated Leg Curls 15-30
Sumo-style Leg Presses (heels only) 15-25 Straight
Leg Presses 6-10 Straight + 3 mins rest + 20 rep Wido
Week
M
T
W
Th
F
1
UB A
LB A
OFF
UB B
LB B
2
UB C
LB C
OFF
UB A
LB A
3
UB B
LB B
OFF
UB C
LB C
4
UB A
LB A
OFF
UB B
LB B
There. Is that clearer?
We did the first workout this morning, and the reverse-grip bench presses were a little strange for me. I kept feeling like the bar was going to slip out and land on my face. Hmmm. The chins were good, though, and I did eight on my first set. Gale did them with me assisting. I think she'll be able to do them on her own soon enough.
Well, I've been on Lipo 6 for the last couple of weeks. Gale originally ordered two bottles, but decided that it didn't work for her the way it should so she donated the second bottle to me. I'm sweating constantly.
I also felt like I'd gained a good amount across the chest, so I wanted to get measure ments. The results were shocking. My weight's up a couple of kilos and so are my measurements. I don't take much stock in the body fat calculation, though, because I figure that Lipo 6 is screwing that up. My fat can't realistically change that much in a month.
Here they are: BF% 16.2 Waist 40.5 Hips 44 forearm 14 wrist 8 arm 16.5 thigh 27 calf 17.5 neck 18.5 chest 47.5
From http://www.burnthefatblog.com/archives/2007/06/foods_that_burn_fat_the_top_10.php
1. Oatmeal (old fashioned) 2. Yams (almost same as sweet potatoes 3. brown rice (love basmati, a long grain aromatic rice) 4. Sweet potatoes 5. Multi grain hot cereal (mix or barley, oats, rye titricale and a few others) 6. White potatoes (glycemic index be damned!) 7. 100% whole wheat bread (not on competition diets) 8. 100% whole wheat pasta (not on competition diets) 9. Beans (great for healthy chili recipes) 10. Cream of rice hot cereal
My Top 10 top vegetables 1. broccoli 2. asparagus 3. spinach 4. salad greens 5. tomatoes 6. peppers (green and red) 7. onions 8. mushrooms 9. cucumbers 10. Zucchini
My top 10 lean proteins 1. Egg whites 2. Whey protein (protein powder supplement) 3. Chicken Breast 4. Salmon 5. Turkey Breast 6. Top round steak 7. Flank Steak 8. Orange Roughy Fish 9. Bison/Buffalo 10. Cod Fish
My top 10 fruits 1. Grapefruit 2. Apples 3. Blueberries 4. Canteloupe 5. Oranges 6. Bananas 7. Peaches 8. Grapes 9. Strawberries 10. Pineapple
Well, my fat has been steadily coming off for months now, and women who are ten years younger than me (and from my own culture ...) have begun staring at me again. Because I was on such a roll, I decided to tempt the fates and step on on of the electronic resistance fat machines at my gym. It gave me full readings about my hips and waist, relative arm strengths, and a lot of other information I'm not interested in. I wanted to know the body fat percentage. There it was, staring me in the face: 36%. I just shook my head. I didn't believe it. I still don't.
The wife of the gym's owner started telling me in Korean how I needed to lose 25 kg of fat to get trim, but I was still shaking my head. I just said "No, it's not right."
The next day I got up and did my tape test the same way as usual, and I was at 19.1%. That's up a little from my last reading, but not anywhere near the margin of error, so I can't really tell anything. Anyway, I decided to graph my body composition over the last seven months.
It's confirmed: I'm overtrained. I've been exhausted for the last couple of weeks and unable to get enough sleep. When I've been in bed, I've been restless.
I'm taking the week off of cardio, trying to reduce my training from eight or ten hours a week to four or five.
Well, I've been promising them for a while. Here they are. They sets cover December to May and the final pictures are from the end of my cut phase in June.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend and he expressed concern over my bulk and cut phases. He didn't like the idea of yo-yoing and said that it had to be bad for me. I wasn't clear in my explanation with him, so I want to write this stuff down clearly now. This blog can also serve as a reminder to myself if I ever get off track.
My goal in weight lifting was to lose body fat. That's how I started. I tried unsuccessfully to lose my gut. Year after year I berated myself for getting fatter. Gale was also getting heavier. She really did yo-yo. Her weight went from 62-75 kg regularly. She'd starve herself until she got down to the weight she wanted, then she'd binge and gain it all back plus half a kilo for good measure. I wanted her off of that roller coaster. When my research turned up that many nutritionists were then recommending strength training to build up the metabolism, it made sense to me. There was a method I could follow: lift heavy, get big, increase metabolism, lose fat. What they said rang true in my ears. I was losing muscle mass every year. It was getting harder and harder to keep the weight off, even when restricting my calories, which I wasn't very good at.
Tracking my nutrition for a few months opened my eyes. I had been aiming for a 35-35-30 breakdown of protein, carbs, and fat, but I found that even trying to increase my protein over historical levels left me with way too much fat and sugar. I had had no idea that my diet had been so bad.
Anyway, back to the main point of cut and bulk. Many people eat like pigs during bulk phases. I don't. Many people starve themselves and do hours of cardio a day. I don't do that, either. For me, the phases are merely a time to concentrate on one aspect of my diet and exercise.
I almost always lose fat, even when I'm bulking. Last bulk phase, my fat went down 2%. The one before that, I went down 4%. Compare that to my cut phases where I lot 4% and 5%. In short, my fat continues to go down because I always do a reasonable amount of cardio. My muscle mass doesn't go down because I don't starve myself and I lift heavy all the time.
I'm at 18% body fat right now, down from 33%. My metabolism is up, probably by a couple thousand calories a day ( my 36 pound increase suggests 2160 calories). By next year, I'll have most of my gut whittled away. I'm in no hurry: this is a lifestyle choice and not a fad diet. I do what I know is right and avoid dangerous activities, exercises, and foods. I don't need to do the kind of insane bulk/cut cycles bodybuilders use because I am not nor do I ever intend to be one. Bulk is merely a period where I eat a little more of the right foods and lift a little heavier. Cutting just means that I watch my diet a little more closely, increase my cardio, and lift lighter with more reps to burn extra calories.
I am not yo-yoing. Look at the fat chart here and see.
I bought a pack of skim milk from the agricultural market today. The nutritional information for a 100g serving was: Carbs 55g, protein 35g, and fat 1g. Compare this to Ultimate Nutrition's gainer: Carbs 53g, protein 34.5g, and fat 6g per 100g serving. Hmmm. Virtually identical nutrition profiles except for the reduced fat in the skim milk powder. Something to think about.
This week I started running to work twice a week instead of biking. The current regimen is MTF bike and WTh run. The totals are about 50 minutes a day for each. The runs this week left me a cripple, especially on leg day. I hope that my legs get cut up more than they are now and that I lose more fat jogging/running than I have been while biking.
Well, I did the official numbers on my cut phase, and it turns out that my initial, rough guess was wrong. I actually lost about 5kg of fat in the five week phase -- not stellar performance, but not something anyone should laugh at. More importantly, my lean mass sits exactly where it was before I started. That's right! I lost 5kg of fat without losing a single gram of muscle.
Well, I went an extra week on my cut phase because I had some Hydroxycut left. I shouldn't have bothered. This week was terrible: I binged, failed to work out regularly, and drank a lot. Sucks. Anyway, here are the measurements:
Basically, I'm sitting at the body fat that I had a couple of weeks ago, but with a kilo and a half less muscle. Not good. The last week was really bad.
So, Kosta, I've decided to write this all down for you because the napkin at the bar (and my drunk self) didn't do it justice last night. I'm putting it in a blog so that I can embed videos without problems. Hope you are OK with it. No one reads my shit blog, anyway.
Neither you nor I are men's mag cover model material. Both of us are just trying to fight the aging process and look a little better while we do it. Most of the workouts you see posted are for guys who've been working out for some time and don't remember what it's like to start with little muscle mass and a fair amount of fat.
I don't think three is some magic number, but it occurs twice here in my recommendations, both at key points. We'll call them the triangles. One could just as well be a square or pentagon, but it's not. Don't take the numerology as more than a coincidence.
There are three parts to your plan"
The workouts.
Sleep, and
Nutrition.
3. Nutrition
__________________________________________
We'll start with nutrition. Follow a loose 40-40-20 nutrition plan. That means that you should be eating your weight (in pounds) in grams of protein every day. A little less one day or more another is OK, but keep the average. You need another equal amount of carbs at specific times during the day. They remaining calories will be about 20% of your weight in grams of fat. Unless you eat only lean fish, this amount of fat will probably already be in the meat you eat every day.
Get an account on http://fitday.com or http://caloriecount.com and record what you eat for a couple of weeks. Once you get your regular foods in the history, it doesn't take long. I was really surprised at the carb and fat level in what I was eating last year. Once you get a feeling for your diet, you won't need to keep records anymore.
Break your calories into six or seven meals spread throughout the day. Try to keep the protein level fairly constant at no more than 40g per meal (more is really just a waste). For example, if you weigh 200 lbs (just a round number -- not a real guess), you would aim for around 25-35g of protein per meal. It could be broken down like this if you work out in the afternoon:
Breakfast 40g with your meal
Mid-morning snack 25g shake
Lunch 40g with your meal
Pre/post-workout drink 50g total, split in two
Dinner 40g with your meal
Evening snack 25g shake
Total = 205g
The carbs should be concentrated in the morning and right before and after your workout. Too many carbs and your blood sugar (and insulin) will be all over the place, causing your body to store fat. Your pre-workout drink should have high-glycemic-index carbs and be taken about an hour before your workout so that you have the energy to complete your workout well. The post-workout drink should be consumed within twenty minutes after your workout in order to minimize muscle soreness. Try not to have any carbs at all for three hours before bed time.
A little secret is that for almost three hours after a taxing workout, your body won't store anything as fat. That means that the post-workout time is your cheat time. If you have a craving for something that you know you shouldn't eat, put it off until after the next workout. Obviously, try NOT to cheat, but we all do, so I think that it's best to push those moments into the time zone where they do the least damage.
Get some supplements. Take a multi-vitamin. Take omega-3 fish oil. Take an anti-oxidant (so you don't rust, haha). I also take liver pills to help my amino balance. Since you are a woman, you need extra calcium, too. ;)
Start taking creatine. I know that you said you don't like it, but it will help you lift heavier and more intensely without a lot of muscle soreness. It's cheap and easy to use. Mix it in your pre/post-workout shake. Order it and the supplements from http://speedns.com
Get on TRT. I'm not kidding about this one. Increasing your testosterone levels to the 30-year-old range will make your life so much easier.
Finally, you need to plan. Get yourself ready for your nutrition. Prepare your protein and supplements in advance. Know what and when you will eat. Don't get caught without your nutrition in place, or you. will. fail.
2. Sleep
___________________________________________
You need to sleep more than you do now. Six hours is not enough for your body to add muscle. Try for eight. Please. Pretty please.
1. The Workout
___________________________________________
This is a total-body workout. This is extremely intense and designed to push your body into muscle-building mode. You will be tired. Exhausted is probably a better word. The exhaustion comes from taxing your nervous system, not necessarily from muscle soreness, though you'll have that, too.
This is a three-day-a-week program, but you can add in a little more as you feel able. Put mostly cardio in on the off days.
OK, this is a column A, B, C, and D program. It concentrates on compound activities. Isolation exercises are the kind of things that sculpt you. Did you ever see Pumping Iron, when Arnold is talking about sculpting his body, adding a little here and taking some off there? That's what isolation exercises are for. Neither you nor I are at that point yet, brother, so we won't worry about them.
First, column A, the chest:
_____________________
Bench Press (mid-chest and tricep)
You'll want to keep the bar a little higher than he does, over the nipples, but with the arms still angled slightly. People always recommend that I use a thumbless grip when I bench because it's better for your wrists. Hmmm. Opposable thumbs are good. This is why the thumbless grip is also called a "suicide grip." Don't cry when you watch these.
Now my flabby, shitty BP.
Inclined Press (upper chest and tricep)
Now me ....
Dips (lower chest, attachment, and tricep) [do these assisted or with extra weight, as necessary]
If you can't do a full dip (I couldn't in December), get assistance from a machine or a partner.
Next, column B, the back:
____________________
Wide-arm rows (upper-middle back and biceps) [Barbell rows, wide-arm cable pulldowns, or wide-arm machine rows are fine] Barbell Rows
T-bar rows
Machine rows
Close-arm rows (lower-middle back and biceps) [Dumbbell rows, narrow-hand cable pulldowns, or close-hand machine rows are examples]
With a barbell
Dumbbell rows
Machine rows
Wide-hand pull-ups or lat pulldowns (Lats and biceps)
The final compound movement section is column C, the legs and lower back:
Deadlifts (Quads, gluts, lower back, and some hamstring, trap, and forearm -- virtually everything) [standard, not Romanian] This guy starts with his hips higher, emphasizing the back and hamstring part of the lift. Most powerlifters use this method. I prefer to have my hips lower in order to emphasize the quadracep part of the lift, leaving hamstrings for the stiff-legged deadlifts.
Stiff-legged deadlifts (Hamstrings, lower back, and most of the rest of the body, haha)
I don't go down to the ground, especially on heavy weight, because I have a tendency to round my back when I go that far.
Squats (Quads and lower back) [As we talked about, you can use a Smith machine and move your feet forward.
Alex Poole's website has some excellent videos: http://www.weighttrainingtechnique.com
I needed to go lower on my squats. There's some new evidence that going lower is actually better for your knees, breaking the common belief that going to 90 degrees is better for the knees.
These are VERY heavy lifts and need to be with proper form. Start light to get it and build up tolerance. Keep your knees behind your toes at all times. Try to lift with your legs, not your back (though your back will get plenty, anyway)
Column D (or the etc. column)
_____________________________________
Some stuff didn't get a lot of work, so we need to make sure that it doesn't languish.
Military press (shoulders and triceps)
Front, back, and top shoulder isolation exercises
Calf raises
Arm exercises (do you really need them?)
Take one from each column for each day, two from column D if you are feeling perky. I follow a modified six-rep method. The heavy lifts are all six reps. The last set should be to total failure. Arnold suggests three reps with strict form and three more however you can get them. Get a spotter. Without a spotter, you won't go as heavy as you need to because you'll be afraid of the weight. On days when you just can't afford a full workout, go a little lighter and super-set the exercises. I can get the four exercises in 40 minutes that way, but it's best to do them one-by-one.
Each exercise gets six sets, broken down this way: two warm-up sets, three heavy sets, and one cool-down and pump set. Stretch the body part in between each set.
Warm: ten reps with 60/70% of the weight you will lift that day. Focus on form and complete the reps slowly.
Heavy: six reps with 85/90/100% of your max for the day. I cheat on my first rep and only do half so that my muscles don't collapse. The last rep of the last heavy set needs to be spit-in-the-air, shit-on-your-seat time. You couldn't do another one if you tried. In fact, you're not sure if you only completed that one because of your spotter or not. Kills the larger slow-twitch fibers.
Cool: 15-20 reps at 60%. This high-rep set uses your fast-twitch fibers instead of the slow twitch ones and gives you a great pump.
You need to make one major change, and that is to do your cardio AFTER your workout. Get on the treadmill for 5-10 minutes before your workout to warm up your boy, then do a full-body stretch. Don't dilly-dally. Hustle on over to your workout and get started. Continue to stretch in between every set. Do your cardio after your workout.
This change accomplishes two things: 1) You have glycogen stores in your muscles so that you can lift heavier for longer, and 2) You don't have glycogen stores when you do your cardio, so that your body starts to burn fats earlier. Right now, you've got it backwards. Your cardio isn't that effective in burning fat and your lifting is more difficult because you lack the energy.
I couldn't handle the super-low carb diet (again) and gave up last Thursday. I still limit my carbs to times around workouts, but at least I'm not lethargic all the time now. Lifting on no carbs is painfully difficult.
I'm a week and a half into the cut phase, and I'm already shedding a lot of fat. I'm beginning to see definition in a lot of muscles that were smooth before. Since my weight is remaining pretty much constant, I wanted to check my progress and find out if my eyes were deceiving me, so I taped this morning. The results are: Area Measurement Change Neck 17.5 0 Chest 46 -0.5 Arms 16 -0.5 Forearms 13.5 0 Wrist 8 0 Waist 41 -1 Hips 44 -2 Thighs 26.5 -0 Calves 17.5 -0 Weight 111 -1 BF% = 18.6% I'll say it again 18.6%
The end of November put me at 33%. Now I'm at 18.6%. This is amazing. I couldn't be happier. My short-term goal was 18%, and it looks like I'll make that this phase.
Next bulk phase, I'll be looking to add 5 kg of lean mass while keeping my BF% below 20%. Next cut I hope to be able to drop to 15%, where I can stay for the rest of my life.
I starting cutting two days ago, on Monday. It's a hard process. I rarely make it all the way through, but it's not an all-or-nothing situation, so I still make some progress.
I've been trying to follow a two month gainer cycle followed by a month-long cut cycle. The gain cycle has generally not worked as well as I wanted, and I lost fat during that period. Optimally, I should gain a very little fat and a lot of muscle. The fact that I'm losing fat means that I'm not eating enough and therefore not gaining all the muscle that I could be. The cut cycle should keep most of my muscle and lose a lot of fat. I rarely complete it, though, because I'm not good at diets -- That's the main reason I lift in the first place. I don't want to diet, so I increase muscle mass and my metabolism instead.
Anyway, This time I'm going on an Atkins-style super low carb diet for four weeks. No bacon or anything, just eggs and meat and lots of greens. The first couple of days have been torture. My sugar has been so low that I'm a walking zombie. I tried this diet a couple of times before, but never made it past three days. I think I've finally turned the corner, though. Today I feel significantly better than yesterday. My bike ride to work wasn't torture. I don't feel like I'm going to pass out at the keyboard. I hope that I can make this cut phase work successfully this time.
Well, I'm not exactly on steroids: I'm on TRT. Testosterone Replacement Therapy is a doctor-prescribed treatment for older guys like me who have naturally reduced testosterone levels. Symptoms of low testosterone include weight gain on the abdomen, irritability, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, reduced energy, and lowered sex drive. TRT alleviates all these problems, turning you into a virtual thirty year old.
I'm happy about going on it because I was given Andriol Testocaps before and they worked wonders. The testosterone was bound to cod liver oil so that it made its way through the liver, normally a problem with oral TRT. I lost a lot of weight and felt great while I was on it. The last two months have been difficult as I have returned to my normal, sloth-like self.
In addition to the other benefits, this time I don't have to take nasty pills twice a day. A doctor's visit every three weeks for an injection is all that it takes.
Yesterday my workout buddy wasn't feeling well, so just came to give me support. I tried to make the workout as fast as possible. A couple of months ago, I was doing 2-3 hour workouts, but I'm off vacation now, so I don't have that kind of time or energy. I've been averaging and hour to and hour and a half. I want to slowly transition myself to a more FIT (Fast and Intense Training) style until my next long vacation, so I took the opportunity to do that yesterday. Instead of doing my normal workout of one exercise at a time with a minute or so rest between sets, I did supersets, resting only as much as I needed to to recover. six sets each of chin-ups, barbell rows, and lat pull-downs followed by four sets of shrugs and six sets of curls. I finished in about forty-five minutes and my back is toast today. For my cut phase on Monday, I've decided to give my joints a little rest and do high reps for the next four weeks. I'll try six sets of 15-20 reps each at about 70% of my normal six-rep workout weight.
I'm ending my two-month bulk phase, where I've managed to lose 2 kg! I suck at this. My last (and first) bulk phase, I put on 7 kg, but I lost so much fat during the same period that I really could've gained a lot more if I could've eaten as much as I should have. This time, I haven't worked out with the same intensity because I'm back at work. I'm only doing maybe four days a week now. I was trying to eat a lot of good food for the first month, but my weight kept dropping, so I added more crap into the mix to make sure that I got enough calories. That was also a mistake. Now I'm ending my bulk (hah!) phase and moving onto four weeks of cutting. This is the first time that I'll be using chemical help to cut. I purchased twenty days of Hydroxycut Hardcore, which is expensive, but I've heard amazing stories. Starting Monday, there will be no more crap and I will be watching my calories very closely to lose fat and not muscle. Although I'm kind of negative in this post, I've still had personal bests several times in the last two weeks, so I can't be too unhappy. My bench press is up to 130 kg x 5 (one-rep max about 150) and my leg press is about 360 kg x 6 (one-rep max about 420), although I screwed up my knee on the last leg press. My tricep pushdown maxes the cable machine at 75 ?lb/kg? + 20kg of dumbbells. Not too shabby this week.
This is the blog dedicated to my ongoing struggle with the lard covering my body. I have other blogs on other subjects, but I feel that this one should be topic-specific. In the last six months, I have reduced my body fat percentage (BF%) from 33% to just under 22% while increasing my total weight by about seven kilos. The results so far have been good and I added about 16kg of muscle while losing 12kg of fat. I don't expect to keep this pace up for very much longer, but I'd like to reach a BF% of eighteen and stay there for the rest of my life.
