Try high reps for some good lean fun

The posting seems to have come a halt as life (school exams+work) has been busy lately, but with only one more week of classes things should slow down a bit and I will be posting more often.

I have missed posting many workouts, but seeing as I was on an extended bodybuilding phase I didn't leave much out. I just finished a high rep phase, which I described a while back as type of routine I work in to maintain muscle endurance as well as definition, burn lots of calories, and just to mix it up. Those of you who have the pleasure of training with me (ie my beloved victims) would recognize this cycle's fast pace and splendid burning sensations. I feel your pain. Here are two of the high rep workouts I did to give an idea:











For those of you interested in the details of this cycle, there are a few tricks I use in addition to the obvious less weight less rest more reps. I also like to work in different styles of exercise, such as more dumbells for greater range of motion, and calisthenics to improve coordination balance etc.. Also, when I super set exercises, I will choose two for the same muscle group, rather than opposing muscle groups, to really get them burning.

Sometimes, to really mix things up, I will perform Tabata intervals on my high reps days. A select few of my clients have experienced these and know how 'fun' they are. Feel free to check them out at:

Tabata Training

I've also been playing around with the weight gainer shake recipe a bit and will give an updaed version in my next post. Suffice to say, by having two a day (an extra 2000 calories) I was able to gain 4lbs of muscle in one week with no change in bodyfat. That's gotta be a record.

Weights, Nutrition, and Beer

The past week has been rather crazy. With school winding down, finding time to post has proven difficult. The same goes for working out, so my last 'official' workout was a chest+back day (shown below), and what has followed since are whatever workouts I've been able to fit in between work and class.
I have been continuing on an extended bodybuilding phase to aid in my goal of gaining a few pounds of muscle. I have been having the vegan weight gainer recipe daily and feel like it is really helping me add lean weight without all the discomforts of powders.

Nutritional Notes:
More on why we avoid animal protein: Here's a (disturbing) glimpse of the book I keep recommending, Eat To Live, showing some of the multitude of informative graphs and charts it contains. The pictures below come from Dr. Fuhrman's blog.



If you are a skeptic who needs the source of such information (good for you!) I urge you again to purchase the book or view one of the of sites below, all packed with research, such as:

Saved By Nutrition

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

and, of course:

DrFuhrman.com

After you've done your reading, or if you can take such information on my word, you should be well on your way to incorporating more fresh produce into your diet. The literature says it all. With such a clear correlation between too little unrefined plant intake and America's #1 and #3 killers (heart disease and cancer), it's no wonder our fridge looks like this:

And, if you are wondering about what I've got circled here, just remember:

"Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Birthday Muscles

The strain of my birthday was such that I could not post until now. I have had a couple hurried mini workouts, but my last real one was on the 15th, and is listed below.


Aside from the workouts being less-than-optimal, it has been a fantastic few days with much fun and frivolity. Well, okay, a little fun and frivolity. Now you might ask yourself, what does a personal trainer/almost bodybuilder/nutrition 'enthusiast' get for his birthday? The answer should be obvious: Arnold Paraphernalia!! As you can see below, this year I must have been good because everyone really delivered:


So the birthday was clearly a success. Now our weight room will be properly adorned with the inspiring images of Arnold. Stay tuned for some amazing gains.

My Weight Loss So Far

Here's an interesting thing: even though I can't say I've really made any special effort to lose weight over the seven years that I've been vegan, I have lost a lot. Most of it very slowly over 5 years of not even exercising or eating well, and the last chunk of it very swiftly while working out and gradually improving our diet. I think it was about a year ago or so that I decided I was actively going to try to lose body fat for better muscle definition - I work so hard for them and it annoyed me that I couldn't see most of them. So I tried calorie restriction to a supposed ideal 1800 for my size, basically reducing my portion sizes but still eating the same things. And I did lose some weight, but I also felt weak and had headaches all of the time, and since the point was to show off muscles that were going to disappear if I didn't have the stamina to work out like I had been it seemed wise to abandon that course.

I tried doing more cardio regularly, and strangely that didn't do much for me either except bore me to tears. I like running, but only at night, and apparently that's not safe according to some people I know...In any case, I could not get past a certain weight that I've been stuck at for almost a year, despite working out insanely hard and eating all whole foods and not too much. Over the 5 weeks or so that we adopted this policy of cutting out almost all starchy, low-nutrient food and eating huge salads with everything and more vegetables, I've lost 6 lbs somehow. I'm probably eating more than I was before that! According to our body fat scale that gives percentage of fat, pounds of water weight, and pounds of muscle, I've lost all fat, and I'm certainly not any weaker, as the chest/back workout I did today will attest.

My new goal is to be able to bench press my body weight, and based on how much I can press 10 times, my max *should* be about 105 lbs. That's only about 7 lbs below my current weight, so this is doable.

More Great Workouts and Some Important Nutritional Observations

Two more workouts to list today. I am now in my power phase, so my workouts have been mostly me sitting around and once in a while lifting very heavy weights. It's not very exciting, but it is the best way to maintain great strength and muscle density. My legs day coming up will look a lot like my last two, seeing as I still don't want to push my knee, so don't expect anything enlightening there.

Yesterday's routine was:


And today's went something like:


I'd like to take a moment to brag on some new Personal Records. Yesterday I bench pressed 300lbs for the first time, but my spotter (Wes) had his hands on it so it doesn't quite count. I have pressed 295lbs with strict contest form before, so 300lbs is not a stretch. I am even happier that I improved my weighted pull up record, performing one pull up with 100 extra pounds unaided, then two more with assistance from another excellent spotter, William.

Today my entire shoulder routine involved weight I have rarely or never tried, so it was a challenging day, and thanks in part to some excellent spotting by Marcella I was able to get some more personal records. Power days may be boring, but it is fun to brag after the fact, and you never know what your limit is until you risk exceeding it.

Another note on our diet: I'd like to take this opportunity (after demonstrating that I can lift some heavy weights) to mention that my strength has increased as compared to when I was on an omnivorous diet. That's right, eating plants instead of animals has helped me get stronger. Not only that, but when I ate meat and dairy products regularly I weighed 185lbs and had 12% bodyfat. Now I weigh 171lbs and maintain about 6-7% bodyfat; so I lift more, weigh less, and easily maintain a defined physique. Neat huh? What I am pointing out here is that a plant based diet will not only make you healthier and longer lived, it can improve your fitness, performance and body composition (fat %) significantly as well.

I enjoy telling people when they ask how much cardio I do that I barely do any. That doesn't mean I advocate skipping cardio, as it is very important for weight loss and overall health, it just means I am able to stay very lean without worrying about how to burn off tons of excess calories. Sure, I have a fast metabolism, but on an omnivorous diet I had the same metabolism I do now (or faster since I was several years younger), I preformed around 10 hours of intense cardio a week, and I still carried around 15 extra pounds of badyfat compared to now! All these are just some of the reasons I have strongly come to believe that nutrition is much more than half the battle with regards to fitness and health.

Hooray for Chest/Back Day!

My favorite day finally came around again today, and I also had slightly sore legs for the first time in ages. I had a cancellation this morning so I found myself in an empty gym with nearly two full hours to work out (hence all the sets).

This was a 'typical' bodybuilding style routine because I am in that phase again. I try to follow a 3 day split of chest/back, Shoulders/Arms, and Legs because this potentially allows for hitting each muscle group twice a week; but lately it's been more like a 4 day split because of time constraints.

I usually (depending on my immediate goals) change what phase I am in every time I start my split again. The three main phases I go through are Bodybuilding (for muscle size and definition), Power Lifting (for muscle strength and size), and Hi-Rep training (for muscle endurance and definition). While these are the main categories, they are just guidelines I use to maintain the best combination of form and performance, as well as to keep things interesting. No two workouts look exactly alike. I will go into more detail on each individual phase as I go through them, so stay tuned.

The Doubtful Salad, and other stories

Chest/Back day, second only to shoulder day imo. Sadly, we got a late start so I had to work out at home, followed of course by the usual fruit/protein shake ...
I've decided that a rushed, sub-par home workout, even breaking 1 workout into 2, is better than taking an extra rest day. This way my metabolism at least gets a boost while I'm sitting on my ass at work all day, not to mention the help with stress reduction.

Speaking of stress, it's quarter close - any finance or accounting people out there know what that means: long hours and scrambling to get 500 things at once done by yesterday.

Tied to my desk today, I had to bite the bullet and finally go downstairs to the company cafeteria to get food. Fortunately, the salad special today was a black beans and tomato concoction that a sign advised me to "smother with cheddar cheese and imagine that I'm on a southwestern getaway" or something to that effect.

I compromised with some black olives, but built a massive spinach salad on the side instead of the cheese, and anyway a southwestern getaway would be uncomfortable this time of year - Virginia is humid enough right now. I even took a picture of the salad with my cell phone:

I forgot how the average mass-market dressing takes like a gelatinous, chemical-laden goo. Oh well.

I made veggie fajitas and black bean soft tacos for dinner with the random stuff below: onions, squashes, bell pepper, rainbow chard, and kale. The strawberries were for eating while I cooked; I missed my afternoon fruit b/c I was unwilling to spend 99 cents on one of the decrepit bananas available for purchase.

I mashed up the tofu in a pan w/ a potato masher, added a can of black beans and some cumin and garlic powder. Just black beans would work, too, or even just the veggies, but that would be too small to satisfy Derek's man-sized hunger.

Meanwhile I steamed the 1/2 lb of greens and sauteed the veggies with pepper and a dash of salt. I add just a bit of salt when sauteing to draw the water out of the vegetables so they stay crisp.

Trader Joe's makes whole-wheat tortillas with just 50 calories a piece; how do they do it? Anyway, that's a good thing; those giant white flour tortillas they use at places like Chipotle have about 350 empty calories.

We had a big salad too, of course.