Skinny to Strong

I will miss my gym all this week as I am on a work related travel. As a matter of fact I am typing this post in the flight (go to love free wifi on virgin america airlines during this holiday season :). I feel bad that I have to take another recovery week because I took one just a couple of weeks ago. Actually there is a gym in the hotel I will be staying in, but I don't think I will have enough energy after coming back from work to go to the gym. These business trips usually mean that I have to put a lot of time at work and get things moving as quickly as possible. I might do some push-ups and squats with my luggage though :). Just to remind my body to keep the muscle during this week. Although this is an unexpected break, it may still be good. Since my left arm has been creating problems for my shoulder press, I hope this time will be put to good use by my body to repair the damage. My calories intake might also suffer now that I cannot have my protein shake first thing in th...

For the past couple of weeks I noticed a few things and have decided to change my diet and exercise as a response. First I am not gaining any more weight with my 1800 calorie diet. So I increased that to 2000 calories and now the weight is going up again slowly. I lost a week or more by just eating 1800 calories and not gaining weight. I have to keep this in mind for my next gaining phase. Every day counts for an ectomorph. The second thing I noticed is that while my weight remained constant I started to see an increase in body fat percentage. Again not good. In addition I was also feeling tired more often too. That is when I decided to give myself a recovery week. After coming back I did perform well in the lifts but still my weight would not increase and the body fat percentage was increasing. Moreover my left arm started to hurt whenever I did any dumb bell shoulder press. I had to skip the dumb bell press for 2 weeks now. This probably is an indication that my body is not recover...

I always like to eat a well rounded meal right after I workout instead of drinking protein shakes or eating protein bars. That is the reason I workout right before lunch. It works well. Protein bars and drinks should only be supplements to your diet but should not be the raw material for building muscle. The natural way to build body is to eat the natural food that is available. I found this interesting video on the same topic. Makes sense doesn't he? Eat solid natural food and lots of it right after your workout. At the end of the meal drink a glass of orange juice or grape juice. This will give you the insulin spike that you need and also some vitamin C to prevent muscle loss after the heavy bout of weight lifting. Give it a try and see the difference. I support eating a protein bar or drinking protein shake during workout session if it lasts a longer than 45 mins. But don't eat or drink so much that you will not be able to eat the huge amount of food that you will h...

Genetics play an important role in how you look and how much muscle you gain. All things remaining same a person with better genetics can gain more muscle than one without the gifted genetics. But what kind of genetics does a guy possess if he can gain 55 lbs of muscle in 12 months? I have no idea! But this guy over at bodybuilding.com claims to have done just that. Unbelievable. He kind of dwarfs my measly goal of gaining 20 lb of muscle in a year. And even that is a stretch goal for me. I kept it intentionally high in the hopes that I will at least be able to do the minimum of 12 lbs of muscle in a year. He says that he did not use any steroids, and I believe him. I think it is possible to gain so much muscle with proper training, rest and nutrition and most importantly good genetics. I wish he had a blog where he wrote his daily routine and nutrition. One thing is clear genetics play a huge role. I don't wish I had that kind of genetics. It is more fun and challenging with ...

It really is amazing what some rest can do for your mind and body. I am felling more energetic and in good spirit today. When I left my house to go to work, I was not sure if I will go to gym or take more rest. But as the day progressed I felt good about myself. I stretched a bit to see if any of the muscles are sore. No. Not at all. I decided to go ahead and hit the gym :). It was a good thing too. I did not feel tired, just fatigued after the work out. And guess what? I got 9, 7 and 5 reps for my benchpress with 110 lbs. You know what that means? It means its time to up the weight for the next benchpress. I can finally do a benchpress with 35 lbs on either side of the bar for the next time! It is time for the elusive weight to become true for the first time. It is so much fun to set goals and try to reach them. It is like building a house, brick by brick while you have the final completed house firmly imprinted in your mind. Even the deadlifts felt easy. I was able to do 190 lbs ...

I have been doing my strength and mass gaining exercises for about 6 weeks now. Time to take a break. Let the muscles recover completely before my next bout of extremities. I just completed shoulder and trapezoids exercises today and I did not feel good about it. All this week my performance has not been so good at the gym. First I did fewer reps than before week on my bench press this past Monday. I also did not do as well as I expected on my deadlifts too. Then I had a very weak bicep curl on Tuesday. Today (wednesday) I stepped into the gym with very low confidence. My body does not feel all energized. I felt tired even before I started. Not good. I picked up 42.5 lbs to start my shoulder press but again could not do any better than previous week. I could not finished my 3rd set at all. Not even a single rep. Which is bad news. My body is demanding rest. And rightly so too. It has been a little over 6 weeks since I started my mass gain phase. I need some rest. Respecting what my...

I found this interesting article , that tries to form a relation between muscle gain and the gain in the lifts. In the article the author gives a very simple relation between the amount of muscle you gain and the increase in 1 rep max weights for deadlift, squat and bench press. While it may not be accurate and perhaps not applicable to everyone it gives us a chance to formulate and set good goals. According to the author if you gain x lbs of muscle then you should be able to lift 4.5 times x lbs more weight in your deadlift. So for every lb of muscle you gain you should life 4.5 lbs more than you did before the gain. All the calculations are based on 1 rep max. Similarly for every lb of muscle you gain you should be able to sqaut about 4 lb more and bench press about 3 lb more. So for my next muscle gaining phase I will use this information and come up with better goals for my deadlifts, squats and bench press.

Here is the transformation from February 2009 to September 2009. This is after I bulked up from March to end of May and then leaned from June to end of September. February 2009 September 2009 There are some changes that you can notice. During that period I could only gain 0.4 lb of muscle, but lost 3 lbs of fat. Since I took the second photo at my lowest body fat percentage of 10%, you can see very light ab definition in there. Very exciting! But now that I am bulking again the ab definition is slowly disappearing.

For the sake of posterity, here are the weight and fat graphs from last month Body Weight Chart Body Fat Chart The graphs start from my lowest weight and fat points which was on September 23, 2009. I was about 117.3 lbs at 10.2% body fat at the time. I started eating more calories from there on and now after 5 weeks I am 120.8 lbs at 12.2% body fat. After about 2 weeks of eating a lot I started seeing that my body fat % was moving faster than my weight gradient. So I decided to cut back a little bit, but then I lost weight (and fat) quickly. And then again I increased my calories. Here are the gains I have made last month: Body weight gain: 3.5 lbs Body fat% gain: 2% Body fat gain: 2.8 lbs Muscle mass gain: 0.7 lb I fell very short at my muscle gain, adding just 0.7 lb of muscle while putting on a lot of weight.

So it has been a month since I started bulking up. How am I doing so far? Here are the raw numbers Exercises Squats: 170 lbs, 8 reps Deadlifts: 185 lbs, 10 reps Bench Press: 110 lbs, 4 reps Pull ups: Body weight + 25 lbs, 7 reps Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 6 reps I am doing well in all exercises except bench press. The exercise that is already closest to my goal for end of december is my pull-ups. I can already do 7 reps with 25 lbs hanging off my waist! You can check out my previous post for the goals I have set. Body weight and fat Weight: 120.8 lbs Fat %: 12.2% I am able to add weight as expected. But my body fat % shot up too much. My goal for end of december was to weight 125 lbs at 12% body fat. But I am already over the limit for my body fat %. So I have to lower it and at the same time increase my weight. Very unlikely. I might have to revise my goals, but I will see how it goes and hope to make better predictions for my next bulking phase. It is not at all easy to ke...

From time to time I meet people who routinely sleep 4 to 6 hours a day and they report they feel great with just so much sleep. I sleep 8 to 9 hours. They say that I am wasting a lot of time sleeping while I could be more productive. But I cannot sleep less than 8 hours. I feel very grumpy if I sleep less than 7 hours. And I feel great after a good night's sleep and perform well in my daily duties and also my workouts. I feel strong and motivated when I am rested. Big weights don't scare me as much in this motivated state. But when I don't sleep my 8 hours I feel a kind of fear that I may not be able to lift heavy. And without the motivation the weights feel heavier. It is not just a psychological factor it is really a physical problem. When you are in deep sleep your body and mind have little to worry about the worldly things. Your eyes are not picking up huge amount of data for the brain to process, you body is not moving, so no reason to stabilize various muscles or se...

In my previous post I wrote about my body weight, muscle weight and fat % goals. Today I will write about my weight training goals, in particular about my compound exercise goals. If I have to choose the 5 best exercises I would choose the following exercises and in that order Squats Deadlifts Bench Press Pull ups Overhead Press It is very easy to understand why I like them. These are the exercises where I can lift heavy. Heavy like lifting close to or more than your body weight. Lifting so much weight simply means one thing, those exercise require more number of muscles and also mostly bigger muscles. One cannot bicep curl one's body weight. The muscle is way too small and no other big muscles are involved. Also the distance these weights are moved is big. Work done is weight times the displacement. So you do more work moving the weights to a longer distance. Engaging more muscles means more hormone response, more repair and more muscles! Now back to my goals. On October ...