Old Man Skinny’s Journal

So I’m still at 9% with a couple of jumps even into 10% this last week.  I’ve cut out carbs in the afternoon/evening.  Hasn’t done much, obviously.  So now we’ll try for increased cardio and see if that will make it budge.

Bad news–a week from today I leave on a 2-week concert tour with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (I play in the orchestra).  Picture the self-discipline it will take to be offered 3 BIG buffets in 5-star hotels every day.  I’m taking a supply of baggies to sneak out protein/carb portions for snacks.  I’m taking protein powder for late-night shakes.  But it will be the actual challenge of NOT EATING WHAT IS PLACED BEFORE ME.  Working out won’t be a problem–the hotels always have nice gyms and I’m taking my resistance bands just in case.  Swimming and jogging will not be a problem.  There are also a surprising number of folks in the group that are equally fitness oriented as I am.  But still . . .

Wish me luck.  I’ll report back.

I can hardly believe that I’ve not blogged in a month!  I’ve been to bb.com almost everyday but I’ve been posting on the Muscle Tech Transformation forum and on all the bodygroup pages.  Big news–I was honored as the “Transformation of the Week–Over 40″.  And I finished the MT Trans. contest.  My pics for that are in my bodyspace progress pictures.

Since then I’ve been keeping up with the daily weight workouts, tossing in a cardio now and then in the afternoon or evening.  My weight has stayed in the low 160s with body fat in the 8%s.  I’ve decided against doing another spring show–too many other things to spend my energy (and money) on, but I’m pretty sure I’ll do the local ABA show in September.  I’m already a member and they have an over-60 class.  Hopefully there’ll be someone to pose against this year.

My wife and I took a week to travel to Colorado and Nebraska to visit grandkids.  I kept up with the workouts all but one day, and I watched the eating.  I was pleased that things hadn’t gotten out of control.  I did cycle off all my supps for that week, so now that we’re back I’m appreciating the boost to the workouts and pumps I get from the Morph, the ISA-TestGF, and the 3XL.
My fitness goals are to find that magic middle ground for nutrition and workouts where I will stay 7-8% bodyfat and yet gain a pound or two of muscle.  They say that one can put on about 5 pounds of muscle a year, so a couple of pounds by September is reasonable.  In the meantime, I’m enjoying the sun–tanning is like an addiction for me.  I like the feel of the sun on my skin, and I like how I look with a good tan, that is if I can also see some ab definition–no reason to be tanned if you’re fat.

So far this week has been better–8% or less every day.  The workouts have been a lot of fun with carbs beforehand.  Even cardio has been exhilarating with a boost of energy from the carbs in the system.  It’s helped having some warm weather too–I’m such a sun worshiper.  Makes you wonder how I ended up in Utah when I don’t even ski.

Already I can see that this is going to take a little tweaking.  Wednesday morning I woke up to 8.8% (couldn’t have been the two bowls of chocolate ice cream the night before!).  So no carbs and an extra run in the afternoon (in a driving snow storm, I’ll have you appreciate).  This morning–8.4%.  It’s supposed to be a just-cardio day, but if I was going to double up workouts, I didn’t want it to be 2 cardio sessions.  So I moved up the next chest workout and will do cardio this afternoon.

And adding anything in to a leg workout is just not going to work.  I kept myself totally busy yesterday doing just legs, so the split will have to take on some different combinations.  I’m actually doing the workouts from the MaxGrowth 8-week program by Stephen Adele’ of iSatori–just adding in a thing or two and leaving out one of the rest days.  It’s a fun program to do–lots of variety with drop sets, super sets, sets to fatigue, light/heavy variation, etc.

My pre-workout supps are 10g of BCAAs, 5g of Glutamine, 4 ISA-Test GF tablets, 4 Morph tablets, 4 oz of juice and 15g of whey protein.

I’ve tried the bulk/cut cycle twice now and it just isn’t my thing.  Sure, I enjoyed the more relaxed eating during the 2 or 3 months of bulking.  I’m not a guy who eats "bad" stuff anyway, but I did enjoy the carbs that I could include in my bulking plan.  Yes, the muscle mass increased and I enjoyed feeling stronger, but I DID NOT like the extra layer of fat I saw around my middle at 13%!

Cutting wasn’t bad, but I did get a little depressed thinking about all the things I couldn’t eat, and it was HARD WORK planning carb-less meals and going out for runs every afternoon just to get rid of the body fat.  And all to no avail.  Both times I ended up right back where I’d started as far as muscle mass.

Now I admit that there were "tricks" I just may not have known about that could have saved the lost muscle, but I followed my trainer’s dietary and workout advice to the letter.  If he, a previous Mr. America, couldn’t help me keep the muscle, then maybe I’d better try something that is tailored more to my goals, lifestyle, and specific body.  And I’m sure you’d include my AGE as a factor .

So here’s the plan.

objective:  Gradually gain muscle while maintaining a lean physique.  This will at least keep me feeling positive about myself, keep my clothes fitting right, while staying fit and healthy and enjoying good, clean food–all the pluses of the bodybuilding lifestyle.
Monitoring:  Body weight and Tanita Scale body fat measurement every morning.  Sure, Tanita scales are not the truest indication, but it will at least be a quick and easy way to monitor some kind of change.  It isn’t ideal, but it will fit my needs.
Workouts: 4-day cycle–1) Chest, delts, upper arms; 2) Back, rear delts, traps, forearms; 3) legs, upper arms, rotator cuff; 4) Cardio and abs.  The workouts will use a multitude of different exercises, hand positions, high/low rep. variations, and set designs (drop, super, to fatigue) etc. to target the muscles from every possible direction.  Sunday will always be a rest day, no matter where it falls in the 4-day cycle.

Nutrition:  40/45/15 Protein/carb/fat daily nutrient ratio, getting most of the carbs earlier in the day around the workout.  The goal will be to eat as much as I can without tipping the body fat over 8%.

Supplementation:  BCAAs and Glutamine before and after workouts.  ISA-Test and Morph before workouts.  3-XL after workouts.  3g fish oil 3 times a day.  Multi-vitamin.
Intervention:  When the daily weigh-in is in the high 7% body fat range, that day will be a no- or low-carb day and include a cardio workout in the afternoon.  This intervention will continue until the body fat is back to the low 7% range.

I’m open to suggestions.

I’ve really appreciated so many here on the board showing an interest in my goals.  The last 5 months have been filled with hard work, discipline, and self-mastery.  This "hobby" of bodybuilding can easily become an obsession, taking over one’s thoughts every waking moment.  What other hobby dictates such basic elements of life as eating, sleeping, drinking, and activity?!

The show was a success.  There were 73 contestants–the largest spring show the NGA has ever had in Utah.  There were 7 in the Masters class–me at 61 and the rest in their early 40s.  There were 12 in the Novice Light-weight (under 164)–all of them young bucks in their 20s and 30s.  Despite not having a real niche to call my own, I don’t think I looked too out of place in either lineup.  The pre-judging in the morning called a spade a spade, though.  In both of my classes, the judges had us do the dozen mandatory poses several times, each time moving the best physiques to the center so they could compare more easily.  I gave it my best, even though I ended up on the end in both lineups.  At least they didn’t have me leave the stage !

The evening show was an entirely different story.  The competition was over and this was just a show–a celebration of what hard work and dedication can produce.  All 73 of us had paid the price.  We’d ALL trained hard.  We’d ALL sacrificed.  We’d ALL counted calories, measured portions, watched scales, practiced posing, and put other facets of life lower on the priorities.  I belonged in that group.  I’d earned my place.

The auditorium was packed.  There wasn’t an empty seat and when the show started even the aisles were filled.  The atmosphere was simply electrifying.  Despite the high number of contestants, the producers guaranteed each of us our 60 seconds of solo time to do our posing routine with music.  The MC introduced me as the oldest of the competitors, and told them about my 8 kids and 24 grandkids.  The crowd was already cheering just to see a grandpa standing there on stage in posing trunks.

Then my music started and they went wild when they recognized the Beatles song, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me WHEN I’M 64."  Every pose I hit brought cheers and whistles.  I hit a crab most-muscular on the last beat of the song and the applause was immediate and overwhelming.  I gave them a victory pose with some ab flexing and they just kept on clapping.  I was smiling from ear to ear as I left the stage.  What a payback for all the months of hard work.

The rest of the evening people approached me and congratulated me, each saying how seeing me up there motivated them to keep working.  And other old people who’d come to support their kids or grandkids in the show would say, "Why, I’m your age.  Maybe I could get fit again too."

I was motivated, too, by seeing the great physiques of the rest of the men–especially the open classes.  The human body is really quite a wonderful creation–truly a temple to our spirits.  We owe it to our spirits to keep our body fit, and by doing that we are showing our appreciation to God who gave us this life on earth.

Today I broke training with several pieces of cake, ice cream, and all the carbs I’ve been craving for months.  Tomorrow morning, it’s back on the wagon.  The goal is to keep body fat under 8% and try to get some of the muscle back that I’ve lost over these last couple of months of cutting.  I’ll keep you posted.

Pre-show jitters and playing all kinds of head games with myself.  I must be crazy to be doing this comp tomorrow!

The spray tan is on. Two coats on Thurs, two coats today–man that stuff is sticky. Being on stage in posing trunks tomorrow will be a snap after standing nude for the lady to spray me The week of low/no sodium almost over, drinking the distilled water and seasoning with tones of pepper, garlic, and onion powder and STILL not getting the flavor a shake of salt would give. Craving the carbs, but I get to start eating "good" ones tonight to start filling out my muscles.

The weight was 157 this morning. What a disappointment to have lost so much muscle. For the next 3 weeks, I’m going to try to put some back on without gaining body fat.

There are 75 contestants! That’s the biggest spring show they’ve ever had. I don’t even want to know how large my two classes (light novice and masters) are. The light novice will be all those college kids from the football team. The masters is everybody over 40, so it will be all the experienced lifters in their 40s still looking buff. What am I, at 61, doing this for!!?

But I’ve had some real fun posing and seeing the muscles get defined, so I’ll give it all I’ve got tomorrow and have a good time doing it. TheTMan, a bb.com friend from Montana, and I are meeting up tonight to "pose down." Maybe I’ll post a few pre-show pics.

Less than 2 weeks to the show.  Pretty intense.  Body fat down to about 8%–quite a cut still to make.  Weight workouts every morning.  45-minute cardio every afternoon.  Tanning.  Posing practice for 45 minutes every night.  Next-to-no carbs. Lots of BCAAs, glutamine, and plenty of Muscle Tech supps.  Meet with trainer tomorrow to get the blow-by-blow for the last week–nutrition, workout, crazy manipulation of water/sodium/potassium, etc.  Take polygraph test Friday (man, are they expensive!).

I hope you can forgive my meager posts over the last few weeks.

Weight 171@ 10.9%  What’s that?! A new number for body fat?  So I step back on the scale to see it again–Weight 171 @ 11.0%.  Ahhhhh, shucks.  But now I know that the scale can really show a lower number.  All the more incentive to see it again and make it stick next time.

Carbs today, but nothing overboard–whole grain toast and veggies with my omelete, fava beans and spinach with my left-over curried pork, pb in my shake, rice and asparagus with my grilled chicken.  I’m planning some cottage cheese/yogurt before bed.  We’ll see how all this makes the numbers jump in the morning.

Good triceps workout with a little chest and glutes/quads tossed in–things I didn’t get to yesterday.  Then a 45 minute run–15 minutes of it HIIT–30sec sprint, 30sec jog.  This fitness thing is really demanding some time AND IT’S WEARING ME OUT!

Weight 171@12%  I had a very killing leg workout this morning.  I drank 4oz of juice with my pre-workout shake, and more protein and slight carb during the workout.  It kept me going.  I definitely DON’T want smooth legs that look like sticks up on that posing stage.  Well, I was SO exhausted after the workout, I just could NOT see myself going out for a 45-minute run.  So I went back to the gym in the afternoon and swam laps.  It killed my arms, since I haven’t swum since starting my 6-day-a-week weight sessions, but it felt good, and my legs got to just dangle along in the water.

My pool session was 50 minutes, broken up into intervals every 4 lengths with a set of abs out on the pool deck.  That kept my heart rate up, but gave my upperbody the rest it needed.

No carbs today, except for the little pre-workout juice, a sliced broccoli stem for lunch (like carrot sticks only more nutritious–just peel it with a carrot peeler to get off the outside tough stuff.  I hope YOU don’t throw the stems away like the rest of the world.), and a dolop of yogurt on my curried pork tonight.

Check out my recipe forum for the description of my maplenut ice cream shake this afternoon.