Mostly a stream of consciousness recap of what happened as I got vain and did easy HT work to stay in the swing of things during a summer-too-hot-to-touch-the-barbell in Bakersfield.
Purposes:
1. Waist reduction n' Recomposition
2. Weak movements improvement
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1. EAT CLEAN - this is not a weight reduction, it's a fat reduction
Outline for eats:
2500 calories/day = maintenance
Cals : 2362
Exercise : 259 (cals, not minutes)
Fat : 89g / 35%
Carb : 84g / 15%
Pro : 295g / 51%
Keys:
- Keep Pro over 225/day; Carb under 125/day
- On Rest days, the target is carbs under 50g
- Do IF everday
Recomposition: Waist is 40, up from 38.5, up from 37
I want to see 35 before changing cycles - .5" off per week = 6 weeks to 37
Upper arm 15.5 to 17
Chest 45 to 47
Everything else can remain static
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2. Weak movements
Pull up
Power clean
Rollout-FtB
Bread and butter:
RDL/Hip Thruster
OHP
OHS
Ring Dip/Ring rows-Meadows rows
BB complexes
KB Swing
Do HT, Tonics, weak movements for reps and weak movements for 5RM
Ruck and easy fat burning endurance sessions, if possible on weekends
1M - La
FW/Rollouts
Power Clean
RDL heavy/Squat light
Hip/Banded Add Squat
2T - Aa
Pull ups/Power clean
Ring Row/Dyno Push ups
Ring Dip/Ez in
3W - OFF - NO CARB, Lo Carb
4Th - Lb
FtB/FW
Power clean, light
Deficit RDL/Front squat light
Hip/OHS light
5F - Ab
Chins/(Power clean)
BBBO/Iso Flat Bench Presses
Ez in-out/OHP light
6S - OFF or Ruck or Sprints/MA or Grace
7Sn - Bonus or Grace
BB complex
Chins
C/T
week 1 - 4/3
week 2 - 4/4
week 3 - 5/4
week 4 - 3/3 - devolume
week 5 - 3/3 add weight
week 6 - 4/3
week 7 - 4/4
week 8 - 5/4 - devolume
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Did it work? Let's start with the bottom line.
Post-cycle Takeaways:
- Started off with waist at 40", ended with waist at 38".
- Other measurements didn't change significantly, upper arm added .5" and this was a secondary objective, just not as much growth as anticipated, and chest didn't change significantly (carry subcutaneous fat there).
- Lost 6 lbs. of scale weight: 2 lbs. a month/ .5 lb a week. Just sayin' - this was not a goal of this program, it just happened.
- Work cap didn't change much (did mostly only HT work), weak movements didn't move too much (wasn't very scientific about tracking them though). They definitely didn't go south, and the weak movements were the movements that got their grooves greased this whole cycle, a plus.
Okay, monthly breakdowns follow.
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4 weeks, June is in the bank.
…lost one pound, BF% is the same via the Tanita scale. I think I look more lean. Measurements say that I've lost some subcutaneous fat all over, because of the lack of weight loss, but slightly smaller measurements all over.
1 inch off of the waist, .5 off of the shoulders and hip. Added .25 to the arm, or not. The inch off the waist is the win - that's .25" per week without really being on a cut - just being on maintenance calories and doing easy HT work.
Workouts have been mostly by feel, and mostly everyday I can get them in. 21 days on with 8 days off in 29 days. 3/1. Mostly about 30 mins, all with the 40 on/55 off timer, and most everything but the buy in is antagonistic.
Mains have been BBBO and dyno pushups
RDLs and light squatting or trap deads
trying to do chins and cleans regularly
I'll get numbers on exercise frequencies. I have been adjusting on the fly, based on what I feel like doing out there.
Sets have been mostly
2/2 for the buy in FW/rollouts
4 of power clean, or chins
4/3 for the main
cash out 4/3 ez and ring dip or tri, or Hip/add squats (now Goblet add squats)
Macros are spot on: 109g fat, 108g carb, 288g pro day/average.38/17/45% - remember that I wanted to only be under 20% with carb 9 (under 125g/day) and over 40% with protein (over 225g/day). I'm averaging 40 over the 2500 maintenance calories per day.
I've been doing IF each day, weekends 95% too.
Sleep has been good, if I nap I keep up. Late in the month I was getting squeezed with early starts at work and ppl staying up late now that they're on summer break (and Konrad's football practices go til 8 - if I go to sleep at 8, I get 8).
The right knee has felt sketchy, I think it was a MCL strain about 7 weeks ago. It's starting to feel better, but I was unable to squat on it for the longest, and completely unable to sit cross-legged until just yesterday.
To adjust:
more so:
- Less or zero cals on off days (as it was for these first 4 weeks, I ate an average of almost 100 more calories on OFF days than I did on ON days, and, more significantly, an average of 23g more carbs on OFF days than ON days, and it should be reversed). I'd like to see an average of 50g LESS on OFF days than ON days.
- Less cals on off days (300 less = to the workout cals, perhaps, and therefore, 600 more on ON days to counter). So, Wave my intake. Which is to say, plan my workout days, instead of trying to exercise when I can or as many days/week as I can.
- My schedule is only allowing me to workout in the PMs (and with the heat, I'm doing well) but that doesn't allow for the first carbs of the day to be post-workout - I wish this was the case
- Wave volume so that you're not doing 4/3 sets all the time
less so:
- Add in heavy, low rep work on key exercises (power clean, pulls)
- I've only done the cosgrove complex a few times, once a week is good, but expand to 2x/week (and the complex can change to be WoD rounds)
- add in some work capacity work
- add in some skill work (read, MA bag rounds)
3 day breakdowns in the future, instead of two (three alternating Mains):
A
buy in - clean/FTB
Add - weighted chin or weighted pull
3 alternating Mains - BBBO/Archer, or ring row-meadows/dyno, or more pulls-chins/OHP
cash out - ez in/tri, ez out/tri, or ez/ring dip on OHP day
L
buy in - FW/rollouts
Add - KB swing
3 alternating Mains - RDL/squat, or dRDL/front squat, or heavy RDL/trap dead
cash out - Hip/Add squat
Tonic - or Bonus
buy in - cleans or kb/chins
Main - complex
cash out - direct arm work, cav press iso and hammer to burnout
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8 Weeks, July is in the bank
Lost 4 lbs, another inch off of the waist - down to 38". This is the primary goal, so keeping pace at .25" off the waist per week is great. See "8_weeks_measurements" - fractional gain on the neck, loss on the arm, but everything else is static. Look, I'm doing the impossible! Spot fat loss!
It's been really hot, and doing workouts in the afternoons has really sucked. But I have been keeping it up; 17 on and 11 off this cycle (22 on, 9 off last cycle). Frequency is a bit lower, but the cals per workout (and thus, time per workout) is up from 280 to 307.
Last cycle I ate 100 cals more on off days than on days, but this cycle I ate nearly the same amount on all days (2700/days, with a maintenance of 2500). Last cycle I ate a third more carbs on off days than on on days, but this month I ate more than a quarter less - a good change.
Carbs on all days were under a hundred grams (with no fatigue or drained feeling - maybe all the days off, or the hypertrophy work instead of the heavy RPT work, or because I'm eating 2700 cals instead of 2300 and less?).
See "8_weeks_macros"
People are starting to notice and say things about how I look. The numbers haven't really moved using the tape measure, so it's mostly a function of probably having lost subcutaneous fat, and everyone in the world wearing less clothes for summer while looking like beached whales.
My right knee is still sketchy, so my squatting is very light. I'm adding weight in most all exercises. OHP feels good at 93# plus chains, archer presses feel good at 74#, added 5# to the curl bar, dips are 11 reps across. Chins and pull ups feel good, dunno if there's much of a breakout but I think I've added 1 rep across for these. Anyway, I'm not flagging or losing strength (although I'm not testing the tops of my lifts, even with 5RM days), just saying that I feel good.
I added in trap deads, and wanted to be powercleaning every other day. I'm probably power cleaning every 3rd day. I didn't do those complexes this cycle, did do bag work once. I would like to do more of all of it, and add in rucking and add in sprinting and, and, and. I'll stick with this until it pans out.
Until then, if I can hold an inch off a month, that means 37" at the end of August, then 36" at the end of September, and finally 35" at the end of October?
I could/would have to buckle down the cals at some point. Anyway, 35 inch waist on Halloween, then hold steady without blowing up again during Squatober?
CFFB with Konrad isn't going to happen (he's not motivated to lift, and his practices are evenings in the heat), but we should adjust after his football season is over. Maybe he will do Squatober.
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12 weeks, August
The final month was hot, making workouts in the evenings either a chore, or skippable. The biggest difference in the schedule was the frequency (18 on, 14 off; or 1.29 … went down to half of the June frequency of 22 to 9 or 2.44). The exercise amount per session went up (355 cals in Aug from 280 in June, so sessions were longer. Not double, but longer). Same rest interval, so more sets per workout.
Timer was 40 on, 55 rest.
Eating was as clean as July, the big difference was fat was down an average of 14g/day, which cut cals by almost 200. June I ate just slightly over the 2500 mark (2540) and July I ate 170 above, August I hit right at 2501. I wasn't focused on eating less fat, I just did. I was eating a lot of hunks of cheese and plain lunchmeats for lunch after IF all morning with just coffee. Simple, some would say yucky, but I have a high tolerance for eating what's good for me and sameness.
Costco ON Whey Isolate protein in the $50 bag was a 2x/day staple. If I was under, and I was under a lot of days, I'd have Halo Top ice cream with peanut butter on it as an after-dinner treat. Cut that out and one could really lose fat. I ran out of BCAAs and didn't have them to drink in the mornings with the coffee, that was probably not a good way to start my day (thinking that drinking a bigbig cup of water firstthing with C and BCAAs is a keystone habit).
For August, hit all the marks that were focal : above 250g/day for protein, under 100g/day for carbs, and right at 200 cals/day average for exercise.
Not that cals are a good indicator of work done with weights, it's just the LoseIt! metric.
I didn't wave the volume this month at all, the workouts were infrequent and I mostly did the sets shown below (22 or 16 sets-ish).
Measurements stalled this month - partly because the workouts were more spotty, maybe because an 8 week "cut" is good enough. Waistline didn't move, that was first on the list of things to change. Everything else stayed static too, basically. Did lose a couple of pounds while maintaining size, which means that I did lose some more subcutaneous fat (maybe partially a product of summer heat, maybe just what one would expect from this program of slow fat loss and slow muscle growth).
I kept up with the power cleans, didn't do any complexes at all this month. Mostly mainline HT work, with less of an eye to the paperschedule and more of a feel for what I wanted to do. Squats started to feel good at the end of the whole program - nagging right knee thing since February sprint session kept bothering me all the way (got it x-rayed and they said it was arthritic, so fuck it then, if it's not an MCL tear or strain, I'm not resting it anymore, I'm going to let it hurt until it figures out who's boss).
Sessions in August mostly looked like:
- Buy In
Power Cleans/Pulls 4/4
FW/Rollouts 2/2
- Push-Pull Antagonists
BBBO/Archer or OHP/Chins 4/3
Squat/RDL 4/4 or 5/4
- Cash out
C/T, many times hammers 4/3
Hip/Add Goblet squats, many times add calf raises 4/3
Looking forward to a switch. I'll kinda clean bulk in Squatober for 4 weeks. Until then, I'll do "Sprintember" because sprinting M/Th while Konrad's at football practice has been easy to do, then maybe morning work when it's cool on S/Sn/W… I promised myself that I would be rucking on the weekends this summer to up my work capacity, but that never really happened.
I'll keep eating clean and keep the cals in moderation, keep doing HT (A/L/A on those S/Sn/W workouts, because the sprinting is L day, really).
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Lessons learned for next times:
8 weeks of more intense cutting will be more beneficial than 12 weeks of more moderate gradual recomping. Next time, even 6 weeks of a true cut with 6 weeks of a clean bulk is in order. Going until you stall isn't as good as changing while you're still feeling fresh.
Carb cycling would have been good to do - get under 50g/day on off days, and up to 125g-ish on work days. This would be a facet of that more intense cut.
Either get a different job, or don't expect to get your workouts done outside in Bakersfield in the summertime. Many days I'd be off at 2:30 and there's no way to touch the bar, even if it's been shaded under a towel. It's mentally wearing. Winter mornings don't work, heck, all mornings are bad early because I'll wake the neighbors and because mornings are for Morning Watch, but Summer mornings are best.
Be more scientific and smart about rep/set schemes and waved volume (and frequency as an aspect of total volume). Sketch out days and what's going to be accomplished. I went by feel way too much the last 6 weeks. How many total sets per week; how many total sets per day; what days; what weight to use based on what you used before; what work is going to be 10-rep HT and what work is going to be low-rep Strength building (maybe only one item per workout, but it's not a bad thing to do to maintain str during a recomp). Anyway, you get it. The nutrition was the focus this time, and I did nail it. Now, to step up the game and be smarter about the work.
Having a sketch of on/off days will allow for carb and calorie cycling too. That's a consideration for a true cut ala Leangains style, which, I've already mentioned, is the way to go next time. Because stubborn waistline fat needs to be shocked.
