Deserteaglle Log


Well I just finished typing a response to someone’s question and I ended up telling my whoel damn life story so I decided to post a log.

Without getting too much into my past, I have a penchant for rambling anyways, I’ll start with when I got serious about training which was the end of December 2006. At the time I was a 20 year old smoker who spent alot of nights out of the week drinking.

I for some reason picked up “The Body Building Bible For Men” and decided to get in shape. On December 28th I crushed my packs of cigarettes and quit, then I started the program.

Starting out I pretty much followed the program very closely except I ran a mile every morning before going to the gym at 6 a.m. Pretty soon though I started changing small things up things up to work on my weaknesses.

My weaknesses have been my calves, hamstrings, glutes, lower back, stomach, upper back, forearms, arms, shoulders, traps, and neck. Yeah, pretty much one big weakness except for a large chest, which is really just large in comparison to the rest of me.

A month into it I had an accident and messed up my knee in one of the most embarassing and ridiculously stupid injuries ever. I had to lay off legs for a few weeks, but got back to it as soon as possible. When I did I changed the program for the first time.

I felt like I should try a lower rep, higher weight program for squats and deadlifts. I also added in a little extra shoulder work, a little extra back work, and I added in shrugs.

My lifts are embarassingly low. When I first started squatting heavy (no more 15 reps of 135) I struggled with 5 reps of 205 for 4 sets, now 205 is a warm up thank God.

In about Mid March I started training at West Texas MMA where we have a local instructor who is a part of Team Brasa (BJJ), and instructors that come every couple months from Brazil, also Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and Striokefore Super Heavyweight Rex Richards who’s 6’5 and 300+ pounds, you may not have heard of him yet, but you will the dude’s a badass.

We also have had Paul Buentello come and do a seminar with us and that was one of the cooler experiences I’ve had. Unfortunately my knee is still causing problems, and every time I think it’s good enough to get back into rolling it tears open and I’m bleeding all over things. It’s extremely annoying and is not helping with my lack of an even halfassed decent ground game.

When I started the MMA I had had my carbs very low, and since the increase in activity I’ve added quite alot of calories, alot of carbs, and more fruits. It’s also gotten me to change my training a little bit more.

When I started lifting heavy on the squats and deadlifts I had been on the program that had me doing both lifts on the same day twice a week. There was just no way I could do that, so I switched to having one squat day and one deadlift day a week, though both days I worked calves and lunges.

At that point my program hardly looked anything like the one set out in the book. I was doing pull ups, dips, bench, and was having to improvise set and rep schemes. I couldn’t do more than 5 pullups at a time so I had to do more sets, and my calves just weren’t responding so I’ve been hitting them extra hard.

For someone with a naturally large chest my bench was ridiculously low when I first started doing it, but after a while I realized my chest wasn’t as caught up as I had thought, and I realized that the dips and other excercises that indirectly hit my chest was causing the lower portion to bulk up more than the top portion, which is funny because that’s what I’d been trying to do at the advice of my brother and it turned out I really just needed to make my whole chest bigger. SO I’m doing less weighted dips now, and incline bench.

Also, I am only doing one main chest excercise now…the incline bench, since I still think my back needs to be brought up the most and I feel like I can hit it harder if I don’t work my chest quite so hard. I would love to have a ripped frickin’ back, so I’m concentrating very hard on barbell rows, pull ups, chinups, and what little I can do in wrestling and BJJ.

Here’s what my current program looks like:

Monday:

Pullups-4 sets of 5 reps holding a 10 pound db between my feet.

Incline Bench-warmup set of 15 reps with the bar, 10 reps at 135, 8 reps at 155, 6 reps at 165, 8 reps at 155, and end with another 10 at 135.

Barbell Bent Row-3sets 10 reps 125lbs. (in two weeks I’m changing this set rep scheme)

Calves- Monday only 2 sets one legged raises on the smith machine with a 45 on each side and finish off with as many double leg calf raises as possible.

Chinups-3 sets of 5.

Close grip pushups- 2sets of 15, and then finish off with 12 body weight dips.

Hammer curls-3sets 10 reps with 25lbs.

Standing Tricep extensions-3sets 10 reps with a 50lb. db.

Tuesday I made myself a sprinting program in place of a heavy leg day, hence why I have calves on Monday with my upper body because I don’t directly work them again until Friday. Currently I’m switching off, every other week doing squats and the weeks inbetween deadlifts.

Most times my legs just can’t handle doing both in the same week so I substitute one day with sprints. It seems to be working so far and both my squats and deadlifts are improving alot even though they’re not done in such high volume.

Wednesday I do weighted situps and leg lifts on a decline ab bench, some rotational excercises and I also consider this my “cardio day”. I do some about everyday, but I just add an extra mile on wednesday.

Thursday is the same as monday excet no calf work.

Friday, like I said, is either squat or deadlift day. I did the same warm up, 4x5, cool down program for about 6 weeks with decent results. Like I said, originally I struggled with 205 for 4 sets of 5, and the last time I did that workout 4 sets of 5 with 245 was a bit too easy, and I decided to switch it to a pyramid type scheme like I did with my bench.

I can’t remember what I did last time…that was 2 weeks ago today.lol, but I squat today so I’ll se how I’m doing.

Calf raises- sets of 10 with 2 45’s on each side of the smith machine.

Walking Lunges-I’ve been supersetting them with the calf raises, and doing them with a 45lb. plate in my hands. 12 steps with each leg.

Shrugs-I had been using dumbbells, but the largest my gym has are 70lbs. and one day I couldn’t find them so I used a barbell. Thank God I’m not being held back by dumbbells anymore and I can use alot more weight.

Bent over Side Raises-I want big shoulders like you wouldn’t believe, but when I had all the extra shoulder work in, plus fighting…I was having alot of pain and I realized how many excercises were working my anterior delts already. Now I’ve cut out the extra front work and just do 3 sets of these with 25lbs in each hand.

Saturday is some more cardio, and sometimes I’ll go fight then too.

There are a few things in my program that are somewhat similar to the first program I started out on. I change my rest times, never resting more than 90 seconds, but mostly 60 seconds between sets, I use some supersets, and every two weeks on most excercises I will increase the sets (until I get to four) and decrease the reps unless I’m adding weight to the bar like I have done with my bench and squat/deadlift.

Monday and wednesday is MMA from 7:30-9:15, Tuesdays and Thursdays are beginners Jiu Jitsu classes until 7:45 and then MMA until 9, usually I don’t go on Friday, and sometimes I’ll go to kickboxing and MMA on Saturday.

Sunday is a complete jack off day. I try not to do a damn thing but sit on my ass and relax. I haven’t taken any planned rest since I started, just every once in a while, like this last wednesday, I didn’t feel like training os I didn’t do anything but take it easy. I think after the next two weeks I’m going to take one week off from weightlifting and then come back to it with a few things switched up.

I kinda have a theory that what added 40 pounds to my squat in a month will work with my bench and rows, though maybe not as drastically.

I also am going to do more sprinting and interval work and less jogging. I can run 2 miles and not be out of breath, but last night during MMA I was sparring with a BJJ black belt, he shot in and I sprawled as hard as I could and threw some body shots while I was at it. I avoided the take down, but felt like puking afterwards…I need to work on my anerobic endurance obviously.

My more short term goals are to get stronger, and maybe stay at a lean 195 for a while. I am going to fight as soon as I have a ground game, and I want to be a hard 185, Nathan Marquardt is my height and the most ripped 185 I can think of. In the long run though I’d like to be just as ripped at 220 or so.

I guess I’ll post some progress pictures as well. I feel like I’m doing alright, but I’m not nearly where I want to be, especially when I have pictures of me in regular clothes. My forearms look pathetically small and so do my calves, which brings me to something I’ve been struggling over, whether I should add in direct forearm work or not.

Common sense says that if you want to bring a body part up you work it hard, but most of my workouts both with weights and in the MMA gym work my forearms and I’m not sure if they’re just not growing as fast as I would like them too, and I would hate for my other lifts to suffer because of worn out forearms.

The last one was from Dec. 31st. This one is from March 28th.


May 1st. I wasn’t real happy with these pictures. I don’t feel like I improved a whole lot aesthetically speaking, and the lighting where theses pictures are taken is bad = doesn’t show any abs.


Like everything else…back needs to be brought up.

This one actually shows off a little bit of my abs. I’m afraid that being fat before has given me loose skin forever, as even where I can see my abs I can pinch quite a bit, but it doesn’t bother me that much.

You have also noticed I don’t have any real leg pics. I have a co-worker take these pictures and I hat eto ask her to take pictures of me with my pants hiked up. I’ll just say until I get some pictures up, they’re like the rest of me.

My quads are pretty well developed, but my hamstrings and butt are not though I have gotten a few compliments on my ass recently, and like I have said, my calves are embarassing.

[quote]Deserteaglle wrote:
May 1st. I wasn’t real happy with these pictures. I don’t feel like I improved a whole lot aesthetically speaking, and the lighting where theses pictures are taken is bad = doesn’t show any abs.[/quote]

You look way better. Great progress.

What does any of this have to do with “Strength Sports?”

[quote]ChaseT wrote:
What does any of this have to do with “Strength Sports?”[/quote]

It’s a log…and I train for strength and MMA…all of the other MMA stuff is in this forum, and you know the whole strength thing…

Is this offensive to the forum?

I squatted yesterday.

10 with just the bar.
10 with 205.
8 with 225.
5 with 245.
7 with 225.
9 with 205.

Obviously I had started getting worn out, and my body wasn’t wanting to go down as far as it should so I didn’t try to push any more reps with worse form. I actually started out feeling very strong though and my form was good. Felt pretty good about it and I’m feeling alot in my butt and hamstrings and less in my quads today.

Then I did barbell shrugs, 3 sets of 10 with 185.

Next was one legged calf raises with a 45 on each side of the smith machine. 3 sets of 10 reps supersetted with walking lunges holding a 45lb. plate.

I decided to leave just a 45 on each side and do another 3 sets of calf raises, this time both legs, focusing on going as slowly as possibly and using completely full ROM, and I actually felt ALOT of burn in my calves afterwards, though I’m still not sore today.

I ended with bent side raises with a 30lb. dumbbell in each hand. 3x10.

This was a really short workout buit I felt like I’d done something when I left.

Also the past two days there’s been a old guy in there wearing REALLY short sweat shorts. It’s quite disturbing.

Well, after work yesterday I went and had a good run. I didn’t time my sprinting and jogging times, I just made sure I was pushing my limits. Then I went and had a good workout, there were two kids, I’mtalking 10-12 years old “working in” on some of the equipment which wasa bit annoying, but I got over it.

When I got to WTXMMA I was a bit tired but ready to go. Rex said he had a fight next month so we’re doing alot of sparring. We go through some drills and I’m the first to spar with Rex. He beats my ass, but there’s absolutely so shame in that. Then I go to spar with another guy who’s kinda new around.

I swear I thought he’d done this stuff before, he’s got really good hands, BUT he doesn’t know what 70% is. The problem though was that I threw a right hook to the body and hit his elbow with my thumb. I stopped for a second, then went back and realized I couldn’t make a fist inside my glove.

Once the round finished I took off my gloves to take a look, and by the time I left it was swelling. I was pissed and went and had a few beers. I can’t use it to help me type, and any kind of contact with it hurts. I HATE giong to the doctor, but I’m afraid I need to.

It’s broken in two places and they’re putting a hard cast on Thursday.

http://images.t-nation.com/forum_images/8/3/83948-team.jpg

Haven’t even been in this cast a week but I’m already about ready t cut the damn thing off. I can hold light dumbbells, somewhat do pullups and chinups but I can only use the fingers on my right hand for grip. I have just got back in the gyma and feel uncomfortable on the machines that I haven’t quite gotten the hang of.

My leg press numbers in relation to what I was squatting is ridiculous.

I’m just sick and tired of the nuisance of this already dirty and smelly cast. I’ve been overdosing on calcium pills. I don’t know if that will help, but i don’t guess it can hurt.

Saturday we took some pictures at the gym of the few fighters who showed up. I’m the second one from the right.

After a few weeks of having that cast on I got so sick and tired of it I cut the damn thing off. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be completely healed, and it honestly hurt like a bitch. I could do even less than the half ass workouts I was doing with the cast. However, in 6 months I hadn’t taken a REAL break from training. I figured at my experience level I was still seeing results, so I didn’t really need to back off more than missing a day here or there.

I kinda felt burnt out and said, “Fuck it, I’ll train when I feel like it.”

I did do some bodyweight excercises. One thing I learned that will kick your ass is seeing how many bodyweight squats you can do in 3 minutes.

Anyway, after a while of just running and doing pushups and bw squats when I felt like it I decided it was time to get back in the gym and bust my ass harder than ever, and honestly I think that time off was a good thing because right now I am more motivated than ever ,and I am making alot of changes.

I feel like a made some pretty good progress asthetically and in strength over the first 6 months of serious training, and I attribute that to alot of hard work, a decent workout plan, and good diet. Right now though I am going to focus mostly on just hard ass workin’.

I am going to be a little bit more lax on my diet and supplementation for the next month or so. Basically just make sure I eat enough, and that’s it. I feel like I can judge how much I need to eat to feel strong and energized while not gaining fat and I’m just gonna go with that for the next month.

My goal is still to be bigger, and to correct imbalances, but mostly I just want to be freaky strong.

For the last 6 months I was working on a 6 day split program. While all the hype makes me want to stay away from them, I think right now the best thing for me is 3 times a week total body workouts. I want to see how it works FOR ME. I’m not really in the mood to post my program, I’m not looking for critiques.

I feel like the program I’ve made for myself is not something I can do for more than a month as its centered around very heavy lifting focusing on deads, front squats, incline bench, pullups and chinups, with very heavy weights and high volume. The plan is to beat the hell out of myself for a month, take a week off, then see how much size and strength I’ve been able to gain. If it’s decent I’ll probably continue along those lines for at least another month or so.

I basically want to try different things long enough to find what else works for me besides what I’ve been doing.

As far as MMA goes I haven’t been doing much of that either. I have rolled a little bit, but haven’t sparred since I broke the thumb. I am looking to get into law enforcement, and at the moment I’m more interested in getting bigger, stronger, and becoming a better submission wrestler than anything, though I am still going to work on my standup.

That’s all I got for this little update.

Good progress, man. You certainly look alot healthier.

Well here’s the deal. Without going into alot of personal stuff i finally decided to do something a little drastic.

I have been maintaining weight for a while now. I have been getting consistently stronger, but no hyooge gains, and my body composition hasn’t altered a whole lot…though I have gotten a little leaner and A LITTLE bigger. However, I have always wanted to get bigger with a lower bf%, but I guess I can’t really get bigger if I’m eating only enough for the scale to read the same can I?

So I’ve decided to try to gain weight for the first time in my life. Basically I still have plenty of fat on me now, and will have even more when I get to my target weight, BUT I always know how to get rid of that, so size is the main objective here. Besides, I think the MMA training and a clean diet will keep fat gain minimal.

I am going to do the same thing I did to lose weight pretty much. Keep it simple. I will keep it simple as long as simple is getting me the results i want and expect.

I am shooting for 240 pounds…and I am at an even 200 right now.

My only cardio is going to be sport specific…so just my mma training, and a little activity. Not hardcore running or sprinting, but just a light warmup before weight training.

If I do feel like I’m gaining a little bit too much fat I’ll add in a little more cardio.

If I’m not gaining weight I’ll eat some more. Right now I’ve just added more food to my portions, and am making sure to eat every 2 hours.

Pretty excited about this, but I am at work so I can’t remember where I was before I had to go help a customer and start cooking some chicken breasts.

ANyways, there you go.

p.s. I just cut my hair into a mohawk…so that should help.

Well I got on the scale this morning, and subtracting for clothes I put myself at about 215 pounds. I’ve gotten a few people noticing, but I don’t think 10 pounds has made a big difference at all. I don’t think I’ve gained much fat, but I do feel a little bloated most of the time. I don’t know if my arms and legs have increased much in size, but I do seem to be fitting into my clothes a bit tighter.

I have switched to a push/pull workout, and haven’t really done ANY cardio and haven’t had much time for BJJ. I have however, made sure to make it to the gym, except I did miss Friday because I’ve been moving.

One really good thing about this new program is that it has gotten me to write down everything I’m doing while I’m in the gym. I contemplated \putting that all down here, but I think I’m going to hold off for a couple months so I can post how much weight i was moving to begin with and how much I’m moving at 240.

I also noticed I gained more than 2 pounds a week, and I pretty much decided not to worry about that at all. I am about sure it’s going to slow down once I can be more active when the moving is all done.

That’s all I wanted to say for now.

I haven’t really kept up with this at all but I just felt like blabbing about what’s been going on.

I got up to 225 and got REALLY tired of seeing how much fat I was carrying around my love handles area. I had let my diet get a little out of control so I decided to reign things in a little bit, especially because without running everyday my cardio went to SHIT. I am known as the puker in the gym now, I’ll be whoopin’ some ass and after a while I have to run out to the curb and spill my guts.

So after a few weeks of tightening up my diet I dropped just a few pounds and looked a little leaner, and felt alot better. Then my coach started talking about me beginning to fight MMA and we both decided I would do best to lean out to around 195 and cut to fight at 185. I had life crap going on though, and all these extra meals with the needy girlfriend were keeping me stuck at 214.

I dropped the girlfriend and things fell into place with my diet and training. I weighed and had my bodyfat measured yesterday and I am an even 200lbs, and according to the calipers the guy at the gym had hooked up to a computer I am 11% bodyfat. My excercise bike had been saying I was 30%, and I knew that wasn’t right, and honestly I don’t care very much to know what my BF is, but I won’t lie, it got me pretty pumped to find out I am that low, though I believe the 3% give or take actually leaves me at about 13-14%.

So here’s some more random thoughts:

-I got to 225 and was still wearing all of the same clothes, which was kind of my way of monitoring fat gain, but they were obviously alot tighter.

-My clothes are falling off of me now.

-I feel like at 200pounds I’m carrying around the same amount of fat in my love handles area, but my legs BLEW UP. Before I started the bulk they were a big weak point and I was embarassed of them, but during the bulk I didn’t get much bigger anywhere but my legs and they are now probably my best feature. That made all the fat gain worth it.

-I never counted calories to gain 25 pounds or to lose it again, it seems like I just have to get it in my mind that I am going to gain/lose weight and it happens.

-I’ve been very consistent with my diet since I dropped the gf.

-When I was 225 it was pretty obvious that I workout with clothes on, but at 200 and in my now baggy clothes I guess I just look like a regular guy. I say this because I went to check out Gold’s Gym and the guy explained to me what every piece of equipment was for like I had never been in a gym in my life. Anyways, I may have looked like I lifted with my clothes on, but nekkid I looked like shit.

-I have changed the way I work out DRAMATICALLY. In fact I’m pretty sure mst people here would think I was an idiot, but it seems to have given me what I think are pretty damn good results, and as much as I would like to be huge, I am a fighter right now, I guess when I’m done with MMA I’ll work on adding more size.

-I started working out at home when I got an oly set, some dumbbells, and a recumbent bike for Christmas, but I just got another gym membership at an AWESOME gym. This place is 45 a month with no contracts, is gigantic, the only trainer there is a huge rugby player and his dog runs around the place, and no one is ever there. I don’t even know how it’s in business.lol. They even have tires and logs and a sandpit and a sprint track. I’m definitely going to take some pics and post them up next to the old gym(yuppy).

-I was supposed ot have my first amateur MMA fight February 23rd in Hobbs, New Mexico but unfrtunately there is a dirty bastard at the gym who was spreading around staph, so when I found a small open wound on my left arm I immediately went to the doctor who glanced at it and gave me some antibiotic ointment and a bill. 2 days later it had quadrupled in size and I had to wait another two days to get with a dermatologist to find out it is POSSIBLY some kind of ringworm. ANyways, I have to go back in two weeks, and until then I can’t train MMA r jiu jitsu, so obviously my fight had to be canceled, but I’ll be making up for it in March.

I doubt anyone’s interested in all this, but I just felt like saying a few things, and tomorrow I am going to post some pics from when I was “The Fatness” and what I currently look like to see if I can get some unbiased feedback.

Thanks for reading.