Welcome to FLF

Just a brief post to let my kind friends know that I’m still alive and kicking, and also to prevent the webspace from swallowing up my bodyblog existence and then auctioning off all my internet belongings to lepers.

Things have been very busy here with wacky work hours, nearing college commencement, and training, but getting to eat more food makes it all worth it! It’s been around 3 weeks of clean bulk now, and to my surprise I have had no discernible gains in weight–a far cry from my hypersensitive metabolism of yesteryear, which would reward lapses in diet as pleasantly as a live grenade rewards someone trying to kick a field goal with it.

I gradually increased the calories from 2200 to 2600 for the first week, and slowly I’ve built it up to 3000-3200 cals a day now. Part of what’s helping me not bloat up like a beestung warthog is the cleanliness of the food, perhaps. Essentially, adding almonds to my diet and a lot more carbs. The extra fat seems to have boosted up my metabolism or something.
I’ve more than doubled the amount of carbs I eat, which has done wonders for my general mood–I even watched a documentary on asteroids hitting the earth a few days ago without getting idiotically paranoid and investing in a bomb shelter–but aside from that my energy level to be honest has not really felt higher.

To all my dear friends: thank you as always for keeping me in awe of your progress. To those of you participating in the transformation contest, many kudos for all the brilliant work you’ve been doing. Each and every one of you is doing incredible things.

‘Aint nuttin but a peanut!

The week has been flying and time has been short. Just a quick note to say I’m on the high rep training again, 12-15, pumps galore.
I was reminded of how much more intense this split is today while doing back. Keeping rest times at no more than 60 seconds means that just as I’m about to finish a set of DB rows it’s basically time to start the next set on the other arm. Throw in the 40C degree heat we’ve been having as well as my proclivity for sweating like polar bear on a spit, and by the the third set of rows I could taste the tomato paste I squeezed all over my green beans two hours before. It was welling up in the back of my throat, threatening to make a second appearance all over the guy doing curls in front of me. Working out with me grunting behind you must be a source of sinister terror.

Diet 

I’ve decided that it’s too hot to be on a calorie deficit. I know that’s a completely arbitrary and nonsensical argument, but it’s hard to object to a mouthful of carbs. Plus, since I’m on a solid hypertrophy split now, I figure I prefer the extra energy (and happiness!). So, I’ve decided to bump things up to approx 2800 calories for the next four weeks, and pay the piper later. The difference boils down to some more clean carbs with each meal, and a couple of servings of nuts each day. Even after a few days of good eats, I noticed that my scale has already put on it’s proctologist’s glove. Screw that thing.
Good luck to you all with your training and goals.

Looks like I might have to take a week off if I know what’s good for me.

Doing Bis and Tris yesterday it seems as though I pulled something in my mid back while positioning myself on the decline bench. Not the manliest of ways to strain yourself… "Hey, how’d you hurt your back, FLF? Squatting that girl you met on the beach over your shoulders? Deadlifting the VW beetle that stole your parking spot? Oh… laying down.
Want me to get you some chamomile tea?"

Kind of a bummer, but I better play it safe since the last thing I want to do is ignore my back. It feels OK, but there’s a lot of stiffness, and the only time it hurts is if I try to look directly down. So it looks as though I won’t be making eye to eye contact with little FLF Jr. in the urinals for a while. But that’s OK; we were no longer on speaking terms anyways.

I was going to take a few days off before starting my new plan, and a few more won’t kill me, but sadly I won’t get a chance to finish the last day of the whole thing (Delts) which should have been tomorrow. It’s a double bummer because I think delts is a lagging bodypart of mine and I wanted that last climactic workout. But maybe that’s also because I reckon that a guy’s delt’s can never be too big.

What say you all? What’s the one muscle group that is the cherry on the anabolic cake? Quads / hammies are another good candidate in my mind. The bigger the wheels the better, but maybe that’s just male thinking. Yet, I’ve always been shocked at how odd people with enormous arms look when they trot around on tiny little legs. It’s as if they’re wearing pants so tight that they squeeze all the mass to their upper body. And yet if you reversed the proportions they’d look ten times as good. Soccer players and sprinters have enormous quads compared to the rest of their bodies, but their physiques never look out of balance.

Maybe I can get some tips from you mass gods that kindly take the time to read my blog: Is there anything that you folks do to emphasise the ‘quad sweep’ in your leg workouts, making the quads have a wider, more bulbous look?

It’s hard to believe that I’m onto my final week of Optimised Volume Training after six weeks. I’ll post some measurements when it’s done and see how it compares to the basic hypertrophy program of high reps and brief rest pauses.

Chest and back

Back was feeling a little sore this morning (I think I did some damage on deadlifts last week) so I went in gingerly and warmed up slowly. After the back session, however, it actually felt better. Also, it’s so unbelievably hot in my state at the moment that bush fires are springing up all over the place and houses are difficult to keep cool even with air conditioning. What this also means is that for me the average gym workout makes me look as though I’ve taken a prolonged dip in the Atlantic ocean. The amount of sweat that pours out of me in an average workout is really quite disturbing.

Diet

My carbs shot up high on new year’s day thanks to a celebratory dinner that involved lots of nachos and margheritas…. just one of those social events that is hard to resist. I keep saying I’ll atone for my dietary sins, but with no other get togethers coming up in the near future, I’ll hopefully be faithful to my word.

2245 cals /  237g protein

Also, I heard I was about to lose my status as the most financially irresponsible human being on the planet, so today I went out and bought one of these:

BryanGee was talking about the Desire Succubus in one of his recent and perpetually awesome entires. Well I’m quite and truly it’s sweaty minion

PS I’m hideously broke now. Anyone have money for chicken breast?

Working late on weekends ensures two things: it gives me a nice excuse to forgo going out and spending absurd amounts of money (I’m a cash hemorrhager), and secondly it allows me to replenish said money.

Speaking of funds, at the gym today I was given the option to pay up front and save some cash on my current membership.  The damage? $600 bucks for 13 months. Apparently it works out cheaper. They are so thoughtful! After all, who doesn’t have 600 bucks laying around the day after Christmas? What saints. I could kiss them.
So I guess my previously planned expenditures will have to wait another four weeks: No HD TV. No moped. No radar detector (Looking back on my shopping list, I realise that I’m still as immature as any human being could be).

Leg day

Warmup: Laying leg curls, leg extensions

Squats (I wish I could go deeper–at the moment inflexibility is keeping me from going ATG or anywhere close to it)

Superset 1: Leg extensions –> Lunges

Superset 2: Sumo deadlifts –> Stiff legged deadlifts

Had to fight the urge to puke on my 10th sets of deadlifts, but I must say nothing wakes up the legs like sheer brutality. All I need is a disgruntled midget to kick me violently in the shins as I do each exercise and I’ll finally achieve full anabolic potential.

Diet
2200 calories / 255g protein today. I’ve been invited out to eat at a fancy but not so healthy place next week and I already anticipate looking like a complete tool, knowing I won’t be able to eat anything there. I really don’t want to be that guy. You know the guy. The one that makes his buddies uncomfortable by fretting about calories, second hand smoke, or the odd venereal disease. Fun loving or not, Fitday.com is going to scold me if I displease the caloric pie chart. hmmm, pie chart.

Party time is over. It’s back to green beans, chicken breast, and gym sweat.

Starting week 5 of OVT after taking a few days off for Christmas. Looking forward to something different (probably back to high volume), but there’s still two weeks left on this routine, so I’ll have to bear the 90+ minute gym sessions until then. It’s not that I don’t enjoy every minute of it, but an hour and a half of heavy lifting means I have to be practically carried out after each session.

CHEST/BACK

As noted a couple of weeks ago, I’ve opted to do back first because my chest is overdeveloped compared to all my other muscle groups.

Warmup: lats machine & bodyweight pull ups
Superset 1: Cable pulldown -> 1 arm DB rows

Superset 2: Bent over BB rows -> Seated rows

Superset 3: Flat DB chest press -> Flat DB flys

Superset 4: Incline DB chest press -> Incline DB flys

Tomorrow is leg day. I’m still enjoying the insane carb boost I got from 2 days of Christmas binging. Boy did I eat. Let’s just say that for the next couple of months going to have to drop to 2200-2300 calories daily intake (about 400 short of my maintenance). This will give me about 1kg fat loss every 2.5 weeks to mitigate the food massacre that was this holiday season.

How does a mature, reasonably intelligent, sensitive man delegate his free time? Attend a Byron poetry reading perhaps? A walk by the river while donning his favourite cravat? A dash of port followed by a morning’s fox hunting? Well, thanks for the offer, but while I may be a big admirer of the homosexual (and/or) British community, I’m not that way inclined.

Or at least, as I keep on telling the voices in my head, even though I might spend hours looking at pictures of half naked guys on this site, it’s strictly for inspiration, not titillation. So as I brace myself for the future realisation that in my lifetime I will have seen more pictures of pumped male pecs than female breasts… (for those wondering what that tremor was: just my Italian grandfather spinning like a lopsided cheetah in his grave)… I will outline today’s related conundrum… scientifically:

Problem: Risk of death by boredom.

Inciting parameters: Day off from work + Day off from training.

Solution:  Mopeds!

Yes, you look ridiculous. Yes, it’s dorky. Yes, you get considered a buffoon by guys riding $5,000 dollar bicycles wearing suits so tight they could be classified as birth control. And yes, I am aware it bolsters the less than masculine image I tried to downplay not 2 paragraphs ago.

But boy it was fun. Take enough people and you have yourself a little scooter gang. I think I might have to bite the bullet and purchase one soon instead of leasing.

Oh, and chest DOMS was strong as usual. Feeling back a little, but not as much. I guess I should use this training journal to actually make a training journal kind of reminder: swap back and chest sets for next week’s workout.

Another day another dollar as they say. The day has so far been quite packed. I had to quaff a semi congealed egg white omelet before work, which had my digestive system waving all sorts of surrender banners. I hear you get twice the protein if new life forms evolve in your stomach.

Tonight is Chest/Back.

The supersets are as follows:

Flat Bench -> Flat DB flys

Incline Bench -> Incline flys

Pulldown - > 1 arm DB row

Bent over BB row -> Seated Rows

As always, the superset is done with low weight, and the negative motion is extended for 6 seconds. I miss not doing pull ups with this routine, but it’s nice to mix things up. I hope I don’t lose my BW pullup strength though. There’s no substitute for the real thing.
Time to train.

I tell yas, I come to Bodyspace with half an hour or so to kill, hoping to squeeze out a blog entry, reply to a few PM’s, etc in that time, and instead I’m immediately swept away in other people’s stories. It’s so easy to be engrossed in the lives of driven individuals.

Thank you to my friends here who take the time to not only provide me with educational tips for my own training, via their progress updates, exercise routines, and nutrition breakdowns, but also the entertainment of their daily experiences.

In short, I came here to write, got caught up in reading, and now I have to pump out this entry quick or I’ll have to cut it short. And crap, I just realised that writing this introductory section has eaten some more of my time. Come to think of it, that last sentence could have been skipped too…

…right, today was my first day back lifting after a week off. To say it felt great would be like saying that drinking a gallon of unprocessed ethanol will get you a little tipsy. Every exercise felt right, hit the right spots, made just the right amount of sweat drip from my desperately panting schnoz.

All in all it’s been a glorious couple of days. So glorious that I think I might have stumbled on the fundamental secret of life–how to achieve perfect bliss. The key to happiness. And here it is: the key to happiness is… oops, out of time.
Just kidding. Here it is.

and 36 miserable seconds without lifting. My last training session was on Tuesday, and on this uneventful Saturday night I am nothing but a ghost.

I feel like Scrooge McDuck (yet more Disney references, I apologise… I am a child) in 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol, when the ghost of Christmas past comes to take the old codger back to his early ears. Only I don’t see greed, but a lazy slob.

You see, much like Scrooge, I’ve come to realise is that the only precious resource in life is time, not money, and having squandered a quarter of mine as an unhealthy sloth, the urge to make up for lost days is acute.

So as the hours tick by, I’m experiencing an unhappy mixture of guilt and restlessness. On the plus side, the muscles are feeling much better. Fortunately I’m working this weekend so I have the mindless ramblings of insane people to keep my mind occupied. But who am I to call anyone insane? Most of my analogies reference Disney cartoon characters. Hell, I bet I’m as crazy as Gyro Gearloose.