ChiMike’s BodyBlog

Not that I expect many people are reading this, but I’ve been using the workout tracker and think that it is generally a good tool.  To the extent that you want to track overall volume, it can be misleading if you enter the weight for a single dumbbell or cable stack when you are doing movements involving both arms (for example, if you do a set of 10 dumbbell bench presses with 50 lb dumbbells, it will track the volume as 500, not 1,000, which is the accurate number, given that you are pressing 100 lbs overall).  I’ve started entering the total weight (dumbbell or cable x2) for movements where I’m moving both side together (presses, cable crossovers, etc.) or entering two separate sets of information with the single side weight (one for left and one for right) for movements where I alternate (concentration curls, cable lateral raises, etc.).

I know it’s a random thought, but that’s what blogs are for right?  I’m currently trying to bulk up, but I’m finding I’m not very good at it.  I’m fairly new at this, but think the basic concept is pretty straighforward . . . eat more (not anything you want, just more, clean foods with good protien) — lift hard — put on muscle (& weight).  It would be great if all the gains could be pure muscle with no body fat, but you’ve got to provide nourishment to create all that new muscle, and it seems pretty hard to divert every calorie exclusively to the muscles; some creates a little fat, right?  The punch line is, after achieving the gains you want in muscle, you change the diet, adjust the work-out, lose the fat and are left with more chisled muscle that you had before . . . have I said anything that’s wildly wrong yet? 

Here’s the rub . . . during the bulking and before the cutting, it seems sort of inevitable that the waist expands a bit.  At least mine does, and every time my waistband starts feeling a little tight, I back off and never get that far in adding on the mass.  I’m confident that I would lose that little bit extra around the waist once I started cutting, but I still have to get dressed for work in the meantime.  What to people do . . . have two sets of pants, one for bulking and one for cutting?  I know it’s a pretty obvious solution, but I had just never contemplated an expanded wardrobe as one of the costs of taking this seriously.  Gym, yes; protien, yes; more food, yes — I just had never thought about the cost of having two sets of pants!

Probably not the first time that this question has been asked here, but I am on the fence as to whether to (1) stick with the basic protien shakes and BCAA’s (already added in to the ON Whey); or (2) start expanding into things like creatine, NO, etc.  I just don’t see getting enough protien for growth or calories without the shakes, so those are pretty much a given.  While my growth and adds in strength have not been skyrocketing with shakes and whole foods, they have been coming steadily, and I can see a gradual difference.  I’ve been temped to add creatine into the mix, given pretty consistent feedback that it’s effective; however, it seems like more of an artificial boost to me.  For example, I was researching various threads in the Forum and comments like "I’ve been off creatine for 3 weeks now, and I’m losing da guns!" have me feeling like the gains (if I used creatine) would be 50% me 50% chemistry.  On top of that, I would be dependent on the chemistry to maintain the results — just not sure that I want to go there.

On the one hand, whatever gains I’ve achieved so far have been due to hard work and diet (including the protien shakes), and if I failed to maintain the diet the gains would slip away — so what’s the difference if the diet that I keep maintaining includes creatine along with everything else I consume?  On the other hand, unlike the "I’m off creatine and I’m losing da guns!" comment, I feel like what’s I’ve achieved is not dependant on any one thing and that if I slipped for a week or two it would not unwind all of the hard work so quickly.

Like everything else (training splits, diet, specific exercises), it’s a matter of choice, and you have to do what works for you.  The feeling I’ve gotten from reading through the Forum is that if I used creatine to achieve certain results and wanted to maintain those results, I would need to stay on the creatine — that sounds like dependence.  I really don’t like being dependant . . .  I guess I’ve talked myself out of creatine, at least for the time being.  If anyone has any personal experience or feedback to share, please comment!