Skinny to Strong

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...

Yesterday I did some chest and tricep exercises. I also did heavy squats. And today I was feeling very tired. My legs were hurting a bit when I step up or down. But that pain is nothing compared to my back pain. My lower back has been in rough weather since monday when I did deadlifts. Then on tuesday I did shoulder press which also put some stress on my lower back. On wednesday I did some hanging leg raise for my abs, but the negatives also applied stress on my back. Come thursday it was squats time. And everyone knows how many muscles it uses. It goes with out saying my back was getting a good pounding. And finally today I did rows and back extensions. Back move man. The rows hurt a little but I did not do heavy weights nor did I push myself. But then came back extensions which I did with a 60 lb dumbbell in my hands. That is the last straw. Although I completed all the sets, my back is taking revenge on me now. I am feeling a lot of pain from mid to lower back and I might have spr...

With my last post I have completed recollecting my past bulking and leaning phases. Now to the present. After my first round of bulking and leaning I understood my body more. I still am not sure what is the best formula for leaning. However I think I have a better understanding of how to bulk up. Since it has been over 4 months of leaning I decided to switch to bulking phase now. Starting this week I am increasing my calorie intake and see if I can lift more weights. Here is what I found out about me when bulking: I should not be overeating suddenly but instead increase my calorie intake slowly and let me body see the change in calories. I should be eating more carbs than either fats or proteins. In fact I decided on 60% carbs, 20% protein and 20% fat ratios. Without all the carbs my body hates me. I have headaches and feel very tired. I should reduce the number of exercises, sets and reps. Instead I should concentrate on lifting heavy with low number of reps. Since my body recovers...

My love affair with P90X lasted for about 3 months before I gave up. Why? Because I was simply not seeing any more results. I am not saying P90X is flawed. Neither am I endorsing it. It just did not work for me. I think P90X works for people who are very fit at some point in their life, but have since become overweight. Even in the infomercial for P90X, they mostly show people who were rowers or athletes or runners or well trained people who slacked and then took up P90X and saw good results. I am not one of them. I was never fit. Never lifted weights, never ran more than 100 yards never lifted more than 30 lbs using any known muscle nor was in rowing, boxing, tennis or any other physical activity ever. I just have a weak body. And it has always been that way. So I could not use P90X to get back to my fit state. After discovering that it is not working well for me I started searching for some workouts for skinny folks like me. I came across stronglifts . This workout was different. A...

I first started recording P90X stats from september 2008 onwards. But all the data that I wrote in a notebook went missing. So I stared to record them online in google spreadsheet. This started sometime on december 6, 2008. This was also the time at which point I have finished phase I of P90X and just decided to split the total time into 2. When I first started P90X I was barely able to do 4 pull-ups. It is surprising enough that I can do any pull-ups at all ;). I was able to do about 10 push-ups at that time. By early december of 2008, I was able to do 7 pull-ups and get around 20 push-ups! That is a great progress isn't it? Instead of going through each workout and how much I did I will just copy paste the progress stats from my spreadsheet here. The first one is for Chest Shoulders and Triceps. Notice how I have 1 date above and another below? That is how I used to split the workout into 2 parts for 2 weeks. The time is whe...