How important is physical conditioning to you?

[darthtrader]

hey Nick1984, reading that fires me up, heh. I use to be obsessed with bb/powerlifting in highschool. When I was 18 I was 5'8" 190 and cut. I won the state highschool powerlifting competition with 500/330/550. That was with a cycle of testosterone suspension though, my foolish youth...heh. I actually had wanted to break the state jr records but gave up when this guy ripped me off on roids twice.
Now i'm 30, same height, 215 with a gut. I tried to deadlift a month ago and gave up after how hard 2 plates a side was. I just want to get cut and have the girly man beach muscles now.

What kind of cutting diet do you use? I've been reading stuff on tnation, been trying a 1800 cal a day diet, egg whites, fiberous veg, tuna, chicken, ehh thats it but this sucks mentally.

You ever try a whey shake with a half a cup of raw oats? I think i'm going to change up to 2 of those a day, then an egg white meal and chicken meal.

One thing with being away from BB/powerlifting for 10 years is the only advancements that seem to have been made are on the drug side. I remember hearing about that stuff Mark McGwire was using but now its illegal, typical.

I guess I'm glad I'm not 20 now though, I would be jacked on dbols and clen.

[Nick1984]

1800 cals a day is not really a lot especially at your height, you're starving your muscles!

Basically for the last 4 months I've been bulking eating as much as I could every day and I didn't really care what I ate, i just needed the cals.

I started my cutting a week ago to get ready for our summer. Basically I've just started by making small changes to my diet. Instead of full fat milk, cheese, yoghurt etc I've switched to low fat. I also have started adding in more protein powder into my diet to increase my protein intake as I reduce carbs. Fat intake remains the same its about a 40/45/15 split between proetin/carbs/fat but I'm not that strick. By base metabolic rate needs approx 3000 cals a day to maintain and when you add in the fact that I work out I need around 3400 to maintain my weight. To begin with I started to cut out 300 cals a day from my diet through simple food substitutions and started walking 20 mins a day after a workout and 1hr a day on my off days.

Also water intake has increased. I'm drinking 3-4 liters of water a day at a minimum. In my first week I've dropped 1/2 a pound and thats about right. I don't want to loose faster than that because any weight loss with be catabolic and I don't want to undo all that hard work at the gym to pack on the muscle mass.

In 2 weeks I'll start adding in boxing to my weekly exercise routine as it's both fun and fantastic at burning off fat. Try hitting a heavy bag for 4 rounds it's not easy!

Plyometric exercies will also start to come in around week 4-5 of my cutting routine. Plyometric jumps and leg work will be the bulk of my plyometric exercise routine. Plyometrics help to maintain muscle mass but develop explosive power through fast movements. Fantastic if you're training as a sprinter, boxer, or football (any code) player.

After 8 weeks the diet will become very strict. I'll start to slightly starve my body with a 2300 calorie per day diet plus daily cardio. On training days, 30 mins after sessions. On off days 2 hours of cardio. On the off days 2 sessions of HIIT sprints (hill sprints) will be incorporated to the routine as well as walking (i hate jogging, its bad for my knees and its only marginally better than walking at a brisk pace).

As for whey with raw oats...I LOVE IT. The oats add a nice texture to the drink and its a great source of slow release carbs. I have that in the morning with b'fast (my biggest meal of the day). Take your carbs in early in the morning and afternoon so you're fuelled up for the day!

As for exercises I'm a great fan of compound exercises both when bulking and cutting. Bench press, deadlifts, squats, dips, pull-ups, bent over rows etc are the best exercises imho. Also olympic type lifts such as snatches, clean and press are great too. I only really do isoloation exercies to hit stubborn muscles that haven't popped out enough from compounds, so i'll do bicep curls, shrugs, and calves in isolation. I also use isolation to pre-exhaust a major muscle before I do a big compound lift.

[Nick1984]

Btw, as an ex-powerlifter you should love doing all those big compounds. The technique you use to lift the weight is different to BB though. I always aim for hypertrophy and complete muscular failure in my sets (I'm a fan of Mike Mentzer's training style) and so I keep strict form as best I can and I keep my ego in check when lifting. I'd rather lift a lighter weight correctly than a heavy weight incorrectly.

Many guys say they have 200+ pound bench presses but you see them lower the bar down only 15-20 cms and press back up thinking they're somehow awesome... lol.

With bad form I can bench around 140 kilos or more not sure what my 1RM is though. If I take it seriously its hard to bench 110kgs with strict form! Squatting is the same, some guys load up a bar with 200+ kilograms and squat down a few inches, convulse back up. It looks like they're trying to make love to the air in front of them haha!

[dalby]

in answer to the question - very.

i have a background in olympic style weightlifting and to a lesser extent powerlifting.

i weight train 2-5 days a week, eats lots of protein and i love working out

[gedward3]

Good Thread Reaver.

Just thought id say hello on my first post.

Physical fitness does keep your mind in order to say the least. My backgound was that i trained and competed in Thai Boxing for 6 years but retired about 7 years ago when getting hit hard started to hurt and the healing process went from 7-10 days when i was younger to up to 6 or seven weeks near the end of my short fighting career of 16 fights. My regime now is 3 or 4 days running, weights and bag sessions Mon - Fri with healthy food and no alcohol.

Then me and my girl call weekends Fat Free Saturday and Sundays. Basically pigging out within reason on booze and whatever we want.

I'd agree that some sort of physical exertion is good as more bloodflow to the parts that need it most, our brains is better than nothing. Whether that be a brisk walk for 10 minutes or a good 2hr gym workout depends obviously on age and preference.

Anyway first post over and hope to join you guys in more postings as i have been lurking for a while even though i read this site every day.

Great site Soul

[darthtrader]

40/45/15 sounds interesting. I went on a low carb diet 2 years ago and had got back down to 180 in the fastest time I ever had, my body seems to respond great to that type of diet but its so hard mentally. I was going to try to get rid of carbs and just add olive oil for calories but this is not working. I'm not too worried about losing muscle, I started lifting when i was 14 and having a decent amount of muscle just seems to be a statis point for my body.
The thing that sucks is I use to go to this dungeon style gym, i think there was one woman in the whole place but it closed down. I've checked out gyms here now and its like a social hour, 3x more expensive and most stuff i dont want. also it was cool because no one lifted stupid like that, it was all powerlifters and roided up bodybuilders, you would have been laughed out of the place. No suprise its gone, hehe.
Do you buy whey online? is gnc competative at all? Something cool i notice is that whey is even cheaper than chicken or eggs now, maybe i'll even go to 3 whey servings a day, i always liked the taste of protein shakes.

[Nick1984]

Low carb diets are hard physically cause your body craves carbs for energy. No way I could go doing a heavy leg session unless im carbed up (leg day is my cheat meal day hehe). You'll be starving your muscles if you severely restrict carb intake. Sure it takes longer to loose the fat, but you also get to keep most of the muslce you worked so darn hard for!

GNC is pretty pricey stuff for what you get. I get //http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/opt/whey.html from a local store where it's cheap as chips. I love the flavours they have and it also blends really easily in either milk or water. For a mega protein shake I take 2 scoops in low fat milk, one tbps of peanut butter, 2 eggs, and a bananna and all in a blender till creamy. Thats like having a whole meal in liquid form! Sometimes if its a hard workout I put in some raw oats as well.

[Reaver]

hey check out 1fast400.com or bulknutrition.com (same company) instead of GNC.

Good deals on supplements, etc. A TON cheaper than GNC. I've been using them a couple years now. No disappointments.

[dalby]

bulknutrition (aka 1fast400) is a GREAT website for bulk stuff.

btw, here's a great way to eat oatmeal...

first of all, i prefer NON rolled oats. irish style steel cut outs (cylindrical instead of smooshed flat. they have more nutrients as well, since they don't press them).

oats
milk (can use nonfat dry milk powder)
banana protein powder
egg whites

once you cook the oats, add the milk, powder and egg whites and cook it up
then add - splenda, and slices of fruit. (banana, etc.)

can also add cinnamon (which is actually a nice fat loss aid believe it or not)

if you are really hardcore, fry up some liver to eat with your oatmeal!!!

[darthtrader]

Thanks for those links, I was wondering if GNC would have had to lower prices by now with online shops, I'm surprised they are even still in business.

I think I'm going to wait to go on a ketosis diet until i lose 30lbs, not until next summer to try to get abs. I'll just go with 2 cups of oatmeal a day for carbs spread out.

Something I found that I can still eat oatmeal is to just take 6 or 7 egg whites, throw in some oatmeal then cook it like a pancake. Its pretty good with hot sauce, or at least it doesn't make me want to puke .

Something else I found, I learned to make an indian dish a few months ago. You just dice up a huge onion, throw in a pan with olive oil then throw in coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger powder and red chilli powder. Let it brown up, then throw a half cook chicken breast in cutup. When its almost done throw in plain yogurt, its like ghetto chicken tikka masala. If you can find an indian grocer you can get huge bags of the spices for a few bucks each. Throw any other vegetables you want in.