Nordic Blood: Climbing And Lifting / Lifting And Climbing

Haha “just”

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You look great bro. Much better than me!!

Thanks hoss! You changed focus though, right? From dieting to lifting heavier?

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Indeed I did. Wound up tweaking my SI again so I’m just focusing on bench. I’m hopeful for a 330, possibly 335 bench in about a month and then easing back into barbell squats!

That sucks. Can you do any lower body stuff? Have you found a PT yet?

Hello good people!

Just checking in as tomorrow marks the start of the final week of the boot camp and I wanted to share some pictures with you all as is my wont. And, I wanted to write down some thoughts that I’ve been having for my own benefit later on.

First, here’s a picture from today (Looking okay considering I pigged out twice this week. TL;DR: I suck at fasting as it causes me to binge on later days) ,

And here’s one from last Sunday (looked better then than this week)

And here’s yet another picture from last Sunday when I looked absolutely fantastic,

Overall, I’ve been happy with the return of investment with regards to the boot camp. The material, and the coaching, have been great. However, I certainly feel that I could have achieved a greater body composition change during the 9-week period if it hadn’t been for a few unfortunate things that I have going on in life.

The two primary barriers to successful dieting have been that

  1. I had it communicated to me that I was not doing my job properly, and so I could no longer afford to have diet-brain and subsequently there have been times during the boot camp when I probably was not in a deficit which obviously has an impact on fat loss.
  2. This is something that I’ve been coy about here in this thread but I might as well be straight-forward about it considering that if you read elsewhere on the forums it’s there. I seemingly have an androgen deficiency (see: Ask Physiolojik Thread - #400 by Voxel and Ask Physiolojik Thread - #402 by Voxel - two different posts).

After the boot camp ends, I’ll be reverse-dieting until I’m back at maintenance however long that takes. And, for the first week I’ll just have fun in the gym,

Christmas Eve:

A1. Back squat 1 x 15, 1 x 12, 1 x 8, 1 x 20
A2. Romanian deadlift 1 x 12, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 15
B1. Barbell curl 3 x 6-8 reps
B2. Close-grip decline press 3 x 6-8 reps
C1. Preacher curl 3 x 10-12 reps
C2. Decline dumbbell triceps extension 3 x 10-12 reps
D1. Hammer curl 3 x 12-15 reps
D2. Cable triceps extension 3 x 12-15 reps

Christmas Day:

A1. Dumbbell Flyes 3x8-12 (mTor)
A2. Barbell Row 3x6-8
B1. Cable Cross-over 3x10-12
B2. Lat pull-down 3x10-12
C1. Pec deck 3x12-15
C2. Neutral Grip Seated Row 3x12-15 _or_ 1+1/2 reps but like 8-10 reps. I'll go by feel

Boxing Day (or, “Panncakes for post-workout” Day:

EMOM 40 minutes (Every Minute On the Minute. 70-75% of max):
Minute 1: Front Squat 4 reps
Minute 2: Military Press 4 reps
Minute 3: Deadlift 4 reps
Minute 4: Rest
Repeat until 40 minutes have passed.

Thursday:

Rest or abdominal work

Friday:

The Saturday Strength Circuit from ALAS (Athlete Lean, Athlete Strong)

After that I was previously touting that I’d run Primer 52 with my own programming for the workouts (Natty on Pennies - #1662 by Voxel Health Benefits of IF vs Cortisol Problems of Type 3's - #2 by Christian_Thibaudeau)

But my preliminary experiments with fasting have turned me off of the idea as I end up in a cyclical overeating behaviour on the days following the fast and so I’ll wait until either Primer 52 is published or I find a better strategy for learning how to fast (specifically, not binge-eating on the days after).

Which is a shame, triggering autophagy to clean-up some excess skin was the entire point but I can also just add muscle and that skin will fill right out. The only time I’d do IF now I think is when, say, I have a small-ish meal Saturday evening and still hit my macros for that day and Sunday is meant to be a rest day without any social plans. Then I might not eat again until 8 PM Sunday (600-800 calories).

So what I’ll be doing instead is… for a later post. This one is long enough as is.

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Good luck with all that. The longer I go without food, the more I tend to eat when I finally get a meal. I struggle with any sort of restriction in terms of fasting. On my days off I might just have a shake and banana before I go to the gym. I’ll be at the gym for two hours and finally have lunch around 1 or 2 pm. If I had a tough session like the leg day from SGSS then I’d eat a regular lunch (around 700-1000 calories) and then I’d be eating another meal 60 minutes later. I made up for the lack of calories in the morning in a hurry.

I’ve been putting about 40% effort into eating better and shedding some fat but I’m failing to eat often enough on this plan. I’m supposed to eat every 2-3 hours to keep fueling my body but I tend to go longer between meals and eat more at each meal. It’s just tough for me to adjust to a different style of eating. I guess this is the downside of 11 months of eating to gain. Eating to lose is no fun!

I mentioned this, that I think that from the two trials that I’ve had that it’s not something I can be too successful with right now.

I sincerely believe that having such a high meal frequency runs anathema to optimal fat loss as insulin will never run low enough. Of course, being in a deficit you’d still lose fat I just don’t see it as optimal. Also, it forces small meals which forces one to always run hungry.

Sadly, regardless of the size of the meal I’m usually hungry soon after. The only time a meal stays with me for more than two hours is if I stuff myself.

What’s your vegetable intake like?

Pretty bad. We usually have salad and the broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix of veggies. My wife eats it pretty fast and I don’t take any to work with me. I’ll throw some spinach on my chicken sandwiches or burgers but other than that I only take beans and rice, pasta, or potatoes to work.

I suck.

Would it be feasible for you to buy say a bag of frozen veggies per day and add that do your meals? I go through 900 grams of frozen veggies a day, split 50/50 over lunch/dinner.

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Yeah it’s possible. I don’t know how much will actually fit in my lunch though. It depends on what else I pack. We have frozen peas and green beans in the freezer but I forget about them. Thanks for the reminder.

I like wok greens as you get some variety.

This is the pasta my wife buys. I guess I’m eating more veggies than I thought!

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@EyeDentist What are your current thoughts on ab-training? I know you used to do abs every day and a lot of low-weight, high-rep stuff and then your coach had you do the opposite. What are you doing now? What is the most important part of the abdominals to hypertrophy?

I’m having a tough time with getting rid of the pouch at the bottom. Might be because of my hormonal issues, and/or left-over skin the full extent of which is quite evident when standing in a quadraped position or while doing a sitting vacuum but I do not have pictures of either of these. I was thinking that maybe with some additional hypertrophy in the abdominals I can have them shine through that final layer of whatever undesirable thing it is (skin/fat),

image

There is a drug called Gotu Kola that could interest you. When taken for a longer time it supposedly tightens up loose skin and get rid of stretch marks.

Poliquin mentioned it in a podcast that I was listening to today (I’ll link it below) and I though you would be interested in it.

He did not recommend an exact dosage, he just said to take “2 pills 3 times a day for 6 months” and then, as you reach a saturation point you’ll see results almost overnight. (After taking it religiously for those six months)

I don’t remember the exact time he mentioned it but it was within the first hour.

Skeptical. Charles, rest in peace, also sold Gotu Kola and it seems to be geared towards treating stretch marks which I do indeed have but they don’t bother me. Could only find one study that reported skin tightening and considering the herb can damage your liver that’s just not a good enough trade-off.

I also have tremendous respect for herbs as it seems easy to fuck up. See reishi, Ashwaghanda, et al. especially when you start looking at their interactions.

Then adding mass to my shoulders, traps and back should pull back on the skin instead and be a easier target to hit as I can track that with a tape measure. Arguably adding some leg mass too should help. Any points sufficiently far away and at an angle from the problem area should - mathematically speaking - yield the biggest trade off. So, wider shoulders will have a bigger impact than a bigger chest and so on.

Well, he did have a lot of controversial thoughts and methods.

I don’t know if it’s the time of the day or what but I can’t wrap my head around this right now. I mean, yes, in theory that makes sense, but your skin is still attached to you, so growing, say, two feet tall traps wouldn’t necessarily pull the skin on your stomach tighter but rather grow more skin to cover the traps?

Just so you know, I have zero knowledge when it comes to loose skin and how it acts, so I’m just guessing here.