Skinny to Strong

After a long time, I am writing about my body stats. Since I follow a 3 months cycle, I will compare my weight and fat% with my March numbers. March 27, 2010 Weight: 122.2 lbs Fat %: 9.77% Fat: 11.94 lbs Lean Mass: 110.26 lbs June 26, 2010 Weight: 125.4 lbs Fat %: 9.46% Fat: 11.86 lbs Lean Mass: 113.54 lbs The difference Weight: 3.2 lbs Fat: -0.8 lbs Lean Mass: 3.28 lbs For the first time ever (in any given 3 month cycle), I gained weight while keep my fat about the same. Of course there could be some measurement errors too. But all in all I gained at least 3 lbs of muscle. Still keeping in line with my 1 lb per month gain. This is good enough for me. Trying to gain too much, too quickly is causing my fat to shoot up really quickly. I did not achieve this gain constantly over the period of 3 months. Sometimes I gained a lot and at other times I lost a few pounds. Here is the weight graph to show just that More graphs and correlation between them in my next post.

In my last post , I mentioned about the big switch from strength training to a more balanced muscle mass training and strength training. In this new program, I attempt to keep my weights in 80 to 90% 1RM instead of the heavy 90 to 95% 1RM, I used before for strength training. I used to do 2 workout per week during my strength training regimen. Usually it was on Mondays and Thursdays. Occasionally I would do another workout on Saturdays, time and motivation permitting. On Mondays and Thursdays I used to do 4 exercises. One for each body part Chest and triceps (bench press or dips) Back and biceps (rows or pull-ups) Quads and Hamstrings (deadlifts or squats) Calves or Abs They are mostly concentrated towards bigger muscle groups. On the occasional Saturdays I used to do these exercises Shoulder press Barbell Bicep curls Close grip bench press After switching to the new program and doing a couple of sessions with the lighter weights, I felt like I was not doing enough per w...

In my previous post I mentioned that I switched from strength training to a more balanced strength and muscle mass training. Why the switch? There are several reasons. First and foremost, it so happened that I have plateaued in most of my exercises. Especially bench, rows and pull-ups. I wanted to have some change in the routine to keep me moving without tiring myself to loss of motivation. I wanted to go back to my 8 reps exercises as I have done before I switched to 3x5 back in February 2010 so I can keep moving. Second, it is a well known fact that low rep (4-6) high weight (90-100% 1RM) exercises are useful in developing strength and high rep (8-10) and low weight (70-80% 1RM) exercises help in developing muscle mass. There are literally thousands (if not millions) of articles on this very subject. I will not elaborate especially because I do not know the mechanics or the biology behind the theory. So it is natural that I decided to go with some muscle mass trying to break the...

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long. Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM At the end of the 6 weeks and ass...

So I went to the gym with a co-worker who has not been doing workouts for a long time. We both used to workout together about 8 months ago. And then he stopped coming. I continued working out. After all this while he came to the gym and was pleasantly surprised with how much progress I made. He said "you really bulked up well and became very strong from the last time I remembered". He was the same guy who used to say I lift the "ladies weights". It is a great feeling coming from him. I still cannot compete with him in many exercises especially bench press and rows. Because I don't weigh as much as him and more weight - fat = more muscle and even after factoring out my relatively low body fat, I cannot match his muscle mass. I am equal to his strength when it comes to body weight exercises like pull-ups and dips. I still have to gain a ton of weight before I can make any big claims and gaining weight is the toughest thing for me. But for now, I am glad people...

As I mentioned in my last post, I got sick last weekend. I have allergies which means from time to time the runny nose and sneezing can take a toll on the immune system. The scenario gets even worse if an antihistamine is taken right after a heavy bout of exercise during a season of flu. The antihistamines suppress the immune system further, allowing viruses to attack the human body. This is the sequence of events that took place last week and is usually the sequence that leads to me getting sick often during flu seasons. Anyway long story short, I contracted this flu from a co-worker when I was at my weakest on Thursday evening last week. I did not feel too bad on Friday morning, but come nightfall I was totally exhausted and running a slight fever. Matters got even worse on Saturday. I was only fully recovered by Wednesday. However the damage is already done. I worked hard forcing myself to overeat a couple of weeks ago which gave me an impressive 1.4 lbs gain (body weight is 124.6...

I am feeling sick today. Perhaps some virus that I caught at work yesterday. I have runny nose and itchy, dry sore throat slight fever and headache. Have been making good progress so far. This is an unfortunate time to get sick. I know what happened when I got sick last time. I went down from 121.4 lbs to 117.8 lbs in just 5 days. Almost lost 4 lbs. This time I just hope I can at least keep my current weight. When I am healthy I have to force myself to eat a ton of food just to maintain my weight. But when I am sick it is hard to eat so much, so many times. Moreover digesting protein even in the form of milk, eggs or chicken is very hard on the stomach. And I know my body will ravage the muscle if I don't eat enough protein everyday. I will try to drink as much milk and eat eggs during this time. But I am not positive that I will be able to maintain my muscle and weight. Will do another post after I get well again along with the muscle and weight loss stats :(.