First a little background.
Since the age of about 8 I have been a competitive swimmer. I had a very successful career, but decided to stop swimming upon entering college(2003). My acadimcs were strong enough to give me enough scholarship to go school without swimming.
As you can imagine swimming doesn’t exactly produce walking mountains of men who look like they’re chisled from stone. When I graduated high school weighed in at a HUGE 153 lbs at 5’11".
However, I always had a passion for wieght training. Anytime my team spent in the gym I was in heaven.
Since high school I have turned all my time to wieght training. Through bumbling around in the gym trying my hardest to following the programs in ARNOLDS ENCYCLOPEDIA of MODERN BODYBUILDING I was able to gain some mass and tip the scale at around 170ish. Then as my nutritional knowledge got better Ii got up to 185 still at a reasonable body fat %. However, this is where my progress halted(summer 2004).
Then I found T-Nation. I feel in love with site and religuosly read article after article and was always in the forums posting every once in awhile. It was then I set the goal to bulk until I was solidly over 210 lbs;I don’t really know why 210 it just seemed like someone who was bigger than 210 was huge. I am so vain. I used all the info from this site to try and help me achieve this goal.
Well a year and a half later, X-mas 2005, I have finally reached the goal. I am now a solid 216! Well not exactly solid which is why I am planning to diet through the holidays then continue to bulk starting January '06(I will try to post some pics soon).
Anyway when I went about trying to form a fat loss diet I realized that I had never dieted and didn’t really know where to start. Through searching the site I stumbled on to the V-Diet. This seems to be the best option for what I want to do;relatively short as opposed to a contest prep diets and easy to follow. However, I want to change my training during the diet. Something that uses heavy weight to help to hopefully retain strenght and most of my muscle mass. But I just want to do it while I am on the V-Diet because I while doing ABBH I when I start to bulk again. I am thinking of doing WM because it is only 4 weeks and focuses on heavy compound lifts.
My questions are:
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Is this a good prgram to go with. I know it is mainly designed to add size and mass, but can it be used to retain strength and muscle mass during a diet?
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My gym is not really suited for super sets(arrangment of eguipment and ths gym is more of a fitness type place than a hardcore gym). I remember reading,I think remember reading, that on exercises that had a x sec rest int between parings you could perform straight sets with time and a half rest. For example, a 60 sec super rest could be turned into 90 sec straight set. Is this true or am I just making it up?
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if some of what I am asking is begginer 101 stuff and for the long post.
Everyone have a great holiday seadon!