aj_rock

Haha you guys are lucky to have Sean instead of Will as coach... I kept my fitness up this winter and guarenteed I'll still be huffin and puffin from his two hour cardio odysseys...

Related: as some people in these forums know, I'm a bit of an EDM nut, so I'll be catching both Digital Dreams and Veld this summer in Toronto. Reply here or msg me if you're interested in meeting up!

Alright, circuits blew up in my face as well. Crazy stress from final project reports n stuff. I'm taking today off, rugby-full weekend again anyway. Bumped myself up to maintenance yesterday and today. Realistically I've been treating my shoulders rather poorly (despite the lack of direct work, which I did to prevent EXACTLY this) lately, so I'll hopefully get back into stuff next week. I think I'm gonna start transitioning back into rugby maintenance type stuff anyway. My heart just isn't in the cut anymore. Final report will come in sometime mid-next week. AJ out.

That makes sense programming-priority wise, but a bunch of endurance work before heavy weight / low rep is gonna kill your bench press performance. When you do endurance oriented exercise, remember that you're trying to increase the amount of work you can do. So you might want to either keep the bench first, OR super set the two! So do your bench press, then immediately go perform as many push-ups as possible. It'll suck muscle-burnination wise, but it'll be effective.

Wowow. Worst workout in a while. Deadlifts: 180 X 1, 170 X 2, 150 X 4 HS BP: 298 X FAIL, 288 X FAIL, 268 X 2. I wanted to cry. Very discouraging Pull-ups: 8 (are you kidding me!?) Inc DB BP: couldn't even lift the 65s on my own. Aaaaaand done. Basically threw the weights down in disgust and left. I'm raising calories by 10% to 2200 and seeing if that helps. Maybe it's residual tension from the load of rugby this weekend, but I neeeeeed to find a way to get that stuff under control. At least the deadlifts went well. Funny, its the legs that seem least affected by all this leg work... Ok, gotta work out a new weekly plan for the rest of this week and the last two weeks of school. That'll finish off the cut, finally. Circuits today, Pull workout tomorrow, and Push workout friday. Neglect higher rep work on the opposite day so that I can get back to chest fresh. Then another weekend full o' rugby, which is what screwed me up in the first place. Clearly, I need more than two days to recover the little bits. So Mondays: light weight, high rep. No PRs or nothing, just get tension on the muscles and stretching. Tuesday: Circuits. Wednesday: Light run and squats Thursday: Pull workout. RPT rather than pure heavy now Friday: Push workout + squats. RPT Weekend. Rugby! Again, this will have to change once exams end. But that's a discussion for the in-season log

Y'know, it's hard to quantify. I haven't been running it in an experimental procedure really, and last couple weeks my intake has been wishy washy due to a ton of travel n such. I'll have to think on how to better quantify results. I'll take a picture of the plaque all the instructions are on, but I'll need to fiddle with a few of the components to make a circuit for someone else. Our track is weird, where 1km = 7 laps (right!?), so translating that to a 400m track or rugby field (428m) will take a bit of thought. I can't just add or take away work, because time to finish is an important parameter. It also requires various equipment pieces (dip bars, chin up bars, a box for steps, stairs) that wouldn't be readily available on a field. You'd most likely need an athletic center or something like that.

Alrighty. Didn't work out friday and pretty good thing, because my body is battered and done anyways. Touch tourny on Saturday; our team won! I was a little rusty, especially on the passing, but made a few good ones and scored quite often. Sunday, we had our alumni game! 9 v 9 because of numbers, one of the older undergrads and myself played with the alumni and cleaned up quite nicely. I had 2 tries and set up another 3, we won quite handily. Then we went to OB practice. 45 minutes passing and decision making, then we got into game play, with about 1/2 hour of full contact to finish off. Hence why I am indeed very sore today. But the coach says the other rookies and I seem to improve from week to week, so only good things happening there. One big positive, is that we did a tiny bit of fitness at the end, front of the pack whole time. Feels good to be one of the few guys actually running during the off season. Tonight's an off night to nurse the bruises and batters, then back into it tomorrow. Intra-squad game Saturday for club, then another OB practice (weekly on Sundays now). We'll see how well the cut holds up.... but getting lots of notice from the club lads!

Mhmm, mhmm, mhmm. Definitely see the start of a six pack there!

Umm I weighted it out so that nine days off (two weekends and a week) should do yah. I would say do a total of six weeks if you wanted to go 50% then 33%, but why not just straight 40% then? You got it. Your life just sucks that much more, but for less time. In your case, a 50% cut also leaves ZERO room for carbs, which could have other negative consequences on work capacity. Much like Mr. Mcdonald always says, if YOU perceive a need to lose weight that fast, then that's up to you. He never recommended people use his RFL program but they do all the time anyways...

First of all, I tend to raise an eyebrow at anyone who's go-to solution for everything and anything as paleo. I won't get into that here though. He's right on maaaaybe one front. That ITB can be caused by a weak posterior chain. In fact, that's the reason for a whole host of shenanigans for your body. But ice not working as an anti-inflammatory? NSAID's a bad idea also? Maybe if you're a git without a proper license to be giving advice. But we've used both to treat inflammation because THEY WORK. Jeesh. He also shows a very poor understanding of what non-elastic tendons/ligaments are supposed to be. They are tough. In non-engineerey type terms, that means they absorb a lot of elastic energy per unit stretch. They provide elastic reflexes without the need to bend like a rubber fricken band. The entire idea of anti-inflammation and stretching is to encourage blood flow in the area. Inflammation prevents blood flow, and stretching encourages it. Enhanced blood flow = better nutrient delivery = faster recovery. It's really as simple as that. Nowhere does he actually make a good argument for training through recovery. Stretch it, ice it, and when it's past the mend, start looking at preventative methods. Not before.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of weighted step ups or lunges. Mimics running form more closely. But GHR's would be easier to perform on top of squats and deadlifts. Hmmmmmmmmmm

As always, there's gonna be some pros and cons to doing this: - I'm not suuuuper familiar with 5/3/1, so I have to ask if it has a diet plan to go with it? If so, then why not just cycle the diet plan? As in, do two 4 week cycles at bulking calories and 2 cycles at cutting levels. Maybe a bump in calories during maintenance weeks. - bjj food requirements are gonna play a big factor here. Wendler builds a bit of conditioning into his program variations, but nothing like you'd get with bjj. Bf is gonna himself with the wind knocked out of him if calorie levels are off. - heavy heavy lifts are weird, because the energy requirements aren't actually that high, so the amount of 'extra' he gets from eating more during the 5/3/1 week is questionable. Energy requirements relate more closely to total volume (sets*reps*weight) than intensity (e.g. say you 1 rep @ a 225 squat. you drop to 65% of that and do 15. You're looking at a total volume of 225 vs 2025.) -that being said, high calorie levels after the big workouts will definitely help him recover faster, but seeing as 5/3/1 has a prescribed weight jump from cycle to cycle, he can't take advantage of any 'extra' gains he gets. - I say all this, but keep in mind that if he follows through properly on the low calorie weeks, odds are he WILL drop fat. So keep that in mind when considering the other points I made above Anyway, everything I say is just conjecture until someone tries it, so best of luck to the bf Laura!

Ok, last night's workout: Squats: 2 X 305, 4 X 295, 6 X 265 T-bar Rows (to make up for the lack of deadlifts this week): 2 X 5 X 225 DB BP: 10 X 70, 8 X 60 (stopped due to discomfort, apparently 36 hours wasn't gonna be quite enough rest) Lat pulldowns: 5 X 225, 6 X 205, 8 X BW Resting it up today, got a lot of work to do (still >.>) and have a weekend of rugby comin up. Touch tourny tomorrow, Alumni school game sunday, and crew practice sunday as well. Monday will likely ALSO be a rest day as a result. Something I was puttin a bit o' thought into as well, re: a big weight difference between Waldo and I. Well after seeing his glute raise video, I have concluded the size difference is due to the fact that I almost literally have NO ass. None. This also explains (although not something anyone else here is aware of) why I have great acceleration (best first 3-4 steps around), but a really really crappy top running speed (40m times are almost embarrassing v.v). Something I'll have to consider for in-season training. The muscles lag enough that throwing a couple targeted exercises in there during the season shouldn't slow me down much.

Can't be right based on the OMG NOT BELOW 1200!!! principle? Which we don't even violate. If you take your TDEE as 2000, then 50% redux is 1000, and total calorie intake for a week is 1000*5 + 2000*2 = 9000, which is an average of 1285 calories a week. If you took that route, than you'd have 145 g protein and 50g fat which totals to about 1000 calories. So you'd be going essentially keto. Remember, you're also using the most extreme deficit I listed (I don't even cut THAT hard!) which you could only do for four weeks. After which you'd lose between 5-6 lbs. OR Taking the less extreme amount:33% cut So you'd be eating about 1350 calories through the week, 2000 on weekends still. You'd lose a little less than a lb a week and lose about 7 in total. So your diet would be the same only adding about 70 grams of carbs to your daily intake. You'd be surprised how much of a difference that makes to your energy levels. And yes, re-feeds are usually on the weekend. Yah know, when it's convenient. It's better to string two together so that you get the added benefit of systems taking a breather for more than 24 hours. So again, I listed the 50% but don't actually recommend it. Weekly numbers seeeeeem harsh because of the refeeds.

% under and length both vary and depend on the presence of a refeed. Because I generally advocate refeeds anyway, assuming you do, I'd say: - you can cut daily calories by 50% for 4 weeks, 40% for 6 weeks, and 33% for 8 weeks(where I'm at). Once you factor in refeeds at maintenance levels (2 days worth), your weekly deficit becomes 35/29/25% respectively. - obviously, these are STARTING POINTS. Knowing actual hard numbers is difficult, and if you experience negative symptoms of a hard cut, bump your calories up. If you're slashing calories by at least a 1/3 of normal intake, I highly doubt you'll run into problems NOT losing weight; maybe it's not as fast as you'd like, but that's what'll happen when you base things off %, heavier, higher BMR people will lose weight faster. It's just how the game works. - refeeds are quite literally just eat around maintenance; as a college student, I tend to eat what I was before and imbibe in alcohol for the rest of the calories. Realistically, it would be better to increase total intake by eating carbs -macros are set in different ways, to me. Protein is 1g/lb body weight, but I DO NOT revise this number down as the diet continues and body mass is shed. Fat is set to 50-60 grams in total, and the rest goes to carbs. So for me, aiming for 2000 calories (based on a 3000 TDEE) that's 200/55/175 prot/fat/carbs. For the refeed, I'd double my carb intake and let some extra fat in as well (for taste). What about calculating TDEE? -> obviously for all of the above to apply, you need to count calories. I however loathe trying to quantify exercise quality because this varies more than a blind man's dart shot. Instead, start with BMR and activity multipliers, and run your first cut cycle. Based on your results (1 lb = 3500 cal deficit), you can figure out what your AVERAGE TDEE is. Please note that you need to take a week or so eating around maintenance before you re-weigh yourself so that lost water/glycogen weight is still accounted for (initial weight lost in your first week will be substantial, and all but 1-2 lbs of it is actual fat). No, the two day refeed has NOT been sufficient to restore all that weight (although fluctuations are to be expected). So what exercise should I do? -> I'll assume you already have your exercises picked out and you're familiar with performing them. Each program is different, and making general rules that apply to the bells, BW, and power lifting is difficult, but some general things: - keep doing what you do, at least for the first week or two. Because you're taking in enough protein, it'll take that long before performance is affected (hell you might even make gains in this time) - as training energy begins to feel more 'sapped', reduce VOLUME, but NOT INTENSITY. Aka try to keep the same weight on the bar, but less sets. Research HAS shown that the body responds to as little as one set of exercise, so really you don't lose that much by taking a set or two off the total. If you like your cardio, reduce the number of sessions per week. Preferably, get at least one workout in while refeeding to take advantage of heightened energy levels at those times. - as you get closer to the end, YOU WILL LOSE STRENGTH. Accept that fact NOW so you don't freak out later, the same way you accept that you will gain some fat while bulking down the road. Once you bump your calories back up, within a week or two of training, your numbers should come back a-okay. So what does this have to do with IF? -> IF is a eating style that makes it easier for some to reach their diet goals. I tend to only eat two meals a day nowadays because I don't have the first one until two in the afternoon. The way my own discipline works, I do very well with the all-or-nothing attitude; if I'm not eating, I'm not eating. Personally, there are a couple supplements I use that work better while fasted, and this is my primary concern with IF. Everything besides personal prefence, as with most things in the fitness world, is still up for debate, and this ain't the place to go over what little literature we have. The only proof I see is that people have successfully lost weight both with and without IF, so again, it's become mostly a matter of personal preferences. Now, I have a paper I should be working on, so that'll be it until later tonight, if anyone has moar questions. PS: as waldo says above, he goes month to month bulking to cutting, which doesnt fit the schema I set out above. The depth vs length I set out is as MAXIMUMS. Feel free to shorten the lengths, but I do feel like you need to perform at least half the max cycle (so two weeks for 50%, four weeks at 33%) in order to 'see' results.

Hey Maegs! Good to hear you've been doing well at practice! I'm sure everyone lets go just a little bit during Easter

Hmmm fair enough, haven't quantified my results in a while! So, one cut, one bulk, partially through a cut right now, been going since mid-november. Start stats: 195 lbs 35" waist And lifting records, for lifts that have been in rotation the whole time: Deadlifts: 2X370 Incline DB Press: 5X65 Squat: 5X255 HS Bench: 5X248 Pull-ups: 13 Rows: 5X210 (similar for lat pulldowns) Current stats: 180 lbs (keep in mind this will shoot up a bit once I finish the cut) 33.5" waist -1.5 Deadlifts: 2X390 +20 Incline DB Press: 5X75 +10 Squat: 4X305 +50 (give or take for the loss of a rep) HS Bench: 5X268 +20 Pull-ups: 18 +5 Rows: 5X235 +25 NOT quantified: the massive amount of cardiovascular training I have also done to prep for the season Anyway, this is for about 4.5 months worth of training, minus a couple weeks for training breaks. Important notes though: - after the cut, once refed for a while, numbers at the gym shot up fast and then continued to progress. This doesn't really quantify that I had also taken Cleans from 135 max to around 205, but I stopped due to back problems. - weekend refeeds keep me sane and my body able to recover properly - I'm not done yet! Still got till the end of April to continue the cut, so still room for improvement

Remember my 'bulk' had a heavy dose of cardiovascular intense training. Cardio doesn't give you lean mass, but after our little touch tourny on monday, the difference between the guys who have been only lifting and myself is staggering. I'm quite happy with the way things are going all told. Great idea on the montage though! Would be the best side-by-side comparison of same weight, different lbm available IMO as most comparisons on teh net always compare different people. Ninja Edit: HI LAURA. I CAN HAZ GIFS!?!?!?!11!?

While I still IF in general, I abandoned the whole macro cycling thing a ways back in favour of weekly refeeds and overall cutting vs bulking macrocycles. I see way too many spinning wheels on the recomp stuff.

It's really not as terrible as it sounds for most women! You have to do one or more of several things before hormones become an issue: - Possess existing hormonal problems or imbalances (natural or BC related) - Depth of cut (obviously totally starving yourself has a much greater impact than simply lowering intake by 10%) - Length of cut (interacts STRONGLY with depth: you can fast for a day as long as you eat later, and a 10% reduction can be maintained for great lengths of time, especially if you start at a higher body fat level) - Excessive exercise amounts (female athletes get this problem, not someone hittng the gym 3-4 times a week) - Quality of food intake (fiber, vitamins, and sufficient fat intake play the largest roles here) - Pregnancy (it'd be questionable to start a diet when pregnant anyways) I'm probably missing a few, and don't know your particular situation, but a well designed exercise and diet plan with periodic updates will avoid these problems.

Gah, under consumption of carbs yesterday/working out fasted today took it's effects. I've never had to breath so hard after a couple sets of exercise as I have today. Even a light jog had my RQ go up ridiculously high. HS BP: 3 X 298, 3 X 278, 6 X 248 Pull-ups: 2 X 11 Inc DB BP: 6 X 70, 7 X 65 10' jog At 180 again. The physical difference between previous 180 and now is outstanding. Easily 4-5 less lbs of fat.

If you're referring to the rugby shorts, well, women play rugby too

Personally, it took me about 6 years, a PT course, a perfectionistic obsession, FFB syndrome, and far too much time on my hands

I'd like to repeat 80's big's suggestion and say rugby shorts for going over whatever you have underneath. Shorter than most shorts, yet not unmanly. Due to the monstrous size of some the lads who wear them, they have sizes that accommodate both larger thighs and waists. http://www.barbarian.com/index.cfm?app=catalogue&a=cat&categoryID=125

Relevant to the male sex drive thing, girls can have periodic problems when hormone levels start to crash due to under-eating. You are going on five weeks of dieting too. Six weeks is the recommended amount before you refeed at maintenance for a week or two anyways. Seems like you're on schedule really. The fact that it's not a 'hard' cut also means that you're likely dealing with leptin issues, which hands down calls for a lengthy refeed.