Overall I am looking to drop about 20-25 pounds (go from 190 to 165-170, I competed at 160). I am likely not going to get into true contest condition, I just dont have the same life I did back then to allow that to happen for me right now (had a baby in august so that has to be my priority). But I am shooting for “4 weeks out” type of condition.
I think I’m largely going to stick with my current training plan (5/3/1 with a rotating assistance template), and “dance with who brought me” in terms of my previous leaning out efforts (methodically and systematically ramping up cardio, lowering calories, and diet on a keto + weekly cheat with occasional Pulse Fasts in the final weeks)
I probably wont add any cardio until 12 weeks out, both because I dont think its necessary for me at my current level and because I have an infant in the house and probably wont be able to time wise until he is around that age (but what do I know? Its my first kid, so maybe it will only get more time intensive at the 6-9 months range)
I may sub out some assistance work on leg day for farmers walks or another loaded carry towards the end as well.
In general though I dont think the actual weight training should change much for a prep, maybe a little lighter at the very end to avoid injury when you are very depleted but otherwise I will just keep on trucking.
Our son just turned 1 in October and dude is exhausting, lol… When people say “once they start walking you’ll never sit down” they aren’t kidding. It’s pretty awesome being a dad, though.
I’m currently in my first week of a 3-week cycle of 531 that’s pretty much building the monolith but with the volume toned down. I just finished a 3week cycle of regular 531 and just wanna see how it compares. If I like it I’m gonna start my contest prep Jan 1 off with a few cycles of the full blown building the monolith program.
For conditioning I’m trying out the “spot reduction cardio” that CT was talking about where you do abs in between cardio. I’m starting out Mon and Fri doing the steady state (elliptical and such) for 3 rounds of 10 minutes with 3 sets of abs (hanging leg raises on Mon and an roll outs on Fri) between every round.
Then on Sundays I’m doing the farmers carries/abs combo
Over the course of the 6 mos I’ll probably start switching the steady state to sprints or some other kind of shitty conditioning like bear crawls or some such
i will keep my 3 day push pull legs split. on april 1st i will start adding cardio and a little bit ab work slowly and it will get harder each week. last 2 weeks will be very intense and i will be doing cardio 6 times a week.
i am thinking about reducing the volume of my weight workouts as the cardio goes up.
last year i followed this plan and it worked really well. i had never been that lean before in my life. even my lower ab flab disappeared.
Not much point in the best physique award, in my opinion. Flip and Eyedentist are so far ahead the rest of us already it’d be a two horse race from the start.
The cool thing about the best transformation is it’s not how great your physique is, but how much you improve, so even if your physique isn’t photo shoot-worthy by the end, you could still have lost like 200lbs (if you started really heavy) and that’d be more impressive than someone going from 12% fat to 8%. Know what I mean?
Definitely going to be a fun watch. With regard to the pics, I always suggest that people take their photos in the exact same place each week, and obviously do their best to maintain the same lighting. The idea to to actually be able to discern changes and progress, not go for that magic photo at the end (of course there are always tricks you can do before that last series of pics to make the most of what you’ve accomplished -lol)
I’m going to black out my head any ways, so might as well just take any unknown Instagram physique guy and blackout the head. Voila, no photoshop needed.
In seriousness though, I’m afraid that if I let my diet go until 1/1/17, I’ll relapse into my crackhead-like addiction to ice cream.
Coincidentally I start my contest prep January 1, I’ll be going to Stu’s in the next couple weeks for some training, posing and most definitely eating! It is hard though, as it gets closer I find myself in the “oh man I have so much I need to eat before I can’t eat it for 6 months” mode, gotta be careful!
It’s horrible. If I didn’t love working out and generally being active, I’d be a giant tub of lard. There were several weeks this summer where I ate two pints of Ben and Jerry’s a day. I slowly had to ween myself off to one a day, then to every other day… I’m a full 40-some-odd-days clean and sober.
