Post 10 week program summary

As I have mentioned in a few previous blogs, I have started incorporating body building protocols in order to experiment with fat loss and mass gaining.  For athletes, too much emphasis on body building as opposed to strength building can have dire consequences, often leading to impingement or injury.  Since my previous protocols have always been about strength rather than size, I was a little apprehensive about switching to something more muscle development oriented, with less emphasis on nervous system development.  So to try and maintain some level of functional strength, I have applied a 50/50 split of compound and isolation, applying body building protocols in both cases.

So what do I mean when I talk about protocols?  Well, think of body building and what the aim of body building is.  If you thought the aim of body building is to build muscle then you are right.  In essence, the real aim is to cause as much damage to your muscle fibres as possible, in order to promote growth and repair when resting, without injuring yourself of course.  With goals like this, it's inevitable that you will be sore the day after if not suffer an onset of DoMS the day after that.  However, with strength training, the aim is to gradually build strength, by training your nervous system to activate more muscle tissue, with the side effect of building muscle at the same time.

Strength Protocols
Strength training has the disadvantage of being a slow mechanism for building muscle, while being extremely effective at developing the nervous system.  Because strength typically involves more weight and fewer repetitions, soreness is often less noticeable, enabling an athlete to train every working day of the week and even multiple times a day; I have been there, training as much as eight times a week, twice a day on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, whilst resting Wednesday and on weekends.  During this program, which lasted for about six months, my strength gains were enormous, even though I didn't actually gain that much actual lean mass.  However, the nervous system is much quicker to adapt to changes than muscle tissue, meaning loss of strength over time is more costly than loss of mass over the same period.

Body Building Protocols
Body building is the natural opposite to strength training.  Whilst both are focused on a similar goal, in that you want to maximise your potential in terms of strength and size, body building focuses on the aspects of weight lifting that will ultimately result in more muscle mass and definition than practical strength.  For example, you will rarely see a body builder whose nervous system is adapted enough to allow them to lift atlas stones or perform other feats associated with power and strength.  What they are however, are masters of being able to recruit individual muscles on demand, rather than collectively, hence why they are extremely good at flexing pectoral muscles.  The protocol that enables this is isolation and frequency.  Muscles are trained to failure on each set, sometimes even past failure when performing X reps or drop sets.  Typically, the repetitions would be moderate to high, with fewer sets and less overall volume.  That's not to say one protocol is better than the other, they merely have two different goals.

My Protocol
So what have I put together?  I have incorporated a moderate repetition program that takes each set to failure, while still incorporating specialist compound movements, like dead lifts, roll-outs, snatches, cleans and squats.  Body builders would usually favour leg press machines over squats, since it isolates the legs, requiring less stabilisation and engagement from the upper body.  By maintaining some compound movements in the program, the hope is that the nervous system will maintain familiarity in recruiting muscle groups collectively rather than individually, which will ultimately mean I will still be able to continue the enjoyment of strength related lifts on non program specific days.  However, this is experimental, so only time will tell.

My Program Results
So ten weeks has now gone by in the blink of an eye, and I feel it's time to share some of the results before I start my next ten week strength/body building program.  The figures for the body composition are not accurate in the slightest, but they are consistent.  I used a set of scales that employs BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) to calculate body fat percentages.  The scales are cheap and this method of body fat calculation is poor in even the best scales, so I just had to run with it.  The percentage is out by about 10%, though the thing about these scales is that they are consistent.  So although the fat percentage is wrong, it will hover around that same area allowing me to plot changes in body composition.  For the next ten week program, I will look at obtaining some callipers and measuring body composition properly.

Start of program
Weight: 82.7 kg
Body fat: 21.25 kg
Lean mass: 61.45 kg

End of program
Weight: 84 kg
Body fat: 22.18 kg
Lean mass: 61.82 kg

Gains
Weight: 1.3 kg
Body fat: 930 g (32 oz)
Lean mass: 370 g (13 oz)

Though I gained some fat, about a kg according to the scales, though in reality this is probably more like 500g based on the good old reliable finger calliper test, there was actually an extraordinary amount of muscle tissue gained.  In a year, if this consistency is maintained, would equate to a gain of nearly 2 kg of lean mass. Impressive!

Since I am able to maintain my body fat quite well through intermittent fasting protocols, it wouldn't take much to shed the excess weight gained at the end of the next ten week program, repeating the process every twenty weeks for maintenance.

How it all looks:
As you can see from the charts, there was a definite steady increase in mass, if you ignore the fluctuations from the inclusion of non reference day weigh-ins.  At the same time, my body fat didn't really increase all that much, even though there was some peculiar spike mid way through.  Again, I can only attribute this to the BIA calculations being sensitive to other factors like humidity or my hydration levels.

Lean mass chart:

Fat chart:

My Program
So what did I do for the last ten weeks?  Here it is:

Monday:
Dumb bell bench press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Shoulder press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Dips: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: Push ups to failure

Tuesday:
Light jump rope work, conditioning finisher and stretching

Wednesday:
Dead lift: 3 x 8-12 to failure week 1,3,5,7,9; 3 x 15-18 to failure week 2,4,6,8,10
Leg press: 3 x 20-25 to failure
Hamstring extensions: 3 x 15-20 to failure
Finisher: Lunges to failure

Thursday:
Light jump rope work, stretching

Friday:
Lat pull downs/pull ups: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated biceps curls: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated rows: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: EZ bar cheat curls 3 x 8-12 to failure

Weekend: Rest

The dead lift followed a weight reduction repetition increase on even weeks to maintain strength endurance.  Also, I found the strictness required for the body building protocol meant I had to move away from pull-ups for lat pull downs, until I was able to increase the weight to beyond body weight; which was difficult given that my weight was increasing at the same sort of rate.

Onwards an upwards for the next ten weeks, incorporating some changes to the program...

IF: Hunger spikes

Not been long since my last blog entry, but just wanted to log this hunger spike I am having right now, namely to make a note of the time but also to help take my mind away from it.  Hunger spikes typically occur about 4 - 5 hours after eating.  Sleep will typically throw this askew, since we would generally sleep for longer; hopefully 7 - 8 hours or more.  I have often wondered how long it would be after the first surge in hormones before the next surge of hormones occurs that makes you get that hunger feeling.  At this point, I am not starving, so the feelings are completely psychological, developed by hormonal changes occurring in my body.  These feelings will gradually subside over the next couple of hours and I will forget I was ever even hungry.  I am expecting to get another hunger surge right before I eat, since the psychological act of cooking will no doubt stimulate a hormonal response again.  According to research, when I eat, my body will overcompensate with growth hormone production, to maximise on nutritional uptake.  This is where some of the benefits to IF are to be made!

Anyway, lets set this as a 14 hour precedent, which means you will experience hunger 14 hours after having eaten your last meal, when fasting through sleep, and 5 hours since awakening.  I woke up at 5 am this morning, as I do every morning, and I was at work by 6:30 am.  I am planning on going to the gym for some last minute rehab (light cardio, stretching), in preparation for tomorrow's lifting programme.

Summary so far (to be continued...):
Eat -> Stop (8:30pm) -> Hunger (10:30am) -> (...) -> Eat (6:30pm)

IF: 22 Hour day

Today is a very sedentary day, with little exercise, so it's perfect to throw in a 22 hour fast.  Essentially, I haven't eaten anything since 8:30 last night, which was some dry roasted peanuts that followed the chilli con carne I made with a smal sweet potato (Meal 2).  Although I only had two meals yesterday, they were substantial and I must have gotten around 160 g of protein and 50 - 60g of carbs, with all the macros from the kale, onions, peppers, beans and whole eggs I consumed.  It is now 9:45 am and I haven't eaten for over 13 hours.  I have another 9 hours before dinner.

I had been supplementing my fasts with whey protein isolate (pretty much pure unflavoured whey), but this is not ideal since it's calorific and thus is technically breaking fast.  Now I have opted for BCAA powder, which is virtually zero calorie and is much smaller doses (5g) compared to the whey (20g).  So all I have consumed this morning is a multi-vitamin tablet, cod-liver oil, black coffee (no sugar), water and my BCAA powder (5g).  I will be dosing up with another 5g of BCAA at about 2pm, and there after it will be just water until about 6pm, when I will hit the food.

When breaking fast, it's important to consume fibrous foods first, to ensure that digestion does not become congested with protein dense food, having been emptied during the fast.  I will be supplementing with ground psyllium husks, to improve my fibre uptake.  Other than that, my fibre intake this evening will come from kale and onions, with my first fasting meal being liver, bacon and onions with sweet potato mash.

Reference Day:
Until now, my reference day has been on a Monday morning, first thing.  I will be moving this to a Friday, since I will be making Thursday a consistent extended-fast day, with every other fast day being 16 hours instead of 22.  In theory, since I consume lots of carbs on the weekend, versus carbs I am consuming during the week, a Friday morning reference day makes more sense.  So tomorrow will be my first point of reference for Friday's, tailing from Monday's reference.  Let's see what fat loss it will show for this week.