Regression is part of the game, usually at least. It’s also a valuable learning experience for both you and your coach
Yeah unfortunately
Indeed, I should have listened to the warning signs my body and mind was giving me. Plus my coach knows what went wrong as well and things that were wrong with the programming also.
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This statement does not align with following the vertical diet. It’s much too narrow with regards to micronutrient needs, and filling that gap with multivitamins isn’t as good as just eating good clean, wholesome food. The vertical diet is tailored for behemoths that have eating as a part-time job basically (think Eddie Hall and Thor, not you) to allow them to eat as much as they need without causing too much gastric distress so they can do their training and continue to perform well in the now. They don’t care about longevity, I don’t know - maybe you don’t either.
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Crockpot alone will serve you well, just cook potatoes instead of rice together with whatever meat you already have in the slow cooker. Also, slow cook whole chicken. It’s the bees knees. And make broth with the carcass later!
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Wrong. It’s full of nutrient dense foods. Red meat is full of nutrients as well as chicken / bone broth, Oranges, Spinach, bell peppers, Greek yogurt, Eggs, Salmon, Sweet potato, carrots etc. The vertical diet is good for you.
The vertical diet optimizes nutrition for maximum performance. I get bloated alot so this Is another reason I chose the vertical diet. As well as the proper of absorption of nutrients and just eliminating junk.
" The Vertical Diet” IS :
ØBased on Whole Foods
ØBased on Optimizing gut health
ØBased on Correcting nutrient deficiencies.
ØBased on Correcting hormone imbalances.
ØBased on improving energy, stamina, endurance, and recovery.
ØBased on improving health through sustainable lifestyle modifications."
“Stan Efferding invented the vertical diet to meet the needs of the world’s most elite athletes, but it’s also intended for the everyday person — he says his two children and his octogenarian father follow it as well.”
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My mistake then, I remembered it being red meat and rice and very little else
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That’s a great idea as well!
Now I’m really interested in this whole passive cooking kind of thing
How are you doing, by the way? Haven’t heard of you in a while
It’s terribly convenient.
Normally, when I pitch it, I claim that it is basically food prep combined with being lazy. But there is another view, and one that I believe is more swaying. Furthermore, it is more in-line with my own experience as I for one genuinely enjoy cooking.
Consider that even with a stream-lined meal-prep (i.e., something you do every week) there is still an associated time-cost. And, extrapolated over a life-time that’ll hopefully be several decades-long then there is an immense compound cost. This is analogous to spending say 10 euro on something every month. That’s 120 euro a year, and a lot of euros by the time you are retired.
So, I usually do lazy as cooking for my weekly meals, and bust out my chef skills for the weekend. Perfect combo. Keeps cooking fun. Keeps me fed.
Doing just dandy, did squats a bit too often when I tried following Arnold’s program Full-Body Workouts of the Legends - Bigger Stronger Leaner - COMMUNITY - T NATION (3x a week, 2x seems to be my sweet-spot), so my hip is acting up again but it’ll be better soon. Don’t really keep my log up, I’m so into extremes that it either takes way too much time to maintain or I don’t maintain it at all - and evidently, we are in the latter phase currently.
Before that, I was doing 5 Years of Insane Gains which showed me that I can back squat two times a week, possibly thanks to all of the lunges. However, as my climbing prowess improves and I routinely overwork myself I’ve decided that I shouldn’t be in the gym more than 3x a week, and have an honest rest day with no planned exercise.
I did 5/3/1 for a while before that split, but it’s not really my jam at the moment. I didn’t feel properly stimulated from my work-sets and overdid my assistance instead to make up.
And so now, I’m a bit in the wind.
Was reading a bunch of Charles Staley’s stuff on full-body workouts, and it’s almost a perfect fit. However, while these sessions are programmed around the primary movement patterns (squat/hinge/push/pull) I believe that the movements change more often than is necessary for a trainee at my level. There is something to be said for the SAID-principle after all.
And so, I’ve made myself an amalgam of Charles Staley, 5/3/1, this article How I Added 100 Pounds to My Deadlift in 2 Weeks and taking into account the reduced need for vertical pulling as I climb so often (hence added emphasis on horizontal rowing and triceps). Feel free to criticize,
Monday:
A1. Back squat 4x6-8
A2. RDL 3x9-12
B1. Alternate bench/military press 3x8-10 (on a session by session-basis, so BP one Monday, MP the next)
B2. Horizontal row
Assistance (lunges)
Tuesday: Climbing, strength-stamina.
Wednesday:
A1. Leg Press 3x12-15
A2. Dip 3xAMRAP
B1. GHR 4x8-10
B2. Tricep pushdown 4x10-12
Abs
Thursday: Climbing, max-effort bouldering.
Friday:
A1. RDL 4x6-8
A2. Back squat 3x9-12
B1. Alternate bench/military press 3x8-10 (as described before)
B2. Horizontal row
Assistance (lunges or abductor/adductor)
Saturday: Rest-day. Might be a fasting day eventually. We’ll see.
Sunday: Climbing, strength-endurance.
Trying to keep the time duration that I’m in the gym down so I can slot it in over lunch. I like the symmetry with how the rep ranges move towards one another.
Add weight when I reach the top of a rep-range. If this ends up being time-efficient enough I can imagine that a secondary progression would be adding an additional work set, so that when doing 6-8 reps the sets go from four to five and that for 9-12 reps the number of work sets increases from three to four.
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I enjoy cooking as long as I don’t do it more than twice a year. I feel like my biggest accomplishment is that I’ve cooked like 97% of my warm meals for the past years myself.
I usually just cook the meat for next couple of days, and add/cook whatever I will eat with it (rice, vegetables etc.) on the day I’m about to eat it. I have not once done a meal prep for the whole week, mainly because I don’t have enough food boxes for that kind of stuff.
I’ve noticed that casual logging isn’t a thing for you. I can’t really say anything against that because I’m pretty much the same myself.
That sounds like a solid plan when you are the person in question. Do you overwork yourself on purpose, or are you just so into your job that You do it kind of accidentally? Either way, it is something to take into consideration with programming.
My first thought was “why doesn’t this program have any vertical pulling or bicep work” because just reading “climbing” on the program apparently isn’t enough to understand what is actually going on during those days. So, I assume climbing takes care of that?
Apart from that, that is a very minimalistic program, which in itself isn’t neccessarily a problem, but after some time you may want to consider adding some variation in there. Doesn’t have to be anything mind-blowing. Maybe a paused variation, or SLDL instead of RDL etc.
Why do you not pull from the floor, by the way?
And lastly,
Something in this is very appealing to me. I got no clue what.
I mean overwork in the gym.
Yes indeed, it’s basically vertical pulling for 2-3 hrs three times a week. If I need added strength there I’d do weighted pull-ups at the end of those sessions, but it’s not worth programming in on gym days.
Exactly, that was the idea. It’ll transmorph towards this: The Primary Pattern Workout Plan - Bigger Stronger Leaner - COMMUNITY - T NATION
No particular reason. I figure that the RDL should be easier to recover from (less weight used) and be better suited for these rep ranges.
I’ve done it, it’s actually designed as a matter of convenience, these things are near each other in the gym.
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Hey @danteism, what’s up in your world? If you have the time, I just posted a thing here: Best Program for an Early-Intermediate Bodybuilder? - #33 by Voxel and as always, it’d be interesting to hear if you have any thoughts to add to that.
Did you ever get started with investing btw?
Doing pretty good. Tried strongman implements for the first time a while ago, as I mentioned earlier when duke came around my log. After that, nothing too crazy has happened.
As of right now I’m finishing up my PT cert, in the process of moving together with my gf and I may be getting a pretty neat job.
My “practice client” - work for the PT cert didn’t go as well as I wanted. (My client went from 50-110kg squat, 40-80kg bench, 0-12 chins and 19-14%bf in 10 weeks, the dude I coached had some issues with motivation at times. ) But I’m still glad I’m getting certified.
I may just be in process of becoming a gym manager/personal trainer" overseer" in a sufficiently large gym in my new city, it would be an absolute catch of a job.
I posted some thoughts over there as of right now
Completely forgot about that, to be honest. As the dust settles from all that is going on I may look into it again.
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Did you land it? How’s school, work, girlfriend, and everything else? Catch me up on the flirting behaviour you had, if you changed it, etcera. How’s your training?
They “felt I would be more use as a personal trainer” and as they did not have one I said why not? Sure entrepreneurship is what I’ll eventually do but this is pretty close to that. The pay is pretty good, significantly more than my last job, sure I’m only getting paid for session that I actually coach but I’m going to book myself full within a month.
School and life is a whole lot easier now that we’ve moved. Relationship is going great as well, I’ve managed to tone down the flirting a bit.
Training wise, I was following a (well, several) full-body powerlifting style program for quite a while. During my latest volume block I really hit rock bottom. I was miserable, didn’t want to train and eventually stopped the program after three weeks. After that I wrote a program for myself, based on neurotyping, which I’ve been following for two weeks now. I feel so much better now, and I don’t care wether or not it is placebo.
How have you been? How’s work, training, life?
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Oh, shit. I left your question dangling there!
How’s the job? And how are them gains coming along?
I’m doing pretty well, nearing the end of the duration of this Nebido-shot so I’m starting to feel the consequences of low T again, but it’s managable!
What are some things that you “always” do? As an example for what I’m fishing for, you’ve mentioned that during a diet you’ll take extra creatine, but what are your staple habits beyond nutrient timing and training hard? Gelatin, is that something you always run? Do you do any conditioning?
Have you learned anything interesting lately? I’ve been reading up on leverages, and identified that I probably need more quad work and direct triceps work after 2019 has run its course (I’ve committed to running Nutty’s Program til the end of the year)
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@danteism Alive?
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Seems like I did the same to you, maybe we are even. I’ve been quite busy lately so haven’t been around the forums for a while.
Job is great. Clients are getting results and they are happy with the services. My only concerns are that the company and I have different views on certain things (they think your clients would need to pay extra for training programs and nutrition info, I think that’s BS and thus I include them free of charge) and honestly, I’m playing with the idea of switching back to doing Personal Training as an entrepreneurer. That way the prices are more affordable for clients and I’m not restricted by rules. At the moment it’s not really viable, as I’m busy as hell with school stuff. But we’ll see.
Great to hear that you’re all good. Has the Nebido helped with your quality of life?
Things I do regardless of wether I’m dieting or gaining are, as you mentioned, nutrient timing and training hard. I also employ peri-workout nutrition year round and try to keep myself at a rather low bf% (around 11-13% in gaining phase. If I get really excited about some strenght goal I may go up to 15%)
When I’m dieting I bump up the creatine and salt intake a bit.
Beginning a diet is easy. Just take away some calories. Usually I do that by decreasing my fat intake to around 0.8g/kg (when gaining my fat intake is about 1g/kg) and taking the rest from carbs. I ride that out for as long as I can.
After that I just decrease carb intake whenever I hit a wall for over a week.
When I feel like complete shit I like to switch some fat for either intra-workout carbs or carbs at night. Usually that results in me feeling better and doing more stuff. After that the next Step would be to include caffeine pre training (I’ve been trying to not consume too much of it so I have an extra card to play during a diet)
Only after I’ve done all that I include conditioning work. 150-200 calories after training makes up for a 1000 calories or so in a week.
And the last step, which I have yet to take is to drop carbs to a minimum. Only what you need in order to preserve muscle mass and stay sane. This is the step I hope I don’t need, but if I want to go on stage I’ll probably have to do it. (The reasoning here is that you have alpha- and betareceptor fat cells. The former make up so called “stubborn fat” and they require a low level of blood sugar in order to be used for energy. If you’re going on stage this may concern you but otherwise, probably not. Lyle McDonald has a book on this, called “Stubborn fat solution”)
Post diet I taper my cardio and caffeine use and increase calories a bit. After that the whole gaining phase is practically a long reverse diet.
As I’m always either gaining or cutting there are not that many things that are consistent, it’s more like a everlasting loop of training, diet, stimulants etc. That follow each other.
I feel like I didn’t really answer your question but That’s a brief overview of how I do things.
Quite some stuff about pain and rehabilitation. It’s kind of “new” in the lifting world and not too widely accepted. Barbell Medicine and pain science are good sources if you want to learn more.
I’ve also learned about myself, as I’ve been digging the deepest diet hole yet (At the moment I’m three weeks from the end of my diet and man, has it been hard) is that after a certain point I get really irritable and tend to lose my temper quite quickly. So if anyone sees me being an asshole around here I’m sorry, shouldn’t have acted like that (but I did)
Leverages are a good segway to noticing what your weak points are. I’ve never thought of them as such so I don’t fall into the “I can’t grow my legs because of this” trap. Instead I’ve just gone with “I need bigger quads”
If course it’s a bit different when we talk about aesthetics vs performance.
We seem to have the same problem areas. My next gaining phase is focused on lower body (especially quads) and from there I go into a delt/arm dominant block with the focus on delts and triceps
Barely
Totes even!
Glad to hear that the job is going well, in the argument with you and your employer I’d side with neither of you though. I’d expect if I hired a PT through my gym to get a training program - but that nutrition info (depending on the level, of course) would be extra.
What’s it like being “self-employed” in Finland? Doing that “right” in Sweden brings to bear a lot of overhead - assuming you want to have support if you say, fall ill or become injured. You can also do it the improper, legal grayzone way, and enjoy absolutely no support network.
Very much so!
Do you change your weight training sessions when dieting?
Right now, I’m trying to keep myself honest to this statement,
and not run a deficit at all if I can avoid it. But, I somehow “miss” dieting. Or maybe just dislike the fluff that much that my mind is playing tricks on me.
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It’s pretty basic stuff, the client keeps a food journal for 3 or so days, I check it and give them my thoughts. I’m not allowed to write them actual diets so the bulk of the work is figuring out their intake levels.
It’s quite safe here. You’ll pay a part of your income and get sick leave that way, also you’ll have to pay for your own retirement and healthcare (like your employer does if you’re working for someone). Main thing is that that way I could bring the cost for customers down a bit and offer a wider variety of services.
I used not to change them that much when I was less experienced, but now building muscle in a deficit is not going to happen so I like to make my sessions a bit more diet-supportive by doing alternating sets. So, say a set of bench, 30s rest, set of chins, 60s rest, repeat. That way the training doesn’t take so long and it kinda work like metabolic conditioning work. I also use alternating sets during gaining phase at times. (depends on context)
With deads and stuff I just do straight sets because throwing leg extension/etc. could hinder my performance. I lower my volume according to what I can recovery from at a given point of diet, because maintaining muscle doesn’t take a whole lot of work, and having too much volume could actually be detrimental to that. That way I’m also less fatigued overall and move around more, thus burning more calories overall.
During a gaining phase I up my volume as needed, as I can recover from more. Note that I said as needed, I’m not just increasing it for the sake of increasing it.
That is not a bad idea at all. Dieting is fun because you see results fast. But stick to your gaining phase, you’ll look a whole lot better Once you eventually diet down if you’re sporting more muscle.
@danteism are you near Helsinki at all? I have a work thing there 16th-18th of March and it’d be cool to lift together if possible!
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