Here's a very cool calculator that you can use to figure out your maximum muscle potential.
Here are my results:
Height: 72 in Wrist: 6.5 in
Ankle: 9 in
Your estimated maximum muscular bodyweight at ~10% bodyfat is: 204.8 lbs
Your estimated maximum muscular measurements (@ ~8%-10% bodyfat) are:
Chest: 47.2 in Biceps: 16.7 in
Forearms: 13.4 in Neck: 16.3 in
Thighs: 25.5 in Calves: 17.1 in
This is a video of deceased Japanese body builder Katsumi Kitamura drinking a bowl of egg whites and making a frozen chicken shake. And yeah, the guy was obviously taking lots and lots of steroids.
That's pretty much it. If you're using them you should stop now. They suck. Here's why.
I've been seriously neglecting this blog. So here's a brief update.
I've been training a minimum of three times a week for the last (almost) 2 years. Some people send me messages from time to time wondering if I've quit or given up. Never!!!
I'm in week 3 of Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0. It's challenging but it's also a lot of fun. You workout four times a week, and I do a morning cardio session on Thursdays. All told I'm spending about six hours in the gym each week which is the most I've ever done. Surprisingly it doesn't seem like any more than when I was only doing three hours a week.
I'm going to take some new photos this coming Monday and post them.
That's about it..
I have one week left of a two week break from dieting.
Look, let me speak clearly. If you want to lose fat and keep muscle, and not waste a lot of time doing it, you simply MUST get Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Handbook.
It's hands down the best $40 dollars you will ever spend.
I actually hate having to take a break. The progress on Rapid Fat Loss is so amazing and so.. well, rapid, I hate to stop.
I'm going to start again in one week as a "category 1" dieter and do the diet for 12 days and then take another two week break, and then it's time for Lyle's Ultimate Diet 2.0.
I can actually say that my abs are almost visible. I'm honestly within a month or so of dieting before I have clearly defined abs and I could not be happier.
I'll update again later on.. hopefully some pics will be posted after I get ripped.
I have been doing a protein sparing modified fast since 12/07. It works wonders. In two weeks I have seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of fat on my body. It is not a scientific measurement by any means but simply squeezing the fat on my abdomen makes it apparent that I have been shedding fat.
Tonight I am having some alcohol and for the next two weeks I will be eating maintenance calories.
After New Years I will be back to doing PSMF. I love it.. hunger is almost non-existent. Taking ephedrine and caffeine has made a huge difference too. I highly recommend Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, even though Lyle is a big asshole.
I've decided I'm sick of doing Starting Strength. I've increased all my lifts substantially while my body has continued to look basically the same. This is to be expected. Strength training in the five rep range results in myofibrilar hypertrophy.
So starting tomorrow I will be starting Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST). I'll spend the next week figuring out my 15, 10 and 5 rep maxes on a variety of exercises and then I will take two weeks off from all lifting (I plan to continue some low intensity cardio during this time).
Afterward, I will begin an HST cycle. You can learn more here.
So that's it.. hopefully I will see some noticeable change in physique and in January I'll start cutting with Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0, a cyclical ketogenic diet. I will cut for four months and resume bulking in May of 2009.
Until next time.
I went back to eating for strength a few weeks ago, and now I am stuck with my lifts. I cannot get my squat back over 270 x 5.
Likewise, bench and press are stuck. Lots of room to improve my deadlift.
I've also started power cleaning instead of rowing but my form sucks so I have some learning to do there.
Tomorrow I'm going to cut volume and drop weights by 10%. On Monday I'm going to start an intermediate routine described by Mark Rippetoe in Practical Programming for Strength Training called The Texas Method.
Essentially you schedule progress weekly using Volume/Recovery/Intensity days.
Today I squatted 270 lbs. for 3 sets of 5 reps each. I think I'm at my physical limit for now because I can *barely* get the last rep in each set, and I have no choice but to let out a primal drawn out grunt as I drive up on the last rep. My face is beet red with veins popping out on the sides of my face. Not pretty. Then my heart is beating like a drum for a minute or two after each set. One technique I utilize is to pull the bar down against my back when I'm pushing up on that last rep. It's supposed to trigger some kind of fight or flight response and it works. You feel that bar dig into your delts and back and somehow squeeze out the last rep.
So, I'm going to stick with this weight for the next month or so. Hopefully as I cut some fat I can keep squatting this amount of weight.
It's funny to think of how difficult squatting 270 lbs. is for me when I watch videos like this one (50 seconds in) where the guy squats 215 lbs. for 40 reps in 90 seconds. "Holy shit" is about the only thing that comes to mind watching that.
In November my hydrostatic weighing results were:
age: 31
height: 72
weight: 175
%fat 11.00353
Fat mass: 19.25618
Lean mass: 155.7438
I kept dieting down to 163 lbs. until February. Then I slowly raised calories until I eventually reached 3600 kcal some time in April.
Today my hydrostatic weighing results were:
age: 32
height: 72
weight: 187.7
%fat 12.9653
Fat mass: 24.33587
Lean mass: 163.3641
Gains:
%fat +1.96177
Fat mass: +5.07969
Lean mass: +7.6203
Ratio lean to fat gain: 1.5 (for every 1.5 lbs. of lean mass gained, I gained 1 pound of fat).
Total weight gain: +12.69999
Not too shabby for less than three months of work!
The beauty is that if I lost five pounds of fat and kept the lean mass I've gained I'd be at 10% body fat. Losing five pounds of fat is easy and can be done in a month. However, as mentioned in a previous post I'm easing back into dieting since this will be my first post-mass gain phase cut. My first cut was just post-fat ass. The point being, I don't want to lose any strength, so I'm easing calories down slowly. Next week I'll drop down to 2500 kcal and start watching the scale more closely. If I'm not seeing any movement after another week I'll add in thirty minutes of jump rope on my off days. I'm hoping I don't have to drop calories any lower but I probably will have to, so long as I keep all my strength gains.
Hopefully by September or so I can return to another mass gain phase. I'm going to do things differently with respect to my carbohydrate consumption next time, but I'll save all of that for a post some other time.
So for the time being I'm done bulking. I've gained a lot of strength and presumably some muscle, as well as some fat. It's time to take out the blow torch and shed the fat and show off what I've created over these past few months.
I'm playing around with some ideas. Today I did an intermittent fast, so I didn't eat until 1:30 this afternoon. I'll stop eating in about thirty minutes, and tomorrow I'll do another 16 to 18 hour fast. Calories are still at 3000 but I'm going to lower them slowly while still attempting strength gains, or at least not losing any strength. I'm going to do cardio on my off days. I bought this high tech jump rope by Nike yesterday so tomorrow I'm going to give that a try. I have a heart rate monitor calorie counter so I'll be shooting for 400 to 500 calories in 30 to 45 minutes of work.
Goal will be to lose a pound a week, possibly more as long as I don't lose any strength. I'll be keeping protein high at around 250 grams per day.
I'm still doing starting strength but I'm going to reduce the volume to one work set instead of three.
I'll also be carb cycling.. so I'm excited to lose some fat and lean out.
On July 10th I'm going to be hydrostatically weighed so I'll report back with the results.. I'm 192 lbs. as of this morning.. quite a long way from my low of 163 pounds back in February.
Until next time!
-Barry
I'm still here, still doing Starting Strength.
Some stats:
Weight: 190 lbs.
Squat: 235 x 5
Deadlift: 255 x 5
Bench: 167.5 x 5
So I should probably stop bulking up but I'm going to wait a while longer. I'd like to wait until I progress to an intermediate level before I go back to cutting some fat off my body but we'll see. On a related note I am drinking three to four gallons of skim milk a week. If you handle lactose then it's really a perfect food.
My deadlift should probably be higher than it is relative to my squat but I'm not worried about it. I imagine the squat will plateau before the deadlift anyway.
Here are two videos from this morning's workout:
Squatting 235 lbs. for 5 reps:
Deadlifting 255 lbs. for 5 reps:
I'm not thrilled with the execution of the deadlift. The first rep is good but my hips rise too quickly on the rest of the reps. I think I was unintentionally trying to avoid scraping my right shin which already has a scab on it from the last time I deadlifted. I must either learn to love bloody shins or buy a pair of skin tight track pants.
