Jettisoned Ponderings

While sitting idle at work today I had a few things going through my mind for C3. Namely, GJ and I have always trained with the same routine. It keeps us more accountable, lets us push each other harder, etc. Considering her first shoot is really not that far out at this point it’s too late to try to put a little mass back on via the means of going heavier. There’s just no way, the diet won’t allow it, and to change the diet now would diminish long term results closer to contest. So… where does that put me? Obviously, the show must go on. In addition to going heavy, there’s one other method that I haven’t really truly tried. Yes, I go higher volume, but I’ve never done HIGH volume, or what I’ve also heard called "Blood Volume Training". Going with moderate to heavier weights and really upping the reps to force that crazy pump, keep the rest times down to stimulate the GH production, etc. On that note, I set out on a mission to find some ideas. I wandered down to the store to find if any new magazines were out. I noticed that both the April (Which has a great article on Victor Martinez’s surgery. His X-Ray and MRI from the injury are… yeah, wow…) and May issue of MD are out, so I picked up both. MD is one of the few magazines I’ve seen solid workouts in, and usually I tailor them more toward my needs. In this case I need to look outside the box. I don’t go for the articles with a big cover story "ADD 1 INCH TO YOUR ARMS IN 2 WEEKS!" crap. I tend to like articles that give examples of the pros actual workouts. I’ve had great luck following workouts inspired by Markus Ruhl, but with him being retired now I browsed for some new ideas. If you pick up the issue, take a look at page 244, an article on Adorthus Cherry. What caught my attention here was that he used to train using more supersets and giant sets. Hmm… I’ve also used super-sets or drop/tri-sets before. He talks about how it got him results, but he was focusing more on isolation exercises. Again, a trend of my own. The resolution to him hitting better goals was going back to basics, something I’ve been starting to do. Looking at his training routine lo and behold it’s a 6 day split, which I prefer. Even the combination of exercises and sets are comparable to what I’d do, just the reps per set are much higher. I’ve also never split Legs into two days. They’ve always been in one day for me. I talked things over with GJ tonight and she agreed that a higher rep program would be more suitable in efforts to lean out. We were going to do 2 more weeks on the current program leading up to her shoot, but instead with C3 starting tomorrow we’ll start fresh then. Looks like I have some excel sheets to make and a workout tracker to update! So since I’m sure most of you don’t have the new issue of MD sitting around, here’s the new workout (Supp stack changes will be posted later, but yeah… Gonna need it to add a couple things to support recovery):

*Note: Sets will usually be done pyramiding up increasing weight and lowering reps as sets progress
Monday: Chest
Incline Barbell Presses - 5×30-10
Hammer Flat Bench - 4×30-15
Incline DB Flyes - 4×12-15
Cable Crossovers or Pec Flye Machine - 4×20-10

Tuesday: Back
Pull-Ups - 5×10-12
T-Bar Rows - 4×15
Barbell Rows - 4×15-8
One-Arm DB Rows - 4×15-8
One-Arm Cable Rows - 4×15-20

Wednesday: Quads and Calves
Leg Extensions (For Warm-Up) - 4×20
Squats - 5×20-12
Leg Press - 5×20-12
Leg Extensions (Heavy) - 4×10-12
Standing Calf Raises - 5×20-30
Seated Calf Raises - 5×20-30

Thursday: Shoulders and Traps
Seated BB Military Press - 5×20-8
DB Lateral Raises - 4×15-8
DB or Machine Rear Laterals - 4×15-8
DB or BB Shrugs - 5×20

Friday: Hams and Calves
Lying Leg Curls - 4×20-10
Standing One-Leg Curls - 4×20-12
Seated Leg Curls - 4×20-10
Calf Raises on Leg Press - 5×20-30
Seated Calf Raises - 5×20-30

Saturday: Triceps and Biceps
Skull-Crushers - 4×30-12
Cable Pushdowns w/Straight Bar - 3×20-10
Overhead Extensions w/Rope - 4×15-20
Barbell Curls - 4×20-15
Hammer Preacher Curls - 4×15-20
One-Arm Cable Curls - 4×20-12

Yesterday I took only a couple hard falls snowboarding but the first one hit right on my palm as it was perpendicular to my arm. Basically all the impact was taken directly through the carpals and fortunately there was no hyperextension. I can only move my wrist back about 45 degrees before it starts to get uncomfortable. Had to lighten my work load today for massages and get creative to do some strokes right handed that I typically do left. Overall, not fun. I have 4.5 hours of massage to do tomorrow (if the new staff pays attention and doesn’t over book me…) and then off Sunday. The wrist really just needs time and ice to recover. I have functionality, just can’t take pressure on it. Hopefully it’ll be able to handle weights come Monday.

Well, today was my 2nd time ever going snowboarding! Our friend Kris got all new gear this year and gave me his old stuff, which works great for me. The board may be 10 years old, but it gets me down the mountain, is the right size, and it’s good and stiff to be learning on. I’d borrowed it all from him last season so I knew it fit and I’d offered to buy it from him. He’s really an awesome guy and I owe him so many more free meals for this! He gave me the board, bindings, goggles, 2 pairs of boots, and the pants. Plus being near the end of the season Court and I got new jackets and gloves last night for pretty darn cheap. Really can’t complain in the slightest!

We got in a good 4 hours of boarding today. I was surprised that I actually did very well for only my 2nd time going. Started to try and work on going down toe-side as well as changing toe/heel. Sure, took a few falls, but there was plenty of fresh powder. The weather couldn’t have been more ideal! I did hit one overly deep soft spot that brought me to a hault and I ended up hitting my wrist/palm dead on pretty hard, but nothing a bit of ice tonight won’t fix. Since I spent most of the time going heel-side my vastus lateralis is shot as well as the always neglected tibialis anterior.

Then there was the food…

Breakfast we went out and loaded up at a favorite place “Toast”, which is really a dang good quality coffee/breakfast cafe. You don’t get anything but home-made pure goodness here! Court cheated a bit worse than me with the strawberry french toast, while I got the “Big Breakfast” (formerly called the “Hungry Man”), but I skipped half the bacon after pulling off the fat and didn’t go for all the sausage. So 3 eggs, country potatoes, orange juice, some pancakes (upgraded to the blueberry ones), and skipped the syrup.

Lunch, up on the slopes we stopped at the top of one of the lifts for the one lonely restaurant there, the “Chili Hut”, where the only thing you could get besides a can of beer was this…

Let me tell you, for $9.75 that was the a dang good bowl of chili! Warmed me up and the bread bowl was perfect. Good amount of beef and beans in it, I opted for the cheese and onion. I also finished off the majority of GJ’s bread bowl, too. What can I say, I didn’t get to make my typical 1088 calorie post-workout meal! For me, it really hit the spot. I know the first two meals were total cheat for GJ and very much not on the diet. Rest assured, she’s home now with her turkey and broccoli back on track. I at least have the excuse that I’m looking to bulk again (as will be known better when I announce my specific C3 goals soon).

Came home and spent a little time in the hot tub. Obviously not going to hit legs tomorrow, perhaps something upper body. Good day… Good day indeed.

What a crummy workout… I got through it all but every single exercise the weight was lowered. Weights I could do the last 2 weeks I couldn’t get full reps on. I hit failure at 7 of 10 reps on my third set of bench (redeemed only by knocking out 9 reps at more weight the next set after a longer rest and adrenaline kick). Just really frustrating. I know that strength goes down during depletion and cutting, but not this much! I don’t know how much of it is fatigue spilling over from yesterday’s cardio session as it was much more than I’ve done in one sitting for many years. Either way, it sucks.

I also went ahead and gave the SuperPump and SizeOn a try. Too early to make any conclusions on either. Come C3 though I know for sure that I will not be using the SuperPump, namely because of some ingredients that the Full Blown Xtreme has that the SuperPump lacks (NADH, Kre-Alkalyn, Evodiamine, and Vanadyl Sulfate specifically). I still wanted to try the SuperPump though for curiosity’s sake.

Anyhow… just a frustrating day. Last week’s workout was great, today’s not so much. *shrug* Hoping for better next time.

Ok, so the new thread is up! C3 doesn’t start until April 1st, but always helps to go ahead and sort out some goals. Anyone who’s interested it’d be good to go ahead and subscribe to the forum thread now and start planning your goals for the next 3 months. Hope to see most of the circle involved! ^_^

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?p=145153761#post145153761

Today’s workout was circuit training, but one thing was changed up. Instead of running a half mile after all the exercises and repeating, the lifting portion was done 3x through then we hit the elyptical for 20 minutes straight. By about 13 minutes I was starting to have the drops of sweat rolling off. I realized I’m not in quite as bad of cardio shape as I thought, but I’m certainly not where I should be either. I’m thinking for C3 it’ll be good to do all the lifting in the mornings then a few evenings a week hit abs and a little cardio before my last meal/shake. The next few months are going to be interesting. Since Jan the bulk went very well and was overall pretty clean. Gonna aim to do a bit cleaner bulk this time around though keeping the fats down a bit. Got a few more weeks though till GJ’s shoot at which point the training will change up. Most likely I’ll begin the new diet a little prior to that so I can reload my body and get the most out of the heavier sets.

C2 is up at the end of this month and it’s been a huge learning experience for me. During it I’ve hands down made the most progress these last 3 months than I have the entire 2 years I’ve been lifting. I’ve learned a lot about my body in that time and especially about nutrition. I had to change my goals midway through it and some of the revised goals were hit while others I feel I may fall a bit shy of, but I’m still going after them with these last 8 days…

As for C3 I’d been debating what to go for. My wife GeminiJedi will be working toward a couple competitions in June and July, but I’m not competing until October. For me, I’m more concerned with size still and trying to bulk more so that when I cut back down I can try and come in fuller and more solid. It’s been working fairly well recently for both GJ and I to do the same exercises, just in different rep ranges based on our goals. She wants to spend a few weeks training more for bulk before cutting down again for the shows. Meanwhile, I’ll still keep training heavier.

For training, I’m going to be using a method called Cumulative Fatigue Training. I only recently came to be familiar with this particular name for it, but it’s how I’ve generally always trained. I made a lot of progress with it when I first started lifting. I’d do the same weight for 3-4 sets of 12 keeping to under 60 seconds rest. I didn’t hit failure until my last set, and if I got all my allotted reps I increased the weight the next time. Going with that philosophy rather than training higher reps per set, I’ll still essentially be doing the same reps, but in more sets. So rather than a 3×12 I’ll be doing 6×6 with the exception of calves as I know they respond better to 12-20 reps for 3-5 sets. I’ve always believed that I didn’t respond well to heavy training. I realized though that by "Heavy" I was referring to doing reverse pyramid (Typically 12/10/8/6/Max) sets that built up to one or two heavy sets of only a few reps at the end. So all the early sets were more of warm-ups with ample rest times. So keeping the weight a bit heavier than usual and only to 6 reps per set should prove interesting since I won’t be gradually doing a progressive load but jumping right into the heavier weight after a couple warm up sets.

I won’t be doing as many exercises per muscle group this time, either. I’m trying to stick with the exercises that I know will hit the most muscle fibers at once. Legs will have more exercises as I’ve had much more success since January with the higher volume. The training split is going to look like this:

Back/Shoulders/Triceps:
Parallel Grip Front Pull-downs
Barbell Front Presses
Reverse Grip Smith Presses
Parallel Grip Seated Rows
Seated DB Lateral Raises

Legs:
Barbell Squats
Standing Calf Raises (4×20)
Deep Wide High V Leg Press
Seated Calf Raises (4×20)
Seated Leg Curls

Chest/Traps/Shoulders/Biceps:
Barbell Bench Press
Incline Hammer Curls
Rope Rear Delt Pulls
Prone Dumbell Shrugs
EZ Bar Reverse Curls

Now for the supplement stack. I haven’t been on much this month and did a cleanse for a while to clean out my system. It’s still too early to run another PH cycle in my opinion, even though I’d be running a different compound to hit a different receptor. So rather than starting off C3 with one I plan to wait and run one in the tail end of it. The plan will be to use American Cellular Labs VNS-9 for the last month (or possibly last 45 days, which would be 1 bottle’s worth) of C3 (along with all the appropriate cycle support supps and PCT after). For the first part of C3 I’ll be trying the Gaspari SuperPump/Size-On stack as I got the trial sizes to see how I like them. I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with the Size-On through all of C3 as I do like to have some form of carbs/creatine to consume during my workouts. The SuperPump, however, has a significant rival for me, that being Max Muscle’s Full Blown Xtreme. I’ll try both and stick with whichever performs better. For protein, I’ll be going back to the Big Max 50 gainer shakes and I’ve also come to like the Elite 12 Hour protein for overnight (not the best taste, but I’ve had worse. I just care that it works). To keep the metabolism high and offset the increased fats I’ll have in my diet I’ll be sticking with Hi-Tech’s ECA Xtreme. I’ve been able to bulk before with fat burners no problem as long as there is adequate good fats in my diet, which I will see there are. So it’ll be back to a lot of red meat, pasta, oats, almonds, etc. and hopefully when it’s all done I can hit my size and weight goals. Those I will wait to set until I take my final measurements for C2 at the end of the month.

Yesterday I ended up doing an additional 90 minute massage on top of what I typically do and was beat. Ended up not working out and tried this morning. GJ and I both slept miserably. I felt ok going into the workout but found myself fatiguing much faster than usual and she was flat out not feeling well. In the end, we were there and it was pretty empty for a Saturday so after the squats I just went ahead and did my starting weight for all the remaining exercises to get the footage and we called it a day. I may go hit up some circuit training this evening if I’m feeling a little better, but for the moment that’s not looking too promising. Anyhow… Here’s the video for those who are curious what my leg workout is like. Here are the typical sets and reps I would do:

(Rest times only 30 seconds)
-Squats: 10/10/Max
-DB Bulgarian Split Squats: 10/10/Max
-Smith Front Squats: 12/12/Max
-Standing Ham Curls: 10/10/Max
-Seated Calf Raises: 12/10/10/Max
-Standing Calf Raises: 12/10/10/Max
-Machine Kickbacks: 10/10/Max

Also, the music in the video is what I was actually listening to today. I typically listen to this sort of stuff in my workouts.

Quick nutritional note, for the rest of the month trying to hit my goals with C3, I’m backing down the carbs for this last week to just under 200g/day. Keeping the protein high, so I’m around 2400 cal/day for this last stretch. I’m gonna be so ready to start bulking again soon… I really wanna see how much size I can put on using the CFT 6×6 program.

The current program has been working really well and I’m seeing results. GJ is, too, however she is feeling that some areas of her body are still too small. With that, we’re sticking on the current program through till her photo shoot in a couple weeks, then after that are going to switch things up a bit and try to put some mass back on for a while. The concept comes from this article, which is actually very similar to the philosophy that I’ve trained with the last two years. Only difference is that I’ve never done lower reps. So we’ll be trying a 6×6 method and generally sticking to 1-2 exercises per body part on a 3 day split. Not sure whether we’ll lift Mon/Wed/Fri, maybe lift 6 days in a row, lift 3 and 1 off, I dunno. We’ll have to see how she feels after the shoot and what the diet plans are gonna be. But for now, the workout is put together and laid out. For me, it’ll be a great way to kick off C3. For those of you who don’t know what that is, some of us on here have a group that participated in a “Challenge” for 3 month durations setting goals and holding each other accountable to it. Everyone’s welcome to participate, and it would be REALLY great to see some ladies in the group! C2 is winding down now, so if you’re curious here’s the forum thread to it: C2 Challenge 2008 The first page gives you a good feel for what the "terms" are and such. Basically you publicly state your goals for the next 3 months, keep it posted in your profile (and Goals section if applicable), then we all mutually support each other through the process. It’s helped me out significantly to have the goals in place as I’ve been in both C1 and C2.

So, to all the Circle… you in?

Wifey has been on her competition diet for 3 weeks now and stuck with it. I’m so proud of her! She’s even developed a positive taste for the "tree food" (aka broccoli) in the process. Recently she’s had a real craving for a milk shake. Not even a large one, just a small one to have along with a healthy meal. She’s been saying how that’s what she wants her first meal after her shoot is over, but yesterday she was talking about possibly getting one now just to get the fix taken care of (or possibly make her realize they aren’t as good as they sounded which has happened with a number of cheat foods in the last year). So I felt it came time to intervene and curb the urge…

Me: "Ok, so I have a proposition…"
GJ: "Ok?"
Me: "You can either have your shake, on you can forget the idea and this weekend you can have a caterpillar roll (for those who like Sushi, this makes sense) for your dinner instead."
GJ: "Ooooohh…. Caterpillar rolls…"
Me: "You get some protein and a few good carbs and you’ll still get your fat fix, but it’ll be from good avocado instead of saturated crap."
GJ: "Yeah, that would be a better option."
Me: "So yeah, if you go for that I’ll get you sushi this weekend and you can have all 8 pieces."
GJ: *eyes get big* "OOH! You mean I get a WHOLE caterpillar roll!?"
Me: "Yep, you can have it all to yourself."
GJ: *Pauses as the gears turn in her head pondering the milkshake* "…..Deal." *Big Grin*

So one fix has been shot down. It’s been a while since we’ve had Sushi, so it will be nice to have that this weekend for both of us. As for the milk shake issue, I’m sure it’s not the last I’ll hear of it. Sounds like I need to go get some good Cookies n’ Creme protein to keep around for situations like this.