no input for friday, was very active (zoo workers think you’re asking about an animal if you ask “what are the macros?”). Was still approx. 5500 cal deficit this week but didn’t lose anywhere near enough for that to be true. I’m thinking this may be the time to take knee and go for a maintenance phase. Will do some more research before coming to a decision, but I’ve been virtually stagnant lately.
2/21/22 - Random Pull Shit Decided to go off program entirely and don’t regret it. Great session.
Plate iso hold - 1x20 @ 45lb
Smith Bent-Over Row - 3x10 @ 135lb
Plate Grip Trap Shrugs - 3x10 @ 185lb
Bodyweight Pull Ups - 3x8
Incline Hammer Curl - 3x10 @ 35lb
Poliquin Cable Pull Ups - 3x12 @ 80lb
Close Grip Cable Row - 3x12 @ 120lb
Band Pull-Apart - 20,15,15 @ red band
Poundstone EZ Curl 1x100 @ 35lb
So I went into maintenance calories yesterday, and I will continue with that for the next 3 weeks. I will be starting MATADOR (2 weeks cut 30% deficit, 2 weeks maintenance) after the 3 week diet break. Protocol as follows: Maintenance 3,014 calories
Protein: 220g
Fat: 100g
Carb: 308g
So my Active Nervous System (ANS) recovery (calculated by Polar Watch/sleep monitor) said it was valued at -10. On a scale of -10 to +10, this is the actual worst it can get… Interestingly, this follows my total bro gym session yesterday. Even on my heaviest/hardest deadlifting days, I’ve never seen it hit -10 before. I take it this means gainz were made.
You know man, I was just skimming through your log here and some of your Maintenance Phase thread, and I don’t know that I have anything to add except encouragement and observations. A couple of years ago I did a big cut and it was so easy I had no problems. Right now I’m trying to cut just a few pounds and it feels like I’m being murdered. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this right now just to distract me from my hunger. Anyway, solidarity, man. Good luck and keep up the good work.
Idk how its for you, but being active helps me alot on a cut.
3000 kcals is your maintenance - that means you dont move much. My maintenance when i dont get out of the bed is around 3500. If i do some gym stuff its 4000. On cardio days i get extra 1000kcal easy just by doing steady state.
If i go for a sparring session with my partner, its extra 2000kcal.
I can burn 9k on an active day with work. If you are looking for 1k deficit, you could be eating 8000kcal a day and lose weight.
Thats why its hard for me to bulk - i actually have to TRY to NOT move. When i teach classes i actually sit on the ground on purpose so i save calories and not walk around the gym cuz 1 hour of slow walking burns 300kcal for me.
Ok, i have done this for years so i do burn more with every activity, so if you would do exactly what i do you might not get to 9k, but you can easy get some 6k for sure.
Its not a quick fix but for your future, i suggest you get that cardio capacity up. Cutting becomes super fast and easy when you burn 6000k on a slow day and 9000k when you actually try to burn some kcals.
Imagine - you just do an active day of 9k and do a 24hour fasting and boom.
I know you are natty and are afraid to burn too much muscle which is why im saying - dont go for my retardedness BUT still… 3000 maintenance is low. If you would incorporate more athletic stuff into your life, you could be losing weight while eating 3500-4000kcal easy.
If not by next month, but by next year - it is beneficial to work on this as all your future cuts will become much easier - at least because you can eat more or just eat more of what you like.
I am on a slow cut now, but i have never actually dieted right now. Most days i still eat boatloads of garbage. I actually feel like i am on a bulk without the overfeeding and a few days of fasting a week.
My current feeling on this slow cut is like “i dont know if i ever wanna live differently anymore”. I actually did a few days of force feeding because i lost some 4lbs out of nowhere somehow, so i wanted to bloat em up a bit, haha.
p.s - it is super mega healthier to work on conditioning and cardio… i actually believe the fact my heart is in check with all the shit i have done to my body, is because while doing all this shit i also did some 3-5 hours of cardio activities a day for like 7-8 years straight.
I would say that there are also some significant genetic differences between you and I - height, weight, etc =)
Admittedly, I need to do more cardio. In fact, I will be doing cardio during my cut phases as well. I work a desk job which doesn’t allow for too much activity, and having online classes certainly doesn’t help in that aspect either - still, I try to push more steps when I can.
I think your calorie counting may be off a bit, unless a sparring session for you is over 3 hours, but that point is a bit moot. I do intend to be more active, and I would most certainly do better in a lot of aspects from doing so - I’m struggling to juggle work, school, commute, gym and family all in a 24 hour period… Finding time to be more active is going to take directly from my sleep schedule until school wraps up.
Hoping this doesn’t come off as excuses - my priority isn’t to put training first. I have to work, I have to finish school, and I have to spend time with the family; the only other time I manage to have is the 1.5 hour period I’m at the gym.
could be… im not saying that im good and you are not - im just suggesting that being a bit more athletic not only does wonders for health, it also would help with your current situation… i also do understand that i get paid to move and to fight which puts me in a situation where i get paid for burning calories, so im not saying you need to go for 9000kcal but i just suggested you to think about how to change your training a bit so you could ramp up that calorie burning and just eat more and feel more free.
Nah its 90mins and my calorie counting actually is absolutelly perfect…
Like 9000kcal is exactly 1kg of fat or 2,2lbs of fat.
I have a list on my phone of activities i do and how much kcals i burn in a hour of these activities and my weightloss has always been very close to the math of how much kcals i burn. Its not a list of the net its my actual experience by testing this for years.
There was a time where i could count how much i burned and how much i ate and tell exactly how much i will weight the next morning it always was withing 100g range which is like 900kcal worth of fat, and if i burn like 6-9k a day it means i could predict within 10-15% accuracy.
Calorie counters and all the machines always count much less for me. On a regular cardio machine i need to add +30%. Maybe it is how you said - genetic. Maybe i am super well adapted because i used to do like 3 HIT type cardio sessions a day for a total of 3-4 hours + active job.
idk, but i can lose 2lbs in half a day… if i dont watch it my slow cut turns into 6lbs lost in a week.
Probably its a mix of me being adapted to this + me being genetically prone to being a skinny fuck.
Nah, of course - no one pays you to be an athlete, and i hope i dont come off like im telling you what to do or shit.
I just looked at the numbers and i tought that it could be good idea to, for example, do some prowler pushes, and some squat jumps on a box for extra leg work instead of some isolation movements… or maybe do some circuit style training - like Brian Alsruhe(?) does for his strongman shit. Or just add like 10mins of hill sprints after every gym session and progress on it. If you skill up, you can burn a lot of kcal by doing 15sec sprint and 45sec standing and doing nothing for 10 rounds. I believe its like 200-250kcal for me doing 15% incline 15sec run, 45sec pause, for 10 rounds. Its not much but you skill up so you can do 20 rounds which will add up to only actually running for total of 5mins and 400-500kcal goes POOF and enjoy your BigMac(i love McDonalds).
I’ve never been the one to eat a shitload of food, at least nothing compared to the numbers you are showing. Truly, I do need to be more active - I’ve just been in a weird in-between state of being too busy and not wanting to.
These are all things I’m interested in doing, but have been saving for when the cut stalls out. I haven’t cut down intellligently before, so I would like to keep those in pocket for a rainy day.
I’m not cutting right now and don’t have a successful history of cuts, so we’re kind of in the same boat. However, I’ve been increasing conditioning, mostly through the fucking Peloton I got talked into buying but sometimes with the prowler and barbell complexes, and it’s been nothing but helpful. IMO, Conditioning/cardio/sled pushes/whatever you want to call it shouldn’t be saved for a cut, it should be utilized as frequently as possible. I’ve dropped 6lbs this month and my lifts are still trending in the right direction, with 3-5 conditioning sessions a week.
I wanted to say exactly this.
In fact, pushing cardio from 0, when on a cut - its a risk of overtraining and losing muscle. You should build your capacity when on a bulk or a maintenance, and hold it no matter what. Then, when a cut starts, your maintenance is 5k, you just clean up the food a bit and you get an easy 1k deficit.
The point of conditioning is not to be a cut tool. The point is to increase your capacity for your average day and it is better pushed when you are fat and bulking. This stuff shouldnt show up only when you cut. It has to be there always, so when you start to cut, burning some 1000kcal is not a new challenge, its an average day at the gym.
Start by adding like 10mins of elyptical after every gym session, and like 100 burpees every morning or smth. There are HIT workouts that can be done at home in 7-10mins etc.
cutting is the only thing i have actually done successfully haha.
Couldn’t get a set of cables for flyes, hit up some BB lateral delt raises to make up for it.
-Triceps and right pec kinda felt like shit so i took it easy on a few things.
-Increased rep range on nautilus shoulder press - felt better at lower weight.
Hit the gym with basically no plan today; don’t regret it.
Slept like 4 hours last night and barely drank any water over the last 2 days… was paying for it today.
Just did kind of whatever so i didn’t log anything and did what felt good.
Squats
Incline DB Curls
Wide Lat Pulldown
Narrow, neutral Lat Pulldown eccentrics
Trap shrugs
Smith shrugs
Poundstone curls (EZ bar)
Smith bent over row eccentrics
Rope face pulls (high to low)
Hyperextensions
This log entry is the antithesis to all training logs.
On a different note, the scale has been showing consistently lower numbers than i started my maintenance at… showed 215.1 today, the day after i smashed half a pizza. Id think it to be an anomaly, but i look more lean too so come fight me diet gods.
Sometimes, dieting makes no sense, and I guess that is okay.
2/28/22 - AM Bro Pump Circuit 2 rounds
Face Pulls x20 @ 100lb
Supenation Curls x10 @ 25lb
Ab Rollout (1s iso at length) x10
Cable Side Delt Raise (leaning) x12 @ 20lb
Completed in 10 mins
Beginning week 2 eating at Maintenance
Weekly Bodyweight Avg.: 217.5
I started off at Tier 2 because it doesn’t appear too much more intense than my normal training; I can always drop down to tier 1 if I need to.
I’ll admit to not doing zig-zagging as prescribed - there’s no way I can manage to hoard enough equipment to make supersets viable.
EDIT:
I was being a cheapskate and didn’t buy the book - so I messed up on my program… Just bought the book and I’ll fix the program to match the templates properly.
I think it’s weird to only have one or two working sets per muscle, so I will likely make some minor changes here as well.
Check out @flappinit s log a while back when he started FT if you desire to look at someone else’s journey through it.
I think this is a weird approach.
If you change things this early on you deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn if FT as written would work for you, thereby teaching you something new about your body in relation to that style of training. If it doesn’t work that’d teach you something to.
You might think it is weird, but come around to change your mind after a while. If it’s weird enough to demotivate you then FT isn’t a good fit.
Scott knows bodybuilding very well, and has worked closely with Dante Trudel and John Meadows. I’d be surprised if FT as written doesn’t work for you. He’s written some workarounds for people that can’t zig-zag (exercise substitutions mainly).
I also suggests looking at videos of Scott to get an idea of his intensity in those sets.
I think FT as written is a great option during MATADOR or a cut. Then after you’ve cut you could do a Meadows program and get more volume/less intensity.
