Pic 1: Overweight with an inner tube around my stomach, moobs, and thunder thighs. [260 lbs @ 27% BF]
Pic 2: 1 year following, became active again in sports and made better dietary choices. [195 lbs]
Pic 3: Found the gym, became serious about weight lifting, 8 month transformation [215 lbs @ 8% BF]
Pic 4: 6 week cut, noticeable loss of lean muscle mass with cut [6'2'' - 205 lbs @ 5% BF]
Every blog is kicked off with an introductory post, so consider this one my inauguration. (Thanks for the motivation redditors!)
My Story:
Embarrassingly, it all began with a tragic ice-skating accident. I mustered up the confidence to attempt an axel on the ice, which was the best idea I’ve had since wearing a thong for my high schools opposite sex day.
Halfway through my spin, the toe pick on my right skate got caught in the ice as I’m rotating and SNAP, there went my fibula, right in half.
My punishment was 3 months in a cast and crutches. My activity declined to 0, but my appetite did not. I ordered take out at almost every meal, picking all the wrong choices and just when it couldn’t get worse, I became incredibly addicted to video games. Since sports were no longer an option, video games filled the competitive void that was missing.
On a real note
- this was one of the darkest moments of my life. I hadn’t experienced isolation like this before, being unable to do a lot of activities I loved. I (an extrovert by nature) became considerably introverted and locked myself away in my room for hours upon end every day.
3 months later I was a competitive and feared gamer (n00bs), but it wasn’t until then, when I was out of my cast and left the man cave, which I came to realize I was no longer Batman in Gotham City. I was his arch nemesis the Penguin, relatively speaking.
Over the next 2 years, I made a life changing transformation that changed the way I thought, the way I felt, how I carried myself, and what I believed was achievable. A lot of trial and error was involved, and there are certainly things I would have changed, but this is how I got there.
My Workout:
I never worked out on the weekends, not because I couldn’t, but because weekends are too unpredictable. Relatives come to visit, bros want to hang out, girlfriend wants to go for a spa day, etc. I worked an 8-hour shift, Monday through Friday, and treat my workouts as an extension of my workday.
I cycled my workouts every 6-8 weeks, taking a week deload for every month of training, so in this case, roughly 2 weeks in-between each cycle.
Your body responds differently to certain types of training just as it does to particular foods, and this is where trial and error comes in. There are many training types that will work, but you want to find the intensity, frequency, volume, and training type that work best for you.
I always rotated between a strength cycle (4-6 reps) and hypertrophy cycle (8-12 reps).
I experimented with many training modalities ranging from 2-day full body splits to 6-day splits that hit every muscle group twice per week. I also tried separate resting protocols, ranging from your traditional 3-minute rest between sets to different types of MRT (Metabolic Resistance Training) where I did reps for time with as little as 20 seconds of rest between sets. What I eventually found to work best for me was a 5-day hypertrophy split, Monday – Friday working separate muscle groups each day paired with traditional rest times between exercises (1-2 minutes).
I’m an 20/80 guy, meaning I believe that 20% of the exercises gets you 80% of the results. I stuck with many of the basic compound & power lifts for both cycles (strength and hypertrophy), but added more targeted exercises in my hypertrophy cycles to focus on definition in a few key areas.
Keys to my workout success:
Correct compensated movement patterns.
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People joke about Quasimodo but I’ve seen a few of these mythical creatures lurking in the gym, and we can best assume it’s in part to compensated movement patterns. Before you begin lifting seriously, you need to have your foundation in check. Your form should be spot on before beginning any lifting program; otherwise you risk building strength on top of dysfunction. This will lead to muscular imbalances, compensated movement patterns, and ultimately injury.
Train in proper postural alignment.
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Ensure that with each movement, you’re going through the motions of your lift with proper posture and joint alignment. If you’re doing a seated cable row with your shoulders rounded forward (internally rotated), the rotator cuff muscles are extended, the anterior deltoid is shortened, and you’re developing the muscle fibers in this position. Again, avoid the Quasimodo.
Make a mind-body connection with your muscles.
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This sounds like a total hoax but I kid you not. You have to make a mind-body connection with your muscles, and it’s a completely different sensation than lifting the weight up and putting it down. If you’re doing a pull-up, this means engaging the core, contracting the musculature involved (primarily the lats), and imagining the muscles being worked throughout each inch of the lift. Help your body connect the dots on every rep.
Don’t bullshit your workout, get in the zone.
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You need to take your workout seriously. When you’re at the gym, it’s not time to chat with your friend on the phone, check your email, or mingle with others for minutes on end. You need to make the mind-body connection with your muscles, make sure you are in proper postural alignment with every rep, ensure your form is nothing short of perfection, and strictly adhere to your rest times. That’s a lot of shit, and you need to be on top of it.
My Ab Workout:
Let me make clear that abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym (upcoming blog post on this). Your diet exposes your abs, but it’s the work you put in the gym that carves them. You don’t eat a couple pieces of celery, 3 grapes, and a carrot stick and leave the house with a shredded 6 pack.
My abdominal workout consisted of 4 ab workouts per week, with 2 ab exercises per workout. I chose exercises that allowed me to apply progressive overload, just as I do with every other muscle group. Rather than increasing the intensity of an exercise by increasing the number of reps, I did so by increasing the resistance or difficulty.
Here is an example ab routine from one of my 5-day splits:
Monday (exercises superset, 2 rounds)
Tuesday (exercises superset, 2 rounds)
Thursday (exercises superset, 2 rounds)
Friday (exercises superset, 2 rounds)
You’ll notice that I did no more than 4 sets of abdominal work for each ab day, with reps staying below 20. I’m a firm believer in following progressive overload with volume low and intensity high for abdominals.
The exercises above were selected because you can progressively overload them by increasing the resistance for ab exercises that utilized weight, or increase the intensity for others by increasing the difficulty of the exercise [i.e., Plank --> TRXPlank, Hanging Knee Raises --> Hanging Leg Raises]
My Diet & Supplements:
I didn’t count a single calorie. While I did attempt to (a short-lived 2 days), tracking with pen/paper was about as exciting as watching grass grow and every food-tracking tool I tried was inefficient and frustrating.
What I did count was the single handedly most important macro, protein. I always shot for roughly 1.5g/kg (~0.7g/lb) which was surprisingly easier to achieve than I thought.
Other than counting protein, my dietary regiment consisted of common sense, balance, and a dash of bacon.
Before long, eating became a chore. I was never quite bothered with cooking before (although I am now), so my laziness forced me to eat the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner (for the most part) at every meal. Food was there to serve the purpose of giving my body the energy and nutrients it needed to continue growing.
I didn’t know what “Paleo” was at the time I was going through my transformation, but my dietary habits consisted of the same principles the Paleo diet follows. For that reason, I’m going to skip the diet details here and send you over to /r/Paleo
Supplements
My goal was (and still is) to stay completely natural, so for that reason I only used 3 supplements and a fat burn stack.
- Pre-Workout: NO-Xplode (cycled)
- Post-Workout: Whey Protein
- Night-Time: Casein Protein
- Fat Burn Stack: Green Tea Extract, CLA, Fish Oil
Pertaining to the Fat Burn Stack, I’ve been asked a number of times how this helped and honestly, I can’t say. I don’t have any data to quantify the difference it made in my personal transformation, although there are a number of people who live by it.
But on a side note, fish burps are the worst, seriously.
Key things that kept me healthy during my training:
Dynamic Warm-ups
Adequate Rest
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I can’t stress this enough. Not just rest between workouts, but rest between exercises. The rest time between exercises will vary depending on your rep range (3-6, 8-12, 15+), and training modality (MRT). It’s completely natural to be itching to workout on your off days but stay disciplined. Exercise induces micro tears and inadequate rest is the quickest 1-way ticket to overtraining.
Foam Rolling
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Also known as SMR (Self Myofascial Release). I attribute much of my recovery speed to foam rolling. It provides a good deep tissue massage and increases blood flow to the muscle, reducing your recovery time between workouts. To the previous point about exercise induced micro tears, foam rolling helps to break up adhesions in the muscle.
Morale of the story:
Getting to 5% was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but also one of my greatest accomplishments.
You always hear the cliché “fitness isn’t temporary, it’s a life long journey”, and this is true. Therefore you need to begin with a solid foundation and work your way from the basics.
My advice?
Experiment with different training modalities and focus on outcomes. Quantify your results and understand your body. Then keep your diet and workout SPE; Sustainable, Practical, Enjoyable.
It’s great to have your fitness idols and strive to mimic their physique but you have to be patient, persistent, and persevere. You will hit plateaus, need to overcome mental barriers, and occasionally frequent the ideas of calling it quits but remember everyone started from the bottom, even Arnold.
- KB
Friday, April 26, 2013 at 11:30AM