March 19, 2013 Fruits & Vegetables

The government has recently abandoned the 'servings' notion for fruits & vegetables which was always confusing for most people anyway.  They've replaced it with serving sizes of cups & half cups, which makes much more sense.  It's a lot easier to measure how many cups of grapes or carrots or whatever you're eating than it is to eyeball just how many servings your cantaloupe comes to.    They have also provided a calculator to determine how much fruits & vegetables you should be consuming.  Here is a link to the calculator, and here is a link to give you a general idea of how much a cup of a fruit or vegetable may be with a couple dozen examples. 

March 18, 2013 Upper Body

• Bench Press: 265*3 275*3 285*2
• BB Rows: 225*5 245*5 265*5 275*5
• Standing Press: 150*4 160*1 145*5
• 1.5 Pullups: 6, 3
• Landmine Lateral Raises: 45*10 50*8 55*6
• DB Incline Bench: 105*6 110*4

38 minutes!!

I am absolutely ripping through workouts, barely took any rest between sets.  I had meant to do a cluster set at about 265 on benching, I'll have to remember for next week.  BB Rows went great, that was without straps until I got to 265.   Standing press still vexes me.  I think I'm going to low with the weight, I rest the bar on the top of my chest at the bottom of the movement.  I see a lot of places say not to go lower than the adam's apple. 1.5 pullups went great.  I think I have a new favorite delt exercise, those landmine things torched my delts all around the shoulder, not just one of the heads.  Went for 105 on incline then I was so pumped did 110 right after.  I looked at my stopwatch and I was only 38 minutes in. What a session, I can't describe how much energy I have on my low-carb days. I have NO idea what people are talking about when they say going low-carb for days on end results in fatigue/etc.  It's the exact opposite for me.

Here's a video of the landmine lateral raises. 

March 17, 2013 Routine

Alright, so my routine for this cut is going to go along with the theme of the nutrition; I know my body well enough at this point that I don't think I need a set routine any more. The upper/lower/conditioning days of the week will almost certainly stay the same.  Deadlifting, Squatting, Benching, Rows, Pullups, sprinting, and Presses will be done every week almost certainly. But really past that I'm not going to marry myself to any one routine or rep scheme.  For instance this week I'm thinking of having an all o-lift thursday with snatching, cleans, and push pressing, and then maybe some incline bench after if I have the energy.   I'll do regular standing presses on Monday instead of PP, and do pullups with deadlifting on Tuesday.   Of course that assumes I remember not to PP tomorrow.   Again, reps will probably be kept low & explosive for everything, but who knows.  There's so many solid exercises out there, why limit myself?   I'm going to do what I feel like each day, and most likely my routine won't look a lot different every day, but there'll hopefully be more variety in set type, rep scheme, and exercise selection.   

March 17, 2013 Conditioning / Core

• 31" Plyo Box Jumps: 15
• PUPP-Plate Transfer Plank Superset: 1:00-10*4 1:00 10*4
• Side-Plank: 1:00
• Paloff Iso-Hold: 70*0:20 80*0:20
• Decline Situps: 20

25 minutes

Was pretty sore from the leg workout Friday, which is odd because I didn't do a ton of volume. Did some jumping then decided I wanted to beat on my core for a while.  Never did supersets for core before, did some push up position plank presses into plate transfer planks which was just downright evil.  Hit some side-planks next, then went with an iso hold on paloffs.  Finished off with some decline situps just for fun since I haven't done a situp in about 5 years. 

I weighted in at 203.5 after this one on a pretty much empty stomach.  I look really lean already, almost as lean as I did here, only I was 195 in those.  Obviously some is from the pump from working my abs today, but still....I've never seen my serratus as easily as I did today above 200 lbs.  This cut may work out REALLY well, and I'm super excited.  Was thinking about running some albuterol at the end of this cut to polish it off, but if I keep going at this rate it may not be needed! 

March 15 2013 ides of March Lower Body

• Squats cluster set: 335*1,1,1,1,1,1,1 - ab cramp??
• BB Pin Squats: 225*4
• Split Squats: 135*5 185*3
• Cable straight-leg kickbacks: 100*7 120*4
• WSARC: 70*10

40 minutes

Didn't know individual heads of your abdominus rectus could cramp, but sure enough, the upper right head seized up on the 8th rep of the cluster set and I had to abort it.  Really odd.  Was kind of ginger with the rest of the workout; it had cramped so hard I was actually pulled down and to my right a little bit when it seized up.   I think the snatch-grip rack pulls were effecting my back musculature's ability to support the load here, I smoked 315 last week for a cluster, but from rep 1 here it was tough, it felt like I was going to fold over, and I could tell my back wasn't entirely up to the task. Hence the load getting dumped on my abs and the cramp.  Will try another cluster at 335 next week. 

March 14, 2013 Upper Body

• Incline Bench Press: 225*3 235*3 245*3
• Pullups: 75*3 75*3 75*2 75*2
• Standing Press: 145*7 140*7 135*7
• Unilateral BB Rows: 145*6 150*3
• DB Flat Bench Press: 120*4 NEW PR!! 115*4
• 7kg MB slams: 50

38 minutes for weights, 41 total

Absolutely TORE through this workout; was done so early I did some ball slams just to add some extra time in.  I'm still reacting really well to the low carb days.  I can't believe how much energy I have on them.  Next week I need to increase weight on the incline bench, had a fairly easy time with the weights I used this week.  Pullups went much better, I hopefully will get 3 on all 4 sets this coming week, assuming I do them again at that time.  Standing press still vexes me, I don't know why I'm not stronger on it, probably because I'm always fatigued by the time I get there.   Also, got 120 on db flat bench,I just realized that's a record, my previous record was 120*3...

March 12, 2013 Posterior Chain / Lower Body

• Deadlifts: 365*1 385*1 405*1 425*1
• Snatch-Grip Mid-Shin Rack Pulls: 315*6 365*3 275*7
• Hanging Power Snatches: 135*1 145*1 155*1 165*X
• Hanging Power Cleans: 185*1 195*1 215*X 205*1
• Ab-Wheel: 12

44 minutes

Went hard on deads last week, didn't want to kill myself here.  Tried snatch-grip rack pulls after reading this article on T-Nation about them.  I'm not sure how I feel about them. I think my traps/rhomboids/erectors even were getting hammered by them, not so much lats.  I was dripping sweat like a...musk ox(?)...after these, they absolutely obliterated my upper back.  I jumped to hanging power snatches after this and was really pumped up, not enough to get 165, I think if I went 140-150-160 though I would have had it.  Next was hanging power cleans.  I really never make any progress on them. I feel like I've made steady gains on snatching, but power cleans....not at all.  I need to figure this out, maybe it's because I do them last, maybe I need to do them ahead of snatches sometimes, I dunno. 

I still toy around with turning Thursdays into an all o-lift day (with push pressing), moving standing press to Mondays, pullups to deadlift day, and maybe tacking on incline benching after the o-lifts.  Just a thought. 

March 11, 2013 Upper Body

• Bench Press: 265*3 275*3 285*2
• Pendlay Rows: 135*10 155*10 175*8
• Push Press: 225*1 240*1 250*X 225*1
• Neutral Grip Pullups: 100*2 NEW PR!! 90*2
• DB Incline Bench: 105*6
• Dips: 50*5 50*3

44 minutes

Good session! Really packing the stuff in.  I notice on the days I don't eat a ton of carbs I have a ton of energy. It's supposed to be the opposite really, so I don't know what's happening; maybe I was eating carbs too close to the start of my workout and was still digesting when I would start?  I don't know, because I still eat about an hour before workouts on low-carb days. Anyway, I'm definitely not imagining it.   

I wanted to get 3 at 285 on the bench but it wasn't happening, I'm going to try a cluster set next week, 10 reps at 270 I think will be the order of the day.  Did more pendlay rows...holy crap do those things kill my lats/rhomboids. Barely missed 250 on push pressing.  I jumped right into it with a warm up of 135, 185, then hit 225. I had been doing 205 in there, but honestly all the explosive movement just tired me out.  Did some neutral grip pullups, had never done them with the 100s, so I did it, mainly for the PR.  Jumped to incline bench, then finished with some dips.  I was exhausted, and even with a forward tilt they hurt my clavicles like crazy.  

March 10, 2013 Conditioning

• Broad Jump: 7' 11.5", 8' 4.5", 8' 1.5", 8', 8' 5", 7' 11", 8' 2.5", 8' 2.5", 8' 1"
• 16 lbs mb twist wall slams: 10, 10
• Plyo bench clap pushups: 6, 6
• Rowing: 400*1:23 NEW PR!!

24 minutes

The cluster set of squats on Friday didn't leave me sore, but definitely tired, didn't have a lot of pop in the jumps today.  I only felt a sort of 'snap' or 'pop' on takeoff on the 8' 5" attempt, and the 8' 4.5" one.  The rest I feel like I just sort of ground out. Threw in some side twists and combined with throwing a medicine ball against a wall, catching it on the bounce, then repeating.  Clap pushups felt great, felt really powerful on them, see if that translates to benching tomorrow.  Rowing went good, set a new record on the 400m!  Really happy about that since I haven't rowed a ton the last couple weeks.  

March 09, 2013 Cut Steps

Alright, so I finally got around to taking the screen shot of what my diet is going to be like this cut.  This time marks a departure in a couple of ways from previous plans I have made.  First of all my low carb day doesn't suck.  Seriously my previous attempts were awful.  The fat was never high enough so it was basically a protein day.   Secondly my high carb day is actually a high carb day.  Actually I've never really done real high carb days before. It's usually medium carb medium fat days.  I'll still probably do those this time, I'll edit this post and add it in later.  I dropped the fat way down on the high carb days, usually I'd leave evoo & coconut oil in.  I was always worried that skipping them on a day would cause my arteries to become blocked & kill me. Or that if i skipped blueberries on low carb days I'd get cancer.  The thing is I'm getting just as much of everything, I'm just switching around the days I do them on, and doubling up on them on the days they're used.

The last, and maybe most major departure is that I realize I've been doing this for 14 years as of last month. I've learned enough, and I'm advanced enough to know how my body reacts to everything. Templates are great at first, but eventually you'll get to a point where you know what your body needs.   So based on that, I'm not going to be using each of these days on set days of the week.  I'm sure my sprinting day will almost always be high carb.  But other than that I'm not really setting anything in stone.  At the start of this cut a few days ago I actually did the low carb day 4 days in a row and was perfectly fine.  I didn't get the 'keto flu' people talk about.  In fact I oddly enough had more energy, and felt clearer for some reason. When I decided to go back to a carby day on Thursday  I actually didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.   So yeah, maybe I'll do that for the next couple weeks (low carb first few days of the week) and then carb up. Maybe I won't.  Who knows.  I feel much more confident now that I know my body doesn't reject low-carb stuff when done several days in a row.  

Anyway, here's the plans: