The Master Plan

Training Training Logs
61

As a general rule of thumb, if I were doing on average 8-12 sets per bodypart/week while bulking, I’d reduce it to something like 4-6 sets per bodypart/week while dieting, and I take an extra day off every week for more rest days. This ensures that you fully recover from each workout and it maintains your strength/muscle really well. There’s nothing worse than going into a workout and dreading it because you’ve lost all motivation/energy! While heavy dieting, your sleep quality tends to go down, recovery is slower, work capacity is lower, stress levels go up…something to think about (i.e. adjust your training accordingly).

Bear in mind that the kind of sets I’m talking about are intensive (to failure or near), also, I do a higher rep range (usually 6-10 for upper body, and 8-20 for lower body except deadlifts which are low reps). Any particular reason why you do 3-5 reps?

62

As for the rep scheme i normally hit around 8-10 reps until i hit my last set which is around 3-5 rep max.

63

[quote]Marzouk wrote:
As for the rep scheme i normally hit around 8-10 reps until i hit my last set which is around 3-5 rep max. [/quote]

If I were you, I’d probably just stop when you get down to 5 or 6 reps. IMO, you’re just wasting energy/reserves otherwise.

64

Cool il give it a shot, as well as tightening up my diet.

65

I think you just need to be consistent. There’s no way you would still be at 25% bodyfat if you stuck to a good diet and workout regimen for three months. I don’t think the rep scheme is the problem.

EDIT: youv’e gone on and off the V-Diet, went to a low calorie diet of 2000 cals, and also talked about lean bulking to gain ten pounds.

66

Very good point i seem to bounce around doing all kinds of shit with bad nutrition in between.

As far as i can see my training is consistent and i’m making gains, it my relationship with food/nutrition thats the problem. If i can keep my diet in check for a decent amount of time hopefully i’ll see some changes.

67

Back from a brief hiatus. Sorted my shit out. Cool. Lifting good. eating good.

68

Although i stated my bench is 315 that was around 4 years ago and the number kinda stuck with me even though i hardly attempted to do it.

Before i stopped posting here about a month ago my bench was around 275 x 3 which tbh is diabolical.

After getting a roasting some guys here (maiden) i decided to sort my shit out.

I hit 326x4 last week. 51 lb gain, i don’t put it down to physical changes more mental. Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

69

That is an INSANE improvement in one month. You will have to coroborate that with vodeo evidence for that to be believed

70

Gratz on the strength improvement, Marzouk.

How’s your body transformation going?

Getting stronger is all nice and dandy, but your plan should be geared towards losing the lard - if that’s still your goal. If not, just ignore the rest of this post.

Now, I wouldn’t say that if you were one of those guys having had to desperately fight for every lbs of muscle and who has to constantly cram down food just to make progress.
I’m getting the impression that you’re one of those types that have a hard time losing fat but can hold relatively easily to lean body mass (up to a certain bf level, of course).
Your legs have been pretty muscular before picking up any weights, right?

Having said that, here’s an idea. Take it for what it is. I’ve used it twice in the past for a relatively short period of time (6-8 weeks).
I used to only focus on keeping my strength up on a cut. Sure, I kept my muscle, all right, even increased it to a degree, but the fat loss was ridiculously disappointing. Even though I did lots of energy systems work and cycled the carbs (to some degree) employing a LC diet.

Switching intensity for density (and thus much more work, thereby increasing your daily energy consumption) did the trick. Sure, my 1RMs went down, but that was only a temporary thing. My one fear of losing muscle that way did not hold true.

Would I suggest that to anybody? No. Certainly not to a hardgainer.
Would I use this approach to go from decent shape to single digits? Certainly not!
Would I train like this permanently? Nope.

But it’s the one thing that really did the trick for me some time back.
This approach still calls for progress, make no mistake. The general idea is to increase work while staying within sensible load ranges. Easy peasy. Gironda’s 8x8 provides a nice template to get you started.

71

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
That is an INSANE improvement in one month. You will have to coroborate that with vodeo evidence for that to be believed [/quote]

I’ll try my best to get a video, tbh i shocked the shit out of myself. I got under 315 n was nervous like fuck coz it had been so long. then i moved it and thought to myself ‘‘not as scary as it seems, i think i can do more’’

Hopefully it wasn’t a one off and i’ll try to move it again.

72

[quote]FattyFat wrote:
Gratz on the strength improvement, Marzouk.

How’s your body transformation going?

Getting stronger is all nice and dandy, but your plan should be geared towards losing the lard - if that’s still your goal. If not, just ignore the rest of this post.

Now, I wouldn’t say that if you were one of those guys having had to desperately fight for every lbs of muscle and who has to constantly cram down food just to make progress.
I’m getting the impression that you’re one of those types that have a hard time losing fat but can hold relatively easily to lean body mass (up to a certain bf level, of course).
Your legs have been pretty muscular before picking up any weights, right?

Having said that, here’s an idea. Take it for what it is. I’ve used it twice in the past for a relatively short period of time (6-8 weeks).
I used to only focus on keeping my strength up on a cut. Sure, I kept my muscle, all right, even increased it to a degree, but the fat loss was ridiculously disappointing. Even though I did lots of energy systems work and cycled the carbs (to some degree) employing a LC diet.

Switching intensity for density (and thus much more work, thereby increasing your daily energy consumption) did the trick. Sure, my 1RMs went down, but that was only a temporary thing. My one fear of losing muscle that way did not hold true.

Would I suggest that to anybody? No. Certainly not to a hardgainer.
Would I use this approach to go from decent shape to single digits? Certainly not!
Would I train like this permanently? Nope.

But it’s the one thing that really did the trick for me some time back.
This approach still calls for progress, make no mistake. The general idea is to increase work while staying within sensible load ranges. Easy peasy. Gironda’s 8x8 provides a nice template to get you started.
[/quote]

FML you are bang on. I’ve always had big muscular legs even before training. I didn’t train legs for the 1st 5 years of my training because of the fear of them getting any bigger. My legs at the moment are around 29’’ and my calves around 18.
Same thing with bf, i store a lot on the love handles and waist and is hard to shift, when im cutting i hardly lose strength or size, obv i look a little flat but thats how it goes. Think im guna take ur advice, up the amount of work, shorten the rest periods and see how it goes.

I realise that not training them for so long was a mistake now as they are my weakest body part but definitely not the strongest.

My sqaut has got better as well, from a 275lb boxed single to a good depth 275x3.

il try and take some progress pics soon when i see some changes.

TBH i’m not heading in strongman or any kinda of strength sport so losing my strength isn’t an issue, but its always a boost when you seen an increase like.

73

I would have to agree with what FF said about density training. Probably sounds funny coming from someone like myself (hardgainer/fast metabolism), but in the days where I used to try every scheme out there I came accross EDT (from Charles Staley; one of the guys who coached CT and held in pretty high esteem by him) - and it seemed that no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t budge the scale upwards.

I was eating to gain, but ended up leaning out! It wasn’t till I did almost the opposite approach with my training; dropped the sets and limmited warmups (1, maybe 2 maximal sets), increased the intensity (i.e. ramped) where I found my “grove” and was able to gain easier without having to eat the fridge every day. It’s worth noting too that I was only training/exercising 3 times per week with EDT, which again backs up the fact that it burns fat really well (even though it’s for muscle building).

My brother has similar genetics to yourself (no problem bulking/mass on legs etc), and I know how much he can struggle with fat loss at times. I can lose weight on twice the amount he eats. One thing to add about diet is calorie cycling (becomes more important for people with slower metabolisms).

It’s nothing complicated, it just entails high and low days (e.g. 1-2 high calorie days/week of around maintenance, followed by days of either low cals and/or extremely low calories). Extremely low calories are pretty useless long term, but just 2 days/week or so they really shift the fat well. The high calorie days speed up your metabolism (thus making the low calorie days more effective).

The net effect ^^^ is greater doing that, than just a constant calorie intake (even though the total weekly calories may be greater utilising the calorie cycling method). Some people do low carbs as well on the low calorie days too (making better use of insulin for when they do higher carb days). Like I said, it’s not complicated, it’s just like alternating “famines” with “feasts” and some normal moderate days thrown in.

74

cheers for the imput guys, im on quite a low carb diet now, sub 100g all from veg. The cals on these days are low aswell, im planning a carb up once a week on a friday with around 3000-4000 cals for the day, mainly coming from simple sugars early on then complex carbs towards the end of the day. then the day after straight back to zero carb for the following 6 days. Guna do this for around 4 weeks and see where i’m at, combined with density training i think it could be lethal!

75

So today is carb re-feed day.

So far it’s gone like this…

1 cup of oats with water and honey

Well thats it so far, ti be honest im pretty stumped to what to eat. I don’t wana be eating anything flour based, so i’m left with oats, potatoes and rice. Not guna be easy to eat 600-800g of carbs i don’t think, but i’ll try my best. I don’t wana resort to the good ole pepsi and donuts method.

Any ideas?

I’m down almost 8lbs this last 6 days, so am guessin il gain around 3 lbs today, then hope for the around 6-8lbs next week. 2 steps forward, 1 step back i guess.

76

Have you tried Ezekiel bread? It is flour less and the cinnamon raisin kind is amazing.

77

I’ve tried to find it but i can’t get it here in Egypt, although i guess i could make some if i wished.

78

Oh wait now looking at the ingredients, i couldnt make it lol

79

Ok my last post didn’t appear…

Basically i said, I’m 231 @ 24% bf. My first goal is to get too 200lbs in the next however long it takes me. I realised 20 years of bad eating isn’t guna be fixed with a 28 day v diet or the odd week of low carb eating here and there. I’m in this for the long haul, i know i look a little shiity at the moment, but i know under this 24% of fat there is a decent physique hidden under there.

If i get to 200lbs the numbers say i’d be at 10% bf but i have a hard time believing that.

Ive come down from 239 in the last 9 days down to 231, i know the weight comes off fast at the beginning so i’m expecting it too slow. I kinda set myself 12 weeks as a time frame, Hopefully if i hit around 4-5lbs a week net weight loss i should hit my target.

80

[quote]Marzouk wrote:
So today is carb re-feed day.

So far it’s gone like this…

1 cup of oats with water and honey

Well thats it so far, ti be honest im pretty stumped to what to eat. I don’t wana be eating anything flour based, so i’m left with oats, potatoes and rice. Not guna be easy to eat 600-800g of carbs i don’t think, but i’ll try my best. I don’t wana resort to the good ole pepsi and donuts method.

Any ideas?

I’m down almost 8lbs this last 6 days, so am guessin il gain around 3 lbs today, then hope for the around 6-8lbs next week. 2 steps forward, 1 step back i guess. [/quote]

Try not to think of it as some sort of science; use your instincts more. Like the carb refeed days aren’t supposed to be some sort of chore that you’ve got to get in (if you feel full/bloated, finish eating). Eat until you feel comfortable but not stuffed - so regular and small meals to satisfy the appetite…not to feel absolutely stuffed or to get a certain quota in.

These days can last 1 day, or you can even spread it over 2 and a half days if they are moderate. Muscle glycogen refilling doesn’t need to be forced, it will happen whether you do it fast or slowly. Some feel more comfortable doing it moderately but over 2-3 days rather than a more “harsh” 1 day refill.

Oats/Potatoes/Rice are excellent choices of carb refeeds. Limit fructose based ones like fruit/soda and many other processed foods.

When to stop depends on how your body responds - bloated and sluggish? Stop carb refeed. As soon as your muscles feel at their fullest, and the point just before your body starts adding fat, that’s when to stop (you’ll get the feel for it in just weeks). For most people this is usually no more than 2.5 days. If carb sensitive (and/or doing high carbs), your carb refeed may only last just over a day.

As your metabolism gains momentum again (from the higher carb/calories), you’ll feel more hungry and eat more. So on the first refeed day, the carbs/cals won’t need to be very high (just a bit more than usual), but by the second refeed day, you’ll probably be starving and can eat more. It’s like getting a flywheel started (slow at the start, but faster and faster as you go). Then by the time cals are dropped again on low cals/carbs, the flywheel (metabolism) is still spinning fast and burning fat.

So once again, refeed days don’t need to be extreme (very high calories/carbs). Go more by feel.