[quote]Tonino wrote:
[quote]its_just_me wrote:
If you could monitor what you eat for the next few days, or if you have a good idea, calculate how much roughly you eat in a day (be as accurate as you can, like snacks etc). If it’s 2500+ then you can lower it by say 500 cals. However, if it’s close to 2000 cals, I’d rather have you increase cardio than lower food intake by much more.[/quote]
My meals are very similar week-to-week, so I can give you a pretty accurate representation of what I’ll be eating over the next couple days.
On average, on training days, I’ve been taking in around 2800 calories (235g C, 265g P, 90g F). This includes the peri-workout shake you recommended. It also had me getting around 1.6g Protein per total lbs of bodyweight. For the following 4 days, seeing as I’ll stick to cardio, I was going to eliminate the pre/post workout shake, which will bring me down to 2100 calories (150g C, 203g P, 78g F). This puts me around 1.25g Protein per total lbs of bodyweight. My plan for cardio was to perform 30 minutes of steady state (medium intensity). As far as supplementation, before and after cardio sessions, I usually take some Scivation Xtend (BCAAs & L-Glutamine … 0 calories).
I definitely wasn’t planning on reducing calories below 2000… does the above plan sound ok for the week? On Friday, I’d be back to getting around 2800 calories…
I’m always up to learning something new when it comes to bodybuilding… especially the science behind the scenes… so hit me up with the details whenever you get the chance!!
Thanks for keeping up on me… I will not let you down!
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You’re welcome 
Once you’ve had your few days off up until Fri, decrease calories by 500 for each day. So, for training days you’ll take in just over 2000 cals, and on non training days it’ll be just below 2000 cals. I would have you increase cardio etc, but it’s much easier and effective simply reducing food since you still have some leeway there. Besides, since your LBM isn’t as high as, for example, someone who was closer to 200lbs, you can get away with lessor calories than they would.
Try to make the reduction come mainly from carbs and a little from fats. Example: No carbs except before workout, get meat that’s leaner (e.g. not necessarily different meat, just leaner - like lean mince, chicken breast rather than legs). If you eat eggs, have a couple whole with some whites (instead of all whole). Also, try to taper off food throughout the day (larger meals at the start and after workouts, smaller meals during inactive/settling down time).
This phase won’t last long, especially once you’ve lowered calories, just around 3 weeks hopefully. Then you can start gaining. Once you’ve gained a decent amount of LBM, you’ll be able to diet off the fat easier/quicker…which is another reason to not diet for too long at this stage and a reason to not be worried about gaining even when you don’t have a six pack (it’s all for a good cause).
As for the routine/lifting - basically, what you’re aiming for is brief and hard (quality over quantity). The more work you can do in the shortest time frame (workout), the better (easier to recover from and it stimulates more growth). 1 set done with your best load will stimulate more growth than 3 sets done with a load that’s not near it. 2 exercises with your best load, and progress will stimulate more growth than 4 exercises that you don’t do your best on and progress on (efficiency over quantity). This is the whole principle behind ramping. With normal sets, you often waste energy getting to your working sets, which isn’t even the most you can lift (you haven’t fully tapped into the muscles). Not only do “normal sets” with high volume take longer to recover from, but they don’t stimulate as much growth either. By ramping, you gradually wake the system/muscle up without overly fatiguing it. Then, when it’s fully “switched on”, you “blast it” (drop the load a little and rep to the max).
The key point is lifting heavy, and doing enough reps. Light loads and plenty reps = mediocre growth. Heavy loads and low reps = mediocre growth. Heavy loads and plenty reps = optimal growth. There are different ways of applying this principle (e.g. EDT is one version, Rest pause/“Dog Crapp” is another). There is a cut-off point between the volume and the load though. Too much volume with a high load will lead to reduced gains (not necessarily over-training, just over-reaching a little), which is why you only do one “blast set” at the end. You need to balance your stimulation (catabolic activity shouldn’t be too high, otherwise growth slows).
The idea behind reducing a percentage of you ramped up load (rather than a set weight that’ll make you fail within a set rep range), is that it’s the muscle fibre makeup of the bodypart which determines when you fail on the set, not the rep range itself. So for muscle groups where you have more fast twitch fibres (there are different variations of fast twitch), you’ll be able to do less reps. Whereas for muscle groups with more slow twitch fibres you’ll be able to do more reps (e.g. calves). There’s much more to it than that (e.g. muscle size/co-ordination, fast twitch types etc). I don’t actually fully understand the nitty-gritty detail to be honest, nor do I really care. All I know is that it seems to work pretty well in the “real world”.
Whatever the case, working up to near your 3 rep max and then dropping it by ~10% will allow you to optimally stimulate the target muscle. Think of the ramping as being like the hole that’s being dug, then the last high rep set as being the dynamite - the deeper you dig, the greater the dynamite will explode the surrounding area. With normal sets, you don’t dig deep enough into the muscle’s potential (your max set is still “draining/fatiguing” but not the best of the muscles potential - the load is less).
You’ll understand what I mean when you get into it - you’ll make PR’s straight away.