So normally these types of blogs start with the usual 'Chapter One: 12 weeks out', but I'll be honest with you I couldn't be bothered to write a blog the other day, what with the hectic schedule I have everyday, waking up at the crack of 9am, the mere hour I have to drink my 2 cups of organic black coffee in blissful silence with my smoking hot girlfriend Jess, then I only have like 6 hours to do whatever the hell I want, which has to include eating 3 delicious meals and training, before starting work at the god-awful time of 4pm!!! The sheer indignation, rushed off my feet for well over 4 hours a day every damn day, well not Wednesdays thats our day off......but every other day......oh and not Saturdays or Sundays either, no one works the weekends so they don't count. But EVERY other day of the week! Its a hard life but I don't complain and I don't ask for any medals, I just struggle on with my 20 hour working week.
Yes I can feel your hatred and envy burning through the computer screen as you read that. WHAT-A-TWAT, you're thinking. And all I'm thinking is 'I LOVE MY LIFE.' Hats off to the people that work 38+ hours a week as well as get in all their meals and training and morning and/or late night cardio too. Very impressive, especially the crazy ones who have to add kids into the mix too.
So another reason why I didn't write the blog from 12 weeks out is that I didn't actually start dieting down for comp from the usual 12 week mark. I started more like 20 weeks out but with much less dramatic changes than most tend to do. CARDIO CARDIO CARDIO!!!! Cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, cardio pre-weight session, cardio post-weight session and cardio before they go to bed. All I can say is 'WTF are you doing guvnor? Are you mental?' F#%K CARDIO is what I say. Who was the nob that said we need to do all this monotonous, shotgun-to-the-head, boring ass walking on a treadmill for an hour 2-3 times each and every day? SCREW THAT!
Let's break it down- 'CARDIO-RESPIRATORY or CARDIO-VASCULAR' training. All those words refer to is the stimulation and training of the heart, lungs (respiratory) and circulatory systems. Nowhere in there does it mention anything to do with fat burning. Yes it burns a few calories but do you know what else gets rid of a few calories? Not eating a few calories!!! In other words get your diet right and you literally can do next to no cardio and get lean as fooooook! That's the approach I'm doing anyway. Plus the benefits from doing sooooo much cardio, which is a catabolic activity meaning it causes muscle wastage, do not out way the negatives. Too much cardio will make you SKINNY, NOT LEAN! That's not advice btw, just a little rant.
ANYWAY, BACK TO ME:
So by making small alterations and manipulations to my daily dietary intake I'm hoping to get lean as a Motherf#&ker without the muscle loss and without the chronic cardio induced carb depleted crazy brain. Its hard enough coming to terms with the fact that I walk around at around 92kgs or more normally and stay there very easily, but I'll probably be onstage at closer to 82kgs, if I'm lucky. I'm dropping weight at just under half a kilo a week, or 1 pound a week and I'm currently sitting around 86kgs, 189lbs or 13 and a half stone. But I'm dropping body fat like grease off of a dirty kebab! And all with just 40 mins of shitty cardio in the whole week. Twenty of those are just for active recovery the day after a nasty leg session, stop blood pooling and speed up recovery, and the other 20 minutes is HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training, whereby I normally do some form of sprints on one of the cardio contraptions or do some skipping like a 5 year old girl. Guys like to think we look like boxers when we skip, we don't, you look like a nob, but its effective. I'm gonna use the line thats made me slightly famous over here in Perth with my clients and other people at the gym- the reason I do these 2 cardio sessions is so I can eat more, as cardio has been shown to increase digestive enzymes and improve digestive action (that's for you Chris, maaaaaaate!!!!). So obviously I choose the day I do my sprints, when my digestion is at its best, to smash an entire pizza from Domino's! No shit, every week without fail. BBQ chicken and pineapple (good for digestive enzymes too) 97% fat free pizza- 44g of protein, just 16g of fat (need it for testosterone to stay high while dieting) and 170g of carbs. Fits nicely into my daily macronutrient values, for now. Plus it refuels both my body and my brain for the next week of training and dieting, not to mention that the spike in calories is actually a way of increasing metabolic rate and fat burning plateaus. Thank you Domino's, I'll see you next week.
THIS WEEKS REVELATIONS:
This week has actually been a slight turning point for me with regards to energy levels and hunger. From weeks 20 until now I've been fine and thinking, 'geez, what's everyone shitting their knickers about? This shits easy man!'
Up until now that is. I've been working with something called 'Non-Linear Periodisation' or 'NLP', combining a week of slow eccentric intense hypertrophy training followed by a week of heavy-as-f#&k strength training. The theory is pretty simple- mass training one week followed by strength the next, a blueprint for building functional bulky muscle.
The strength weeks are greaaaaaaaat fun! My lifts are getting heavier and heavier every 2 weeks without fail, except for once when I tried deadlifting whilst wearing a belt so small that I couldn't stand up straight once I lifted the 210kg bar up to my knees. But I'm deadlifting 245kgs on the hex-bar, 210kgs on the Romanians, have had to change gyms to get dumbbells big enough for my bench presses and will have to change again soon (looking for gyms with 65kg+ dumbbells) and I push-pressed 105kgs the other day, all for reps of between 2 to 5. Not bad for a short ass, all 5ft 9" of me.
BUT, the intensity weeks suuuuuuuck! I'm really starting to feel the drop in stored energy and body fat and even the tiny drop in carbs. In my offseason I was eating around 700 grams of carbs per day, everyday. Thats around 2.3kgs of rice each day for those who don't know what that means. A shit load! My cheat meals, or 'refeeds' for a better term, tended to be either 3 large Domino's pizzas (photo attached below) with extra BBQ sauce or the Sean O'Mac happy meal from McDonalds which consisted of 4 double cheeseburgers, a chicken burger (coz they're healthy and have lettuce in them!), 10 chicken nuggets, 2 large fries (with Ketchup, has lycopene in which is great for my prostate apparently, so that puts it on par with a multivitamin right?) and 2 apple fry pies (fruit is healthy too). With a bottle of water I should add as I don't drink Coke, doesn't mix too well with my hyperactivity, crazy things happen!
Now though, I'm down to 200 grams of carbs per day, so not crazy low or even close to ketosis and I'm feeling the lack of energy in my training sessions. For the first time ever I was just one retch away from spewing my preworkout double chocolate Protowhey and oat brownie all over the gym floor during a superset of lying hammie curls and slow eccentric leg presses. No fun at all! I look forward to Friday nights when I get to eat a big kick ass meal that fills me up for hours and hours.........NANDO'S!!!! Jess and I share a whole chicken and a large chips, and by share I mean she gets whatever the f#%k I leave her!!! No chivalry here woman, Nando's is the exception to the rule, in fact I do believe that the word Nando actually used to mean 'not for women' many centuries ago. But angry women with hairy legs and bushy armpits protested and Nando's was changed forever. FACT!
So energy not great at the moment, something may need to be adjusted. But the royal kick in the nuts is that my appetite is through the roof right now. I'm not even craving the so-called 'bad' foods, although a Macca's double cheeseburger would probably give me the majority of an erection right now..................(tumbleweed rolls by)..............I'm just wanting more food but don't have the allowance for it. DAMN YOU TO HECK!!!
My saving grace though........TEA! And not just any shitty tea, not like the crappy Australian Bushells, pfffft, terrible! Or Red Bush, that shit tastes like arse and smells like the burnt pubic hairs of a red-head's bush! This Englishman drinks good old PG Tips, with pyramid shaped tea bags, tastes completely different just because of those oddly shaped bags. Yes I pay an extortionate amount for a mere 40 bags per box but those little pyramids of greatness are one of the few things keeping me from eating my own hand right now. Just the thumb would surely be ok, that squidgy bit on the top when you touch the inside of your thumb to the knuckle of your index finger, now that bit looks tender, bit of Nando's extra hot sauce...................where's my PG Tips Jess, I need one now!!!!!!!
Can you have too much tea is an interesting question? How much is too much? Will I get classed as 'unnatural' by the ANB federation and have my title stripped from me for having dangerously high levels of tea in my blood? Surely 20 a day is fine, although I'll definitely need to get my teeth whitened before getting up on stage now, get rid of the evidence. Don't want the other competitors knowing I had tea in my stack!
Anyway, thats about it for now. I wont be doing one every week as I just realised how boring I actually am and will struggle to write 12 successive blogs. Although people find Big Brother interesting so I might be ok. Keep an eye out.
Few pics below for your perusal. The pics of me in my panties are from 12 weeks out. Still not crazy lean but abs are coming through and getting separation in my legs. Should get a shit load better though.
Apologies for the crappiness of them, the camera is pretty old and I was doing them myself with a timed flash. Plus the fact that I have no idea how to pose properly.
PEACE OUT F$&KERS!!!!!
Yes I can feel your hatred and envy burning through the computer screen as you read that. WHAT-A-TWAT, you're thinking. And all I'm thinking is 'I LOVE MY LIFE.' Hats off to the people that work 38+ hours a week as well as get in all their meals and training and morning and/or late night cardio too. Very impressive, especially the crazy ones who have to add kids into the mix too.
So another reason why I didn't write the blog from 12 weeks out is that I didn't actually start dieting down for comp from the usual 12 week mark. I started more like 20 weeks out but with much less dramatic changes than most tend to do. CARDIO CARDIO CARDIO!!!! Cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, cardio pre-weight session, cardio post-weight session and cardio before they go to bed. All I can say is 'WTF are you doing guvnor? Are you mental?' F#%K CARDIO is what I say. Who was the nob that said we need to do all this monotonous, shotgun-to-the-head, boring ass walking on a treadmill for an hour 2-3 times each and every day? SCREW THAT!
Let's break it down- 'CARDIO-RESPIRATORY or CARDIO-VASCULAR' training. All those words refer to is the stimulation and training of the heart, lungs (respiratory) and circulatory systems. Nowhere in there does it mention anything to do with fat burning. Yes it burns a few calories but do you know what else gets rid of a few calories? Not eating a few calories!!! In other words get your diet right and you literally can do next to no cardio and get lean as fooooook! That's the approach I'm doing anyway. Plus the benefits from doing sooooo much cardio, which is a catabolic activity meaning it causes muscle wastage, do not out way the negatives. Too much cardio will make you SKINNY, NOT LEAN! That's not advice btw, just a little rant.
ANYWAY, BACK TO ME:
So by making small alterations and manipulations to my daily dietary intake I'm hoping to get lean as a Motherf#&ker without the muscle loss and without the chronic cardio induced carb depleted crazy brain. Its hard enough coming to terms with the fact that I walk around at around 92kgs or more normally and stay there very easily, but I'll probably be onstage at closer to 82kgs, if I'm lucky. I'm dropping weight at just under half a kilo a week, or 1 pound a week and I'm currently sitting around 86kgs, 189lbs or 13 and a half stone. But I'm dropping body fat like grease off of a dirty kebab! And all with just 40 mins of shitty cardio in the whole week. Twenty of those are just for active recovery the day after a nasty leg session, stop blood pooling and speed up recovery, and the other 20 minutes is HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training, whereby I normally do some form of sprints on one of the cardio contraptions or do some skipping like a 5 year old girl. Guys like to think we look like boxers when we skip, we don't, you look like a nob, but its effective. I'm gonna use the line thats made me slightly famous over here in Perth with my clients and other people at the gym- the reason I do these 2 cardio sessions is so I can eat more, as cardio has been shown to increase digestive enzymes and improve digestive action (that's for you Chris, maaaaaaate!!!!). So obviously I choose the day I do my sprints, when my digestion is at its best, to smash an entire pizza from Domino's! No shit, every week without fail. BBQ chicken and pineapple (good for digestive enzymes too) 97% fat free pizza- 44g of protein, just 16g of fat (need it for testosterone to stay high while dieting) and 170g of carbs. Fits nicely into my daily macronutrient values, for now. Plus it refuels both my body and my brain for the next week of training and dieting, not to mention that the spike in calories is actually a way of increasing metabolic rate and fat burning plateaus. Thank you Domino's, I'll see you next week.
THIS WEEKS REVELATIONS:
This week has actually been a slight turning point for me with regards to energy levels and hunger. From weeks 20 until now I've been fine and thinking, 'geez, what's everyone shitting their knickers about? This shits easy man!'
Up until now that is. I've been working with something called 'Non-Linear Periodisation' or 'NLP', combining a week of slow eccentric intense hypertrophy training followed by a week of heavy-as-f#&k strength training. The theory is pretty simple- mass training one week followed by strength the next, a blueprint for building functional bulky muscle.
The strength weeks are greaaaaaaaat fun! My lifts are getting heavier and heavier every 2 weeks without fail, except for once when I tried deadlifting whilst wearing a belt so small that I couldn't stand up straight once I lifted the 210kg bar up to my knees. But I'm deadlifting 245kgs on the hex-bar, 210kgs on the Romanians, have had to change gyms to get dumbbells big enough for my bench presses and will have to change again soon (looking for gyms with 65kg+ dumbbells) and I push-pressed 105kgs the other day, all for reps of between 2 to 5. Not bad for a short ass, all 5ft 9" of me.
BUT, the intensity weeks suuuuuuuck! I'm really starting to feel the drop in stored energy and body fat and even the tiny drop in carbs. In my offseason I was eating around 700 grams of carbs per day, everyday. Thats around 2.3kgs of rice each day for those who don't know what that means. A shit load! My cheat meals, or 'refeeds' for a better term, tended to be either 3 large Domino's pizzas (photo attached below) with extra BBQ sauce or the Sean O'Mac happy meal from McDonalds which consisted of 4 double cheeseburgers, a chicken burger (coz they're healthy and have lettuce in them!), 10 chicken nuggets, 2 large fries (with Ketchup, has lycopene in which is great for my prostate apparently, so that puts it on par with a multivitamin right?) and 2 apple fry pies (fruit is healthy too). With a bottle of water I should add as I don't drink Coke, doesn't mix too well with my hyperactivity, crazy things happen!
Now though, I'm down to 200 grams of carbs per day, so not crazy low or even close to ketosis and I'm feeling the lack of energy in my training sessions. For the first time ever I was just one retch away from spewing my preworkout double chocolate Protowhey and oat brownie all over the gym floor during a superset of lying hammie curls and slow eccentric leg presses. No fun at all! I look forward to Friday nights when I get to eat a big kick ass meal that fills me up for hours and hours.........NANDO'S!!!! Jess and I share a whole chicken and a large chips, and by share I mean she gets whatever the f#%k I leave her!!! No chivalry here woman, Nando's is the exception to the rule, in fact I do believe that the word Nando actually used to mean 'not for women' many centuries ago. But angry women with hairy legs and bushy armpits protested and Nando's was changed forever. FACT!
So energy not great at the moment, something may need to be adjusted. But the royal kick in the nuts is that my appetite is through the roof right now. I'm not even craving the so-called 'bad' foods, although a Macca's double cheeseburger would probably give me the majority of an erection right now..................(tumbleweed rolls by)..............I'm just wanting more food but don't have the allowance for it. DAMN YOU TO HECK!!!
My saving grace though........TEA! And not just any shitty tea, not like the crappy Australian Bushells, pfffft, terrible! Or Red Bush, that shit tastes like arse and smells like the burnt pubic hairs of a red-head's bush! This Englishman drinks good old PG Tips, with pyramid shaped tea bags, tastes completely different just because of those oddly shaped bags. Yes I pay an extortionate amount for a mere 40 bags per box but those little pyramids of greatness are one of the few things keeping me from eating my own hand right now. Just the thumb would surely be ok, that squidgy bit on the top when you touch the inside of your thumb to the knuckle of your index finger, now that bit looks tender, bit of Nando's extra hot sauce...................where's my PG Tips Jess, I need one now!!!!!!!
Can you have too much tea is an interesting question? How much is too much? Will I get classed as 'unnatural' by the ANB federation and have my title stripped from me for having dangerously high levels of tea in my blood? Surely 20 a day is fine, although I'll definitely need to get my teeth whitened before getting up on stage now, get rid of the evidence. Don't want the other competitors knowing I had tea in my stack!
Anyway, thats about it for now. I wont be doing one every week as I just realised how boring I actually am and will struggle to write 12 successive blogs. Although people find Big Brother interesting so I might be ok. Keep an eye out.
Few pics below for your perusal. The pics of me in my panties are from 12 weeks out. Still not crazy lean but abs are coming through and getting separation in my legs. Should get a shit load better though.
Apologies for the crappiness of them, the camera is pretty old and I was doing them myself with a timed flash. Plus the fact that I have no idea how to pose properly.
PEACE OUT F$&KERS!!!!!
My post leg session meal every Wednesday night
A few English goodies found at Coles, including my PG Tips tea
