Serge Storms Experimentation Log - New Methods to Gain Muscle and Lose Fat

Training Training Logs
101

[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:
To make the most of it, I’ve kept my tanks empty so far today (Friday)…just a scoop of MAG-10, some strawberries, and a few swigs of Omega Man Fish Oil, Mocha Java flavored. Chocolate Fish Oil. What will they think of next.[/quote]
Heh. How does that taste?

Chocolate protein powder with lemon fish oil I thought was a pretty good combo.[/quote]

The Omega Man Fish Oil tastes awesome. I go through a bottle of it way too fast. Protein powder with fish oil…I think I’ll pass on that one!
[/quote]

It was whole milk and/or half and half, with a raw egg or two, with chocolate protein powder, with lemon fish oil. Tried some crazy stuff in the past.

102

[quote]LoRez wrote:
So I’m a little confused trying to follow that. I used Lose It for a 5 week mini-cut (using it for logging mainly, but using my own calculations) so I’m at least a bit familiar.

I got the 2100 on non-workout days and 2700 on workout days part. And setting a hard cap at 2700.

But with respect to other activities, are you just suggesting to just cap your intake at 2700 no matter what else you do? (And just letting that deficit accumulate in your weekly numbers). Or are you ALSO suggesting to avoid doing any other activities?

Do you think that “lifting” is the only activity that should drive up your available calories?[/quote]

Definitely do more activity, he’ll, as much as you can possibly get away with.

For me, lifting is the only thing I usually count. But if I don’t lift but instead play two hours of singles tennis, I will still shoot for 2700 and the rest (500 or so) will count towards the deficit.

But this is all more of a behavioral hack than anything else…I don’t do well if I have too much room to negotiate with my numbers throughout the week. Set them, hit them, observe, adjust, repeat. That would be ideal.

103

So many numbers, brain hurting reading this… :wink: haha.

(happy birthday too!)

104

[quote]raven78 wrote:
So many numbers, brain hurting reading this… :wink: haha.

(happy birthday too!)[/quote]

Thanks!!

Did somebody say numbers?

Here are the numbers from yesterday

MONDAY INTAKE

2400 calories

170g P
265g C
90g F

^We had some grass-fed ground beef burgers for dinner. Eight ounce burger with half an avocado…that’s about 50 grams of fat right there.

I tend to get a baseline of about 40 grams of fat with just my basic normal eating habits, so a meal with lots of fat will tend to make it hard to execute a lower-fat day. That’s why I am allowing my macros to flex up to Zone-levels…90g fat/day max.

I’ll still try to dig for a few low-fat days this week. From past experience, the more of those I string together, the better the results.

105

Training Tuesday AM - 60 minutes

25g HBCD pre-workout with 2 scoops MAG-10 and a double-espresso. (no, it was NOT all mixed together)

8 minutes intense jump rope
pistols
planks
pushups

DB work - primarily shoulders with some bi’s and tri’s
Lot’s of high-rep squeeze work, tons of holds

I did many sets by starting in a physique-competitor front “relaxed” pose - kind of the hollow-body abs type of full-body tension, lats flared, pecs tight. From there, I would start cranking out reps for different shoulder and arm movements. I was practicing holding the ab tension in the correct way while still breathing through the exercises. This might be a good way to prepare for a competition some day.

Anyway, my front delts looked pretty weak during these movements, so that’s where I focused most of my effort today…they were pretty fresh, so that was a good match.

I also did a tone of ab work with the high cable. Here, I would simulate the ab tension during a “front relaxed” pose, and then use the cable to deliver stimulation while holding that specific type of tension…lots of mini-drop-and-catch reps, pulsing reps, shiver reps, etc. Most of these little methods are nothing more than ways to make “constant tension” and static hold work more bearable, both physically and mentally.

At this point, it seems that the biggest benefit of the rope work is probably the cardio improvements. I think it helps to build my overall work capacity, which helps me extend sets - especially on things like pull-ups, where you CV system can get pretty taxed.

My body is used to the movement, so I’m probably only burning a fraction of what a beginner would burn. The sense that I’m NOT using the rope to burn calories is actually kind of liberating. It lets me really keep the sessions short and intense, it makes me want to do them more. They are so much fun that I really look forward to them. Also, keeping them short and un-timed really helps me autoregulate, because too much jump rope can quickly aggravate shins, ankles, knees, etc.

With my diet in-check, intense 60-minute workout sessions every day, and lots of extra summer activities and moving around - it would seem silly for me to do any kind of regular “cardio” right now. It would be a rain drop in a bucket.

106

Tuesday Intake
2200 calories
185g P
290g C
36g F

I went back to review my logs from the last mini-cut and remembered that I was delaying fat intake as much as I possibly could back then.

I tried it today, and ended up at 36 grams, which is awesome. It would have been higher, but my wife accidentally bought the extra lean ground turkey instead of the lean (great for me, but the girls hate it)…that saved me about 20 grams of fat or so right there.

Anyway, I really think that some very low-fat days is a good idea on a cut…on my last one, they always seemed to coincide with an acceleration of fat loss.

The trick is to manage the carb intake throughout the day so I don’t spark an avalanche of intense carb cravings. Fruit, oatmeal (no sweetener), bread, and some pre-workout carbs made up my carb intake until dinner today, and I never felt like my appetite got fired up too much.

I still have room for more food under the cap today, especially since I did a second session at the gym this evening. But this cut could use a spark, I have zero problem coming in under my numbers right now if it’s not a struggle and I’m getting good pumps and feeling awesome.

Played around with a new pump-inducing combo this evening - a glycerol product with some nitro nitrate nitrizzznit something or other and beet root extract, mixed with a hydration product, and then 3.2 grams of beta alanine.

Now I already had an appetite-suppressing product on-board, which may not have been the best idea but oh well.

Anyway, I was sweating like a mother and had the reddish, warm, tingly skin sensation. It was kind of intense. I seriously felt like I could have gone for another hour, though. I had to stop myself. The pump was great, although I tend to always get a good pump after dinner, when a full day of food is on-board and when I’m riding the 6pm circadian phantom pump that often appears out of nowhere on its own.

107

Wednesday Training

Quads

I did about six million reps of leg extensions.

About four million of those were very small range pulsing/squeezing reps way up in the lockout position.

5 minutes of jump rope

5 minutes of smith machine work for traps (high-pull variations with holds and catches)

Weight= 196.5

Surprised I’m holding at this weight with such a low intake, but a whoosh is probably upon me at some point.

11 weeks out, practicing my physique competitor poses even though I’m just going to a resort… but you never know if a physique contest will suddenly break out, so I should probably work on my posing, right?

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108

[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:

Weight= 196.5

Surprised I’m holding at this weight with such a low intake, but a whoosh is probably upon me at some point.

[/quote]

Whoosh, there it is.

192.8 this morning. I could actually feel the whoosh coming on yesterday afternoon, as I just seemed to keep getting tighter and tighter throughout the course of the day. Mysterious. It’s funny how I used to think that dropping carbs and salt was the only way to spark a few quick pounds of weight loss.

I had 350 grams of carbs yesterday - a bunch of them came just before bed when I ate a few bowls of rice krispies.

There were 28 different entries in my food log for the day. That’s another thing I noticed from my last mini-cut - I seemed to be grazing on many small servings of different foods throughout the day. The highest calorie single food item I ate yesterday was 9 ounces of chicken breast. Everything else was just a little of this and that:

oatmeal
greens powder
Metamucil
fiber smart
fish oil
carb drink
extra lean ground turkey
protein shake
deli turkey on bread
fage ff yogurt
fiber one cereal
apple
peach
low fat string cheese
small square of cake
figs
deli turkey
almond butter
chicken breast
strawberries
Metamucil
ahi tuna
rice crispies

INTAKE WEDNESDAY
2750 calories
221g P
348g C
52g F

(32%/51%/17%)

If I hit those numbers every day for three weeks, good things will happen.

TRAINING THURSDAY AM - 50 MINUTES

Big focus on chest today, I pretty much had some kind of tension on my chest for about 90% of the 50 minutes, using very long extended sets and plenty of special techniques.

My bread-and-butter chest move is the D-Roy cross-body raise. I do them with DBs and cables. Today I also did a TON of work with these on the smith machine, with hardly any weight on the bar and using one hand at a time to really generate a focused contraction in the upper/mid pec area.

I need to bring up my chest, or at least figure out a way to drastically increase my ability to pump up my chest. I think the key to a good “physique competitor” pose, should I ever require the ability to display one, is to be able to really focus on contracting the abs but allowing the chest to stay relaxed so it can take up as much real-estate as possible.

Do I need to build up my chest so it can get super pumped and look big while relaxed so I can keep my shoulders spread far apart so I can emphasize the V taper.

Today I did some post-workout posing work using video instead of pictures to see if I could zero in on some angles and contractions to improve my mastery of illusion. It’s a fun challenge, but I think more posing options will open up to me as I get much leaner - if that makes sense.

109

Leaning out.

It’s like a cruise ship making a u-turn.

Takes a bit of effort to change directions, but once you are moving, it’s all good.

192.8 this morning.

THURSDAY INTAKE

2350 c
190g P
320g C
44g F

Weekend ahead.

I’m treating it like any other day of the week, just without work.

Weekend derailments are nothing more than a bad habit. I’m executing an override. Then we can observe the difference between kicking ass for 6 days in a row vs. 14.

Off to L.A. Fitness. The old ladies dig me here, a few of them chat me up for advice, it’s great.

110

Friday Intake

2400 c

210g P
315g C
45g F

Training Yesterday (Thursday)

60 minutes

Arms, shoulders, traps
Rope x 5 minutes

Same shit…super-high reps, constantly moving with very little rest.

Weight = 193.2

Leaning out on low fat is so much easier than doing it on low carbs.

I’m thinking the little body weight blip may be related to the 6,000-plus milligrams of sodium I had yesterday. I had a pound of shrimp for dinner. Sounds like a lot, and it is 80g of protein and 400 calories, but it doesn’t feel like much food when you eat it.

Anyway, I woke up looking very good this morning…I thought for sure the scale was gonna go down based on how I looked.

Not that I care about the scale, but I do find it interesting to tease apart the effects of different dietary changes on day-to-day scale fluctuations. I really don’t have many high salt, low fat days. Usually high salt comes along with a high-fat, high-alcohol day, so it’s hard to know what contributes to what.

All of this just reinforces my theory that salt, alcohol, fat, and carbs are not really evil on their own. It’s the combination, especially alcohol, salt, and fat. It won’t destroy your physique, but it will take so long for the water to stabilize that you’ll spend half the week not really knowing where you stand.

Running average macros for the week are 50/30/20. It’s not a matter of IF those are effective numbers because that zone is pretty much magic for me. The question is…how long am I willing to sustain those numbers.

The diet itself is quite manageable and pretty easy to sustain. It’s more about my attitude, my drive, stress level, level of engagement, and connection to purpose. If those things are strong, everything else is automatic.

My wife got a new job and we just found out we have to cancel the Cancun trip in October. So I guess whatever extra sense of purpose that goal date was providing is now gone.

Just so happens there is an NPC show very close to me that very same weekend I was supposed to be in Cancun. It looks like they have a few different height classes for physique, a few age divisions, and I think a novice class. Maybe it would be a good replacement for the Cancun trip. Against the advice of iDrDan, I’m thinking about it. (He told me not to think about it and just do it.)

That would put me at 11 weeks away…I think I could pull it off.

111

Finally, an entire week in the “green”, no days over the calorie cap.

Sunday Intake
2450 calories

225g P
305g C
40g F

Weight Sunday AM - 192.0

No lifting today - golf and some trail walking instead.

Averages for this week:

364g C
182g P
52g F

^Those will definitely do the trick…shit, if I even just put two or three more of those weeks together I feel like I’ll be pretty damn lean already.

I’m already in the fun zone - this high rep training really does seem to improve vascularity because I’ve been this lean before but I’ve never seen some of these veins.

112

After watching some videos of physique contests, I’ve become obsessed with adding some size to my chest or at least figuring out how to pump the shit out of it. Posing makes a huge difference, so I’m working on finding all the best angles and combinations of contractions. Once I have that all down, I’ll need to start practicing without a mirror so I can go by feel.

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This isn’t a physique pose but it sure should be…
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113

I was feeling soft, flat, weak, and pale after looking at those pictures^.

I also had a long lunch break.

So I went outside and did some jump rope and a few DB circuits. Then I adjusted the lighting. Now I feel all better.

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I’d like to do one of those shows where they wear the shorter shorts so I can show off my quads!

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114

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Comparison. 30 years old on left. 40 on right.

115

Tuesday intake

2500 calories

175 g P
260 g C
55g F

Hunger is low, Energy is high, Cravings are non-existent. I must be doing something right.

There are two potential physique shows I’m looking at - one is October 4th, and the other one is a month later. Both are located pretty close to me. The October show has three height classes and a master’s division but I don’t think it has a novice class. I think I can be 5’10" if gravity is exceptional the day of the weigh-in, or registration, or whatever the hell goes on. I’m really close, so I would guess it would be better to be the tallest in my class…I don’t know. Depends on the builds of everyone who shows up I guess.

I don’t know anything about this stuff, so I better start learning.

My local health food store guy knows a few people who have competed in physique, but otherwise I don’t know a single person in real life who is part of the competitive scene. It would be nice to at least connect with some real people who compete around here, just to pick their brains and maybe get some tips on the posing and tanning and what to expect the day of the show.

I’m open to the idea of getting a coach, but I feel like local would be the best way to go - someone who can work on the poses with me in-person. I don’t really know if I want to pay someone to tell me to remove a certain number of grams of oatmeal throughout the weeks…that would take some of the fun out of the whole process for me. I feel like that’s my department. I’ll probably pick a peaking strategy that I think will work for me and then hopefully have time to test it out a few weekends ahead of the event. Not sure what that strategy will look like, but I’m guessing it will involve some carb supercompensation and hopefully not too much dicking around with salt and water, but whatever works I guess.

My wife and daughter are starting to come around to the idea. My wife just hates the fake tan part, it seems to really freak her out…teeth and eyeballs everywhere. I showed my daughter the pics from iDrDan’s contest and she said they all look like they have girl-boobs because their chests are too big. They are both calling it a “gentlemen’s contest” for some reason, which makes me laugh every time I hear it, so we’re sticking with it.

I just need to decide 1. which height class should I enter (does it matter…will they just put me in the right one anyway depending on what the measuring tape says?) 2. should I also enter the masters division or 3.) should I ONLY enter the masters division?

I did manage to dig up some photos from last year’s contest and there were some great builds but I think I could hang.

116

Training Tuesday AM - 60 minutes

SHOULDERS

DB Work -
lateral raises
leaning away lateral raises
front raises
rear delt work

Basically, I worked the shit out of my shoulders using a wide variety of contraction techniques including:

drop-and-catch
holds
super slow
explosive “throws”
twitch contractions
slow squeezes at peak contraction

I also did a ton of delt work on the cables.

ARMS

lots of arm work done between sets of shoulder work
same shit…a bunch of different techniques with DBs and cables
plenty of DB kickback holds and cable kickback holds -
-for this one, I squeeze at full extension and then I squeeze some more. Then I turn my arm to move the contraction around the different tricep heads. And then squeeze some more. Kickbacks are awesome, although I see no purpose for full-ROM on them. They should only be done for squeezes, holds, and tiny littly partial reps very near full lockout.
(coincidentally, I think the same types of techniques work well for leg extensions, since the quads are like the triceps of the lower body)

ABS

Only thing I did for abs was a bit of posing/tension work. After reading through some articles and logs on physique contests and from talking to iDrDan, I feel like I should start working on increasing my capacity to hold my ab contraction while breathing and moving around. So I did some of that, but it’s hard to do in the gym with a shirt on, so I might reserve that for a dedicated session so I can make sure I’m creating the right contraction.

I also did two short-ish jump rope sessions but they were super intense.

And I did a monster set of insanely strict pull-ups - probably 20 or more reps with some pauses and mini-contractions embedded in there.

The shoulder pump today was pretty insane. Someday I’ll need to zero in on the ideal pumping strategy. I’m thinking blow up the chest and pump the shoulders and arms secondarily. And then I do one of these shoulder workouts and feel like nope, I need to blow my shoulders up because the size difference and visual impact is pretty damn dramatic.

BODYWEIGHT TODAY = 191.0

117

Tuesday PM - Mini Session - 30 minutes

Went back to get a chest and shoulder pump before dinner.

I ended up doing some great sets for abs using the rope…constant tension work, good stuff.

Also did a few sets with the jump rope, some pistols, and stretched.

I would much rather do something like this than a dedicated “cardio” session. I think it provides more metabolic bang and feels like it helps dinner go to the right place (which is my chest right now. and shoulders. arms too. traps. and lats. but mostly chest).

Intake Tuesday

2700 calories

200g P
277g C
72g F

I had 10 ounces of grilled salmon for dinner, so that drove the fat intake up a bit. That’s why my macros are kind of boring today.

The salmon was pre-seasoned, so we will see what that kind of salt intake late in the day will do to my morning weight. Not that I’m restricting salt, but those things had a shitload of salt.

I’m gonna keep trying to nail 2700 on the head this week in hopes that I can continue to ride this momentum and leave room to drop calories later.

I am seriously going to blow my chest up over the next few months, my wife is gonna be pissed.

The flipside of that “artificial”-seeming nature of pump-driven gains is that they happen much faster. I am unleashing the hounds of frequency on my chest right now.

118

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Starting to see some new separation in the very upper part of my leg, it’s pretty cool.

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Got a ways to go still on the waist, but one posing option that will be available will be the side-on look with the waist pulled in to look as small as possible. I’ve seen some guys do this on YouTube videos of physique contests, and I really don’t like it that much - it’s a little too artificial looking, even though it can look freaky and kind of cool.

TRAINING WEDNESDAY

Quads and Lats

Tons of leg extensions, mostly partials.

A zillion single-arm rows for maximum lat contraction using cables.

It felt like I was getting an awesome pump and great connection, but I’m not sure where the payoff is with lats from a physique contest perspective - seems like it might pay off more to work on my strengths in that area and figure out a way to just get the right pump for the basic back pose, which to me would be more in the traps and rhomboids and rear delts and lower back.

Lats. It looks like I have them when I’m doing partial-range pull-ups, but that’s about it.

119

Serge,

Have you played around with dropping carbs significantly at all in the past?

Or is your current lower fat component of the food split the best way for you to drop fat.

So much info out there - and I am somewhat confused.

I am currently carb cycling (1week only thus far) and aiming for 2000 cal on workout days (circa 188P 181C 63F), 1000 cal (circa 123P 31C 47F) rest days typically with low carbs on rest day. My BW 69kg atm.

(My main focus is to reduce the belly!)

Never measured or weighed my food previously, its a massive eye opener.

Thoughts? Cheers.

(And who needs lats when you have the guns…) ha.

120

[quote]raven78 wrote:
Serge,

Have you played around with dropping carbs significantly at all in the past?

Or is your current lower fat component of the food split the best way for you to drop fat.

So much info out there - and I am somewhat confused.

I am currently carb cycling (1week only thus far) and aiming for 2000 cal on workout days (circa 188P 181C 63F), 1000 cal (circa 123P 31C 47F) rest days typically with low carbs on rest day. My BW 69kg atm.

(My main focus is to reduce the belly!)

Never measured or weighed my food previously, its a massive eye opener.

Thoughts? Cheers.

(And who needs lats when you have the guns…) ha.[/quote]

Hey raven78, thanks for dropping by.

I’ve done some very-low carb approaches in the past, but I like low-fat much better. It’s easier to sustain and I get better results…much better.

As far as carb-cycling goes, I would probably reserve it for a peaking strategy where you are going for the supercompensation effect. I don’t think carb cycling produces any better fat loss than sticking to the same macros for seven days/week.

For normal fat-loss goals, especially for a novice macro tracker, your first goal should be to do the same thing for at least three weeks in a row. This is really the only way you are going to learn anything about what works best for you.

Those numbers you listed for your rest day macros are so low I’m getting hungry just reading them. You might throw in one day of very low intake per week just to speed things up, but otherwise I would not go lower than 2000 calories per day whether you are training or not.

Do you want to get lean and then STAY lean? If that’s the case, your most powerful asset is HABIT. Get your body habituated to the types and amounts of foods that are required for leanness. That means doing the same exact thing (not the same foods, just the same calories and macros) for about three weeks. Once you get to that point, you can assess and adjust.

You are right, it can be very confusing. Give yourself some time to develop some mastery of the tracking stuff and try to do the same thing for three weeks in a row. If you need a starting point for macros, I’d roll with what you’ve listed for your workout days. If you nail those macros for three weeks in a row, my guess is you’ll probably see some quick results and might need to add some carbs back in…just a guess, I would need pictures and more info but even that won’t help as much as simply nailing those numbers for three weeks in a row.

Hope that helps, good luck!