Rob's 2017 Contest Prep Thread

147.2, first thing AM. Not ideal lighting, tough to get good pics with the timer.

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Legs look amazingly massive from the side, Rob! Youā€™ve really brought those guys up this past offseason. Or youā€™ve learned better posing. Or bothā€¦probably both. And those delt striationsā€¦

Lookinā€™ good, dude!

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Itā€™s the magic anabolic hat :slight_smile:

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@IronAndMetal thank you very much man! Iā€™ve been training hamstrings twice a week for a little over a year now, once after chest and again after quads. Last year they were an area we really wanted to bring up, we did legs twice a week for a couple of months, after that I still kept training hamstrings twice a week, and it just stuck in my program.

Yep! The hat and hoodie combo really take it up a notch.

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HIGH DAY FRIDAY AWWWW YEAH! Took my morning Indigo-3G, almost time for bagel and egg whites.

Yesterdayā€™s low day HIIT workout was great, I felt like I had a ton of gas in the tank, much better than last week. Sat in the therapy pool at the gym for a bit afterwards, I usually like to do that after HIIT or a long cardio session, after weights Iā€™ll sit in the sauna for a few minutes. Great way to relax the mind and muscles, good for blood flow and recovery as well.

Itā€™s been an excellent week overall, the changes we made have really helped recovery and still made progress. Woke up this morning at 146.4, so matched my low from last week, but am definitely tighter. Stu is going to make some adjustments that will kick in Sunday, we are mainly keeping an eye on leg conditioning and basing our decisions from that. Still work to be done to get the lower half stage ready, both exciting and anxious. Stu and I both feel Iā€™ve surpassed the conditioning I brought to the Hercules last year, so at this point Iā€™m chasing a level of conditioning I havenā€™t achieved yet. Another reason why itā€™s so important to have an experienced coach who knows what it takes to dial it in to get there!

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Looking good mate. Pleasure to read your updates as always.

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Thank you very much @JamesBrawn007!

Legs session was very solid today. After fueling up with cookies, Finibars and Metabolic Drive, squats felt strong. I wanted to play it safe as I continue to lose weight and make sure Iā€™m not risking injury, did an extra few warm up sets but felt really good.
250x10, 275x10, 305x10, 325x10, 355x8. I had a spotter for the 355x8, got 6 on my own and he helped with the last two. After that went on to the usual:
-Leg Press - 4 sets x12-15
-Single Leg Extensions - 3 sets x10-12
-Leg Curls - 4 sets x8-10
-Hamtractor - 3 sets x12-15
-RDLā€™s - 3 sets x12-15
-Seated Calves - 10 minutes. I started doing Stuā€™s method of just taking 10-15 minutes to get in as many sets as I can, focusing on a great squeeze and pump, some stretching between sets, lather rinse repeat.

-Sauna - 15 minutes

Tomorrow is just arms, no cardio, medium day. Sunday is low day with a long posing session in the gym studio, followed by 45min LISS. Weā€™re also starting some new adjustments Sunday to continue our progress for the show in 4 weeks, excited to dig in further.

My wife is doing well, she lost another pound this week and is responding well to keto. The other female client Iā€™m training is 7 weeks into her prep and has lost just shy of 12lbs so far, right on point, tentatively 15 weeks out of her first show. Weā€™re going to wait until the time approaches and see if sheā€™ll be ready, there are plenty of shows in the spring/summer around here so there will be no shortage of options. Itā€™s been very enjoyable to start coaching competitors this year, as well as more clients who just want to get healthy and lean.

Halo Top coming soon, going straight chocolate tonight.

4 weeks out tomorrow!

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Everything is looking great man!

Your squat strength constantly impresses me.
Youā€™re sub 150lbs, and low on cals and somehow just repping well over 2x BW squat.

No way I could do this and I train purely for strength! Look forward to seeing how you and your wife do at this competition.

Down to the 4 week stretch, I imagine she is getting nervous/excited?

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I can only hope that 355x8 will be my version of safe one day

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Seriously!? New goal: squat double body weight for 8, at 7% BF while in a caloric deficit.

Jeez man

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x2 x2 x2 x2 x2 x2 !!!

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@buttwink @dchris @IronAndMetal @littlesleeper thank you very much guys!

Thanks for asking! More-so excited and pumped, and feeling confident as she continues to tighten up. Some exciting stuff as the show gets closer, we ordered and received all of our tanning stuff, her custom suit is being made, and tonight while we were grocery shopping we stocked on up some carb loading goodies: Reeseā€™s spread, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, gotta pick up some cupcake goldfish grahams for show day.

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Letā€™s talk about one of my favorite subjectsā€¦

FOOD!

Having a great prep, and maintaining a successful off season nutrition plan that allows you to stay lean and not feel like you need to cheat, is all about having foods you really enjoy eating that contribute to your goals. As such, Iā€™m always on the hunt to figure out any food hacks I can that make the prep more enjoyable, filling, etc. Made a couple adjustments to the diet this past week that have really been working nicely.

-Took out dairy. The further I go into a prep, the more sensitive my stomach and digestion become. It seems to be a fairly common issue amongst competitors. While Iā€™m not lactose intolerant, it is very common in my family, and as I continue further into the diet, dairy is not agreeing with me. I donā€™t have much, we drink almond milk, but I do have cottage cheese in the evenings, and fat free cream cheese on my morning ezekiel bread. So, I stopped with the cream cheese, and switched out my last shake for egg whites, tuna and almonds. Taking dairy out removes the incidental dairy sugars, and also removes any possibility of bloating/water retention I was getting. As I am aquaman after all and am really trying to be as tight as possible, Iā€™ll take every advantage I can get. Some people can keep dairy in with no problem, eat large amounts of food without getting bloated. Iā€™m not one of them!

-Took out oats. I do love oats, but between the ezekiel bread and the oats, I do think it was contributing to some excess bloating. I started subbing out my second meal ezekiel bread with oats recently, and I could tell I was more bloated than usual. Which leads me toā€¦

-CEREAL! Thatā€™s right, Iā€™m eating cereal every day on a prep and itā€™s awesome.


Nothing special, sprouted brown rice puffs. 1g sugar from coconut sugar, no fat, super easy to digest and doesnā€™t bloat me at all. I eat this with my second meal every day, and with my second and third meal on Sunday. Because itā€™s just puffed rice, the servings are pretty big so I feel like Iā€™m eating a massive bowl of cereal. Good stuff.

-VITAMIXING my chicken and veggie meals. What an amazing discovery! Anyone on the Transformation challenge may like this one. It started in an effort to make a better tuna salad for my second meal. I was out of tuna, subbed chicken breast and wanted the consistency to be finer, didnā€™t want to spend the time to chop up everything. So, I tossed all ingredients into the Vitamix on low, and BAM, came out like a perfect chicken salad consistency. I now eat all of my chicken and veggie meals this way. Meal prep time is cut down, it takes longer to eat, seems like a ton of food, and since the food is diced up so fine itā€™s easier on the digestion.

-6oz chicken thigh (chicken breast for lunch, chicken thigh for dinner)
-2oz shredded raw broccoli and red cabbage
-1oz 0 sugar added relish
-1oz sauerkraut
-Hand full of spinach
-2TBSP sugar free BBQ sauce
-salt, pepper and garlic
-Weigh everything in the bowl, pour contents into Vitamix, add seasonings, and dice that bad boy up.



For my second meal, I toss the cereal in there when itā€™s all done and have a chicken salad cereal bowl.

These are things I wouldnā€™t normally worry about in the off season, but as weā€™re 4 weeks out, I feel collectively theyā€™re all helping.

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Hey rob, for those exercises you are not ramping up (just doing 4x10 or whatever at one weight), is the last set or so fairly difficult where you might not actually get the 10 reps? Or is it ā€œhardā€ but not so hard you feel like you risk not getting all 10? How do you know when to add weight from one session to the next? If you do say, db laterals 4x15 with 20 lbs every week how do you make progress (not saying you do this just throwing out a random example)?

Iā€™m always confusing myself on how I should be treating lifts later on in the gym session, if I should be just picking a weight where I can get 4x10 ā€œkind ofā€ comfortably and just focus on contracting the muscle and getting the volume in or if I should be constantly trying to add weight and really struggle and push and usually fail to get all 4x10. Mainly I just get confused when people talk about adding ā€œvolumeā€, like a good example is when fairly big guys talk about things like bicep curls and other smaller exercises and lifts and stress how it doesnā€™t matter what you do as long as you do some volume.

Is it more important to do the 4x10 at a weight that isnā€™t super taxing to just get some volume in, or keep trying to bump up the weight where youā€™re unlikely to get the 4x10 anymore and do that with all your lifts for that bodypart? After the first or second exercise of the day it seems difficult to really keep pushing to increase weight consistently and earlier exercises might fatigue you to you point where you canā€™t really tell if you progressed, you know?

Iā€™m curious to hear more about your thoughts, sorry if Iā€™m not very clear!

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@staystrong, thanks for following along! Iā€™ll get back to you on this in the next couple days, just wanted to make sure you knew I saw your post. Thanks again for reading!

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Alright, 3 weeks and 5 days out of the first show. @The_Mighty_Stu and I went over the adjustments, the plan is to go hard for the next two weeks, then start tapering cardio 2 weeks out, and as usual eliminate it peak week. Now that weā€™re less than 4 weeks out it feels like itā€™s around the corner. Iā€™m confident with a couple more weeks of our plan, weā€™ll get there.

Aside from the nutrition and post workout cardio adjustments, Iā€™m tossing in 20min of fasted LISS in the morning. Iā€™ve been sleeping well lately and am typically well rested, and have a treadmill in the basement that has been abused thoroughly during last yearā€™s prep. I have a bottle of HOT ROX on my nightstand with some water. Wake up, check the mirror and scale, then have HOT ROX right away with water. Wait 15 minutes, start the 20min LISS while drinking water (no BCAA). Then, eat breakfast. Iā€™ve read that the effects of Yohimbine can be blunted by insulin, so even BCAA might not allow me to max out the effects. If I was doing 45min of cardio in the AM, Iā€™d have BCAAs for sure. But, only 20 minutes and then eating breakfast shortly after, Iā€™m not risking any muscle loss there. It might not even make a difference, but Iā€™m working for every advantage I can get. If itā€™s an inch or a centimeter, Iā€™ll take it.

Excited to push hard and see what we can do these next couple weeks.

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148.8lbs - first thing in the AM. 3 weeks 5 days out.

Slow and steady progress, woke up heavier than yesterday today but tighter than I expected. At this point, I always check the mirror first, then the scale. Havenā€™t had a new low in almost 3 weeks, but have still been tightening up. As I am definitely a bantam and donā€™t need to worry about making weight, Iā€™m not worried about the scale at this point, just the mirror. Additionally, for this first show, I am sure there will not be a bantam weight class. Probably light, middle, heavy, or 2 classes, or even 1 depending on the amount of competitors.

Started the 20min fasted LISS this morning and it felt great. After last yearā€™s 45-60min fasted cardio every morning, 20min is nothing. Threw down my HOT ROX, waited 15min then hit the treadmill, by the time I was done I felt very alert and surprisingly good.

Normal (medium) day cals are down to 1,800 now, low day is 1650, high day remains at 2300, all days are 5 meals a day.

One thing thatā€™s important to note, is since I started dieting in October, and through the official prep, my strength has kept going up and gym performance has felt consistently great, with the exception of just a couple workouts. While Iā€™m getting 1,800 cals a day split between 5 meals, over 30% of my total daily cals comes from my pre-workout meal alone, 565 cals and 70g carbs. The rest of my meals are smaller, anywhere from 200-300 cals each. Keeping the workouts fueled is extremely important, better gym performance will always provide better results all around.

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This is what most people miss when theyā€™re just trying to drive down their scale weights. The diet and cardio help, but the Resistance work in the gym, the giving your muscles a reason to utilize the nutrients youā€™re ingesting is the machinery driving the cutting process!

S

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145.2lbs - first thing AM

Woke up lightest yet at 145.2, starting to see some more glue definition and leg cuts, slowly but surely.

Yesterday hit me like a ton of bricks in the afternoon after lunch. We were walking around a local department store looking at some furniture for the Presidentā€™s Day sale, both of us less than 4 weeks out, completely worthless. Weā€™d stop and sit on couches, motivate each other to get up, it was rough lol. Afternoon HOT-ROX and 2 cups of coffee before the workout really helped, along with my usual Finibar, cookie and Metabolic Drive, post workout LISS then sat in the sauna for a bit. By the time I got home I was toast, and last night was the first night of terrible ā€œbrokenā€ prep sleep. Couldnā€™t fall asleep, and once I did, kept waking up, never really feeling rested.

But, after my morning HOT-ROX and cardio, feeling pretty alert now. Today is back/biceps, and the one day during the week I do not do LISS after weights. Going to have some breakfast, get as much writing done as I can and keep pushing!

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