6 Pack This Summer

pimp_by_blood · February 23, 2006, 2:44pm

[quote]PharmD Pete wrote:
The diet looks ok, but I don’t see you eating the veggies at every meal like you mentioned.

I didn’t do any calc on the macro and kcal, but if you are 190 and 6’1" I would think that you need A LOT more calories than 2300 per day, just to maintain.

Go read Dr. John Berardi’s G-FLux article or the old “massive eating.” You could also check out his website at www.johnberardi.com Should give you a better idea of calories needs for someone your size.[/quote]

before I was eating around 2800 calories and wasn’t making any fat loss progress so I dropped them and it is working quite well. yeah, I did forget to write down the vegetables for the other meals, what I do is in the morning cook about 5 cups of brocolli and divide that into my meals for the day. I don’t count those in my calories though because I wonldn’t assume it would be very many for only 5 cups.

I’ll look into the g-flux, I read the article but I don’t want to try to raise my calories. also it seems that most of the people he had with high g-flux were elite athletes.

pimp_by_blood · February 23, 2006, 2:48pm

[quote]kroby wrote:
Hi 020206. I like your split routine. Try to incorporate max effort(ME) and dynamic effort(DE) into them. For instance, max effort on the chest on Monday, DE back and shoulders. Tuesday, ME squats and hack squats, DE deadlifts. Thurs DE chest, ME back and shoulders. Fri DE squats, ME deads and leg curls… Rotate exercises (start chest, then back, then shoulders for a month, then move to back, shoulders, chest for a month… you get the idea.) There’s no reason to not do squats and deads the same day, just vary the intensity!

AND if you’re interested in gaining muscle, EAT MORE! If you’re not gaining a pound a week, then you’re not eating enough. Eat until you hate eating, then eat some more.

Thus says a disciple of He Who Need Not Be Named. You all know who I mean.[/quote]

is dymanic effort just higher reps and max would be fewer reps? I do something similar to that but proably not exactly that. I do heavier weights on thursday and fridays so my reps are more like 3-8 and monday and tuesday I do more rep range of 6-20.

I’m trying to get ripped so raising my calories seems like it will send me in the opposite direction of my goal dont you think?

pimp_by_blood · February 23, 2006, 2:51pm

I found an article on this website that I am going to use for abs training. it is by Ian King and is called Awesome Abs. It has 4 stages and looks like I can do it without having to go to the gym and use equipment which I like so I can do it while watching tv.

ah_dut · February 23, 2006, 5:27pm

In response to your questions: to the best of my understanding, DE is about the speed of the bar and technique while ME is more about Max Strength or weight lifted as the name implies. For a person who hasn’t done 2 years of proper lifting (read me) I think Joel Marion’s suggestion of an re day is better instead.

And wrong, wrong, wrong…raising your calories may be just the ticket. As odd as it may seem, mroe food=higher metabolism. More food+high activity levels=extremely high metabolism. I guess that’s the idea of G Flux.

If you are going to cut (I wouldn’t if you don’t have all that solid a base to play with…yes X some people do listen) then cut gently…very gently. Zig zagging up and down with calories is supposed to work quite well as well

HvRv · February 23, 2006, 6:04pm

I doubt that I’ll be packing 6-pack for the summer. If I reach my weight goal then I’ll cut for shure, but if my goal is not there like by the end of july, than I’m not gonna waste my bulking cycle for some 6-pack thing that’s only good for walking down the beach or washing your clothes.

The 6-pack is like WORK. There has to be a plan and shit like that. Offcourse there’s also the 1 month period of transition between bulking and cutting where you need to hold the weight if you want to get the job done right. And there’s like month and a half of cutting and when you drow the line the summer is over so F*CK it.

Anyways, all I’m gonna do this summer is lie,dring beer, get laid and work out. I don’t see where’s not having 6-pack limits you to any of the mentioned activities. Unless it’s beer so your limited to the floor or a chair. XEXE

pimp_by_blood · February 23, 2006, 6:51pm

[quote]ah_dut wrote:
In response to your questions: to the best of my understanding, DE is about the speed of the bar and technique while ME is more about Max Strength or weight lifted as the name implies. For a person who hasn’t done 2 years of proper lifting (read me) I think Joel Marion’s suggestion of an re day is better instead.

And wrong, wrong, wrong…raising your calories may be just the ticket. As odd as it may seem, mroe food=higher metabolism. More food+high activity levels=extremely high metabolism. I guess that’s the idea of G Flux.

If you are going to cut (I wouldn’t if you don’t have all that solid a base to play with…yes X some people do listen) then cut gently…very gently. Zig zagging up and down with calories is supposed to work quite well as well

[/quote]

thanks for the explaination, I think I have a pretty solid base right now, people often ask me if I workout so to me that would say i’m above average status muscle wise. I think it will proably only take me to april to reach my bodyfat goal at the rate its dropping now so, I’ll definitly be upping my calories then. But for now I’m going to stick with the plan. thanks again!

pimp_by_blood · February 23, 2006, 6:53pm

[quote]HvRv wrote:
I doubt that I’ll be packing 6-pack for the summer. If I reach my weight goal then I’ll cut for shure, but if my goal is not there like by the end of july, than I’m not gonna waste my bulking cycle for some 6-pack thing that’s only good for walking down the beach or washing your clothes.

The 6-pack is like WORK. There has to be a plan and shit like that. Offcourse there’s also the 1 month period of transition between bulking and cutting where you need to hold the weight if you want to get the job done right. And there’s like month and a half of cutting and when you drow the line the summer is over so F*CK it.

Anyways, all I’m gonna do this summer is lie,dring beer, get laid and work out. I don’t see where’s not having 6-pack limits you to any of the mentioned activities. Unless it’s beer so your limited to the floor or a chair. XEXE[/quote]

I read your post like 3 times and still don’t know what you said lol! good luck with your goals!

RUDist · February 23, 2006, 10:19pm

[quote]020606 wrote:
thanks for the explaination, I think I have a pretty solid base right now, people often ask me if I workout so to me that would say i’m above average status muscle wise. I think it will proably only take me to april to reach my bodyfat goal at the rate its dropping now so, I’ll definitly be upping my calories then. But for now I’m going to stick with the plan. thanks again![/quote]

I am not sure where you are hanging out, but 191 lbs. 15% BF on a 6’1" frame would not be above average.

Keeping in mind what your stated goal is I think you might want to do some calculations. Math is your friend.
191 lbs. 15% BF is 162 lbs. LBM. Now, I would have to say that if you stay at 2300 KCAL the best that you could hope for would be to reduce your current fat mass and maintain LBM. However, I really do not think that would be possible without several supplemental aids (not all of them legal or all that healthy). I would without a doubt say that you would not add any LBM at 2300 KCAL.

So, lets say you keep your intake at 2300 KCAL and everything works perfect and you strip off only fat and get down to 8% BF. Remember the 6 pack goal? That is the BF level where that will happen. That is 15 lbs. of fat away. I.E., 176 lbs. x 92% = 162 lbs. You maintained your LBM level and you are down to 8% so you can see your 6 pack. To pull this off, you probably could not lose fat any faster than about 1 pound per week. That would put you at the end of June. So you are standing on the beach at the end of June, you can see your 6 pack, and you weigh 175 lbs. at 6’1". Let’s see a double bicep? No? How about a crab most muscular? Not much to look at is it?

Now, in the above discussion alot of “perfect” things happened that would never happen in the real world. As you get down in body fat, you will have to reduce your calories a bit or increase your calorie expenditures in order to keep progressing. However, you are already at 2300 KCAL. An old rule of thumb is reduce daily KCAL by 500 which will equal 3500 for one week which will equal one pound. So you reduce by 500 and get down to 1800 KCAL. Can you say starvation mode? Your body will shutdown completely. It probably for the most part already has. If you had to reduce your intake down to 2300 KCAL before you starting seeing weight loss, then I think it is safe to say that your metabolism is pretty screwed up.

You need to ramp it up. You need to increase your g-flux according to Berardi. If you can get to a point where you are taking in 4000 to 4500 KCAL and gaining about 1 pound per week or maintaining. Then when you “bring in your 6 pack”, you can start reducing calories SLIGHTLY over time without your body shutting down. And this will not happen overnight. If you try to do it too fast, all that you will do is add fat. It is like you have to train your metabolism to handle the calories correctly that you are ingesting. I guess that is where the term “partitioning” comes from.

So I can’t tell you to change your goals, but I think you should take a hard look at what you are trying to accomplish and also contemplate the tools that you are using to get there. Please try to read everything by Berardi that you can get your hands on.

In the future, when you’ve been able to ramp up your metabolism, and you are sitting at 227 lbs. 12% BF and you decide to bring in the 6 pack and diet down to 217 lbs. 8% by dropping your calories down to 3500, then I think you could truthfully say that your muscle status is above average.

And hopefully you would look back on this thread and laugh at the fact that you were trying to cut at 2300 KCAL.

sasquatch · February 23, 2006, 10:30pm

[quote]RUDist wrote:
020606 wrote:
thanks for the explaination, I think I have a pretty solid base right now, people often ask me if I workout so to me that would say i’m above average status muscle wise. I think it will proably only take me to april to reach my bodyfat goal at the rate its dropping now so, I’ll definitly be upping my calories then. But for now I’m going to stick with the plan. thanks again!

I am not sure where you are hanging out, but 191 lbs. 15% BF on a 6’1" frame would not be above average.

Keeping in mind what your stated goal is I think you might want to do some calculations. Math is your friend.
191 lbs. 15% BF is 162 lbs. LBM. Now, I would have to say that if you stay at 2300 KCAL the best that you could hope for would be to reduce your current fat mass and maintain LBM. However, I really do not think that would be possible without several supplemental aids (not all of them legal or all that healthy). I would without a doubt say that you would not add any LBM at 2300 KCAL.

So, lets say you keep your intake at 2300 KCAL and everything works perfect and you strip off only fat and get down to 8% BF. Remember the 6 pack goal? That is the BF level where that will happen. That is 15 lbs. of fat away. I.E., 176 lbs. x 92% = 162 lbs. You maintained your LBM level and you are down to 8% so you can see your 6 pack. To pull this off, you probably could not lose fat any faster than about 1 pound per week. That would put you at the end of June. So you are standing on the beach at the end of June, you can see your 6 pack, and you weigh 175 lbs. at 6’1". Let’s see a double bicep? No? How about a crab most muscular? Not much to look at is it?

Now, in the above discussion alot of “perfect” things happened that would never happen in the real world. As you get down in body fat, you will have to reduce your calories a bit or increase your calorie expenditures in order to keep progressing. However, you are already at 2300 KCAL. An old rule of thumb is reduce daily KCAL by 500 which will equal 3500 for one week which will equal one pound. So you reduce by 500 and get down to 1800 KCAL. Can you say starvation mode? Your body will shutdown completely. It probably for the most part already has. If you had to reduce your intake down to 2300 KCAL before you starting seeing weight loss, then I think it is safe to say that your metabolism is pretty screwed up.

You need to ramp it up. You need to increase your g-flux according to Berardi. If you can get to a point where you are taking in 4000 to 4500 KCAL and gaining about 1 pound per week or maintaining. Then when you “bring in your 6 pack”, you can start reducing calories SLIGHTLY over time without your body shutting down. And this will not happen overnight. If you try to do it too fast, all that you will do is add fat. It is like you have to train your metabolism to handle the calories correctly that you are ingesting. I guess that is where the term “partitioning” comes from.

So I can’t tell you to change your goals, but I think you should take a hard look at what you are trying to accomplish and also contemplate the tools that you are using to get there. Please try to read everything by Berardi that you can get your hands on.

In the future, when you’ve been able to ramp up your metabolism, and you are sitting at 227 lbs. 12% BF and you decide to bring in the 6 pack and diet down to 217 lbs. 8% by dropping your calories down to 3500, then I think you could truthfully say that your muscle status is above average.

And hopefully you would look back on this thread and laugh at the fact that you were trying to cut at 2300 KCAL.[/quote]

This is one of the finest, well thought out posts I’ve read in some time. So many post goals and have absolutely no clue what it takes to get there.

I hope he listens.

cblasco · February 23, 2006, 10:46pm

Interestingly enough, I’m pretty close to your case:

6’0"
~190lb
~13% fat
Weight training 4 times a week
Doing the Lowery cardio thing

The only difference is that my maintenance calorie intake is around 4000 cals right now.

So, 2300 cals? Unlikely…

RUDist · February 23, 2006, 11:10pm

[quote]sasquatch wrote:
This is one of the finest, well thought out posts I’ve read in some time. So many post goals and have absolutely no clue what it takes to get there.

I hope he listens.[/quote]

Well, thanks for saying so. It was quite easy to write as I was living it last summer myself. I never got the 6 pack and gave up after 8 extra weeks of strict dieting after the probably one and a half years of not eating at a high enough calorie level to either gain LBM or lose fat. Spinning wheel syndrome. During the 8 weeks I managed to drop from 192 lbs. down to 182 lbs. on 6’3". At the time I decided to pull out the calculator. Let’s see 182 lbs. can only see the top 2 abs for sure maybe 4 altogether so lets say 14% (I used a Nike ShoX as reference). That gives me 157 lbs. of LBM. I still need to get down to 171 lbs. to hit 8%. That is if I don’t lose any LBM in the process. Now, I was taking HOT-ROX at the time for LBM preservation, but did I know if it was working for sure?

And, I had dropped KCALs way down to get from 192 to 182 already. I was sprinting, running stairs, etc., etc. And how much lower was I going to have to drop KCALs?

To achieve what? 171 lbs. on 6’3". So that I could see my abs? I still would not be strutting around with my shirt off at that weight.

So since then, I have been on a steady gain. But most importantly, I have ramped up my metabolism. I take in between 4000 and 4700 KCAL depending on the type of training day. And I am pretty sure that once I have reached a sufficient size, that with my increased metabolism, and increased LBM, that cutting down to 6 pack body fat levels will be much easier. But I am not sure where the top end lies as I am still gaining.

Time to go eat.

HvRv · February 24, 2006, 3:31am

[quote]cblasco wrote:
Interestingly enough, I’m pretty close to your case:

6’0"
~190lb
~13% fat
Weight training 4 times a week
Doing the Lowery cardio thing

The only difference is that my maintenance calorie intake is around 4000 cals right now.

So, 2300 cals? Unlikely…[/quote]

My stats:

6’3’
223lb
12-13% bf

still far from my goal.

pimp_by_blood · February 24, 2006, 4:49am

thanks guys, i’m gonna do some thinking here and let you know what my plan is…

pimp_by_blood · February 25, 2006, 4:46pm

ok, after thinking about what you guys wrote about here, I decided to go get an actual assesment of where I’m at. So I went and got my bodyfat tested on friday. When I told the dude taking the measurements I thought I was around 15% he said, nah man, more like 10. According to the bodyfat test, I am a little under 11% and weighed 192lbs.

I was talking to the guy about my goals and he thought I should keep doing what I"m doing now. I should be able to reach the look I’m going for before may. so according to the test I have 171 lbs lean mass and 21 lbs of fat. If I lose 1-2lbs of fat a week I will be less than 8% by mid april. And then I will set new goals. thanks for the help fellas!

and I’m starting the Ian King awesome abs on monday!

Aragorn · February 27, 2006, 8:28pm

[quote]ah_dut wrote:
In response to your questions: to the best of my understanding, DE is about the speed of the bar and technique while ME is more about Max Strength or weight lifted as the name implies. For a person who hasn’t done 2 years of proper lifting (read me) I think Joel Marion’s suggestion of an re day is better instead.

And wrong, wrong, wrong…raising your calories may be just the ticket. As odd as it may seem, mroe food=higher metabolism. More food+high activity levels=extremely high metabolism. I guess that’s the idea of G Flux.

If you are going to cut (I wouldn’t if you don’t have all that solid a base to play with…yes X some people do listen) then cut gently…very gently. Zig zagging up and down with calories is supposed to work quite well as well

[/quote]

Honestly, if you’re new, then your program looks pretty good as is. I’d change up your exercises every month or so, but my compliments on balancing your bench/row work.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Max effort and Dynamic effort days right now. You said you had two days of higher reps and two days of lower reps, that sounds fine to me. In all truth, if you’re making progress as is, don’t change a thing.

All recommendations are not suited to all individuals. I’m about your height and weight (about 200) with a powerlifting focus, and I can cut, bulk, or maintain on 3000-3500 calories a day, depending on how I manipulate timing and macronutrients.

Some people my height/weight are as much as 20% lower or higher. Big deal. If it works, do it. Figure out why later. Of course, it’s better to learn as much as you can, but don’t stop doing something that works just because some expert said it’s not supposed to work well.

Once your progress stops/slows, you may want to look at changing your calories upward for a week or two as well as recalculating your calorie needs. Your metabolism WILL shut down eventually, then you reboot and recalculate and get going again. Instead of trying to up your calories now, look at Thibaudeau’s “Carb Cycling Codex” article for a look at how to lean out and build a little mass. Take that idea and play around with it.

I would suggest more rowing work as opposed to pulldowns to offset your bench/flys. pulldowns have (roughly) the same effect on your shoulders as benching, so I’d say face pulls (look up in Dave Tate articles) and neck rows (cables, rope grip). Keep the bent rows. If you wanted, drop one of the two back movements after bent rows in favor of pull/chinups. Same deal with the shoulder, but better muscle potential than pulldowns.

Make sure you’ve got proper form on squats and DLs, and make sure to go past parallel on the squats. Other than that, just keep an eye on your progress. If it slows, change things up.

Good luck.

cjf3690 · February 27, 2006, 9:29pm

Your profile says that you’re at about 15% bf right now, so you should be able to see those abs anyway, but give ‘7 Days to Ultimate Leanness’ by Chris Janusz a read, that is if you have a specific date set that you want to be really ripped by. Good luck.

-CJ

sasquatch · February 27, 2006, 10:26pm

[quote]020606 wrote:
ok, after thinking about what you guys wrote about here, I decided to go get an actual assesment of where I’m at. So I went and got my bodyfat tested on friday. When I told the dude taking the measurements I thought I was around 15% he said, nah man, more like 10. According to the bodyfat test, I am a little under 11% and weighed 192lbs.

I was talking to the guy about my goals and he thought I should keep doing what I"m doing now. I should be able to reach the look I’m going for before may. so according to the test I have 171 lbs lean mass and 21 lbs of fat. If I lose 1-2lbs of fat a week I will be less than 8% by mid april. And then I will set new goals. thanks for the help fellas!

and I’m starting the Ian King awesome abs on monday![/quote]

1.) You will not drop 2 lbs of fat per week starting off at 11%bf.

2.) I got nothing else. A lot of people gave you some good advice above. Too bad it will be some time before you realize that.

3.) Oh yah, you do realize that it is a tad unhealthy and also quite unnecessary to stay at that low of percentage for any length of time. If this is for the beach and not some specific show, you’ll look and feel better at 10-12 or even 15%bf as opposed to the skeletal 8% you seem to desire.

JokerFMJ · February 28, 2006, 5:36am

I know a few guys who have 6 packs and are real defined. They’re also sickly looking, which is exactly what you’ll be if you get down that low.

I know some girls or whatever might think it’s hot and dig it, but seriously, do you want to be a string bean?

I’m 5’11’’ and have been dropping weight. I’ve lost 20lbs in about 3 months (went from 199 to 179) - I can see my top 4 abs (wow, amazing).

I’ll admit, having a 6-pack was the reason I started dropping weight, but now that i’m down to 179, I want to put on some mass. I don’t want to get huge, but i’d like to have bigger arms, lats, and a stronger core - my legs i’m pretty happy with… Except my calves, but they’re fairly easy to work, or so i’ve read.

Anyway, I looked at your diet, and i’m not expert, but here’s what I think:

Are you allergic to fruit? Then why aren’t you eating any? Blueberries are wonderful for you. Hold on, let me try and find that article… Here you go. “The Magic 13,” by TC. http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=867137

Read it, it’s very useful.

While i’m talking about the diet, here are some other articles I found invaluable.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Progrsms by Dr. Berardi.
http://www.T-Nation.com/findArticle.do?article=291seven2

The Taste of Success by Dr. Berardi.
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=552425

Tailor Made Nutrition I, II and III by Dr. Berardi.
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do?id=856188
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do;jsessionid=6AA54D540FDC389E3E8DFC4C2B911E4D.hydra?id=862942
http://www.T-Nation.com/readTopic.do;jsessionid=BA698CC9E975A332F9D02150EFDA834E.hydra?id=869278

Enjoy and read up. =D

pimp_by_blood · February 28, 2006, 5:15pm

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
ah_dut wrote:
In response to your questions: to the best of my understanding, DE is about the speed of the bar and technique while ME is more about Max Strength or weight lifted as the name implies. For a person who hasn’t done 2 years of proper lifting (read me) I think Joel Marion’s suggestion of an re day is better instead.