You must be lean as heck. I’m 88kg right now and a fluffball lol
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Going low on carbs doesn’t really affect my performance too much (or at least it hasn’t in the past - for example, I tried Berardi’s Get shredded diet a bit over two years ago and actually gained strength while doing it. The plan is basically 10 Calories/pound of bodyweight with zero carbs)
Going low on protein, however, fucks me over. I’ve always eaten a really high protein diet. I’ve tried lower protein intakes a couple of times but I can’t function as well with it and after a week or two I’ll go back to high protein.
I do employ lower protein days, however, to avoid the drawbacks of constantly eating a high amount of protein.
Regarding why I didn’t increase carb intake: it’s all about experimentation for me, really. If we look at the rate of progress I could’ve added carbs without lowering my fats or proteins while still staying in quite a deficit, but I want to try new and even more miserable stuff. After all, three weeks is a really short amount of time so if you manage to lose some muscle or strength it’ll come right back when you enter a surplus.
Lean enough to be accused of using drugs (which doesn’t really say anything). But still, I do not have a vein on my biceps. God damn.
Personally, I don’t see a reason to go past 12% bf (or so) as long as you have enough cushion to not get injured and to not have achy joints all the time you’re all good, and the amount of fat needed for that isn’t a whole lot.
Stubborn bicep veins!
Hey thats quite a compliment regardless
True. It’s no surprise pro bodybuilders end up with there joints all messed up
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Probably because your body has gotten good at using protein for fuel via gluconeogenesis?
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This might have more to do with having their muscular adaptations sped up compared to how quickly their tendons and connective tissues can grow as opposed to bodyfat. I’m guessing here, but I haven’t heard much about fat in joints.
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You make a good point there
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Sure that could be an explanation, but most likely not, because - apart from the last couple of weeks of a longer diet or a mini-cut like this- my protein intake is very rarely disproportionately high compared to fats and carbs. Usually it’s around 35-40% of my total caloric intake.
Animal proteins do however raise your dopamine levels, so feeling better when eating more protein could be at least partially explained with that.
Also as I increase my protein intake my fats go up somewhat (sometimes notably) because I’m not too keen on eating only the leanest meats if I don’t have to
I think of myself as someone with not so great genetics.
However, I’m lucky enough to have biceps veins that show pretty easily. I guess I should be… Hmm, happy? Haha
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Not sure which source the body finds easiest to convert to blood glucose.
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I would say, in this order
Dietary carbs
Stored carbs
Protein
I didn’t put fats in the list because AFAIK they don’t actually become glucose when used for energy, but if we were talking about the sources used for energy period, they’d probably be at par with dietary carbs in the form of fatty acids, and then between stored carbs and protein in the form of ketone bodies.
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I know I’d be happy with a bicep vein, but man, you do have pretty nice genetics in terms of structure; with enough muscle you’ll look really aesthetic
I didn’t mean to imply that dietary fat would turn into glucose, I just meant that the higher amount of fat consumed results in feeling better overall
Yeah, seems right
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A little update:
Observations on suicide diet:
First four days were fine. Performance was a tad affected, but not too much. In fact, yesterday I did 3x142.5kgs and 4x140kgs on paused bench. (One thing is that I had to switch from regular to paused because I felt that I couldn’t keep up the performance on regular bench.
However, today I had to switch up my training for the day pretty much completely. I felt horrible.
Instead of pendlays and lat pulldowns I did pull ups and strict DB rows. So nothing really drastic, but still, doing that is not something I usually resort to.
My expectations for tomorrow aren’t too high either, but we’ll see.
Physique wise:
I’m nearly as lean as I was at the end of diet (82-83kgs if I recall correctly) while being probably 88-89kgs now. But in my opinion I look a whole lot better. It’s not a massive change in size really, but the muscles look a lot denser and fuller now compared to the end of the diet. Why so? My body is rested, it hasn’t had to endure several weeks of hard dieting. Also even the tiniest amount of muscle gained helps when it’s in the right place.
I talked about having these distinct phases of low and high blood sugar in my last update. With no carbs the difference between phases is really small, but I can still feel the effects. Also, interestingly, now I don’t get nearly as cold after eating as I did last week.
I’ll go on for tomorrow. Don’t know about the day after that. It’s a rest day so I feel I could benefit from exiting the diet and getting in some fuel for Christmas eve’s session.
Mini-cut update:
The end
Weighted in at 88.7kgs, which is 8.5kgs down in three weeks.
Now I’ll do something completely different for a while. Not sure what exactly yet.
My school schedule for the beginning of next year is looking quite intense so I’m going to push back CTs program a bit and just figure out something that takes very little time.
On other news, I cooked the Christmas ham over last night and it’s perfect. Only complaint I have is that the meat is so tender you can’t make proper slices of it!
Yeah, merry Christmas to all of ya!
Merry christmas!
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Finally caught up! Congrats for getting into the school you wanted. Working hard and getting results; that is you in a nutshell. Keep it up mate!
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Happy 2019 and Let the Gains Begin!!!
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Thanks guys, happy new year!
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My plans for 2019
I don’t do new years resolutions, I plan. What I want to do this year is:
- Get my personal training cert done
Technically I started it three and a half years ago, if I remember correctly. I was too young to finish it at the time. Since then there hasn’t been a good time really. But I think it would be a good idea to finish that this year - can’t put it off forever.
- Do as well as I can in school.
Yeah, that’s a vague thing to say. I just want to give it my all and do really well. Shouldn’t be a problem as the subject is really interesting to me.
- Work less
This is a given, really. If I were to work as much as I do now and study on top of that I’m pretty sure I’d run out of time - literally.
- Make personal training my sole source of income
This is related to the one above. Shouldn’t be too hard as the government pays us to study as long as we don’t make too much money. I’ll get ~650€/mo for studying as long as I don’t exceed like 12K/year income. Yeah, it’s a downgrade but it’s nice to be paid to study instead of paying to study.
- Read more non-training related stuff
I’ve been neglecting reading for a while now. Reading, say a book or two per month would be a good goal for me, I think. So let’s say I’ll read 20 books this year.
- Work on my relationship with my girlfriend
It’ll be 5 years in a bit over a month from now, but that doesn’t mean I could slack off in terms of what I give to the relationship. What you put in, you get out, tenfold.
That’s it, I think.
You see no strength goals here, as this is more of a general life - kind of list.
But achieving, say 170kg bench and 270kg deadlift would be something to shoot for. I also have some vague plans that require a certain level of aerobic conditioning, but nothing too extreme.
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Client story time
So, three months ago a girl came to me and told me she wanted to get stronger and to look better. Sure thing. Today she did her last workout of the three month program I wrote for her.
Background info:
(Before)
2A
19 years old
60kgs BW
Three years of training experience
45kg bench
57.5 kg squat
75kg deadlift
3 chin ups
She had surprisingly high bench compared to other lifts, in my opinion, but hey, that’s not a bad thing.
After 12 weeks we are at:
57kg BW
60kg bench (+15kgs)
75kg squat(+17.5kgs)
95kg deadlift (+20kgs)
A chin up with 15kgs added
12 consecutive chins
Not bad at all. I’m especially impressed by her upper body strength. I’ll have to note that when we started she told me that squats and deads felt odd to her, so just by making them feel more comfortable we were able to get some “free” progress.
How we did it:
We used a five day split as follows:
Heavy and “Dynamic” refer to the main movement
Mon: Squat, lower body (Heavy)
Tues: Bench, upper push (“Dynamic”)
Wed: Deadlift, Hamstrings, rows (Heavy)
Thurs: Off
Fri: Bench, upper body (Heavy)
Sat: Squat and deadlift, lower body (“Dynamic”)
Sun: Off
On all of the days we used 3-4 exercises after the main one to target whatever the target muscles were for a given session. Those exercises were rotated every 2-3 weeks and I used different loading schemes for them as well in order to keep the program feeling fresh.
Dynamic is in quotation marks because we worked in a rather large scale of intensity there.
We worked in three week waves with changing rep targets and exercises for our “heavy” days. On dynamic days we switched exercise every third week and when doing so we also took out one set.
For example, on heavy squats we did:
3 weeks of sets of 6 on pin squat
3 weeks of sets of 4 on back squat
3 weeks of sets of 2 on front squat
3 weeks of singles on back squat
So that’s four three week mini-blocks. Each miniblock also progressed in volume simply by adding one back off set. (She only did one top set each week)
So on squat she would do (as an example):
Week 1:
Work to 4RM
2 sets of 4 at 90% of top set
Week 2:
Work to 4RM
3 sets of 4 at 90%
Week 3:
Work to 4RM
4 sets of 4 at 90%
Next week she’d switch to front squat and do a top double followed by two more doubles at 90% of the first one.
And it goes on.
I used the exact same sets and reps for all three exercises, only difference was that on deads backoffs were done at 80% of top set.
On dynamic days we altered between two variations of each main lift in three week waves.
For bench it was paused and tng bench for triples
For squat it was front and back squat for doubles
For Deadlift it was conventional and sumo for singles.
First three weeks she did six sets of each (60s rest tops) on their given days.
Next three, five sets.
Then four
and then three.
Always maximum of 60 second rest.
Weight increased 5kgs per week, so that on the last week she would have to fight for them, while the first one was more like speed work. Why so? It teaches how to use good technique under load. When she came back to an exercise she would start at the halfway point of what she did last time.
(So if she did, say 32.5, 37.5 and 42.5 on paused bench she’d do 37.5, 42.5 and 47.5 next time)
I set it up so that she’d never perform the same exercise twice a week. So if she did squats on a heavy day, she’d do front squats on a dynamic day. I did this so that she wouldn’t have to spend a week figuring out technique when coming back to an exercise.
Lastly, I want to mention her chin up progression, as it was pretty neat. She only did them once a week, so the workout described below is everything. Apart from a few sets of rows and curls.
We used the first four weeks to really nail the execution and to build some strength. She got to 5x5 with BW in that time.
The next four weeks we did a tailed pyramid with fast progression:
The top single and last rep of last set were done with as slow eccentric as possible.
Week 1:
3xBW
2x1.25kg
1x2.5kg (slow eccentric)
Max clean reps with BW
2:
3xBW
2x2.5kg
1x5kg
Max w/BW
3:
3xBW
2x3.75kg
1x7.5kg
Max w/BW
4:
3xBW
2x5kg
1x10kg
Max w/BW
Now a couple of questions may arise.
Why start so low?
Because I did not want her to have any chance of failure. That’s crucial with 2As. They are streaky guys and if they fail, they’ll dwell on it. That’s also part of the reason why I rotated exercises so often: she didn’t have to risk failure with such short cycles.
Why always start with BW?
Because it’s the only warm up she did for chins. Also I want it to be fast so she doesn’t go into the “I’m feeling weak” - mindset.
Next four weeks we slowed down the progress, only adding 1.25kgs to the double and the single from week to week. (Compared to 1.25 to the double and 2.5 to the single)
I asked her how she liked the program after we were done with her session today. She loved it. She felt that it had just the right amount of variety, intensity and time to recover. She also told e that this was the first time in a year that she had actually made progress. So naturally I’m quite happy about how this came out.
But that’s that, feel free to ask any questions. My phone died halfway through writing this so I may have missed something I thought about writing before it occurred.
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Tweak update:
A few weeks back I tweaked my shoulder slightly while failing a low incline bench rep. It hurt to do a whole lot of stuff for a while, but now the only things that feel a bit off are low incline bench (surprise surprise) and hitting the most muscular pose. So that’s pretty much sorted out.
Back is feeling quite good, I’m still getting some random pains once in a blue moon but nothing constant.
The lock/whatever it is I have on my right leg is a bit better than before but it’s a long way from being 100%. I’ve made the observation that the pain is worse on back squats compared to front squats, which is odd. It’s also worse when I’m wearing compression pants compared to just regular ones.
I’m working on sorting these things out, hopefully my next tweak update is about solving some of them
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