First Bodybuilding Show. April 2012

It’s never how much weight you lose, but how you look. In your case, you can only compare to your previous cut, and a realistic approximation of how much more LBM you carry. I never tried to guess how much weight I put on each year, I would always try to hit my previous year’s number. What would happen was that my body would just start to stall out at a higher weight, with better conditioning than it displayed the year before.

This always gave me those last few weeks to settle into the weight and let the conditioning (skin appearance) ‘sink in’ a bit. People who really have to crash down, or who start with an excessive amount of bf to lose don’t usually reach this point. That’s why I thought your target of 180 lbs, compared to 170 lbs last cut seemed excessive.

If I were prepping you, I’d target 170 lbs and probably bring you in at 173-174 with better conditioning.
Little jumps are visually very impressive if your leanness also rises. Look at my last few years’ weights:
2009 170 lbs onstage, very very lean
2010 173 lbs, even leaner than year before (4, 5 lb gain?)
2011 175 lbs, better conditioning to date (3,4 lb gain?)

So I can realistically state that in contest condition, that I’ve put on about 8-10 lbs in the last 2 years, which most people (without any basis other than looking at IFBB competitors) do not realize is a hell of a feat. You looked very impressive in last year’s pics. If you can duplicate the level of condition, and end up even 3 lbs heavier, it is going to have a very noticeable effect!

S

Thanks Stu.

Sorry I kept bugging you with questions (and I am sure there will be more, lol, where should I send the check?). I get what you are saying. I should forget about any projections of increased lean mass, and simply aim for 170.

That is a helpful answer because losing 35 pounds is different from 25 (yes, I am captain obvious), I will have to average another 0.5 pounds per week. Almost 2 pounds per week for a 17 week diet.

Your gains have been consistent, pretty cool for someone at your level. Although, I hope I can eak out a few more pounds given my younger training age. But we’ll see.

So leading up to vacation I squatted 5 times in 4 days (and deadlifted twice in those same 4 days), and got in 12 training sessions in 5 days! Sweet.

The goal was to supercompensate on vacation, not detrain. Goal accomplished.


Rest Days Suck

Well, it is no surprise to confirm CT’s ideas. But my legs got plenty of activity over vacation. I vacationed in the Shenandoah Valley, so I spent many days hiking trails (sometimes with children on my shoulders) and climbing rocks/boulders. That left my legs ready to go for my first squat session after vacation.

However, I did nothing even close to challenging for my pressing muscles. And my first bench session sucked, I felt sluggish and weak.

Conventional wisdom would have said that my chest was fresh and should have done well. Conventional wisdom also would have said that my legs would have been drained from the barrage of squatting and deadlifting followed by intense hiking and rock climbing. However, since my body is used to the activity, the REVERSE is true, as guys like CT and Pendlay have suggested, rest days suck.

Anybody see the fat guy in the mens open short class???

People want my problem:

I lost 3 pounds this weekend, surrounded by junk food that I didn’t want, tried to find decent sources of lean protein but it was hard to come by.

Sure the 3 pounds was mostly water weight and I’ll bounce back. But it is funny the response you get when you tell people you lost 3 pounds over a gluttonous holiday weekend. People don’t want to hear it, they can’t believe that anyone’s metabolism could be that fast and could be that healthy that merely abstaining from a little junk (and thus not eating much because there wasn’t much to choose from) can result in a quick loss.

They want to have my problem…especially my wife. Her response when I told her I dropped 3 pounds, “Why do you tell me that?”


I like Active Rest:

I’ve been incorporating active rest exercises more often after watching the training lab videos. I think it will be a great tactic for addressing my weak arms. They get hit indirectly with chest/back work on MWF and then with active rest when I do legs on T,Th and Sat. I did that last week, so they basically got 6 days of stimulation. It was a nice feeling, walking around with a continual arm pump. I hope it translates into some growth since it is definitely a new stimulus for them. Never got this much volume before.

Jumping Rocks at the Bearfence Mountain Trail, Shenandoah National Park.

To see it bigger, click here:

Imgur

Two Questions:

  1. BEARD - As you may be able to see above, I have a beard. I am leaning towards no beard when I do my contest, but just wanted to get some other perspective. Beard or No Beard on contest day?

  2. DELOAD FINAL WEEK OF BULK - I haven’t seen this particular topic discussed anywhere, but it made sense in my mind to make the last week of my bulk a deload week. The thought was that since fatigue masks fitness, I should deload to dissipate any accumulated fatigue and let my body supercompensate efficiently prior to cutting calories and beginning my cut phase. Thoughts?

1-I always shave my goatee for contests. It just looked dirty when you put all the fake tanners on.

2-Probably not a bad idea from a health and longevity point of view. Make sure all your joints are feeling as good as they’re going to before you start stripping fat away from 'em.

S

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
1-I always shave my goatee for contests. It just looked dirty when you put all the fake tanners on.

2-Probably not a bad idea from a health and longevity point of view. Make sure all your joints are feeling as good as they’re going to before you start stripping fat away from 'em.

S[/quote]

  1. That’s what I figured. Cool.

  2. Neat.

Thanks for replying Stu!


Coming down with a cold, woke up with a very sore throat today. I took the morning off (had a double session planned), I usually feel better as the day goes on when I have a cold. It is always worse in the morning, so I expect my lunch break workout to go smoothly. I don’t plan on letting the cold get in the way of my training too much.

Finally over my cold.

But now something really odd is happening with my body, just dropping weight like you wouldn’t believe.

I was averaging 196 a week back, as high was 198. Now I’ve dropped to 195, 195, 193, and today…192.

You’d have thought that I was:

  1. Unusually high before and holding water - but I was not, I averaged 196 over a two week period.
  2. Not eating the same, but I have still been consuming almost 6000 calories on some days. Maintaining at least 5500 to 5600 on all days.

Am I overtraining? I will say that I’ve done more active rest over the past 3 weeks. So it is possible that the extra energy expenditure is eating up my caloric surplus. But I know I didn’t add in enough active rest activity to start LOSING weight. That is why I am throwing the “overtraining” word around. I have never just started dropping weight for no apparent reason (diet & sleep are both constant). However, I don’t really think I could be overtraining because I am still able to add weight to the bar or at sets to the workout.

Thoughts?

Since the last post my weight bounced back up, but I couldn’t get past 197 ish. Stuck for 1 month at around the same weight and composition.

Something had to change…

After sticking with the same program for almost 10 months and 25 pounds of mass gains. I needed a fresh stimulus because my weight gain has stalled.

Enter High Frequency Strength

When I first told my wife that I was going to squat, bench, deadlift and OH press everyday in an attempt to jumpstart new gains, she said “Aren’t you going to LOSE weight?” And her thought process made sense as I had worried about that very same thing.

Even though my weight choice is moderate, the total tonnage I move on a weekly basic now is more due to the frequency of squatting and deadlifting in particular. So more weight moved equals more calories burned…and I wasn’t planning on eating more because, honestly, at close to 6k calories, I don’t feel like I can without developing an eating disorder, lol. I’ve grown weary of eating. So eating the same, burning more, my wife SHOULD have been correct. I SHOULD have lost weight.

But sometimes 1+1 doesn’t always equal 2, sometimes you get lucky in bodybuilding and it equals 3. I can’t say why, is it a hormonal response to squatting and deadlifting so much? I don’t know and honestly I don’t care right now.

I’ve done at least 1 HFS workout for 9 of the last 10 days, with double HFS on two of those days.

Results?

I am up 2 pounds and I feel leaner. Averaged 199 this past week and this morning woke up at 201 and lean. Quiet a big change from being stuck at 197. Being heavier and feeling leaner is the Holy Grail of bodybuilding. Will it continue to work? Again, I don’t know, but I am going to ride this wave as long as I can.

I have exactly 6 months until my show. Show is April 21, 2011.

Maybe it’s early but I figured I would ask:

Any advice on…

Posing Trunks?

Shaving vs other hair removal methods?

Tanning?

Oiling?

HFS great stuff love it. But watch the weight and double wkrouts fatigue can build up fast. Also dont do the same movemnt patterns like front squat every day for doupbles. I did that and in 4 weeks my knees went to hell now i cant squat for a while so just watch that. Make sure the HFS doesnt detract from your main workout. Also do them in circuit if you can that will ehlp move things burn more cals and put on more muscle.

[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
HFS great stuff love it. But watch the weight and double wkrouts fatigue can build up fast. Also dont do the same movemnt patterns like front squat every day for doupbles. I did that and in 4 weeks my knees went to hell now i cant squat for a while so just watch that. Make sure the HFS doesnt detract from your main workout. Also do them in circuit if you can that will ehlp move things burn more cals and put on more muscle.[/quote]

Trying to watch the fatigue, taking Sunday off, I really needed it.

I workout on my lunch break and often only have 35 minutes, HFS takes me about 27 so I don’t have much time left for main work anyways, so it hasn’t detracted from it. : )

However, I was not stressing the fact that I don’t do much main work since CT had mentioned in recent spills that he was putting more time into the HFS and even adding rounds or adding different HFS groups of exercises.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the equipment to do a circuit (working out a home and only have 1 good barbell).

Thanks for checking in Ryan.

[quote]timmcbride00 wrote:
I have exactly 6 months until my show. Show is April 21, 2011.

Maybe it’s early but I figured I would ask:

Any advice on…

Posing Trunks?

Shaving vs other hair removal methods?

Tanning?

Oiling?
[/quote]

I bought my trunks online, and they didn’t quite fit, so I wouldn’t recommend that route. I tanned in a bed for months and then used a topical tan. Spray at the show seem to work best for most guys.

I didn’t oil up and none of the other competitors I knew did.

[quote]davidcox1 wrote:

[quote]timmcbride00 wrote:
I have exactly 6 months until my show. Show is April 21, 2011.

Maybe it’s early but I figured I would ask:

Any advice on…

Posing Trunks?

Shaving vs other hair removal methods?

Tanning?

Oiling?
[/quote]

I bought my trunks online, and they didn’t quite fit, so I wouldn’t recommend that route. I tanned in a bed for months and then used a topical tan. Spray at the show seem to work best for most guys.

I didn’t oil up and none of the other competitors I knew did.
[/quote]

Thanks for the input! Much appreciated.

I just read the little bio on your profile. Much like my life story, I had no clue what I was doing until about 2008 when I was 29. I spent age 17 to 29 doing Muscle and Fitness routines and not progressing. I’ve made more progress in the last 3 years than I could ever have imagined.

Diet was supposed to start on December 5th.

Well, I’ve lost weight, but not because I started my diet as planned. I ended up getting sick on December 1st and it just got worse and worse. Normally I still workout when I have a cold. But this was whole body aches and massive headache. Just total exhaustion simply going up steps, doing daily tasks, etc. It sucked and my appetite was zero.

Went from 200 to 192 between December 1st and December 12th. Obviously, much more weight than I would have planned to drop in that time…and not the way I would have chosen to drop it.

I will try to make lemonade though, I obviously lost a lot of water weight which would have happened anyway when I started my contest prep diet.

My appetite is back and I am curious what will happen to my weight over the next week. I am eating what I planned on eating for my first week of the contest diet, but it is significantly more than I was eating last week so I expect a slight rebound in my weight.

[quote]timmcbride00 wrote:
People want my problem:

I lost 3 pounds this weekend, surrounded by junk food that I didn’t want, tried to find decent sources of lean protein but it was hard to come by.

Sure the 3 pounds was mostly water weight and I’ll bounce back. But it is funny the response you get when you tell people you lost 3 pounds over a gluttonous holiday weekend. People don’t want to hear it, they can’t believe that anyone’s metabolism could be that fast and could be that healthy that merely abstaining from a little junk (and thus not eating much because there wasn’t much to choose from) can result in a quick loss.

They want to have my problem…especially my wife. Her response when I told her I dropped 3 pounds, “Why do you tell me that?”


I like Active Rest:

I’ve been incorporating active rest exercises more often after watching the training lab videos. I think it will be a great tactic for addressing my weak arms. They get hit indirectly with chest/back work on MWF and then with active rest when I do legs on T,Th and Sat. I did that last week, so they basically got 6 days of stimulation. It was a nice feeling, walking around with a continual arm pump. I hope it translates into some growth since it is definitely a new stimulus for them. Never got this much volume before.[/quote]

LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

I am the same way man, and I am not exactly young anymore at 28.

After reading this thread, I can’t wait to cut down in late March for the summer, you look sick in those pics.

Not sure if you have ever been to intensemuscle.com, but has a ton of competitors there if you want to ask them for advice.

[quote]FearFactory wrote:
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

I am the same way man, and I am not exactly young anymore at 28.

After reading this thread, I can’t wait to cut down in late March for the summer, you look sick in those pics.

Not sure if you have ever been to intensemuscle.com, but has a ton of competitors there if you want to ask them for advice.[/quote]

Thank for checking in. And thanks for the kind words. Just trying to bring my best.

Are you still doing HFS work?