Wednesday - PM Mini-Session - 30 minutes
Wednesday Intake
Thursday AM Weight = 191.0
after a quick shoulder, arm, and chest pump:
[photo]40286[/photo]
Great thanks mate, super response, greatly appreciated.
Yup 1000 was low, doable (filling foods), but not a sustainable long term strategy - agree!
Will aim for circa 2000 for the next 3 weeks for sure. Cheers!
Getting leaner and staying there yes that’s the aim.
It seems I’m now stalking in your squat rack. Ha.
(I have some pics in my profile - need to take some more and review measurements)
[quote]raven78 wrote:
Great thanks mate, super response, greatly appreciated.
[/quote]
No problem, always happy to help.
I took a quick look at your pics. You could probably cut about 6% bodyfat just by improving your lighting, adjusting your camera angles, and contracting your abs instead of pushing out your stomach. Well, okay, technically the bodyfat would still be there, but you’d look a hell of a lot better!
Anyway, good luck with keeping on track…and seriously, you are probably not as far away as you might think - I’ll be following your log.
Traps
All isolation, all the time. Cables and dumbbells…little. tiny. dumbbells.
Each of my traps blew up…like little pop-up tents resting on my shoulders… throughout the session.
Still don’t know if I’m going to pull the trigger on one of these physique contests coming up in the fall, but I’m enjoying the contest prep mentality right now. It has really forced me to start problem-solving some of my “weak” body parts (as defined by physique contest criteria, whatever the hell that is) and made my diet go from 78% on-point to about 99% on-point It feels pretty effortless because I’m locked in this mindset where a chocolate chip cookie Palermo’s Pizza Beck’s Light Binge is no longer a danger that constantly looms on the fringes of my consciousness.
It’s funny how even though I’ve dropped calories, my “appetite” and “cravings” have almost disappeared. Having a strong WHY really takes away all of the effort and struggle with things.
dude, what’s the D-Roy cross body raise?
[quote]Yogi wrote:
dude, what’s the D-Roy cross body raise?[/quote]
At 3:05 and about 3:40 in this video:
Thibs used it as part of a series of chest movements, so here in the video they do them with pretty loose form and just a squeeze at the top.
I’ve played around with it and figured out some better ways to get the most out of it. I like to start with some swinging momentum to improve the distance the arm stretches across the chest. There seems to be a sweet spot that is beyond what you can reach without giving it a little swing to increase that range. Then once at the top, I do a very hard squeeze and hold.
Something about the explosive nature of that catch/squeeze/hold really pumps the shit out of your chest very quickly.
Also, this type of contraction/movement pattern doesn’t really stress the joints or cause the type of “microtrauma” that other movement might, so you can do them frequently…just go light at first so you don’t pop an AC joint or anything.
ah ok, so it’s like a one armed, bent over fly type deal only with more across the body ROM.
Excellent. Always like a shoulder friendly chest movement so I’ll definitely give those a try.
Thanks very much, brother
[quote]Yogi wrote:
ah ok, so it’s like a one armed, bent over fly type deal only with more across the body ROM.
Excellent. Always like a shoulder friendly chest movement so I’ll definitely give those a try.
Thanks very much, brother[/quote]
Anytime…glad to help.
My shoulders do not like any kind of pressing - maybe because the structure I was born with is better for ballet than lifting weights. Clavicular Vaginitis, I believe they call it.
[quote]Serge A. Storms wrote:
[quote]Yogi wrote:
ah ok, so it’s like a one armed, bent over fly type deal only with more across the body ROM.
Excellent. Always like a shoulder friendly chest movement so I’ll definitely give those a try.
Thanks very much, brother[/quote]
Anytime…glad to help.
My shoulders do not like any kind of pressing - maybe because the structure I was born with is better for ballet than lifting weights. Clavicular Vaginitis, I believe they call it.
[/quote]
LOL! I think I have that very same affliction!
The only heavy pressing I’ll ever do now is on a decline. Doesn’t have to be much of a decline, but a decline nonetheless.
Thursday Intake
2700 calories
250g P
275g C
56g F
Friday Intake
2100 cal
Had a busy work situation early in the day and my normal eating was a bit disrupted.
Good news is I played a round of golf tonight and didn’t have 8 beers like each of the other three guys did.
I had zero beers. Because I’m locked in like that.
Strange day today…started with a mini-session in the morning at the hotel gym. Not a bad gym for a hotel, so I got a great 30 minute session and focused on shoulders.
Went back later and did another 40 minutes. Only this time I hit shoulders. Oh, wait, didn’t I hit shoulders? Yes.
For the morning session, my pre-workout carbs came from a bowl of corn flakes and some pineapple.
For the evening session, I used a mixture of HBCD, dexanhydrous glucose, a non-stimulant pump product, and some MAG-10.
Much better pump in the evening. My shoulders were looking fibrous.
Then I played a round of golf and completely sucked. It took my 12 holes to remember to stop rotating my clubface open so much on the backswing. Once I figured that out, I crushed a couple of drives about 315 or so, straight down the middle. Stupid game.
Macro split is averaging 45/35/20 so far this week. Calories are a bit low - I need to keep nudging those up unless I want to get stringy. We’ll see what tomorrow morning’s weight is. If it’s less than 189, I’ll probably spike my carbs tomorrow and then see if I can stay at the same weight throughout next week while nudging my calories up towards 2800 or so. If it’s above 190, I’m good to go.
I think it’s been about 2 weeks off the Carbolin 19, so I’m gonna throw that back in the mix for a bit. Not sure I need the Se7en right now, as the leaning momentum is in full force right now without any help.
Tomorrow I’ll probably do, hmmm…oh yeah, CHEST.
Saturday AM Training - Garage Chest - 50 minutes
Played around with some band movements, ring stuff, and DB work.
2 sets on the jump rope - maybe 7 minutes total.
I’m gonna see what happens if I crank the carbs up to 400 and keep everything else the same.
That should take me up to about 2800 calories.
The trick is to do this with un-sweetened plain oatmeal instead of appetite-stimulating carb sources like cinnamon toast crunch.
I don’t need to be tripping the reward circuits just because I’m adding some carbs.
I mean…my normal 1 - 2 servings of cereal before bed is fine because even if it makes me hungry, I won’t know. I’ll be asleep.
But no need for skittles or jellybeans or pop tarts right now.
By the way, I don’t get this whole pop tart thing. I just never liked them, they make my stomach a little uneasy for some reason. Something about the dry-ish yet moist-ish texture that never appealed to me.
In terms of fun carbs without fat, my favorites include:
I won’t be doing chest in the garage anymore - no choice this morning, but next time I won’t even bother. I need cables and fly machines and benches.
Also, jumping rope on the driveway is horrible…gotta keep that to the nice wooden floor in the cardio studio at the gym.
Here’s what will happen today. I drank a shitload of fluid this morning because I wanted to add some extra intra carbs. Got a nice pump, but now I feel slightly full and watery. Between now and the afternoon, I’ll be in the bathroom pretty frequently as that water all passes through. Then, from around 2pm on, I’ll be all dried up - just in time for the circadian pump to kick in.
I am eventually going to need to figure out how to achieve that same dry but full look in the morning, though, right? Isn’t that when the “pre-judging” or whatever is? So will I be able to do that by executing a typical depletion/supercompensation cycle leading up to Saturday morning? I feel like I need to start testing this out, but I don’t want to be dropping carbs too frequently between now and October because I’m gonna need them if I really feel like I can bring my chest up a little bit during that time. Maybe I’ll shoot for the end of August for a primary trial run at peaking and just keep my nose down for another 5 or 6 weeks.
Also, for physique, what is a bigger risk, “overpumping” or not holding a pump long enough? Or not being able to get a good enough pump to begin with? I want to have this shit figured out beforehand. I am pretty sure that nervousness might also be a factor - too much fight or flight response, and I could imagine a nor-epinephrine-ish type of cascade getting in the way of a good pump. Nerves will be there, but if I can prove to myself that I know my approach will work, then I’ll have the confidence to overcome the nerves. Not completely, but at least enough.
I honestly think that pizza might end up being part of my peaking strategy. There is something about it that seems to almost instantly make my veins start jumping out of my skin. I’m thinking pizza and an ounce or two of frangelico might seriously end up being used. Obviously I’ll try this shit out first, but my gut tells me they would work. I just don’t know what effect it would have on my stomach - in terms of any kind of bloating or whatever…could be an issue at such a super low leanness? I feel like my waist will be like a wasp at that point - you might be able to actually see the corners of a slice of pizza bulging out.
Saturday Intake
2800 cals
Running averages this week -
190g P
275g C
60g F
Time to lift weights. I’ll either do back or chest or arms or shoulders…depends on how things feel.
Intake Sunday
200g P
300g C
60g F
Sunday training was chest - got some deep stimulation with some machine pressing, where I found a few new angles that really seemed to hit the area I’m trying to bring up.
Monday Training
Back
Rows, rows, rows, and more rows. From different angles with different devices and different techniques. For about 45 minutes.
Weight 189 ish - didn’t get a pre-workout weight because we ran out of espresso beans this morning.
Grand Haven, MI.
Still nailing macros.
There is a gym, it’s bad.
But there is a multipurpose machine of some sort, so I can get a chest workout if needed. But I may just do a few low days and just do some rope jumping and burn through some fat.
Diet doesn’t need to be difficult on vacation.
Eat super light all day with some carbs in the AM and fast proteins.
Normal HEALTHY dinner.
Salad with some dressing , just enough for taste.
Big protein, steak or fish. Rice or potato. Vegetable.
A taste of ice cream from the girls.
Consume no more than 1.2 JTE of alcohol per day.
That’s Jade Teta Equivalents, which is 3 servings of alcohol.
Lock that in and focus on other stuff.
Oh. Espresso as needed. Already checked out one local offering. Poor, but above average for a gelato shop.
Back from a “vacation” up to Michigan.
We cut the trip a day short because it was cold up there. And our dog was being an asshole.
So now I have a few days of “vacation” at home. I’m gonna do some double sessions and add on as much other activity as I can come up with.
This week’s macros were off a little bit - more fat, not as much carbs and protein. I’ll probably be back to my normal macros tomorrow.
Today I hit shoulders and chest with some arms, abs, and traps thrown in there.
It’s all about chest now. Need to bring it up to competition standards for a competition that may or may not ever happen. Maybe I’ll write more on that later. The competition mindset really showed me some things, so no matter what, I’m gonna stay in it and ride it out for a while. I just want to keep raising my level and going beyond where I’ve been.
[photo]40302[/photo]
I increased calories to 3100, my weight was dropping just a little fast.
Stable at 189 right now, so I’m thinking of dropping to 2700 to shift back into fat loss and chisel away a bit more.
My jump rope skills are insane.
Last week, I had some time to think about stuff while I was on vacation with the family.
I decided that the whole competition thing is not for me right now. It’s still something I may want to try in the future, who knows. But right now, the forces that drive and motivate me are not really aligned with the type of motivation I think I’d need to see a “prep” all the way through.
Although the “competition mindset” gave me a little boost for a few weeks, the decision to embrace the things that have really been working for me for the past ten months or so felt extremely liberating.
And since liberation is very similar to libation, I decided to celebrate my decision by partying my ass off this weekend.
To protect against the potentially physique-ravaging effects of the alcohol consumption, I added in shitloads of food yesterday. My wife made chocolate chip cookies for my niece’s birthday party - I think I had 7 of those. I also had a pile of chicken salad and who knows what else. I probably put away about 6,000 calories worth of food and beverage on Sunday, maybe 4,500 on Saturday.
My weight was 190.8 this morning, so at least it won’t take an entire week to get me back to where I left off.
So where did I leave off? Where does this leave me? What’s the plan?
The plan is to
As far as the diet goes, I will continue to experiment with different tweaks so that I can keep getting leaner while avoiding deprivation or getting too crazy with restrictive behaviors.
Part of the life-long learning process here is to look at elements of my daily and weekly rhythm of life and plug these different dietary tactics in so that everything flows together easily.
For example, if I look back and see that out of the past 1,040 weekends of my life, I have enjoyed a little too much food and drink on 1,025 of them…well, then maybe that’s not something I should look to drastically change.
I can, however, make small tweaks to allow myself to fall into my normal social rhythms and habits (even if some of them are not perfectly productive ones) while slightly reducing the negative impact they may have. I’m not so concerned about the impact of weekends on my leanness - I think it’s more about making sure shitty habits don’t carry over into the week and also just minimizing some of the health damage. Sure, you can have your fifteen drinks in one night and still have abs on Monday, but that shit can’t be good for your liver and heart over time. Again - it’s about finding a way to turn the 15-drink and 6,000 calorie binge into an 8-drink, 3,500 calorie day. I’ve actually been pretty good at that. I used to party my ass off in my 20s and 30s. Even though I’ll still blow it out once in a while, I rarely go out and get stupid hammered anymore.
Anyway, another thing I seem to be pretty good at is executing my damage control protocol after the weekends. It’s never a psychological struggle for me to throw in some really low days early in the week, so I plan to keep that going and maybe look at ways to even further optimize those tactics. Today, for example, I’m doing kind of a pulse-feast approach where I’ll keep my carbs as low as I can for as long as I can throughout the day. If I wake up tomorrow at less than 189, I can go back to my normal macros on Tuesday. If I’m still fluffy, I can throw in another low day or even two. But right now I’m already not fluffy, so this week should be easy.
Within my normal days, I plan to stick to what has been working, which is kind of a bi-phasic approach to carbs. If I am feeling on the lean and flat side, I’ll blast some carbs intraworkout (I am a first-thing-in-the-morning trainer), then keep things fairly low throughout the day, and then blast more carbs at night to QS my levels up to my macro goals for the day. I try to divide protein up throughout the day, but I really feel like I keep coming back to this place where I feel best at the lower end of protein intake. I’d say 170 grams, or roughly 1g/pound LBM. Fat intake above 60g/day does not seem to offer me any benefit, while keeping it low seems to force me to eat “clean” and allows me to blast more carbs. I’ll continue to shoot for this goal.
For training, I will probably continue to pair low intake days (no carbs intra) with training sessions that focus more on glycogen depletion, conditioning, body-weight movements, and lots of DB swings and floor work and stuff.
On days where I blast the carbs intra, I’ll probably focus more on pump workouts where I’m targeting one or two general muscle groups. The thought of competing in physique really had me focused on chest development, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue down that path or not. I think it’s fun and challenging to bring up specific body parts, but personally, I need to pause and ask why. Whose criteria am I trying to meet? Under what exact conditions does it really “pay off” to have more pec development?
Some people are wired to feel like they need to do the things they suck at in order to get better. I totally understand this approach, but it’s not how I’m wired at all. I will basically do anything it takes to make life easier and more enjoyable. It wasn’t until I started embracing this that I started to really love my time in the gym the same way I love the joy of crushing topspin forehands.
As far as “results” go, well…I’ve never looked or felt better in my life. How would I look on stage compared to other people? Apples to oranges…it doesn’t really matter. These guys are training for a certain look and for a certain purpose. I am dancing with pink dumbbells, dancing with my jump rope, hitting golf balls, crushing big serves and forehands, and generally kicking all sorts of ass in a never-ending competition against the guy I was yesterday. I’m feeling the same type of joy I see in my 7-year-old daughter after her very first “dive” off the diving board.
(For the record, the dumbbells aren’t really pink and I would NEVER curl in the squat rack)
Had some alone time at home yesterday, so I grabbed a little video of my jump rope warm-up song.
If you are bored enough to watch this all the way through, you’ll notice that I mix up the way my foot contacts the ground the entire time. This really helps distribute the cumulative impact forces and minimizes the chance for those nagging overuse injuries like shin splints, ankle soreness, or knee pain. They say that proper jump rope form requires a specific type of landing on a specific part of your foot. That’s garbage.
Make sure you turn your volume up a little so you can hear the music:
I do this just about every day for probably the length of 2-3 songs…sometimes I’ll really speed it up or throw in some doubles, but generally I just stick to the beat of whatever I’m jumping to.
Interesting day of eating with some lessons re-learned.
For breakfast, I had a scoop of MAG-10 and some almonds.
For lunch, a basic restaurant salad with five little blackened grilled shrimp. No dressing and no cheese or nuts on that, just basically five shrimp and some lettuce and some kind of pico-like tomato and onion thing.
While I was waiting for Target to fill some prescriptions, I had a bag of some new brand of beef jerky.
For dinner, I had three pre-cooked grilled boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I found these in the freezer section at Target and thought I would try them. Nasty.
By the time dinner ended, I had probably consumed about 3,500 mg of sodium over the course of about four hours. I only had about 50 grams of carbs the entire day.
I’m at 135g P, 55g C, and 40g F right now.
The result - crazy vascularity right now. Suddenly I can actually FEEL the veins on the inside of my thighs…not sure I’ve had that before. All kinds of shit going on in the abs and obliques.
Hmmm.
Of all the shit I’ve tried to improve the pump during my AM workouts, MAG-10 is probably the one that produces the most consistent results - the more MAG-10, the better the pump. Not that I didn’t know that salt can really help with pumps, but it’s one of those things that I guess I needed to be reminded of.
So I’m gonna start blasting salt first thing in the morning and see what happens. I need to re-order MAG-10, so tomorrow maybe I’ll just eat some pickles instead. Pickles and peanut butter, maybe.