Growing up in a small town and attending a local yuppie gym, I never really had someone to teach me how to work out correctly besides books and magazines. I scrwed around in HS and got “Newbie Gains” and thought I knew what I was doing.
A couple years ago after exiting college, I found myself a tad overweight from eating cheap food and whatnot, and therefore decided to “diet down” through a popular weight training/cardio/eating program. I went from 233lbs to 196 in roughly 3-4 months. Not knowing at the time that you can actually lose muscle, and at 6’ 4’’ I was skinny.
I messed around for the next year trying to get bigger/stronger, but found myself dissappointed at my stagnant 225 lb 1RM on the bench, and small, barely 15’’ calves. This lingered on for the next six months until an old frined of mine helped me out. He had earned his degree in kinesiology and is now an aspiring Strength Coach. I then learned about set/rep schemes, sets per bodypart, levers, eccentric and concentric tempo’s and a whole bunch of technical shit along with exercises that I could’nt have dreamed up.
Since 2 years ago, I have gained 60 lbs while only brining my waistline up from 34 inches to 38.5 inches. My calves grew to 16.5, arms to 18, chest to 48, and my PR’s on the big three are as follows:
Bench Press: 302
Back Squat: 405
Deadlift: 500
I weighed 252 2 weeks ago at 14% BF(4 point pinch), and since have lost 4 lbs. My current goal is to Diet Down through Carb Cycling, and hopefully I will lose much more fat that muscle this time around. My goal is to get to as little BF as possible and i will continue to post on this log my daily eating habits and training routine.
Please, Feel free to chime in with any help/suggestions.
I’m emulating a 6 day cycle that Stu followed during his precontest routine:
1: Chest Back Shoulders
2: Legs Calves
3: Off + Cardio HIIT
4: Biceps Triceps Forearms
5: Hamstrings Calves
6: Off + Cardio HIIT
My LBM as of right now is 208-211 lbs. meaning that I have around 34-36 lbs of fat actually on me. If I can lose a solid 20 LBS and 90% of it being fat, that would make my freaking year. Pics up later. Now
And a forearm blast I do with a 40 lb dumbbell. 4x15 each arm no rest until all sets are done. This is the only thing that has allowed my forearms to grow.
I felt like I could do more weight tonight, but I still got in a pretty intense workout. I did screw up on eating only PF or PC meals today though. Did some food shopping tonight so tomorrow should be better.
I have found that shopping every 2-3 days helps keep the carb cycling process fresh in your head. I’m sure to most people it is quite an easy concept, but when youre working 10 hr days doing construction and painting like me, your mind tends to skip like an old record now and then.
I talked to Stu awhile back, and have laid out my carbs and workouts as follows:
1: Chest Back Shoulders: med carbs 200-250g
2: Legs Calves: high carbs 350g
3: Off + Cardio HIIT: Low carbs 100-125g
4: Biceps Triceps Forearms: med carbs 200-250g
5: Hamstrings Calves: high carbs 350g
6: Off + Cardio HIIT low carbs 125g
This was done pretty easily as I planned out my low day at 3200 kcals, and that is my “rubber stamp” eating plan. On medium days, I up my carbs by 100g or so at my workout session. Then on high days I ingest 200g fast carbs during my workout session. Simple enough. Weighed in today at 244.4. Hopefully it was just food I had in there and not actual LBM I’ve lost!