The off season is moving along nicely. It’s been 3 months since my show, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to training and nutrition wise since then:
NUTRITION
-Started at 1900 calories, reverse dieted slowly, currently sitting around 3,000 per day. Off days are about 2600-2700.
-I’ve lowered protein to 1.1g per pound down from 1.5g, to make room for more carbs, still gaining strength and mass slowly. Current macro breakdown is roughly 350c, 180p, 65f. I have a meal plan that I follow and still measure my food, but allow myself not to be restricted during family events and such, and have a wide variety of carb choices throughout my day (bagels, fruit, ezekiel products, rice, granola, etc.)
-I am responding well to evenly distributing my fats throughout the day. I used to have “carb based” meals and “fat based” meals, now all my meals are typically 30g protein, 40-50g carbs and no more than 10g fat. Fat sources are varied between nuts and nut butters, grass fed cheese, avocado and coconut oil I cook with.
TRAINING - past 3 months post show
-Started out immediately with a 6x per week split, hitting shoulders, arms and back twice a week. Did this for one month.
-Went on vacation with the wife for 2 weeks, trained every day on a 4 day cycle of chest, back, shoulders, arms, repeat. No direct leg training because we hiked a lot every day.
-Post vacation went to a 2-a-day program, hitting everything twice a week.
-Past few weeks shoulders, arms and back were hit twice a week, everything else once.
So, I haven’t given myself any down time training wise what-so-ever. I have a fire to come back next season as undeniable as possible, which means I have to add more mass, bring up my arms, and get 4-5 pounds leaner. I was lean, but not lean enough. That being considered, I still had some first place votes over the guy that won the overall. Great motivation to come back next year and leave no doubts.
Immediately after my show I was hitting the gym hard. There’s some “broscience” out there that post show is an ideal time to make some quality gains. While I don’t think there’s a magical window to put on 20lbs of mass, I do think there is some validity there. My body was very, very depleted from 6 months of prepping, so it was primed to put all nutrients to good use provided I kept training, which I did. I’ve seen some surprising physique and strength changes in just 3 months, and the recomposition is apparent with the comparison pics I posted earlier in the thread of my 161 weight.
I think where most competitors go wrong is they increase food too quickly, while decreasing training. So not only are they not putting the nutrients to good use, they’re storing a LOT more fat than they normally would because the metabolism is slow and the body is used to running on low cals. I probably could have reverse dieted a little bit slower, but didn’t want to. So, I chose to increase training and it seemed to work out.
The past two weeks I’ve been feeling my body pushing back, saying, “hey man…how about some recovery time, huh?” As we’ve been discussing in other threads, change is necessary to continue improving. As I’ve been increasing intensity and frequency for the past 3 months, I can feel I need to pull back and allow myself more recovery time. So, this week I’m starting a 5 day split, hitting everything once a week. While this is kind of a standard split, for me, this is lower volume and frequency than I’ve been doing for the past 3 months, so I’m going to start with 5 days, and if I need more recovery I’ll move to 4 days, until I feel I’m ready to get back to my current routine, which I REALLY like. Here’s what I’ve been doing the past 3 weeks, my favorite split so far:
MON: AM arms 1 & abs / PM quads & calves
TUES: back 1
WED: delts 1
THUR: arms 2 & abs
FRI: AM chest-hams-calves / PM back 2 & abs
SAT: delts 2
I’ll come back to this program when I feel my body is ready.