This is where my recent entrainment work starts to pay off.
I’ve been gradually shifting towards an eating schedule where I eat very little fat during my first 3 meals of the day, and pretty much split my targeted fat intake between the two last meals of the day.
This is a really easy one to follow during business travel or meetings, because it works well with the typical foods that are available and allows me to eat a regular restaurant-sized dinner meal while still hitting my macros.
So far, I have not observed any disadvantages to keeping fat low during the day. Unless you have a problem with skittles or something, it’s pretty hard to fuck up your diet if you are trying to completely avoid fat. It’s very straightforward - if the protein source isn’t an egg white or a chicken breast, it’s a protein bar or shake. Plain carbs like oatmeal or even cereal are usually easy to find for breakfast. Lunch can be difficult sometimes - it’s tougher to find a variation of rice, potato, or pasta that hasn’t been prepared with an extra 15 grams of fat or so.
I notice that many of the contest prep diets lock the fat intake at around 65 grams or so…I think that’s where I got the idea. Glad I stumbled on it, because it seems to automatically make other things fall into place pretty easily.
Finally done with the !ong business trips for a while. It’s been brutal, but I still managed to lift every day this week.
I’ve had to navigate my way through piles and piles of shitty but tempting conference food all week. I’ll be glad to get back to twigs, berries, and space food again.
Tomorrow, Loyola plays Stanford for the NCAA Mens Volleyball national championship.
I can’t believe it has been 18 years since I was wearing that uniform.
We happen to be hosting the final four this year, so it will be a home match for Loyola. This time around, we are the favorite with the top seed in the tournament and #1 ranking in the country. We just need to put it all together one more time.
Usually at least 60 minutes and at least 600 calories.
Lately I’ve been doing lots of:
Flexibility work
Floor work (planks and variations - my favorite new form of cardio)
Rope work
Athletic movement work - simulated moves:
tennis serve, forehand, backhand, golf swing, volleyball jumps
Upper body DB work:
shoulders, arms, chest, upper back
Ab work
Bodyweight squats and pistol squats
I hit a bucket of golf balls at the range yesterday and again this morning after my workout.
I’m crushing it. This is how the bug bites me, dammit. It starts off with a few sessions at the range where I’m just nutting everything. Next thing you know, I don’t surface until late July, where I’m found slung over the bar at the golf club with a half-eaten burger in one hand and a bloody Mary in the other.
But I refer myself back to the first post in this log.
Just. Keep. Lifting.
As long as I get my baseline 500 calorie lifting session in every morning, I can add all the activity I want. As long as I keep the food choices on-target, I can increase my intake a bit and everything will be humming along very nicely.
It’s that one morning where instead of turning left to the gym, I turn right to the range. That is where the trouble begins. Awareness is the first step, and I am fully aware of the powerful forces at work here.
And then there’s the tennis. I’ve come up with a potential plan with the tennis this year. I’ll play all the doubles I can play, but when it comes to singles, I’m really going to try to limit things and hopefully do more hitting and less match play. Basically, there are some guys who play old school who just want to run back and forth. Those guys are OUT. I’ll stick to the guys who want to spend a half hour just hitting and then maybe play just one set. No more two-hour wars of attrition with these flat ballers.
This week, I’m averaging about 2500 cals, 240g C, 220g P, 55g F.
If I could stick to this every day, or at least 6/7 days, I’d be a lot more shredded right now.
But it’s summer, so I’ve been eating and drinking like most normal people a little bit more often than usual.
Not a big deal, I still feel like I’m holding it together. The one constant is that I’m always hitting my 60 minute AM workout.
I was up to about 198 for a few days, but back down between 191-193 lately.
I’d like to say that these dietary “excursions” might be doing me some good in terms of muscle gain, but I honestly don’t feel like gains or recovery or pumps are much better for me when I’m taking in more food than I need. If anything, I get better pumps when I’m on the lean and dry side - maybe because I’m more insulin sensitive in that condition vs. possibly nudging up against “anabolic resistance” after a decent run of excessive consumption.
The weather has totally sucked balls this spring, which is probably why it has been easier for me to hit the gym without being distracted by opportunities to play golf or tennis.
It’s all good. I plan to keep lifting every fucking day until October so I can finally say that I lifted for an entire year without interruption.
More arms.
More shoulders.
More upper back.
Reps. Reps. Reps.
Light weight.
Low fat. High carbs. Protein pulsing.
Beck’s Light.
I had a golf outing the other day and hit a drive that carried 315 and ended up almost completely buried in the fairway grass when it landed (tons of rain, very soft fairway). It was sweet and made it easy to tell just exactly how fall the ball carried.
I’m taking an on-line compliance training module, so I’ve been reading through some logs and forum posts.
What the fuck is the deal with everyone telling frustrated skinny-fat people to just keep trying to get stronger.
In my opinion, it’s the worst fucking advice ever. The only people who should train to get stronger are the ones who are super inherently driven to get stronger simply for the sake of getting stronger. Strength training should be their tool of choice. Go for it.
But if you are skinny fat and want to NOT be skinny fat, AND you have not seen great results with a strength-training program, then do something DIFFERENT for fuck sake.
Turn over some glycogen. Improve insulin sensitivity. Make room for more carbs. Improve recovery. Increase frequency. Turn over even more glycogen. Rinse. Repeat.
One day you’re using 15 pound dumbbells, and a few months later you are doing a much higher volume with 20 pound dumbbells. There’s your fucking strength gain if you really need one.
That ends my passive aggressive rant and I’m still only on fucking page 39 of 79 of this compliance module, dammit.
60 minutes, 650 calories (estimated. NEVER by a fucking TIMEX hear rate monitor)
CHEST - Roc-It seated bench press machine. I love the angles on this thing, perfect for shoulder-friendly pressing work.
You know how sometimes when you try to hold a push-up you start trembling/shaking a little bit?
I’ve been playing around with creating this in many movements. Thibs wrote an article where he called it micro-oscillation.
Anyway, I did it today on this chest press machine and holy shit. What an awesome way to create a huge stimulus without putting much stress on your joints at all. Amazing. I will continue to play around with this type of rep…I think it’s good for muscle hardness, pump, glycogen turnover, and injury prevention. I also feel like it creates a huge metabolic demand.
But like holds and isometric contractions, it’s hard to find a way to include it in a workout in a sustainable fashion.
Just found this log. Really like your basic goals stated on page 1 (we’re pretty similar in that regard - just keep doing work, allow ourselves to evolve, do some of what we want). Nice work
Wow, it’s been almost a month since I dropped in here.
Weight - 193
Still lifting, that’s the most important thing. If I lift all the way through September, it might be the first time I’ve ever completed twelve consecutive months of lifting since I started this shit about 20 years ago.
I’m shooting for 2700 calories, 80% from P+C (flexible with specifics - could be 300g carbs and 240g protein or 200g carbs and 340g protein or 270/270.)
60g Fat. Trying not to get most of this through my solid food protein sources like fish and beef, with some added oils here and there.
Right now my main supps are MAG-10, a GDA-type combo, and some Seven, Carbolin 19, or Fahrenheit here and there. I just re-ordered some Carbolin 19, because I ran out and like to take it at night by itself.
Training continues to evolve, but I’m generally lifting every day for an hour. I mix in some short circuits of rope jumping or floor work. I will generally hit everything everyday, but I rotate what I focus on. Sunday was legs. Yesterday was chest. Today was arms.
^It’s funny. Any time I start to really clean up my diet and get crank up my consistency, it starts with a few days of tweaking back-and-forth.
This week, I started with a visit to Whole Foods so I could stock up on a bunch of REAL shit.
1 lb. grass fed ground beef 85%
1.25 lbs. copper river salmon
bag of frozen shrimp (good kind)
Free-Range Eggs
Kerrygold Butter
Avocado Oil
Kale
Asparagus
Blueberries
Strawberries
Kiwi
Lemon
Quick Oats
Cranberry Juice
After that shopping trip, I wanted to see what kind of macros I would fall on if I included all of those foods.
I’ll give it a few days to see where the chips fall, but it’s obviously trending toward 33/33/33. I have had enormous success getting lean on 40/40/20, but there are elements that just make it a little impractical to achieve broader health goals with those macros. I think.
I do know this: I look forward to a breakfast of free-range eggs cooked in grass-fed butter with some chopped brussel sprouts sautéed in avocado oil. Some strawberries and figs. Double espresso. Done.
I also added creatine mono at about 10-15 grams/day for the past few days and then I’ll probably go to 8g/day.
And I’ve thrown in some beta-alanine (enough to make it feel like I’m wearing a long-sleeve wool sweater when I’m lifting).
And some agmatine sulfate and beet root extract pre-workout.
^I’ve been throwing all of the above into my 2 scoops of MAG-10 pre-workout. That’s it. No other carbs until oatmeal and some dried figs post-workout.
This combination seems to give me great performance and great pumps without the need for carbs pre or intra. I know, I know, it’s blasphemy. But it seems to work for me. For now.
