a_welch503 WORKOUT JOURNAL

[.V.]

03-31-2006

Legs
Squat..........225x7x5
Calf Raise.....315x7x5

Got up this morning, low back swollen, tight, painful. Stretched for a few hours, ate to get ready for lifting then hit the gym with trepidation about an injury. Squats felt great, heavy, hard, almost didn't finish on those last sets, but still no back pain from them. Calf raises were about the same. Couldn't do SLDL with the low back stiff, that would have likely damaged something.

Tomorrow morning finishes off the last day of the first week of this workout. So far, so good.

Nutrition will be as planned. Cardio - depends on the back. If it can take it, I'm going to run during softball practice today. If not, another day of rest. Gotta be well by tomorrow - 1st day of trout season - : woo hoo: .

Edit: After the squats today and some recovery time, my back feels much better. Not ready for the pounding of a run or the strain of a ride, but I bet it'll be ready tomorrow.

[.V.]

04-01-2006

Arms
BB Curls...........125x7x5
Skull Crushers.....115x7x5

Used the same weight as last time, but with the extra sets it was pretty tough. I've never actually vomited after skull crushers before. Didn't think I'd finish the last set on either, and almost didn't. But I got 'em with a bit of determination, a lot of shaking, and a great deal of pain.

I kept thinking of Firehawk's old sig - "pain is just weakness leaving the body" - I've noticed aikawa is using it too. I sure hope they are right. If so, then I've gotten rid of some weakness this week.

So I used to never get DOMS until two days after the workout. I hope that's not true anymore. I had to do some serious stretching of my legs to walk today. They still hurt, but are functional.

Nutrition - diet planned for the day, won't deviate.
Cal-2256, Pro-294g (53%), C-31g (5%), F-104g (42%)

Cardio
None really. Managed about a 1/2 mile walk. Then watched my little one's softball game. Just couldn't go any further.

Comments
If my arms respond the same as the rest of the body has from today's workout - There won't be a shoulder workout tomorrow...if I'm even able to walk to the gym.

[.V.]

04-02-2006

Shoulders
Mil Press.....125x6x3
Shrug.........295x6x3

Nutrition - scheduled foods - will not deviate today. The fat may be a bit low to get the body to choose fat for fuel, I may have to add more to get it above 40%...we'll see.

Cal-2573, P-302g (47%), F-94g (33%), C-124g (19%)

Cardio
Run.....4 miles, no walking breaks.

I did however, stop every mile and stretch my lower back a bit. Wasn't too bad on the back. At the end though, I was shaking like Katherine Hepburn jonesing for a hit of crack.

Comments
I honestly didn't think I'd be able to increase weight today after the struggle last time. Got a 10lb increase (5 more than the one I couldn't budge a few weeks ago) on MP today and a 20lb increase on shrugs. It looks like I may have to buy more plates soon.

Tweaking the diet a bit more. It seems that I'm cutting too quickly - don't want to end up losing strength or muscle. In the past week, my delts are striated, my abs are more visible, and my quads are looking the best ever (still puny and small though). So I'm adding 64g dextrose immediately postworkout followed by 60g protien 10-15 minutes later. My preworkout protein is going 50 be 20g instead of 40. Hopefully by tweaking a bit here and a bit there, I'll come across the perfect fat loss, muscle gain amount for my body. If I don't lose more fat this week or if I gain some, I'll simply go back to what I've been doing this week.

Legs still hurt, back much better today. Arms feel like legs did yesterday.

[skyman]

Gonna try your chicken and greens diet thing this week. Just grilled up 8 breasts for lunches all week.

[.V.]

I learned the hard way...don't do it. With the chicken you've got to have some fat. Just high protein and low carbs isn't a good idea. Cut the carbs - add some fats. Preferrably not saturated or trans fats though. I'm cooking mine in olive oil now and feeling much better.

[skyman]

I have been stuck at 190 18-20% BF for the longest time now and feel like I need to do something a little more drastic. I gave up beer, milk and cheese over the last couple weeks and no big changes yet. I figured carb cut during the week and then eat normally on the weekends.

[.V.]

A ketogenic diet - "cutting carbs" will work well for some people. Perhaps it will for you too. I've done it before - that's how I initially dropped from 300 to 170. This time, I wanted to do it with more protein. My mistake was to try to do it low fat. Ketogenic diets do not work when you do them low fat. The idea is that you feed the body protein and fat at least 40% of your calories coming from fats - preferably natural fats, not hydrogenated oils and stuff like that and it starts looking for something else to use for fuel - so it burns fat instead of carbohydrate. The end result of fat burning is ketone production - then the body burns them for energy too - hence the term ketosis. This is not the same as ketoacidosis - a dangerous condition that happens when blood sugar is too high - the exact opposite of ketosis - where the blood sugar is maintained at the low end of the "normal" range.

The problem that I ran into with my experiment was not eating enough fat and the body starts looking for something else to use for fuel. Well, without carbohydrates and fats to use all that was left was protein. The risk there is the easiest, most readily source of protein is your lean muscle tissue. Why risk the body "eating" that and leaving the fat alone?

All that happens with a high protein diet and very little fat is catabolism of the muscle, tiredness, weakness, loss of energy. Actually, if you do what you are suggesting and "cycle" your carbs - there is evidence to show that although fat loss isn't as fast as with a straight ketogenic diet, it is quite effective. The idea with carb cycling is to go ahead and eat your protein, fat, and green veggies every day (think steak, sausages, hamburger, chicken cooked in olive oil) then on your workout days have your post workout sugar followed by post workout protien - approximately a 1:1 ratio. Then go back to eating your usual meats and green veggies. If you don't want the sugar, you can have other carbs postworkout if you want.

On your days "off" from workouts - keep carb intake to a very minimum - only the amounts you get in your green veggies - especially salads. I make my salads with lettuce, cauliflower, and broccoli with a full fat/sugar free dressing on it (all I want). For the meal that's closest to the end of my workout, I also include some carrots and tomatoes.

"Carb up" days, or the days you eat "normally" should be on your heaviest lifting days for example leg day and back day.

Anyway, that's my understanding of it, it's how I did it with great success before, and how I'm doing it now...after experimenting to see if there was a better way and learning the hard way that there isn't - for my body at least.

Granted, some people will do extremely well on a balanced diet of P: 30-40%, C: 40-50%, F 10-20%. Myself, I just spent 6 months eating P-50+%, C-40%, F-10% - well that was the daily goal anyway I came very close each day and didn't cheat. I got fat...time to go back to the way I was more successful before.

Some of us just need more fat in our diet to build muscle and keep the fat off of our bodies.

I hope this helps and didn't confuse you skyman. Sometimes I get to rambling and my thoughts don't exactly make it to the screen the way I thoght they would.

For more information, do a search in the diet and nutrition thread for "My ketogenic Plan". It really worked well for me.

[skyman]

Where do you get your fat from....just olive oil?

[.V.]

Skyman, that would be better, most likely. However, I'm eating steaks twice a day, adding olive oil to my chicken, and having the occasional ground chuck pattie with a salad. If you really want to do it super clean, I suppose you could do it with just olive oil and chicken - that's the base for my sugar free vinagrette dressing. I seem to be doing OK the way I'm doing it though, I actually had to add 128g of carbs day before yesterday and 32g of carbs today to slow down the weight loss - 6lb in a week is too much - especially since I'm still using creatine and drinking water like a fish to make sure it's fat loss and not water loss. So far so good, weight down, strength up, hopefully that means no muscle loss. Just had to get past the "clean" eating thing I've drilled into my little head for the last year and get back to the red meat I was having when I lost all the fat initially. I had forgotten that as long as I'm not exceeding my glycogen storage ability even with all the fat I'm eating that my cholesterol and cardiac risk factors actually go down - according to the lab work from recent physicals. It went UP during my "clean" low fat bulk...excess is stored on and in the body as saturated fat and cholesterol - even if it is just broccoli.

[.V.]

04-04-2006

Back
CDL......275x6x3
P/U+W.....35x6x3

Cardio - skipping it today since it was deadlift day.

Nutrition
Cal-2592, P-298g (47%), C-62g (9%), F-126g (44%)

Comments
Energy levels are good. I'm not having the up and down I was having a few weeks ago. Strength is up. The last time I did 275 CDL's I approached the bar with fear of not making the lift. Today, I just grabbed it and OWNED the DLs. They were hard, they were heavy for me, but better than they have been the last several months. When I started the first set, I thought they may be a little light. When I got to the end - I was very happy I didn't have to do another rep, probably couldn't have gotten it anyway. Pullups were much better today too...only had to rest 10 minutes between DL and PU.

Wetsuit was delivered today. Now I can start swimming more and not be dependent on availability of the college's pool.

[Klinger]

where will you swim that you need a wetsuit? nice job on the DL sets, too.

[.V.]

Originally Posted by Klinger

where will you swim that you need a wetsuit?

In the lake - it's COLD .

[MostMuscle]

Hmmm...strength up in one week?? Could this program actually be working??

[.V.]

Originally Posted by MostMuscle

Hmmm...strength up in one week?? Could this program actually be working??

Must be working. Anything that makes ME stronger has got to be a good thing. Kind of like Max OT did for a long time - then I guess I got adapted to it or something. Then when I saw your program it just jumped out at me - "hey this is the way to break through some sticking points". Weird, I'd finally started getting stronger again, was making wild progress with Max OT at the END of the bulking cycle after struggling for months with the same weights. But, I knew what was going to happen when I cut the calories back - even a little bit...This program is just as hard as Max OT, but different - I guess even with the reduced calories, doing something different is a way to keep the muscles confused so they are willing to get stronger. Bigger? I don't know about that...it it happens great. If not, oh well I'll just keep being a skinny little dude for a bit longer. It is a great change for now though. I'm still in the dark for week 5 though, I've decided to keep the shrugs but I'm still debating over switching from pullups to BORs or to keep the pullups.

I don't know what the carryover from one to the other is. I've noticed that even doing high numbers of body weight pullups doesn't carry over into very much for weighted pullups - since I can do more BW than ever before, but not do them nearly as heavy as I used to. That's why I wonder about P/U vs BOR and shrug vs upright row. Maybe I'm just trying to think too much without enough brain to think with.

[Klinger]

Lifters don't think; they lift.