I had a crappy 2014 in regards to training. After deciding to start crossfit in mid-2014 I got a string of injuries (mostly from running/soccer, not crossfit) that didn’t really let me train properly. After straining my right hamstring for the fourth time in mid-late November I decided I just had to take some time off.
I started training again a week ago today, can still feel my right hamstring a bit tight and both my lats (which I strained at the same time) a little tender. I feel like I’ll need at least a week for my hamstring to heal and at least a couple for my lats to heal.
As for my training, I’m simply doing a push/pull/legs split focused on performance. I don’t have any set schedule throughout the week nor do I have a set routine for each bodypart. I just train them in the way that I feel would be most effective that day with my goal being both aesthetic and performance driven. If you would like to see an example of what I’m doing just ask.
As for my diet, it’s also very flexible. I’m trying to get to 6-8% bodyfat. Mon-Fri I just focus on staying under maintenance and having carbs mostly around my workouts, as well as taking 2 HOT-ROX twice a day.
I feel like I may have discovered a little “trick”. Every time you eat make sure you have enough protein AND 5 grams of leucine. Leucine starts the muscle building process through the mTor pathway, meaning that every time you have 5 gr of leucine your body will start synthesizing protein. This is extremely effective because it also keeps protein breakdown low (it’s also thought to be insulinogenic). I have both l-leucine by itself and an EAA blend that contains 10 gr of EAAs and 5 gr of Leucine. I think this is extremely powerful and if I were to recommend just one supplement to someone it would be an EAA blend like the one above. Just think about it, you can start protein synthesis and stop protein breakdown while having ZERO calories.
Saturday is the same until night-time, where I have a cheat meal. Sunday is a cheat day (not too big of a cheat day just a lot of carbs to refill glycogen stores). I was 198.6 Saturday morning and I’m 202.4 after the weekend refill.
My goal is to look damn good while having a body that’s extremely efficient terms of power and sports. So, as of now, my aim is to build muscle and lose fat (just focused on losing fat but I feel really anabolic.)
01/19/15
Weight: 202.6
Bodyfat %: 10.63
Lbs fat: 21.54
Lean lbs: 181.06
Skinfold measurements (mm)
Umbilicus: 15 mm
Chest: 7 mm
Thigh: 16 mm
Suprailiac: 6 mm
Love Handle: 28 mm
Muscle circumference (in)
Arms: 16 2/16
Legs: 25 5/16
Calves: 15 7/16
Waist: Am: 35
I’ll be following, I’ve always appreciated your physique and you seem to train in a fashion I’m very fond of (inspired by Hernon a bit?).
I’d love to see an example of your routine.
Also, how tall are you?
Hey Spidey I’m 6 ft tall
I actually trained with Phil for a year and got freaky strong with him (squat went from like 315x5 to 385x6 in like 3 weeks and hadn’t deadlifted for a few months and got 5 pps x 4 out of nowhere). So yes you could say my training is inspired a bit by him lol although I do a few things differently.
My diet is also very intuitive and that’s something inspired by Phil as well since he didn’t have me counting my calories either. His diet simply was eat when hungry for mass and eat when hungry with less carbs for cutting lol it was that simple.
Until I feel 100% with my injuries I have been/will be training in my building’s gym.
I don’t have a specific number of sets and reps for each movement and the movements vary sometimes but I stick to high reps (15-20) and increase the weight each set while keeping the rep range high. Sometimes I also use lower rep ranges but I try to keep the concept of strength endurance in mind (so instead of ramping up to a max set of 5, I’ll do about 4 sets of 5, all to almost failure, with the same weight). I want to have muscles that can lift heavy shit for a long time.
Once I reach a weight where it’s hard to do 20 reps with then I’ll count that as my first set. Then I’ll bump up the weight by a bit each set until I can’t get 15. Then I may or may not stick with that weight for a few more sets. It all depends on the training effect I feel I’m getting so it changes a lot.
Another aspect of my training is my cardio. I do this for it’s performance and health benefits instead of for fat loss. I do this almost every day and consider it just as important as my lifting and would rather skip a lifting session than a cardio session. I keep it simple and just do road work or stay on the treadmill for 30-60 min.
Legs:
Hamstring curls 4x15-20
Leg extensions 4x15-20
Smith squats 2x15, 2x8
Smith romanian deadlifts 4x15 (right hamstring is tender so doing this to build it up)
Push:
Smith bench 5x15-20
Cuban press ? 4x10 (the one where you start pressing in front of your head, bring it up and behind your head and then press up and forward again)
DB Press 4x15
Barbell press 4x5
supersetted with
Side laterals 4x10 (sometimes I could only get 3-4 at a time so each set was comprised of “rest pause” sets)
Pull:
Lat pulldowns 5x20 (both lats injured)
Semi snatch grip yates style rows 4x15
DB rows 4x15
supersetted with
Shrugs 4x10
And then always do cardio afterwards
Starting pics? Seems like you kept it together being off
This is a week in so last week I was around the same weight but with more fat. I surprisingly kept a lot of muscle with no diet and training. I think taking EAAs with 5 gr leucine was key in this. I felt a lot flatter and felt I looked worse the days I didn’t take it. Kind of felt like I lost a pump (“pump” from nitrogen retention maybe).
What brand of EAA’s are you using ?
–Brian
The one I use is called EAAs but pretty much any one will do, just check to see how much leucine they have since you’re gonna want to get 5 gr of leucine.
I actually like Hernon’s training a lot, always cycle back to his Big Beyond Belief style of training. I too hired him for a bit, but I just think we weren’t a good fit, mostly diet wise. Just a personality thing I think, though.
So are your workouts pretty short? 45 mins or so?
I don’t really count the time I spend in the gym. I just do what I need to do so sometimes it’ll be a shorter session and sometimes it might be a longer session it depends on what I’m doing and how I’m feeling that day.
I do at least 30 min of cardio after every lifting session so also keep that in mind.
So I basically don’t think it really matters how long you train if you’re taking in something like plazma during your workouts.
So today I did legs and some cardio.
Legs:
Romian deads 95x20, 135x20, 185x15, 2x10@95 w/ 5 second eccentrics and focusing on where I felt my injured hammie tense
Leg curls 1x20 1x18 2x12 (ramping up until the last two sets of 12)
Leg extensions pretty much the same as the leg curls
Smith squats 95x20, 135x15, 2x5@185
Cardio:
15 min on eliptical and 10 min on bike (treadmills were taken)
My right hamstring (injured one) is ridiculously sore lol. I can barely even bend at the hips because of how good it hurts.
Today I did push
Smith Bench: 95x20,105x20, 135x20, 155x15, 135x13, 135x10
Smith seated press: 95x12, 75x15, 65x10, 65x10, 95x9
Pushups: 3,3,5,8 (rested a bit more)
supersetted with
Lateral raises: 4x7-10 @20lbs
Rope pushdowns: pinned at 7 for 20,18,15,10,10
supersetted with
DB presses: 30x5, 25x5, 25x5, 20x8
DB tricep extensions: 25x5, 20x8, 20x5, 15x8
I then did 45 minutes of hard cardio
35 minutes on the treadmill and I would run and walk according to how much I could run and then I just did 10 minutes at the bike
the whole thing took about 80-90 minutes so the lifting part of it took just about 40 minutes or so.
01/26/15
Weight: 201.8
Bodyfat %: 9.41
Lbs fat: 19
Lean lbs: 182.80
Skinfold measurements (mm)
Umbilicus: 13 mm
Chest: 6 mm
Thigh: 15 mm
Suprailiac: 5 mm
Love Handle: 26 mm
Muscle circumference (in)
Arms: 16 3/16
Legs: 25 7/16
Calves: 15 7/16
Waist: Am: 34.5
EAAs, Leucine, Dieting with Peri-workout carbs. Saturday Night cheat and Sunday cheat day
I have lost around 4 lbs of fat and gained almost 2 lbs of muscle in the last couple of weeks. I can only hope things keep moving along like this.
02/02/15
Weight: 200.6
Bodyfat %: 8.80
Lbs fat: 17.65
Lean lbs: 182.95
Skinfold measurements (mm)
Umbilicus: 12 mm
Chest: 6 mm
Thigh: 14 mm
Suprailiac: 5 mm
Love Handle: 24 mm
Muscle circumference (in)
Arms: 16 4/16
Legs: 25 6/16
Calves: 15 7/16
Waist: Am: 34
EAAs, Leucine, Dieting with Peri-workout carbs. Saturday Night cheat and Sunday cheat day
I finally got to go back to the crossfit gym I’ve been training at since last year.
I did
Legs:
Squats: 95x20, 125x15, 165x10, 185x2x5
Stiff legged deadlifts: 95x20, 125x15, 135x2x10
Glute ham raises: 3 sets of 4-7 assisted glute ham raises
Conditioning:
20 min in the rower
AMRAP in 10 min of:
10 kb swings @ 35 lbs
10 wall balls w/ a 20 lb ball (I think)
It all felt pretty good and my hamstring wasn’t as stiff as it had been.
So far I’ve lost about 8 lbs of fat and gained 3 lbs of muscle. Pretty good progress so far.
02/16/15
Weight: 198
Bodyfat %: 6.94
Lbs fat: 13.73
Lean lbs: 184.27
Skinfold measurements (mm)
Umbilicus: 10 mm
Chest: 5 mm
Thigh: 11 mm
Suprailiac: 4 mm
Love Handle: 29 mm
Muscle circumference (in)
Arms: 16 2/16
Legs: 25 1/16
Calves: 15 5/16
Waist: Am: 33 7/16
EAAs, Leucine, Dieting with Peri-workout carbs. Saturday Night cheat and Sunday cheat day
I did
Legs:
Squats: 95x20, 135x15, 185x9, 215x5, 185x7
Stiff legged deadlifts: 95x20, 125x11, 135x10 , 185x5, 135x10 (I’m finally able to do this with a full rom and pain free. I’m going to SLOWLY increase the weight I use.)
Glute ham raises: 3 sets of 4-7 assisted glute ham raises
Conditioning:
20 min alternating between:
Rowing: 400 m
Running: 200 m
Work Density:
10 min of:
5 kb swings @ 55 lbs
10 wall balls w/ a 20 lb ball
It all felt pretty good and I could finally use a full ROM on the deadlifts.
[quote]myself1992 wrote:
I have lost around 4 lbs of fat and gained almost 2 lbs of muscle in the last couple of weeks. I can only hope things keep moving along like this.
02/02/15
Weight: 200.6
Bodyfat %: 8.80
Lbs fat: 17.65
Lean lbs: 182.95
Skinfold measurements (mm)
Umbilicus: 12 mm
Chest: 6 mm
Thigh: 14 mm
Suprailiac: 5 mm
Love Handle: 24 mm
Muscle circumference (in)
Arms: 16 4/16
Legs: 25 6/16
Calves: 15 7/16
Waist: Am: 34
EAAs, Leucine, Dieting with Peri-workout carbs. Saturday Night cheat and Sunday cheat day
[/quote]
Thats a massive drop in BF considering the time frame and being that lean. Some side by side progress pics would be fun
Great job
Edit shit didnt quote the most recent my bad
Hey Ryan, I didn’t take any progress pics this week but I’ll do some either some time next week or on Monday when I do all my measurements.
As far as the results so far, the only reason things are changing fast is because this is literally the third week I’m back at my actual gym after not really being able to train how I wanted to, because of injuries, for most of last year.
My goals for now are to get as strong as I can, increase my work capacity as much as I can, and to get my cardio to pretty decent levels (I want a sub 7:00 mile at least).
