B Variant

My back is still a little tingly-tender from deadlifts, so I skipped the squats I was initially planning to front-load. I considered doing leg presses or calf raises, but when I got to cardio I was much relieved to have not done any of those three. I thought my back was going to be irritated by the rows, but I must have actually activated the correct muscles for once, because no such problem was had.

B Workout

START: 11AM
Weight: 167lbs.

Flat Bench

1. 45lbs. x 5
2. 45 x 5
3. 50 x 5
4. 70 x 3
5. 90 x 2
6. 100 x 8 (+)
7. 90 x 9 (+)
8. 80 x 10 (+)

The (+) is going to be my shorthand that these sets need to be increased next workout. The rep range, respectively, for these sets are: 5-8; 6-9; 7-10

Row

1. 45lbs. x 5
2. 45 x 5
3. 60 x 5
4. 75 x 3
5. 105 x 2
6. 120 x 8 (+)
7. 105 x 9 (+)
8. 90 x 10 (+)

Same rep set-up as the bench. I used a different sort of handle today: close-grip, smooth handles. Black. Didn’t agitate my calluses any, will be using it again.

Lateral Raise

1. 35lbs. x 5
2. 45 x 3
3. 55 x 2
4. 65 x 10 (+)
5. 55 x 11 (+)
6. 50 x 12 (+)

Rep set-up: 8-10; 9-11; 10-12

STOP: 1:30PM
Weight: 173.5lbs.

Cardio

1. Treadmill warm-up: 5 minutes of 2.0 mph/ 2.0 incline for the first two minutes, then 3.0 for the rest.
2. Treadmill intervals: 1′ walk / 1′ run, so that I got off the treadmill immediately after a run. 3.0 incline.
   1. x2 @ 2.0mph/6.0mph
   2. x3 @ 2.0mph/4.0mph
3. 6 minute rest in the locker room.
4. Stationary cycle: 5.52 miles in 37 minutes

Notes:

• I want to replace at least one of the 4.0mph runs with a 6.0, until they’re all 2.0/6.0mph. Then I’ll work on increasing the sprinting speed.
• The slow-and-steady cycling at the end will be increased in terms of duration only.
  • I don’t really have any idea as to how much to increase cardio duration by. I’m tentatively just saying “anything that is more, even just one minute.”
  • Another idea is mileage: I’d like to log 42 miles a week, as in real life I tend to have gone distances of about 20 miles and back.

Diet

Stuff I have to remember:

Maintenance Intake

At Body Weight 169lbs. = 2800kcal.

I’d really like my weigh-ins to be three consecutive days, but that probably isn’t going to happen.

I’m going to recalculate maintenance (for proper deficit purposes) weekly.

I would like to achieve a 1000kcal deficit on rest days, training days are allowed to be at maintenance/slightly over.

Fasting Period

Fast starts: 8-10PM
Feeding begins: 1PM on rest days; as soon as I can after training otherwise.

Protein Multiplier

• Lean Body Mass x 0.9 = Protein on rest days
• LBM x 1.1 = Protein on cardio-only days (not sure if I’m going to have these or not, yet)
• LBM x 1.5 = Protein on weight-training days (if cardio is done after weight training, still use this number)

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Weekly Review #1

10/19/2010 – 10/26/2010

I’m going to resume blogging about my workouts and diet, but in a slightly different way than before.

Rather than lay out the plan for the next week/month, and then later detail how I’ve failed my plan in various ways, I will instead only provide the retrospective. Every week, looking back on what I’ve done.

I realize the week is eight days in length. Deal with it.

Let’s start with diet:

10/19/2010 - 10/26/2010

In the future I'm going to remember to put the date range in the chart itself and eat less carbs.

Summary:

• Two days at roughly maintenance
• Two days hypocaloric
• Four days EXCESSIVE caloric

Now, that’s from the standpoint of an estimation that my daily maintenance requirement of calories is somewhere around 2300kcal.

Turns out it isn’t.

It’s a hack estimation anyway. I took it from Daily Plate, but, whatever. Lacking the mental dexterity to calculate much of anything on my own, I just punch in my weight (if it’s any different) every once in a while to see where the moving target has… moved.

Averaging everything out from the past week:

• 2823kcal
• 77g fat
• 384g carbohydrate
• 147g protein

Total Weekly Intake: 19,766kcal
Range: 879 – 4157kcal

Body Weight:

1. 10/19/2010: 167lbs. @ 20.1% bodyfat
2. 10/27/2010: 167lbs. @ 18.8% bodyfat

Given the horrendous quality of results stemming from a bio-impedance meter, however, this is a shallow victory. An implied body composition shift is nice, but not something I couldn’t attribute to water going where I want it.

I have to reduce calories. A pound of fat would be less than 20% of my present maintenance so that should be easy enough to achieve with diet alone. I dread the day that cardio is mandated…

…Which will never come, because I’m not going to diet down that low; it will merely remain optional based upon my impatience and willingness. Thankfully.

Funny to me: I’ve settled my maintenance as being 2800kcal, a 3500kcal deficit per week would mean a 500kcal deficit per day (if that were the way I diet.)

Putting me right back at 2300kcal.

Trends:

Something I’d been wrestling with previously was post-workout nutrition while dieting. The tri-pronged effect of lifting, ephedrine, and poorness leads me to not eating after my workout, extending on through the night until about 2AM when I get ravenously hungry and begin my binge. This isn’t in evidence in the charts above because the whole point of this week was to try something different and see if I like it.

And I do, kind of.

The previous effect was this: Workout [eat very little], Day After [holy fucking chowdown], Day After That [not so bad, still pretty crap.]

This past week went more: Workout [force the food down], Day After [not really hungry], Day After That [even less hungry], Fourth Day [OH GOD I'M HUNGRY.]

In the charts, Days 1-2-3 were pretty comparable to 4-5-6 in this pattern of eating behavior.

In order to repeat the pattern, Day 7 would have had to have been a workout. It was not. There is apparently a rebound on that day (as in two days after a workout) where RAVENOUS returns, and lacking the pitchfork of lift/drugs/poor… well, I wound up with a 4,000+kcal day. Fortunately it was satisfying enough to return to a supposed-maintenance day, which seems obvious but really often isn’t.

This would seem to imply working out every third day to keep from ever overeating. Ha ha, if only. I’ll be watching my habits a little more closely, but I want to see if the pattern repeats before I force my workout into the degrading position of appetite control.

That’s what drugs are for.

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Standard Strength

Much like I did here, I’m going to post what my poundages are for some lifts.

These are the lifts I’m going to struggle to maintain as I diet down. I will not be increasing weight much, if at all, until next year. Most likely.

Workout A

• Bench Press: 110lbs x 2 reps
• Incline Bench: 95lbs x 5 reps
  • Drop set: 85lbs x 8 reps
• Close-grip Bench: 80lbs x 5 reps
  • Drop set: 70lbs x 8 reps

Workout B

• Deadlift: 200lbs x 2 reps
  • Drop set: 165lbs x 4 reps
• Lateral Raise Machine: 95lbs x 3 reps
  • Drop set: 85lbs x 4 reps
• Pulldown: 130lbs x 3 reps
  • 115lbs x 6 reps

I’m probably going to still do Chins (assisted) on A days, but they won’t be a part of the central workout whose numbers I want to maintain. It’s almost a push/pull routine!

Probably going to fill this in with more goal-talk at some point, but I wanted to post up my numbers for my own reference. It’s surprising how useful this blog is when I have a phone with internet access.

God, I am so weak.

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Berkhan Workout B1

Q: Why did Bruce Lee do wrist curls?
A: It was a Good Morning.

Hah hah. That never gets old.

So today was THE deadlift day of the program. I aspired to a measly 135lbs. because the 45lbs. plates are the standardized height for a plain-ol’ deadlift. I logicalled to myself that at LEAST the work sets ought to be for-serious deadlifts, so if I could manage THAT, then this workout would be labeled a success for me.

Workout for May 1, 2010

Romanian Deadlift

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 55 x 5
3. 80 x 3
4. 100 x 2

RDLs for warm-up, you see.

Deadlift

1. 135lbs x 3
2. 135lbs x 3

I’m only working these to sets of three. Probably could have done more: no reason to.

Lateral Raise

1. 30lbs. x 5
2. 50 x 3
3. 60 x 2
4. 80 x 8

Perfect. Set to increase linearly.

Leg Curl

1. 20lbs x 10
2. 30 x 10
3. 40 x 10
4. 45 x 10
5. 50 x 10
6. 55 x 10

I was just testing for 10RM here, so this went perfectly as well. I felt COOKED after that last set though, I walked around a bit and got a few slurps of water before I moved on. I took really long rests for this exercise, too. I’ve not done these since my first days (around the time I was doing pushdowns regularly, actually) not really enjoying the feel of lying down to work hamstrings. However, the seat leg curl feels like I’m working WITH gravity instead of AGAINST it, and the poundages seem less intense/real.

This shit is not about to get less real.

Leg Extension

1. 30lbs. x 10
2. 40 x 10
3. 60 x 10
4. 65 x 10

I went through these a little quicker because I just know my quads are stronger than my hams, so I made slightly more-drastic increases than I did on Leg Curls, which were essentially blind, by-feel increases. These were by-feel too, but… I don’t know how to explain it. I just KNEW I could handle more than my leg curl poundages with my quads when I loaded 40 and it was just SO MUCH EASIER than 40 on leg curl.

Pulldown

1. 45lbs x 5
2. 45 x 5
3. 50 x 5
4. 70 x 3
5. 90 x 2
6. 105 x 8

Super-win. Great form, just felt great to do. I love pulldowns. All things considered, they’re probably my favorite exercise now, and I’m really happy that they’re so common in this program.

Body Weight: 163lbs.
Body Fat Percentage: 16.4%

Condition: C.

I was restless most of the night. Did too much writing and had too much on my mind. Was a bit groggy going into the workout, even after my pre-workout ephedrine/caffeine.

My weight actually made me extremely happy. I’ve been recording amounts-of-what I’ve been eating, but not calories or the like. I just ate ‘until satisfaction’ and I think one fasting partial-day or so. I’ve essentially maintained my body weight with 0.1% difference in body fat. So I’ve gone back and tallied everything.

I totaled 11906kcal for the four days prior this day of training. Averaged out, that’s 2976kcal MAINTENANCE.

My ‘maintenance multiplier’ is then 18.

I rounded stuff down to account for shit like activity and my obstinate fat-loss goal. Slower weight loss means a great percentage of it is from fat, right? So yeah. Super slow…

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BigGame

Still sick. I wanted to start fasting today, but it just didn’t happen. I ate pretty much the entirety of my maintenance calories for breakfast and then slowly adding on top of that throughout today. Blah.

Tomorrow will probably be my last day of over-maintenance eating, if I go above maintenance at all.

I just got my Yohimbine HCL in the mail, too, so I’m going to begin taking that tomorrow. Probably before I work out.

I’m going to write up my workout for Saturday so I don’t have one of those annoying doubled-up posts. I don’t get to yammer as much about nothing when I do those. So I don’t like them. Saturday I did a couple sets of direct arm work: triceps, biceps, and wrist extensors. I’ll probably only do direct arm stuff every other workout, though, to sidestep worries of overtraining them.

I might work wrist flexors next time. My hands seem to finally be in line with my forearms so I can try adding a bit of mass there without worrying about my hand idly slapping the white part of my arm.

Workout for Saturday, March 20, 2010

Read the rest of this entry »

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Overeating

I ate a lot yesterday.

Went out to the Chinese buffet with mom to celebrate. Finished filming my parts for Thinking Speed the day before, so I thought I deserved a treat.

I ate almost 4200kcal! Ughh!

No guilt, just lots of water weight and poop. Interesting to me, though, I ate over the 3500kcal necessary to put on a pound of fat… but my weekly average remained below 1800kcal, the amount I need to MAINTAIN weight. I wish I could magically deplete overnight just to see where my highly-likely jump on the scale is really coming from, but I’m not going to even attempt depletion for the next few days. I had a brush with hypoglycemia last night and I don’t feel like flirting with disaster until things even out. Maybe being carb-bloated will help me eek out that elusive next rep on deadlifts tomorrow!

My arms are still whining at me about Thursday’s workout, and I really think I need to re-evaluate my form or try something else.

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Full-Belly Workouts

I think I should stop having a bowl of oatmeal before I workout. It’s fucking up my bodyfat readings. Not to say I’m NOT a lardass, but the meter is essentially laughing at me as hard as I was laughed at in middle school. It saddens me.

10/8/09
Deadlift – 1 x 1 @ 195lbs. (left hand under, after failing a right-under of 205lbs.)
Bench – 1 x 4 @ 95lbs.

So next workout I bump up the Deadlift and Bench stays the same.

BW: 171lbs.
Fat%: 19.3lbs. (33lbs.)

10/14/09
Squat – 1 x 5 @ 195lbs.
Press – 1 x 2 @ 70lbs. (FUCK!)
HamChin – 1 x 5 @ 55lbs. offset (114lbs lifted; since I’m the same weight I was the last time I attempted this lift, I got the final rep I wanted, yay!)

Weight: 169lbs.
Fat%: 22.8% (38.5lbs)

See, this is why I shouldn’t eat a big bowl of oats before a workout. Not only when I breathe deep do my lungs expand fully, push down my organs, and make me feel like I should shit right there in the squat rack, but it bumps my bodyfat up too! Waah! I don’t really know how to do the math for this! So I gained nearly six pounds of fat and lost… seven and a half pounds of muscle. What the fuck? /sarcasm

At any rate, I need to get my diet in order. I think I’m going to change to something a little more staggered, where the majority of my calories are eaten on training days. I know that retained water artificially inflates my bodyfat “score” but I’m not going to be doing any bizarre glyco-deplete bullshit until at least a month from now.

Invoking Katch-McArdle: 370 + (21.6 x 58.725) = 1638

Multiplied by an activity factor of 1.375 leads me to 2252 calories for daily maintenance.  Suddenly the weight gain doesn’t seem so implausible =\

Anyway, I’m going to be eating at maintenance on training days ONLY, and dropping to 30% of that on days I don’t train. As much as I hate to diet by percent, I’m going to just for the sake of daily adjustments/sanity. Fat/carbs/protein; 20/50/30.

Using today as an example: I eat as close to 2252 calories as I can without going over and with getting at least 169g protein.

Tomorrow, I’ll assume nothing has changed, and use “yesterday” values: 2252 – 30% = 1576, with 118g protein and 197g carbs.

And then Friday I go to the gym again, so I’ll re-weigh and re-measure accordingly. I’m going to try to go in without a carb meal (maybe just some eggs or a proshake or something), it won’t fully deplete me or anything but I hope to get a more accurate reading nonetheless. Then I’ll use that to calculate for that day, which will be hard to manage if I don’t get to my dad’s house for fooding up, and then for the low days following all the way to Monday.

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Birthday Goal

Goal Statement: By my 20th birthday I will have visible abs.

Start: July 27th, 2009
Deadline: January 27th, 2010

Measurements

• Height: 5′ 9″
• Weight: 163.8lbs.
• Upper Arms (mid-bicep): 10.5″ (both arms)
• Waist: 33.5″; 34″; 35.75″ (two inches above; at; and two inches below navel)
• Hips: 38.75″
• Thighs: 24.5″; 25″ (right/left, measured directly below buttocks)
• Body Fat Percentage: 19.5%

Specifics

• 1400-1500 calories per day
• 6 meals per day
  1. Breakfast (320 calories): Bagel with slice of lowfat cheese
  2. Snack (140 calories): Protein shake
  3. Lunch (300 calories): Turkey on whole wheat with light mayo
  4. Snack (140 calories): Another protein shake
  5. Dinner (300 calories): Microwaveable meal
  6. Snack (180 calories): Protein bar
• Drink 1 to 2 gallons of ice-cold water per day
• Workouts are brief and intense, 1 set of 8-12 for the following exercises:
  1. Crunch
  2. Leg Curl
  3. Leg Extension
  4. Palms-up Pulldown
  5. Bench Press
  6. Oblique Crunch

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