Thanks, bro.
Tinybro4lyfe.
Or not.
We shall see.

27.5.2013

Figured that it's best to start really low weight-wise and go full nazi on form.

Squat
3x5x35 kg

Bench
3x5x40 kg

Deadlift
1x5x50 kg

Everything felt fine. Didn't die. Didn't even injure myself.
Success. Gonna be adding 2.5 kg w presses and squat and 5 kg w DL.

The whole shebang took about 35 mins including 5 mins warm-up run so decided to do a bit of extra pressing. That's what I plan to keep on doing anyway. Vanilla SS sucks for upper-body.

DB-Incline-Bench
5x10x12,5 kg's

YNDTP. DGAF.

Made some brownies today, no secret psychedelic ingredients this time.
Thick chocolate frosting and crushded hazelnuts on top and chunks of dark chocolate inside.
**** C4, jack3d and NO explode, this is the nuts pre-workout.



Around 600 cals w/ a glass of milk.

29.5.2013

Squat
3x5x37,5 kg

OHP
3x5x30 kg

DB-OHP
5x10x10 kg's

Never done these before, surprisingly hard compared to equivalent weight with BB-version.

Deadlift
1x5x55 kg

I recorded some form-check-videos but was too lazy to upload them yet.
At first glance it looked like I might be squatting too deep and therefore unnecessarily rounding my low-back.
Deadlift looked all-right but I might be actually over-extending my low-/mid-back.
OHP seeemed fine.

My first reaction watching these was "Whoa!, Am I really that skinny? Need to bulk, bulk, bulk, eat, eat, eat!"
Serially, obv I see myself in the mirror every day and knew I'm skinny, but damn.

Squat (all 3 sets, 3 angles)



- Need to cut the depth imo
- Knees keep cracking like a mother****er.
- Not sure about the bar placement, I think it's not quite high-bar but not quite low-bar, either. But it feels fine so I guess that's okay. Low-bar is what I'm trying to do FWIW.

OHP (3rd set)

- Fine, elbows could be a tiny bit more forward



DL



- Mid-back seems over-arched whereas low-back flat at best.
- I think my mid-back is hypermobile and low-back lacks mobility and thus when I try to extend my low-back, the extension takes place up higher in the spine instead. How to fix that, that's something I'd really like to know.

Yeah I don't think you should alternate bulking and cutting cycles either. Just bulk to 160 and reasses. In my opinion you would have better success doing both strength training and bodybuilding. I was 118 pounds at age 18 and I am taller than you. I gained quality muscle with large compound movements done in the 6-12 rep range. Adding a backoff set to your SS routine is a quick and easy compromise. No, you won't die from the extra set.

Workout-routine officially loco-approved and the Connoisseur of H&F posting drool.gif over a picture of my baked goods.
What a good day.

Yeah, I hear you, bro.

I've now twice fattened myself up to 71 kg. Both times I was rather disappointed tbh. Looked just about the same, just had a thicker fat layer on me.
4 reasons I can think of:
- Trying to bulk too fast / too big of a calorie surplus
- Too little volume
- Sucky genes when it comes to putting on muscle
- Broken low-back stopping me from doing things w/ 100% WIM or altogether

Good news is the first 2 of those things I have full control over and low-back thing seems to be in check now.

The plan is to keep on doing extra high-rep upper-body work for sure.
After all, upper-body swoleness is my priority #1. Overall strength comes as a 2nd. Lower body swollertrophy is ofc important too but it is the least important out of the three to me.

I think it's fairly standard for skinny bros to bulk too hard to start with. If your #1 goal is aesthetics, this is silly. You're not immune to the laws of thermodynamics just because you're skinny. I like DF II's advice: eat at maintenance the first month or two, then gradually increase cals. Getting a sweet body as a natty is going to take a ton of work no matter what, that's just how it is.

Yeah, that's the masterplan.
Around maintenance for as long as stallaments start creeping around the corner and then small-ish surplus after that.
Slow going. Need to be extra-careful because of the back anyway.

Why waste months?

Even if he gained a little bit of extra fat, it's not such a big deal anyway, why even worry about that. It's not like he's gonna turn into a fattie with 6 months of ~500 cal surplus. That could be all fat and he'd still be skinny.

And are you really saying that it's "fairly standard" that skinny bros eat too much in the beginning? Isn't it usually the exact opposite, people make ****ty progress at first until they realize they need to eat to get bigger.

Because a lot of the strength gains on a program like SS isn't caused by hypertrophy and it's doubtful how much actual hypertrophy will occur at first when the trainee is learning a lot of technique, isn't really pushing against his max etc. It's not wasting months.

It's not a big deal, but you certainly see guys go overboard on SS and end up too fat. Why gain the extra kgs and have to diet down? If his goal is mainly aesthetics, I think there is a bigger need to justify eating at an unnecessarily big surplus.

And yeah, def a ton of gym rats who make no progress due to not eating enough and wanting to maintain their razor abz. That's not the case with pummi though since he knows the mechanisms behind gaining strength/mass, unlike the avg gym rat.

I agree 100% with Soulbro on this one.
Especially so in my case where main focus is on aesthetics.

I'm sure I've seen more detailed post(s) by DFII on the subject but here's a few related quotes I could find thru a quick search:

30.5.2013

1 hour of Badminton

In my early 20's I used to play semi-frequently but during last decade or so I've played only maybe a handful times and the last time was maybe 2 years ago.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out that I'm still pretty elite in this game.
The guy I played with is ~10 cm taller and (non-fatty) 20+ kg heavier than me me but I still somehow managed to win every set and most of them by a wide-ish margin.

I believe height def is an advantage in this game, at least to a certain extent but not sure about higher LBM, esp when he's mostly an upper-body bro.

Anyways, pretty exhausting stuff, drank about 1,5 litres of water during that one hour of game-play.
Prolly burned at least 1K cals.
A couple of Big-Macs were enjoyed afterwards to fix that.

Inspired by a recent water-discussion in the Beginner's thread I decided to monitor my liquid-intake for 2 days.

Wednesday:

2,1 L of water
0,7 L of coffee
0,7 L of milk

Thursday:

2,2 L of water
0,7 L of coffee
0,4 L of milk
0,3 L of diet Coke

So, both days I drank about 3,5 litres.

Note to self: Try to drink a bit more water, esp now that it's finally summer-ish in Finland.

I'm a huge numbers guy.
I believe that's why I was drawn to poker in the first place.
But yeah, I just like cracking them so I cracked some in excel today.
This time it was weightgain-related.

GOAL

So, my goal is to go from 60kg, 10% BF to 75 kg, 10% BF.
In other words the goal is to gain 13,5 kg of muscle and 1,5 kg of fat.

PARAMETERS

First, lets make a few assumptions:

BULK = eating at maintenance + 500 cals a day.
Muscle/Fat-gain-ratio while bulking = 50/50

CUT = eating at maintenance - 500 cals a day
Muscle/Fat-loss-ratio while cutting = 20/80

Also, for simplicity's sake let's assume that both fat and muscle are lost/gained at a rate of 1kg = 7000 cals.

RESULTS

Using those assumptions, to reach my goal I'd need 110 weeks worth of bulking and cutting.

I picked 3 different strategies to get there and this is how the progress would look like in chart-form with each of them:

One big bulk following one big cut



So, I'd would bulk for ~70 weeks and then cut for ~40 weeks.
Between weeks 17 and 98 I'd be over 15% BF and hate myself for it.
At week 70 I'd peak at 95 kg BW and 25% BF
Also lol at cutting for 40 weeks straight.

Oscillating between 10% and 15% Bodyfat



Steady going and keeping the BF in good enough check.
Bulk periods would last ~20 weeks and cut periods ~10 weeks, which is fine by me.

Bulk for 7 weeks, Cut for 4 weeks, rinse and repeat:



Even steadier going and staying very lean at all times.
This type of Bulk/Cut -periodization would probably produce the worst strength-gains out of the three though.

CONCLUSION

Oscillating between 10% and 15% BF seems like a no-brainer, nice middle-of-the-road solution.

Obv human body doesn't stay work quite this accurately or straightforwardly and my assumptions are well, assumptions. And broad ones.

So, I'm not sure what the point of this post was, other than clogging the Interwebs and that I've too much free time on my hands...

I'm all for toying with numbers, and Excel is <3. The biggest strike by far against option #1 is something your model doesn't account for: adherence. Cutting 40 lbs is just a straight up bitch. Cutting from 15--->10 is infinitely easier. I realize you prob already know this, just wanted to point it out for completeness.

But keep in mind your workloads, or whatever the word is. The total tonnage you'll be lifting in your workouts. If you start with a longer bulk, you'll workload over that time will be higher, presumably leading into bigger gains. This is just my broscience-theory, feel free to dismiss with facts.

But I like that 20/10 week plan anyway.

Yeah, Excel is most def the best product Mickeysoft ever came up with.

Hmm, I think I had it covered there?

Very much possible.
That said, I personally value staying lean thru the journey more than reaching my goal a bit earlier.

BTW, start a log, bro.

31.5.2013

Squat
3x5x40 kg

Bench
3x5x42,5 kg

Deadlift
1x5x60 kg

DB-Incline-Bench
5x10x12,5 kg's

DB-bench was still the toughest part of the workout for sure.
But I have a feeling that's gonna change in not so distant future.

Yeah like I said, just for completeness. As in, the model itself doesn't account for adherence as a factor which imo will lead to a longer road to your goals for #1 for 90% of the population.

Which is why #1 won't get you faster to your goals anyway, re: your reply to chinz.

Oh, I see.
Makes sense.

IF-calculator tells me that my maintenance calories are just a tad below 2400 (BW = 60 kg, Activity level = moderately active).

That's very much in line with my own data/experience. 2400-ish is what I've been averaging last few months w/o much BW-fluctuation.

So, that's what I decided to eat last week and plan to be eating in upcoming few weeks.

Last week:

Cals ~2400
Protein ~190
Carbs ~210
Fat ~90
Fibre ~32

Pretty good, esp. protein (>3g/kg) and fibre.
Fat (~1,5g/kg) is kinda high I guess, compared to most other posters.
But that's how I roll. I don't like/eat chicken, red meat and fatty fish 4lyfe. And cheese in/with everything.

Fat's what makes food good, keep on truckin'. Nothing wrong with those ratios imo.