TPower81’s BodyBlog

I had a good workout today.  The other day I was feeling pretty tired in the morning so I popped a Hydroxycut Hardcore before my workout to help wake myself up.  Typically I don’t have coffee or any caffeine in the morning to get me going…which after a long week of not sleeping enough, can really take its toll on my wakefulness for a workout!  I was pleased with the kick it gave me in my workout and so I decided to try it again this workout.  I’ve never tried NOxplode or any pre-workout drink other than BCAA’s but I think I might get some of this hydroxycut stuff and start taking one before every workout.  I felt awake, energized and ready to go!

 Todays workout posted a few PR’s.  I’m in a high weight phase, not so much worrying about how many reps completed as long as I can get around 3-6.  I’m only doing 3 sets so if I get 3 reps, then I decided whether or not to do another set to keep the volume a little more even.  Nevertheless here’s what I did today.

Incline DB Press - 100lbs DB’s!  6/6/4.  Rockin, reached my goal and new PR!

Chin-ups - BW (188) + 40lbs! 6/6/6.  Too easy, PR but next week going +50lbs!

Skullcrushers - 90lbs   6/6/5.  Form issues on second set but nailed the 3rd, PR!

BB Curls - 90lbs  6/4 drop set 85lbs 6, assisted on last rep.  PR!

Arnold presses - 40/45/50  6/6/5.  Searching for a good weight.

DB Shrugs - 70/70/60  6/6/6.  Not very taxing but my grip could not hold anymore…

If you’re curious I’m in phase 2 of tri-phase workout.  Basically an A,B upper and lower body split.  4 days a week - Upper A, Lower A, Upper B, Lower B. 

I’m closing in on this milestone…the 1000 lbs club (dead/squat/bench).  I haven’t really been gunning for this at all, its just starting to get close.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to pull 400lbs but right now I’m at 275/335/235 for dead/squat/bench.  If I maxed out I might be able to get pretty close to 1000 lbs but I’m not in a hurry or anything.  Currently sitting at 845lbs and able to go three sets with the weight.

 Thursday is my try and repping 100lbs on the incline.  The only DB chest exercise I do is the incline db press, and it will be sweet to finally know that I’m over 100lbs on it!!!  Sitting back with those fatty 100lbers on my knees…throwing them up and cranking 6 reps out is my vision for thursday morning.  The only problem is I have a sticking point getting them up the first time and my spotter ain’t the best at helping me out.  I’m basically on my own.  I’ll have to get some black coffee in me to help me get energized and awake for it!

I’m looking forward to making a success post soon!

Each time I load up on food over the weekend my body rewards me with stellar performance in the gym the next day.

 Today I put up 245lbs on the bench, 3 sets 6/6/5.  Next week I will be breaking 250 for sure.  I’m excited to see that plateau pass me and I hope that in the future I will be able to put up 250 in the 8-10 rep range.  The goal for my next upper body workout will be to put up 100lbs incline dumbells.  I’ve been in the 90-95 range for a few weeks now and I’d really like the satisfaction of 100lbs in each hand.  It is almost making me want to eat a crap load of carbs over the next 2 days to make sure I’m ready to go, but I think I’ll just stick to carbs only after my workouts and maybe do a carb-up mid week.

I was really weak doing bent over rows so I decided to throw in two sets of chin-ups at the end of my workout.  I was able to do BW+37.5!  Improvement there.  I think on thursday, I am going to try and do my sets at +40lbs.  My goal is to be able to get up to bw+90 or 100 depending on what my bodyweight is at.  

So progress…little by little.

I’ve been thinking a bit, as I often do, about things going on in the world and why they are so.  I’m not a nutritionist by any means but I really do think that part of the reason why our society is so padded is because of the whole anti-fat movement in the 90’s.  You look at the ww2 generation that is slowly and peacefully exiting this world and you see people who have eaten eggs whole, butter and not margarine, bacon, whole milk, and red meat all their lives!  Yet, they still remained relatively healthy.

 I think part of this is due to the fact that the latter generation was very hand on, active and not so much of the "sit in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day".  In addition though, I think that dietary fat plays an important role in body composition.

 I remember growing up and all the sudden fitness took the trend of low fat, fat free foods.  All the sudden people were scared to eat fat for fear that it would get them fat!  What I think has happened though is people have replaced fat calories with carb calories.  This has led to two problems.

First of all, the carb increase.  It can be difficult at times to pick good carbs to eat.  Most of the carbs that people eat these days are processed and not low glycemic by any means.  I’m not argueing all carbs eaten have to be low glycemic, only that the average person is not paying attention to this at all when picking foods to eat.  The effect is the body is storing more energy as fat for later use.  It has gone from being in balance, to having too much energy, therefore storing it for later use.

The second thing that I think has happened is the body has gotten used to using carbs as an energy source.  The flip side of this is that fat is no longer breaked down as effectively as before.  A person on a low fat diet doesn’t really notice this because they aren’t taking in fat.  What I think the problem with this is that in addition to not dealing with fat intake very well, the body also is unfamiliar with breaking down fat stores in the body for energy.  In fact, in most cases the body may not even touch these fat stores, instead catabolizing itself and burning muscle for energy over the fat.  Muscle is much easier to get energy from, and if the body is not used to or equipped to transfering fat to energy because there is no fat in the diet, then it will produce "skinny fat" or simply just obese people that can’t figure out why they can’t lose fat while on a 1500 calorie diet.

In my opinion, fat needs to be reintroduced to society as not being all that bad.  No fear, guys, eating fat isn’t going to make you fat.  I hope to show this in the coming weeks while on "The Anabolic Diet".  My calories are coming from roughly 60% fat sources, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

If you have any comments on this, I’d love to hear them.  Once again, I’m not a nutrition expert at all, and most of the time I have no idea how the body works, lol.  Just saying, the way I see it right now, the fat scare of the 90’s combined with all the simple sugar in a lot of today’s pre-packaged foods has made a lot of people overweight.

I decided to take this week off.  I’ve just ended a long cut, while doing high volume workouts in the gym.  I feel like I need to give my body a break, and this week seemed like a good idea considering I’m taking a 4 day weekend vacation to see friends and family in oregon.

Problem is, I just can’t keep out of the gym.  I decided to do three full body workouts, light this week just to keep the body going a bit rather than sit around.  I also am walking like usual, 3-5 miles a day if I can.  My first workout was yesterday.  I had read of a workout consisting of body weight exercises and thought I’d give it a try.  If I remember right it was pullups, dips, squats (with BW on shoulders) and crunches.  You start at doing a set of 10 through all the exercises and then rest 2 min.  Then do sets of 9, then 8 and all the way down to 1.  Then if you’re still up to it you go back up to 10.

 Well, it seemed a bit easy to me.  By the time I got back around to an exercise I was ready to go and didn’t need any rest at all.  I stopped taking the 2 min rest and just went back to chin-ups.  Then once I got down to low reps I got tired of reracking my weight on squat so I started doing 2 rounds at once.  For instance if I was going to do sets of 5 I would do 5 chin-ups.  5 dips, 5 squats then turn around and do 4 squats, 4 dips, 4 chins, then 3 chins, 3 dips, 3 squats. etc.  OH yeah, I forgot to do crunches…oh well.  So I did all this and made my way all the way back up to 10. 

 In all my workout consisted of 109 chin-ups, 109 dips and 109 squats of 185lbs.  I then hit the bench for a burnout set and hit the shower.  Workout didn’t seem to tax me that much but this is some respectable volume!

I think tommorow I will do the same but add in push-ups and crunches.  I just hope to keep moving back and forth quick enough to get my heart rate up.  I might just start at 10, go to 5 then back up to 10 too.  That would only be 85 total reps.  Not as bad…

Deloading….hmm.

I set a goal a few weeks ago…maybe two weeks, not sure.  Anyways I set a goal that by the end of the year I want to be repping 100lb DB’s on the incline bench.  So far I’ve been working up about 5 lbs a week.  I do 5 sets of 6, then the next workout I will do 5 sets of 8.  Then I go back to 5 sets of 6 and increase the weight 5 lbs. 

 Today I moved up to the 90lbers.  I wore my bodybuilding shirt to boost my morale and help represent well!  I figured, if my shirt says bodybuilding.com on it, I should look like I know what the eff is going on right?  First set was pretty hard, but the rest fell into place very nicely.  I got all 5 sets up without any cheats and what I think was pretty good form throughout! 

Next was 5 sets of barbell flat bench.  I worked them at 205.  Then cranked a few declines out (3 sets).  Hit some dips up, then the fly machine.  Rope pulldowns and done.  Took my shirt off once in the locker room and admired a nice full chest…I just wish it were like that all the time and not just pumped! 

 It will come with time, patience, hard work…

I’m back from cali now and resuming the carb cycleing cut diet.  Quite frankly I enjoy the diet.  Last night I made some fresh salsa, and am mixing it in with my meats today and its pretty dang good.  Only draw back is I’m walkin around with a bad case of onion/garlic breath!

So the question for me now is whether or not to go 3 more weeks cutting, or to call it good, go on a maintenance diet and use the extra energy for muscle building.  Last night was picture night and I didn’t really notice my progress until compared the pics from now and 9 weeks ago.  I feel great about my progress.

If anybody thinks I should just cut for 3 more weeks, let me know…or not and just start focusing on building more muscle.

So today I squatted 3 sets of 6 reps at 315lbs.  I’ve been wanting to get over 300 for a while now, and I’ve finally accomplished it.  I’m very happy with this progress considering I’ve had lower back surgery before.  Now that I know I can throw 3 plates on each side and bust them out without busting out my back I think that I will maintain this weight while increasing the reps.  I want to make sure I am comfortable with the weight and am not straining at all to lift it.

Another decision now is to start deadlifting.  I’ll probably do the romanian type off the ground.  I want to take my time and slowly work my way up like squat.  I think my body will adjust fine, but I’m still thinking about where and when to work it into my workout split.  We’ll see how it goes.

Weaknesses with my current physique.  I think my chest needs help.  Legs are coming in fine and my back has seen a great improvement so I will go back to focusing on my chest.  I may do it twice a week…will see.

Today I squated 3 sets of 8 at 295 lbs.  It felt really good.  My back felt good going into it and I decided to just throw it on and pump them out.  I really felt like I could go higher.  A few weeks ago I was doing 285 and it felt really heavy.  Today 295 didn’t feel heavy at all, lol.

 Right now I"m at 186lbs.  186 x 1.5 = 277 so I"ve accomplished part of my goal of BW x1.5!  I think dips will be next.

I weighed in around 190 this week and thought I’d update my progress towards my goals.  This weeks working sets were:

 Dips: 270lbs x 6 x 5 sets

Flat bench: 225 x 6 x 5sets

Squat: 265 x 6 x 5 sets

Pull ups: 190 x 8 x 5sets (will add weight next week and drop back down to 6 x 5)

I wasn’t counting barbell bent over rows but I increased to 185lbs x 6 x 5 sets this week also.  I can’t imagine doing 285lbs of this at my current weight…my back would be massive!

 On a side note, I love dips I guess because I’m good at them.  I see a lot of guys go to the dip bars and do BW…these guys are ripped though and I’m like…hmm why not throw some weights on?  A friend of mine joined me in the gym this past week.  I started dipping with 80lbs on the belt and it just made him collapse.  Was a pain pullin 45 lbs off every time it was his turn.

Bench press was a bit easy, however, I used to do 225 all day so I’m not suprised.  I was hoping to be able to bench 250 easily now, but since its been a while I am starting at 225 and will increase by 10 lbs per week, breaking 250 by the 4th week.  Once I am doing 255 x 6 x 5 I am going to work my way up to 10 reps a set, and then reset once I can do that.  I feel like my body has adjusted to this low rep range and needs to see higher volume for a bit.  Its great to go into the gym and lift pretty heavy weights, but I need to change it up soon to shock my body back.  I really enjoyed the simplicity of the 10×10 sets method, or German Volume Training so I may return to that once my cut is completed.

I’ve had goals off and on, of weights I wanted to get to.  250 bench was one, I achieved that a while back.  I’ve realized that weights lifted is also related to your weight.  For instance, much easier for a 240lbs dude to bench 250 than for a 150lb dude.

 My new goals for lifting are to lift 150% of my bodyweight for all the big compound exercises.  Not talking maxes here either.  I have never really maxed out for only like 2 reps.  I prefer to do at least 6 reps.  So…what this really means is lifting 150% of bodyweight for 6 reps.

 For instance if I weigh 190lbs I would be benching/squating/deadlifting/pull-uping/dipping 285.  Obviously the squatting and deadlifting will be the easiest to achieve and I’ll probably be past this goal by the time I can pull-up 285lbs x 6 but overall I think this just provides a great goal to get to.

 Currently I’m doing about 120% of my bodyweight for these exercises. 

My mini-bulk gave me roughly 8 lbs.  I consider this pretty decent considering it was my first shot at bulking and also considering some of the problems I had in the gym, staying healthy, etc.

 I’m following "The Cut Diet".  www.thecutdiet.com for the free e-book.  Its basically a low carb diet with carb cycleing every 3 days.  I had my first carb up last night and the woke up early in the morning extremely hungry!  It was crazy.  I walked into the bathroom to take a leak and strangely enough felt really slim.  My Gf, who is doing the same thing had the same reaction.  Interesting to say the least.

 For the most part the diet works fine, is easy to handle and I think I’ll be able to stick with it without too much of a problem.  I don’t really get hungry, and if I do, usually I only have to wait maybe another hour before I can eat another small meal.  I don’t believe in artificial sweeteners so I eat everything without that stuff, however, if I do have a sweets craving I will drink some 0 cal, 0 sugar, 0 carb, 0 everything carbonated, flavored water.  Still, I try and make it through the days without even doing that…strickly water and 1 protein shake a day.

I’ll try and post weekly pics of progress.  I’d like to lose 12 lbs, and I’m giving myself 14 weeks.  I really want to make this happen and not cheat at all.  I just have to make it through all the weekends, traveling, and partying without boozing and eating out tremendously!

T

I’ve been back in the gym this past week and its been rough and slow!  Anyways, I weighed myself the other day and I’ve lost weight…this coming from a person who is trying hard to gain weight!  I think I must just not be eating enough (thats obvious) but I’ve really been trying to eat more.  I eat a lot of red meat, as well as other meats, and have been eating protein every 3 hours.  I’ll post my diet one of these days…

The other thing I’ve been stuck on is my back.  I can’t seem to get growth out of it and I haven’t been able to up weights.  I have two problems, other than I can’t seem to gain muscle back there.  First is most of the time I can’t hold on to the machines long enough to get a good back workout in.  I generally do 10 sets of 10 on the lat pulldown followed by 3 sets of 8 on the iso row machine to finish.  By the time I get to the end of my 10 sets I can barely hold on to the bar, and then on iso row its just excruciating to hold on to!  I feel like my grip is keeping me from progressing in my weight.

I started using those straps which helps a bit but I have such small hands that it almost makes it worse, because I can’t around the bar as much as without the straps.  Any ideas on this would be a great help.

 Also, if you have any ideas on a better back exercise to be doing with GVT I’m all ears.  I think bent over barbell rows would be great but I don’t know with my lower back issues, how well that would actually work out.

My chest workout which consists of med grip bench and either cable flys or dumbell flys is going great.  I’ve been able to add 10 lbs per workout to the bench and now I’m up to 165.  This is equal to a max bench weight of 300-320 lbs so I feel like I’m making progress.

Me legs are going great too.  I had to switch to leg press instead of squats but I’d like to work squats back into the routine when I’m not trying to do the 10 set method.  I’ll probably do both squats and leg press to get more weight on my legs without worrying about my lower back limiting on the squats.

 I’m not sure how much the sled weighs on one of those things but last week I did 10 sets of 360 lbs pretty easily.  Then 195 on the leg extensions, and 125 on leg curls.  Today is another leg workout and I’m going to try and increase sets on leg curls to get a good hammy burn.  I’ll throw another 45lbs on the sled too for the leg presses.

 So in summary, lol, GVT gives me great workouts and I’m glad I’m feeling sore afterwards again but so far I don’t see any muscle growth and I think that is because of my diet.  I’d like to stay away from creatine type supplements but its hard not to when you feel like your gym workouts are being wasted.

So…the biggest thing that I’ve been working on lately is my diet.  Putting together a plan etc, and one of the hardest things is working it into my dialy routine.  I’m an 8-5er with a desk job, and luckily my job right now has a microwave.  (Previously I had none!)  So now its easier to just bring food and warm it up.  Lets just say ziplock microwavable containers are my friend.  Anyways, I’ll post a completed diet soon…

 Diet isn’t too difficult.  I mean there are tons of them posted on the forums and you just need to read a bit to understand where to get your calories, which foods are cleaner than others, and how much of each to eat.  I also have been training mostly without any supplements for the past year, so its not like you can hide poor eating habits.  They will surely show on your body.  I think I’ve made good gains and progress so far, and now am looking to take it to the next level, add some supplements, and really stick to an eating plan rather than be as flexible as I’ve been before.  As the old saying goes, you are what you eat.  So eat well!

I love being sore!  I used to play a lot of soccer, year round growing up and I would love being sore and then stretching out.  Saturday I did Chest/Back and it felt like a pretty easy workout.  I didn’t start to get sore until sunday afternoon.  Today is monday and I can really feel it deep in my pecs and lats.  I hope my muscles understand that they need to grow back stronger and bigger than before.  

Today is an off day…just gotta keep the alcohol to a min tonight!  Happy New Years!

I had my first GVT workout yesterday and I guess it went well.  I think I chose a little too low of weight because I could get through all the sets without any problem really.  I did:

10 sets, 10 reps, 135lbs bench press

10 sets, 10 reps, 120lbs lat pulldown

3 sets, 8 reps, 35lbs dumbell flys

3 sets, 8 reps, 270lbs, Iso Rows

I kept my stopwatch handy to keep my rest periods between 1min-1:30.  Bench was easy enough and I’ll add 10 lbs next workout.  Lat pulldown I picked because I figured it would be easy on my back, (rather than the bent over barbell rows).  My grip and forearms got really pumped towards the end of those sets and I could barely hold on for the last reps.  I just started using the straps and am getting used to them so hopefully that will help my situation!

Today I’m sore but not like…super sore.  My back seems fine…mostly just sore at the edges of my chest.

Just got back from break with my family back in Portland.  I felt like we just sat around and ate all day!  Sucks trying to be happy and eat whats prepared but dang.  Needless to day I’m happy to be back and on detox from the holidays.  Cutting sugar out and starting to eat as clean as possible once again.

I also managed to throw my back out pretty bad over break.  I was trying to pull a seat up on a piece of workout equipment for my Mom and there went my back!  So I took it easy for two days and by saturday I felt good enough to go into the gym and do a Chest/Back workout.  Its continueing to get better, which is a good thing.  I really thought I was going to be sidelined for a while.

 It really puts in perspective how fragile I can still be without using good form when lifting things.  I mean I can squat 250 all day and not have a problem but can’t lift a stinkin little bench!  Blah!

I’m just an average dude trying to keep in shape.  I’ve never had a problem with weight and fitness until I sat around for a few years decaying away.  I’ve transformed my body in the past year and a half, following back surgery and if I can do it with a bad back, you can too (or without !

 So far I haven’t really seen significant weight loss or gains throughout the two years.  Initially before getting hurt I weighed about 200 lbs.  While I was injured and through surgery/recovery I dropped 10 lbs.  Once I hit the weights again I gained those 10 lbs back pretty quickly.  From then I went through slow weight loss until I am where I am today…around 187lbs. 

 Looking back at my pictures throughout the years I can’t believe what I used to look like, and what I do now.  This next year I look forward to building more muscle and looking even leaner during summer.  Good luck to you all in whatever your goals are, and drop me a line if you want to chat or exchange ideas.

 See ya in the gym!