Tricks Up Your Sleeve?

Trick up your sleeve, the rabbit in your hat, your ace in the hole, your secret weapon. Whatever you wanna call it, most of you have one in your training and nutritional arsenal. Whether it be a way to increase weight, lose fat, increase a lift, getting ready for a competition, increasing energy, motivation, a cooking tip, or bringing up a lagging body part I want you to pull the rabbit out of your ass… I mean hat and make a thread that shares a variety of training tips.

Here’s mine, when lacking nutrtional motivation I add a cinnamon and salt mixture to everything I mean everything it increases my appetite substantially.

The only trick up my sleeve is my bicep insertions.

Eat most of your calories post workout.

keep a log.

read a book by Jonny Bowden

Protien coffee. mmmm

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
Protien coffee. mmmm[/quote]

recipe?

24 mg Ephedrine with a Stacker IF I’m not feeling motivated to work out…note the IF…as in I don’t do this all the time.

I have good diet tips but don’t think you guys are into eggwhite pancakes. OK, well if you are this is a good way to increase food VOLUME when cutting.

EGG Whites (however many doesn’t matter I usually have 6-9)
whip them with my hand mixer until they are a meringue (this means FLUFFY you guys) um do not think of this as baking it really only takes like two or three minutes.
Add whey protein powder (I just use one scoop 32g protein)
cinnamon or cocoa powder
splenda
whip it some more.
I cook this in a big non stick pan sprayed with PAM and it makes a HUMONGOUS fluffy pancake thing.
Can also add quick cook oats to this if you do carbs breakfast

My protein coffee is a big plastic cup with coffee in it (like one of those promo big gulp cups) scoop of protein powder 8 oz unsweetened vanilla almond breeze and some splenda.

then I use my hand blender to just whip it up right in the cup. Is so NOM.

agree on the lifting journal must have.

Leangains.

I dont really know if this is a “trick”, but I have noticed that successful people in ANY endeavor tend to systematize and plan things, and general seek out objective measurements. Meaning the more of a schedule you can get yourself on, and the more thinking you can take out of it, the better your chance of success will be.

For me, this means:

  • Eating the same thing every single day, at the same times. There is NO guesswork here. I know exactly how many calories, carbs, proteins, fats I am eating. This makes it VERY easy to adjust when the time comes to increase/decrease cals or carbs.

This style of eating/cardio progression makes dieting almost EFFORTLESS. Simply eat the food, measure and log your results, and find 70-100 calories to remove from one of the meals every week. This is as simple as removing a single egg, a piece of cheese, going from Half an avocado to 1/4 of an avocado. The same rules apply for weight gain, except you add in food here and there. Same with cardio, burn 600 cals this week. 900 the next week, etc… Effortless. Effective.

  • Training on a program that has an easy progression model built in: I do the same workout on the same day every week, after I wake up. The goal is ALWAYS to lift more weight, or the same weight for more reps. This eliminates any guess work out of the progress making process by objectifying it… If your bench goes from 225x6 to 315x6 over a years time, and your chest is 3 inches bigger, you have damn sure made progress.

  • I have sex with my girlfriend M-W-F from 6:00pm to 6:06pm. This is currently TRIPLE the amount of time I use to do this, I call that progress (for the lulz here people)

I know this might sound boring and maybe even robotic and monotonous, but “winging it” does not work for me and I derive a great amount of personal pleasure from executing a plan and seeing results. This is the ONLY area of my life I do this with and it it actually FREES UP quite a bit of time to do the other things in life I enjoy, after I get home from the gym (and I dont have to work that day), the ONLY thing I have to do is hit those meals and I can do whatever the hell I want. Movies, Piano, Write, Hang out with friends, Film…

I guess if I had to some up the tip into a formula it would be - More Structure = More Freedom.

^ I agree, I was just spinning my wheels for at least a year because I had no structure, while I was winging it I was more stressed out than now because I don’t have to worry if something works or not.

@hallowed- I do the same except I keep the yolks, its incredibly filling and tastes amazing.

Thought of another one too- when loosing weight I add a 2 liter bottle full of water to my backpack for every 5 pounds I lose to account for the calories I am no longer burning with NEPA. Sucks when I run out of room for books but it is very effective, plus you can drink the water later.

I have this one thing I do in my daily diet where I don’t eat any products that originate from a living being. It’s awesome and really speaks to my level of dedication.

  • Nutrition: My trick is food PREPARATION.

On Sunday I head to the supermarket and buy all my meat, fats and veggies (on the AD, so no carbs) for the week.
When I get home I spend an hour or two sorting everything into daily amounts. And I prepare all my food for Monday. On Monday evening and grab Tuesday’s segmented food and prepare it. This way, I know my exact calorie intake and macro’s, I never miss a meal, and I never cheat.

This also takes all the stress out of nutrition planning and keeping a good food log, like lonnie123 mentioned.

But on the weekend I take a more relaxed approach and switch up my food from the previous weekends menu.

Awesome thread idea…

Also, Loving bicep ladders after training back. If you don’t know how to do them properly, here’s a good video of Brandon Curry doing them…

about 4 mins 30 seconds in… the form and technique is explained well

My training trick: I have a 45 minute limit on training sessions.

So I like to keep rest time between sets to a minimum, I focus on hitting the muscle in question hard, from all angles, good volume, good pump, then a quick warm down and stretch, and out of the gym.

On the days where I add in HIT training at the end, I finish the weight training in under 35 mins, to leave 10 mins for HIT

[quote]JaseHxC wrote:
I have this one thing I do in my daily diet where I don’t eat any products that originate from a living being. It’s awesome and really speaks to my level of dedication.[/quote]

Could you list a sample diet or PM it to me? I interested in knowing what you eat.

[quote]Seouldier wrote:

[quote]JaseHxC wrote:
I have this one thing I do in my daily diet where I don’t eat any products that originate from a living being. It’s awesome and really speaks to my level of dedication.[/quote]

Could you list a sample diet or PM it to me? I interested in knowing what you eat.[/quote]

Check out my training log “World’s Strongest Vegan” I typed a pretty general outline of what I eat on a daily basis in there for another poster. There’s likely been some small changes to that since then, but you’ll get the idea.

When training a “performance movement”; Pick a single exercise for that workout and blast away with tons of low rep sets. I found that this greatly increases my focus on the given exercise. If i wanna hit the mucles from a different “angle”, I do it next workout.

For back I like to start relatively light on rows (45 lb db) for 30+ reps, slow (2 seconds up, squeeze, 2 seconds down) then go to a 60 or 65, 20+ reps slow up/squeeze/slow down. This gets my lats so tight and full of blood, and drive home the motor pattern, then I get the heavy dbs grip and rip. I’ll use straps, I don’t count, just rep until I can’t anymore, then I’ll let the db rest on the floor for a second, and do dead stop reps, wash, rinse, repeat for a few sets.