Serge Storms: Training Log

[Serge_A_Storms]

Vibration Training

I have so much to report, but not enough time.

Summary: Weight 194

I am in the zone like never before right now.

CRUSHING IT.

In the past few days, I have lowered my carbs a bit in favor of some more monos and polys (fats).

I’ve cut out alcohol completely (only two days in so far)

I’ve stopped all intake after dinner, usually between 4-5:30 pm. (ETRF-style)

I’ve kept intake at about 1900-2200 calories

Probably the most impactful thing I’ve done is I switched up the way I burn my extra 500 calories every day.

WHOLE BODY VIBRATION TRAINING. (without the silly vibrating platform device.) I’m literally just vibrating. The video above is only a tiny example, but if you watch how I start with my feet coming off the ground but then the vibration moves more to my core right after that….that core-generated vibration is magical and I’ve started to learn how to harness it.

I have a lot to share about this, but will try to write that up later. I really think it could be an enormously powerful and efficient weapon in the fat-loss and health-optimization arsenal.

It can be scaled to any intensity. Here is a high-intensity version from this morning. Yes, I literally stood in place and vibrated intensely for 30 minutes straight and burned 500 calories. I went from barely out-of-bed to HR up to 150 within the first two minutes of starting! Dripping sweat at about 9 minutes in.

More to come on this. Here’s the HR data:

Body comp wise, the fat is literally disappearing before my eyes and my obliques are going to be grainy within probably another week. The blurriness in the lower abs and the stubborn lower back will be the last to go.

But…

…I never had this new cardio trick in my arsenal before.

I hypothesize that there is a localized effect, and so if keep learning how to move the source of my vibration-inducing contractions from my legs and through to my glutes and into my core, I won’t be surprised if I can get my midsection to lean out way more effectively than ever before.

Oh, and judging by scale, body fat analyzer estimates, and mirror, I will definitely peak with more muscle than by previous best ever.

That might be the only benefit to staying near 200 lbs for such a long stretch - while still pounding hard on shoulders and chest much of that time.

[Serge_A_Storms]

50 Days completed.

If I do the most honest math I can, I’m down 8 pounds. My average weight during week 1 was 202, my average weight right now over the past few days is 194.

I’m pretty sure there a lot of the transformation has been recomp. Muscle memory is an amazing thing, and the progress in leanness is pretty dramatic for just an 8 pound drop. I’m probably sitting at about 11%-ish body fat right now. Would like to get to 8%.

Goal weight should be around 187. I’ve only been losing at the rate of about 1 pound/week, but I think that might actually speed up a bit instead of slow down. Muscle memory gains slowing down, alcohol just removed, and still room to escalate the intensity density within my workouts.

Plus, I am now harnessing the power of vibrating myself to a shredded state, which is seriously the coolest thing I’ve stumbled upon in fitness in a long time.

I could piece a bunch of papers from the literature together - most of them based on shivering. Apparently, shivering from cold temperatures burns about 400 calories per hour.

Creating the effect yourself by learning to contract your muscles with maximum frequency at various amplitudes - so far, I’ve been able to sustain a rate of 1000 calories per hour.

I wish I could measure the physiological impact, but I’d need a lab and money and time. I think it creates many of the same effects that shivering does - like the conversion of white fat to brown.

I think it primes the nervous system - I notice that I’m way more fidgety, alert, and just “up” throughout the morning after including this stuff in my morning workout.

I think it probably torches fat both DURING and after - it feels very “fight or flight” ish so I’m guessing there are all kinds of adrenaline-fueled signalling cascades going on. The muscles used to generate the movement are being asked to fire hard and extremely fast with no rest between the contractions, so the nervous system needs to be on full blast to coordinate and sustain that.

Look up “irisin” - it’s one of the main hormones involved in the shiver response and has all kinds of cool effects.

I also think this type of training might be good for improving insulin sensitivity and metabolic flexibility. I could write a whole thesis on that one, but the turnover of fuels required to generate and sustain this type of movement probably primes the body to be good at accessing these fuels, but also allows the body to soak up whatever you give it for breakfast (and probably lunch and dinner).

You get all of these benefits without the trade offs that come with maybe the next best modalities like sprint workouts or Tabata. The biggest one…this is EASY! Tabata sucks. Sprinting is for youngsters. There is VERY little impact involved here. You’re not really creating a big recovery hole where you’d risk over training with this.

I’ll keep doing it and reporting back.

Unfortunately, any kind of “before and after” claims from incorporating this are going to be hard to make. Dropping alcohol and continuing to optimize my intake are all going to be working together with this, so…yeah. The results will be impressive, no matter what. I just won’t be able to pin it on this new tactic.

In the future, though…when I get to maintenance at 8-9% bodyfat…I might be able to lock down more variables and study this as a way to get the absolute maximum bang for your buck from “cardio” so you can focus your time in the gym on lifting. Finding the MINIMUM effective dose of this would be golden, because then you could easily scale it up from there for any reason.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Check out how much zig-zag there is in my daily morning weight, up until the past three days.

The difference? Cutting out alcohol. 1-2 drinks is all it takes to throw your whole water balance system out the window.

ESPECIALLY if you are drinking a few every day. I think it takes about two days for the body to get totally back to normal after a few drinks. There’s an initial dehydration phase, and then a compensation phase. When you drink every night, your just layering those phases on top of each other, so there is absolutely no way to make sense of what’s going on. It makes tracking progress frustrating, especially if you add any bigger weekend binges to the equation.

Get the liver reset, probably heal some of the fattiness, and then I should be able to access and process fuels more efficiently. That will improve my ability to turn the various dials up and down with my diet and exercise to achieve and maintain exactly the condition I’m shooting for.

As far as alcohol goes, as one of my favorite Instagram personalities, Baylen Dupree would say, “Yer Done….Yer Done”

[Serge_A_Storms]

Holy Hypoglycemia

I’ve been super low-carb for the last three days.

This morning I decided to add carbs. Overall, I’d like to first see what I can do to max out my carbs around my workout window, and from there I might just leave it at that, or add in more fruits throughout the day in the next phase.

Right after my workout, I slammed 31 grams of a carb powder (rice oligo) and 20g of honey. Oh, and a scoop of a mag-10 type of stuff - casein hydro/EAA from another brand.

So.,about a half hour after that I went hypo. Cold sweat, shaking. Dripping sweat within like 2 minutes of onset. Luckily, I was able to find my glucose meter and there were some strips left.

I have experienced this before, so no big deal. I was planning to eat breakfast anyway, so I just had some mini-oranges and a bunch of leftover chicken breast and was good to go.

But wow.

I just put in an order for Surge Workout Fuel, so I’m gonna need to remember how to deal with this stuff.

For starters, I’ll likely dilute the Surge more, sip it instead of slamming it, and do it intraworkout instead of post.

Also, I will not do what I did today. I could have totally predicted that.

3 days of very low carb.
6 days of stopping all intake at 5pm.
A monster fasted workout this morning.
A monster vibration-training-induced storm of adrenaline that probably drained a ton of carbs from all storage locations

Perfectly primed for a rebound hypo episode.

Whew.

[raven78]

@Serge_A_Storms

Dropping alcohol

Essentially have done similar here on this front (maybe 3 beers in the past 6 weeks) - dropped 3kg in the process (7lb ish?), with little change to anything else food/movement wise.

Fascinating writeups as always here, glad you’re back logging here.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Wednesday 12/14/22

Weight 194.0

Cruising right along, trying to be patient.

I have finally regained ultimate control over my diet - fully entrenched in the zone.

The funny thing about getting here is that the first thing I want to do with this new “toy” is play with it. I have the control, now how can I start jacking around with variables to “optimize” everything and accelerate my progress.

It’s not a horrible thing to be so locked-in that I’m caught up in tinkering with details. But I just have to keep reminding myself that ultimately, the condition I’m able to achieve and maintain has very little to do with the tweaks. It is more related to one very, very simple variable. How long have I been nailing macros and nailing workouts WITHOUT a major backsliding phase?
That’s what all of the pictures and logs from my past 25 years or so of fitness has taught me.

I look back at example weeks or days from when I was at my best, and I’m blown away at some of the things I could get away with. Booze, treats, weekend benders, etc. But the common theme is that there were months and months and months of consistency leading up to that state where I could maintain at about 2800 calories and just cruise along nice and tight and lean and full.

So, yet another reminder to myself. Tinker all you want, just stay the course. Oh, and no need to go extreme with the diet. Throwing in some streaks of lower carbs and higher good fats (whatever those are) can be good for staying engaged and sparking momentum, but the general framework of high protein, high carbs, low fat is what pays off the most for me.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Thursday 193.6 lbs

Two workouts today. A big chest session this morning, and then a bodyweight/cardio session after work.

I’ve been putting together a nice string of low-ish calorie days, 1900-2220 ish. Dropping alcohol really blows my mind. The scale is moving so much more predictably, just inching its way down these days.

I gradually ramped my carbs up after dropping them for a few days. On Saturday, I only had 20g of carbs. The next days were 65g, 70, 135, 210, 255.

Fats dropped in the other direction and calories stayed the same.

Will see what the scale says tomorrow, but I wouldn’t mind ramping up to 300, keeping proteins at 180, fats 50. If I could keep dropping bodyfat at that nice high level of carbs, I’d be in a very good place.

My strength and cardio fitness are both through peaking right now, it’s amazing.

I did 100 double-unders with the jump rope and my HR only got up to 150. Usually, that’s more like 172.

My handstand pushup strength is also better than ever. Pistol squats, too. The low calories do not seem to be hurting performance at all. I still have plenty of body fat to burn, so maybe my body actually feels like it’s getting more calories than I’m feeding it. My own fat is fueling me. I deserve it, I drank a lot of Guinness and ate a lot of pizza…it’s about time that energy gets unleashed.

Cardio thoughts - I have shifted away from lower-intensity steady-state cardio. The more I do my own thing, and the more I let myself jack up the intensity of whatever I’m doing, the less the steady-state stuff makes sense. I think for bodybuilders who are already at a super low body fat, it makes sense. They don’t have the body fat energy reserves, so they need to ride a very fine line. But for a normal guy just trying to get to/hold 9ish % body fat, I don’t think high-intensity cardio has any downsides, especially if you pick stuff that works for your body and works around your injuries.

Part of this is also because I actually did a ton of low-ish intensity cardio in last month or so, and in the process, I use got in much better shape. So the higher intensity stuff became more bearable, and then I just figured, let’s bang it out and get it over with.

I also love the adrenaline rush and feeling all amped up after an intense workout. Long walks do not make me feel like Superman after - I usually just feel like I just walked for a long time.

Taking carbs way down and then bringing them back up has reminded me that I’m a grower, not a show-er. When I’m depleted, I look kind of like a muscular basketball player and my mind starts to tell me I should just take up yoga or something. Jack up the carbs, get a good pump going, find some decent lighting, and suddenly my mind starts telling me to hire a prep coach and sign up for the next bodybuilding contest. Ha.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Friday weight: 192.

Whoosh. There it is.

Look at the beautiful graph of how I shifted my macros throughout this week.

Interesting note about the overnight weight drop:

I had a late-ish mini-meal after my second workout last night. First day I’ve eaten after my dinner (usually 4-6 pm ish) in about a week.

21g honey
8 g Justin’s peanut butter
1 slice of “low carb” bread (35 calorie slice)
1 large apple.

I’ve also been going pretty heavy on the salt - I get 1000mg preworkout from an LMNT packet, and then I’ve been having about 2-4 scoops of my other electrolyte mix in the morning. With meals, I just use my normal amount of salt.

With water intake, by 9 am or so, I’ve already had about 75oz or so. From there, I just sip on my electrolyte mix when needed. I have STOPPED forcing myself to drink water or trying to achieve some kind of “constant flushing mode” state. My mindset is now — give the body more salt and water than it needs in the morning, and then let it do it’s thing to balance it out naturally. Thirst will be the only cue that matters.

Interesting note about the weight drop whoosh: I had a very mild night sweat going on last night. Nothing major, but enough to notice. My resting heart rate was also just a few beats higher last night compared to the last week or so.

There ya go - a complete over-analysis of an overnight weight drop whoosh effect.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Friday. Nailed it.

I don’t really do food prep or Tupperware or broccoli. I have ways to make things work.

Lunch today was two 8-piece grilled chicken nuggets from Chik-fil-a and then a bunch of random carb sources - cherries, some oatmeal, some honey, and a slice of “low carb” 35-calorie bread. And a scoop of protein powder. (Lunch isn’t really one meal for me, it’s kinda just whatever I eat between about 10:30 and 2, and generally adds up to about 700 calories.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Saturday: 191.6 lbs.

Another nice drop in weight.

I’ll just stick with the same today.

Part of me wants to start adding the calories back in…maybe stay ahead of my metabolism and start the reverse thrusters early.

But I’m NOT at my goal yet and I feel phenomenal. Weight loss overall is still no faster than 2lbs/week.

So I’ll stay the course.

I started taking carbolin-19 and I’m also using a scoop of surge workout pre/intra.

I did shoulders today and the pump was real. I still need to optimize my personal Serge Surge protocol. I need more water. And it feels like I need more Surge, like maybe I’m more of a two-scoop guy?

I work out first thing very early, so I don’t think it’s optimal from a circadian pump rhythm perspective. That means I need to really get things right. I’m already adding an extra 1000 mg sodium to a separate water bottle that I slam first thing in the morning.

Diluting 1 scoop in more water, or just drinking more water overall…maybe that’s the ticket. But I think I recall the concentration needing to be on-point for the best effect? And seriously, I feel like my body wants more scoops.

When I went to Biotest HQ for the Indigo Boot Camp, I was drinking like 4 scoops-worth of this stuff at each workout. And Mag-10 on top of that!

It’s a shame that there is some kind of global casein hydro crisis, because I never felt better than the days when I was just crushing Mag-10 all day long. Now I’m left with shitty alternatives and an enormous price increase when it finally does come back. I really do believe there is something magic about mega-dosing that stuff.

[Serge_A_Storms]

8 Weeks!

Feeling pretty good about my progress over these last 8 weeks.

I did a massive overhaul on my diet, stayed consistent with ZERO days of going off-plan.

I could either start nudging things back in the direction of slower leanness and more optimized muscle growth OR….

Keep things going. I feel amazing. Why change anything at all?

If I stay the course, I will be as lean as I need to be in another 4-6 weeks. That’s the plan.

Macro goals are 40/40/20, going even lower in fat whenever possible.

Calorie goal stays at 1900-2200. It’s not WHAT I do, it’s how long I keep doing it. Period.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Tuesday - weight 192.0

My weight has been pretty stable, but the changes in the mirror are just getting better and better by the day.

I’m doing so many things better than I was before, that it’s hard to say what’s really driving the progress. My rate my not even be accelerating, it’s just that I’m in that bodyfat zone where small changes start making a big difference.

My refined morning pump protocol really shined this morning. I didn’t even look like myself, it was insane. Crazy combination of fullness and detail in my shoulders, traps, bis and tris. Very motivating to see the amount of change.

This is all first thing in the morning, after a double espresso:

I’m doing a standard water bottle with a half of a serving of Surge Workout fuel mixed with a packet of LMNT. (Extra 1,000 mg sodium). I drink half of that when I mix it, then I fill it up with more water and drink the rest on the way to the gym.

Oh…I’ve also been having about 6 grams of peanut butter with that. I’m not sure it’s doing anything, but the goal was to reduce the chances of going hypo since I’m doing this first thing on an empty stomach. But I think if I’m not depleted - if I had carbs the night before, and if I dilute things the right way….I don’t think hypo is an issue anymore. Anyway, why not, it’s tasty and actually feels like it might buffer the onslaught of citrus/salt a bit.

I mix another 28-ish ounce water bottle with a full scoop of Surge. I drink about half during my first 15 minutes of warming up, fill the rest with water again, and then just drink it at whatever rate is natural. Usually I get through that and fill the bottle up again with just water.

This seems to be doing the trick.

Today, I did my “cardio” first. My cardio has become the furthest thing you can possibly imagine from standard cardio. But I did it first, burned about 500 calories in 45 minutes, and THEN I went to the weights for a chest workout.

I liked this, it seemed like the 45 minutes was enough time for that water to find it’s place and for the pump conditions to get right. By the time I started lifting, my nervous system was on full blast and the pump came very easily.

As far as lifting goes, I’m doing a mix of all kinds of stuff. 1-2 body parts per session, probably 6-7 days/week. Now I’m trying to throw legs into the mix as well. Pretty basic stuff, extensions, curls, and a glute move. One per day, either as a second lifting session or part of the main workout if I only go to the gym once.

I haven’t don’t shit for leg hypertrophy…ever. My hamstrings are like tiny little balls of mush, which is actually pretty awesome. It takes hardly any weight to stimulate them, which is important. Hamstrings can be easy to injure, so I need to take it slow. Quads have always been meaty and powerful, but now I want to add a teardrop, which should be fun. I know I can get my legs to respond pretty quickly, and I’m looking forward to seeing them change and seeing if/how it effects the rest of the insane recomp results I’m getting.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Weight: 192.9

Carbs yesterday were at 300 g.

I woke up this morning feeling pumped already. Like…right out of bed, just a fuller, tighter feeling than most days. I could see more detail in my obliques so I thought for sure I’d see a scale weight drop, but nope.

I added a GDA supplement to the arsenal and I’ve had out-of-body-experience-level pumps.

Biotest used to make a supplement with some kind of cinnamon compound, ala, and maybe a few other things. It was one of my favorites and I’ve never found anything quite like it. Works really well with intra-workout carbs and for just getting a pump out of nowhere in the middle of the day.

I think I ended yesterday at about 2400 calories. I should start nudging things in that direction at some point, but I’ll keep feeling things out. The midsection fat has gone from a full spare tire type of thing to pretty much a few blurry patches on the lower abs and lower back. Another two months for those areas , not necessarily in a deep deficit though.

[Serge_A_Storms]

My version of food pics.

I have been keeping it SUPER simple.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Weight Friday - 192.4 (super stable over the past week.

Average calories have been about 2400-2600 for the last few days.

Macros are averaging around:

50g fat
250g carbs
210g protein

This is working beautifully.

As far as food choices and meal structure (NOTE TO FUTURE SELF IF NEEDED - THIS IS IMPORTANT). This structure has been super manageable and the level of struggle/deprivation/challenge is about a 2 out of 10. Very low struggle to hit macros and keep calories at my target.

Morning: 1.5 servings Surge Workout Fuel plus 1 packet LMNT pre/intra.

After workout: 2 scoops protein powder and 45 grams of oatmeal. Lately, I’ve been using metabolic drive vanilla because it seems to keep me full longer than anything else. (I never drink my protein powder in a shake, I always mix it into other stuff and eat it)

11:00 ish: ideally a lean protein-based “meal” with carbs from either fruits, bread, rice, honey, oats. I try to keep this one all protein and carb and very little fat.

2:00 ish: similar macros to above, but usually I don’t do two whole-food based lunches. One of them is usually similar to the post-workout meal and is protein powder based.

4-6ish: dinner - whatever we make for the family. Usually on the healthier side, but even then, there is usually enough fat in this meal (combined its the small amounts throughout the day) to get me to 50 grams. If not….

After dinner: dark chocolate, or some kind of snack with honey and pb2…whatever it takes to top off the macros and make me feel happy.

(One of the tricks to eating for leanness is to develop a strategy to periodically give yourself some dopamine boosts. Condition yourself to trigger the dopamine with the minimally effective dose of food. See the picture in my post above of one single peanut-butter-filled pretzel nugget with 5grams of raw honey. You don’t need 3 servings of pretzel nuggets or 7 mini snickers bars. You can condition yourself to get more from less.)

[Serge_A_Storms]

Uh oh. They got me a flexible phone mount contraption, so now I’m back in the selfie “progress pics” game. I can still shave a few percentage points in body fat if I get the lighting figured out. Easier at night.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Coming up on the 10 week mark since I dialed-in my diet.

We have a body fat analyzer at the gym, it is not accurate but good for trending. I was at 12.1% body fat on 12/9 and it was 8.3% today. My weight has only decreased by 2 pounds in that same timeframe.

(Realistically, I’m probably somewhere around 10-11 ish…not that the actual number means anything)

But the drop is nice to see. Confirms what I’m seeing everyday, which is a very solid recomp that hasn’t yet run out of momentum.

No reason to make any drastic changes. Energy is very high, appetite is totally manageable, workouts are great. All systems go. If I change nothing, I will easily reach my goal, which is to beat my best condition ever. I will probably be there by February, which gives me a few months to tighten up even more so that I can blow peoples’ minds at the…at the…I don’t know where. I don’t really go to the pool or the beach. So, ummm, yeah.

[Serge_A_Storms]

Quick note:

The vibration training I’ve been doing seems to be doing something to my cardio fitness.

My resting heart rate has dropped from 52bpm to 41. All other forms of cardio are noticeably easier now. This is nuts. My HRV is also increasing. It’s at around 67 now.

[Serge_A_Storms]

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[throwawayfitness]

please tell me how tall you are. thanks.