I am pleased to report that I have survived a weeks holiday in Butlins. My bag of food and some of my "creations" seemed odd and un-palatable to the friends we travelled with but I managed to stay on track with my calories, macros and even squeezed in two good training sessions at Skegness's very own New Era Gym.
The gym @ Skegness was very old school... not much in the way of high tech or new equipment, despite only opening 4 years ago. Everything in the gym was old bodybuilding tried and tested machines or equipment. I was particulary amused on my first visit to find that the dumbbells didn't even go lower than 12.5kg - my kind of gym!
Two workouts were Shoulders and Legs. They were fairly swift, but with heavy weights to ensure time in the gym was maximised, but time away from family and the holiday was minimised.
Shoulders:
Reverse Pec Dec - warm ups and 3 sets of 12 reps (cant remember weight!)
Seated Hammer Strength Shoulder Press - 100kg 4 sets of 6-8 reps
Uprigh Bt Rows - 65kg - 4 sets of 8-12 reps
Seated Lateral DB Raises - 17.5kg - 4 sets of 10 reps
Standing Fron DB Raises - 17.5kg - 3 sets of 8 reps
Legs:
Seated Leg Raise - warm ups and 3 sets of 12 reps at 40kg
BB Squat - 4 sets of 8-12 reps 100kg-120kg
DB Rom Deadlift - 55kg DBs - 3 sets of 8 reps
Incline Leg Press - 300kg - 4 sets of 10 reps (4 second negatives)
Laying Leg Curls - FST7s (big squeezes - my hams still hurt from these!!)
Calf Raise superset (seated calf raise - 75kg into standing calf raise 120kg into donkey calf raise 80kg - 12 reps on each no rest inbetween with varied feet angles for 3 total sets)
I forgot to take the scales or tape measure with me so I have absolutely no idea when I baselined, if I even baselined, how much weight I may have lost, if I lost weight, if I lost any inches etc etc. All I have been able to go by is what I see in the mirror! I looked alot more vascular with increased muscle seperation during my workouts and my back looks more defined so I have to assume I have lost some bodyfat.
We were out for dinner last night at one of the best fish and chip places I've ever been. Did I falter.... hell no I ended up with a poached cod salad. Commitment. Out again tonight before we head back South. Usually I promote skiploading as soon as you wake up, but life does happen so I've postponed the start until about 3pm this afternoon which allows me to go out for dinner tonight and tuck into a shed load of egg pasta guilt free.
Saturday 28 September 2013
Sunday 22 September 2013
Chest and Bi's
Last update for a week.
I have spent all afternoon cooking up food, packing stuff for next week to make sure I can eat as clean as possible whilst away.
Chest with Andy this morning. I could of been training by myself as he completely blanked me not recognizing me as I wandered over to him when he arrived! I love chest day as I get to train with a partner which means a) I can push myself harder b) he will push me harder. Win win. I highly recommend anybody trains with a partner where possible, provided that you get on with each other, want to follow similar routines and lift similar weights.
After some warming up of the shoulders and chest workout was:
After some warming up of the shoulders and chest workout was:
Chest:
Flat DB Bench Press
Incline H1 BB Bench Press
Seated Hammer Strength Press
Seated Hammer Strength Press
Cable Flyes at various angles
Cable X-Overs
Biceps:
EZ Bar Preacher Curls
EZ Bar Preacher Curls
DB Standing Hammer Curls
Wide Grip BB Curls
Reverse Grip BB Curls
Reverse Grip BB Curls
Commentary:
No numbers as my book is sat in my bag and I can't be bothered to go fish it out! Plus, I have stopped recording weights and reps for cable flyes and x-overs and anything arm related opting to just concentrate on getting a good squeeze and going to failure at whatever the weight.
Don't normally do much of a warm up, but really wanted to warm up my shoulders and chest today. 2 reasons for this: My left shoulder has been giving me serious jip the last 2 months, predominantly from heavy pressing so I need to start being sensible and looking after it a bit better. The other is that I wanted to get some good squeezes in my chest to get the mind muscle connection going into pressing. Interestingly it seemed to work so something I'll keep doing.
We worked up to the heaviest dumbbells on offer in the gym on the flat presses. 3 sets at no less than 8 reps concentrating on squeezing at the of the movement. Having started my lifting life in a gym with no bars this is an old staple for me. Could really do with some 55kg or 60kg dumbbells to make it more challenging though!
Don't normally do much of a warm up, but really wanted to warm up my shoulders and chest today. 2 reasons for this: My left shoulder has been giving me serious jip the last 2 months, predominantly from heavy pressing so I need to start being sensible and looking after it a bit better. The other is that I wanted to get some good squeezes in my chest to get the mind muscle connection going into pressing. Interestingly it seemed to work so something I'll keep doing.
We worked up to the heaviest dumbbells on offer in the gym on the flat presses. 3 sets at no less than 8 reps concentrating on squeezing at the of the movement. Having started my lifting life in a gym with no bars this is an old staple for me. Could really do with some 55kg or 60kg dumbbells to make it more challenging though!
Incline Bench is something I used to suffer on but have made good progress on this in 2013. Again nothing lower than 8 reps on this today. I don't touch the bar to my chest, nor do i on any heavy pressing sets. I find this really aggravates my shoulder taking my arms past parallel in relation to the floor. My personal thought on this is that you have to treat it like a squat and only go as low as is safe and comfortable.
Hammer Strength Pressing is a good finisher to the compound lifts. I really concentrate on squeezing at the top - imagining there is a banana between my pec muscles and I am trying to squeeze it to pulp.
Cable Flyes and Cable X-Overs are good isolation moves to finish with. The cables provide constant tension on the muscle so no let up at any point. On flyes we worked from an incline into a decline.
Cable Flyes and Cable X-Overs are good isolation moves to finish with. The cables provide constant tension on the muscle so no let up at any point. On flyes we worked from an incline into a decline.
On a closing note I sat down after training today and reflected on where I think my strengths and weakness lay in terms of physique. I think my shoulders, calves and overall "thickness" should serve me well as I lean out helping me to look big. My weakness will be my abs, quads and waist. I'll probably start hitting quads twice a week, once on leg day, one day as an isolated bodypart. I lost a lot of size in my right quad due to atrophy after the double rupture last year.
Saturday 21 September 2013
Taking a Break
I'm sat here writing this feeling nice and full from todays skipload. I literally threw the food down me this week - must of been really depleted, and now I'm going to train hard and eat clean for the next 6 days knowing that I have really elevated my metabolism.
Next week is an interesting one for me as I'm away with the family Monday through to Saturday night. With some friends we are taking the kids up to Butlins in Skegness. We did the same trip the exact same week last year and it was really successful in that despite it being wet, windy and cold the kids were pretty much occupied from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to bed, and any parents know that this makes life a hell of lot easier!
Last year I lived on pizza and cider, but as I was recovering from my DVT my body literally just seemed to funnel any calorie surplus into undoing the damage the clots had done. This year is different and I am a man with a clear objective and a set plan on how I am going to achieve that objective so it wont be all you can eat Papa Johns pizza, fish and chips with mushy peas or burger kings for me. As we have an apartment with an oven, hob and microwave I'll be able to take my own food to ensure I can hit all my macro's. I've even rang round a few local gyms and spoken to a few guys on some of the UK forums to find a local gym that I can train at a couple of times on a pay as you go basis. I'll be hitting up shoulders and legs at Skegness's very own "New Era Gym" which is run by a bodybuilder and seems to have all the equipment I need. I wont be hitting any cardio at the gym as we'll be walking around every day and swimming with the kids as opposed to sitting at my desk or driving to meetings etc so the cardio stuff should more or less balance itself out.
Therefore for all intents and purposes it is business as usual next week, even though I am on holiday! Now I cant eat quite like I do at home as we will be out and about all day and meals have to be convenient, but I've stocked up on some stuff to make keeping on diet as easy possible.
With me I'll be taking:
- 1000g cooked, diced and marinaded chicken breast
- 500g Beef Frying Steaks
- 3l liquid egg whites
- A box of protein cookies
- 7 microwave protein meals (these are like ready meals for bodybuilders/athletes - just microwave and voilla 50g protein, 30g carbs)
- 1kg jumbo raw oats
- 250g natural organic yoghurt
- Bag of protein powder
- Carb powder (for pwo shakes)
- BCAA powder
- MP Pulse V4 x 2 servings
- Bag of greens powder
- 150g peanut butter
- 150g almond butter
- some avacados
- omega oils
- multi vits
- 3 bags of uncle bens microwave wholegrain rice with vegetables
- A bag for my skipload next Saturday
Alot of people are probably reading the above and thinking I'm crazy and why the hell don't I just enjoy it, but needs must and I go with the philosophy of "if you want something bad enough you just do what you gotta do". We had a family holiday abroad earlier in the year and thats when I ate and drank what I wanted when I wanted, and in fairness at weekends throughout the summer that same principle has applied. Now is the time to knuckle down and getting lean is only going to happen with a solid diet and workout plan. I want to get to the end of this in 22 weeks and know beyond doubt that I did EVERYTHING I could to get into the best condition I could.
Friday 20 September 2013
Skiploading
A 5:15am start this morning. Bleary eyed and very sleepy I had to stumble to the kitchen and ingest caffeine to get any sense of purpose or desire to make the gym, but I guess thats commitment for you. Decided to walk to the gym and hit 40 mins steady state cardio (heart rate around 130bpm) and then an abs circuit of 4 different moves for 2 repetitive circuits. Abs nice and sore job done.
As today is my dreaded carb free day there was no pwo (post work out) shake. Just a walk home to prep/cook all my food for today and to shower up. Today’s meals looks like this:
7:15am – ¾ scoop of whey and 5g BCAAs mixed with 200ml egg whites and a spoon of coffee and omega oil blended with ice to make a mocha frappacino. 2 rashers smoked lean bacon medallions, 3 whole eggs
10:00am – 200g chicken breast marinaded in a little nandos lemon and herb peri peri sauce. 10g greens powder. 25g beef jerkey (from grass fed beef).
13:00am – 50g whey mixed with 25g natural almond butter and a little water – this makes what I like to call protein sludge .
15:30 – 250ml egg whites mixed with 25g whey and 5g BCAA. 1 tea spoon of cashew butter.
18:15 – 300g Sirloin steak trimmed of fat and a 1 cup part cooked broccoli (to ensure vits and minerals aren't boiled out)
21:00 – 300ml egg whites mixed with 1 scoop whey and 5g BCAA blended with ice to make frappacino . 1 heaped tea spoon of natural chunky peanut butter
The above is about 2200kcals (400 less than a workout day)
Water intake through the day, and every day for my diet, is likely to be 7 litres. 2 litres of which consumed during training. I’ll elaborate on the high water intake at a later date.
Tomorrow is the only true day off from training, its also Skipload day (hooooray!!!).
Skiploading is probably going to blow your mind a little so the following is a brief overview and a slightly adapted version of an article I wrote and that was published for Fit Mag last year.
A serious cut, for the most part, is energy sapping, mentally draining, and can feel all too much like self torture. I’d therefore, like to introduce you to a way of cutting that I have found to be revolutionary.
Last year I decided to cut in a different way and in this write up I’d like to provide you with the overall concept of this method of cutting/dieting and my findings so far. SKIPLOADING – this is the brainchild of Ken Skip Hill, and started life as simple shit-loading. Shitloading is the term given to a massive binge-out pre-bodybuilding contest to increase fullness in the muscles and give a full hard look on stage (along with water and sodium manipulation). More often than not the aim on a strict cut is to only use shitloading pre-contest, but as your will fails many find that they lose the ability to say ‘no’ to what they are craving and end up going into a massive binge-out (shitload) at the end of a long week of depletion or calorie restriction. This happened to Ken Hill, and he realised that even by stuffing crap like doughnuts down his neck one day a week that he could lose the weight he put on, and more by the following week…. And look better, harder and leaner. SKIPLOADING is basically the evolution of this process through Ken Hills own trial and error by both himself and the many athletes and competitors he has gotten into contest shape.
Lets face it. If you have to diet and lose weight you want to do it the easiest possible way you can right? Skiploading satisfies that attitude because you essentially break your diet down into 7 day cycles whereby you are never more than 6 days away from food heaven. So why do you need to skipload at all? Well, dieting involves creating a calorific deficit either by a reduction in calories or additional calorific expenditure (exercise) or in most cases both. As you diet your metabolism slows down and your leptin levels drop. Leptin allows you to release fat for energy and you want to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible as this will promote fat loss (the more calories you burn at rest the less of a calorie deficit you will require). Therefore dieting is, to a certain extent slightly counterproductive over long periods of time. Further to this the body is a clever thing and sooner or later will adapt to your diet and stall progress. Ultimately the point at which your metabolism slows down to match your calorific intake and/or your body adapts will be where your progress stalls. In a normal diet this is where you would either expend more calories or consume less. Often you can perform this several times over until you are either consuming too little, or exercising too much. At this point your body will eventually go into starvation mode. Starvation mode is bad news because this is where muscle will be burned for fuel. Yes you’ll lose weight, but also muscle and you’ll therefore get softer and smaller. Again we want to avoid this because you want to cut up to the lowest body fat percentage possible, whilst maintaining as much lean body mass (LBM) as possible. This is where skiploading comes into the equation as it solves all issues. It allows you to supercharge your metabolism, to the point where you may break into a sweat as you eat, and will increase your leptin levels. The huge calorific surplus every 7 days will stop your body adapting to any kind of diet. You’ll end up bigger and harder than ever before and it will be easier than ever to achieve it.
It’s important to remember that this article provides a basic overview of skiploading and how you can make it work for you, and that Ken Hill tailors loads to his individual clients (who pay $thousands) and learns from, and adapts their loads and diet on a weekly basis to hone in on the desired end result. In my opinion skiploading works best if you are on a moderate-low carb diet. It is also very effective if you are using something along the lines of a Keto diet. Most of the available information I have found on skiploading is from people on low carb (for the sake of argument sub 150g carbs per day) diets. According to Skip’s longevity DVD and Seminar it will work regardless of if you have a high carb vs low carb diet, cutting or bulking so do bare this in mind.
The best day to skipload is usually Saturday or Sunday. Mainly because most people are off work on these days, and most people tend not to train on these days. These days do not have to be set in stone – just pick a day you are not at work and don’t train. Its best to be at home on a skip-load as it allows you easier access to food and as the load can cause some flatulence issues which isn’t great if you’re out in public places. The idea behind not training is to ensure that you are not using the load to fuel or recover from immediate exercise. This is to ensure that you can maximise glycogen replenishment and retention. Eating an excess of calories (which you definitely will during a skipload!) will also significantly rev your metabolism. If you train you will dip into these additional calories, potentially reducing the metabolic kick in the face your load will provide to your body whilst at the same time altering the way your body will want to use the excess of carbohydrates.
The principles behind skiploading:
• Weigh yourself before your skipload (upon waking is best)
• Start with a 6 hour window of Skiploading. Usually it’s best to go from Breakfast and time 6 hours. When 6 hours are up go back to your normal diet • Eat high carb foods- the higher the GI the better, but make sure its low fat. Yes that’s sugary foods such as pancakes in syrup, malt loaf covered in jam, jelly sweets, marshmallows, kids cereals, sorbet, white bread etc. The skies the limit here.
• Keep water intake to a minimum! This is important because the carbs will act like a sponge in your stomach and drinking water at your normal levels will make you feel very bloated, full and uncomfortable.
• No dairy (it slows down digestion). If you opt for kids cereals then mix them with a protein shake (be warned coco pops mixed with chocolate whey shake and chocolate syrup = chocolate overload!)
• Eat your carbs, do not drink them. This means no fruit juice drinks or bottles of fizzy pop.
• Use your hunger as a guide as to when to eat. If you are hungry eat. Don’t stick to set meal times as you normally would – think about the load as a 6hour graze. If you are full don’t eat again until you are hungry.
• PERSONAL PREFERENCE – Start on high GI carbs and taper onto more savory or starchy carbs such as low fat baked crisps, low fat oven chips, potatoes, pasta, low fat pizza (pizza express is particularly good) etc. You will find that there is only so much sugar you can eat before you feel terrible (although over time you will significantly increase your tolerance). You can increase the GI of more savoury foods by dipping them in BBQ sauce, ketchup, syrup, jam or sprinkling sugar onto them etc.
• Ingest protein at the usual 2-3 hour intervals you would on a normal day or with each meal if they fall near these times. The carbs will shuttle the protein straight into your muscles at a quickened rate and the huge spike in insulin will aid with muscle growth/repair if protein is available as a resource.
Your skipload will add instant next day weight to the scales, but fear not, it’s only going to be water weight or the weight of food still in your guts. Expect to put on anything from 1-10lbs depending on just how much you can eat.
Your job every morning following the load is to stand on the scales and check your weight. You are aiming to baseline (return to the same weight as before your skipload) by Wednesday mornings weigh-in. If you baseline early then add 2 hours onto the following weeks load. You may baseline as late as Friday, and this can be scary and a bit demoralising, but you should still lose weight by the following Saturday. If you lose no weight you need to knock off 1 hour the following week. If you gain weight you need to knock off 2 hours. Women (oh yes this works for ladies too!) please bear in mind you need to log your hormonal weight fluctations or be aware of them prior to starting as you will retain and excrete water at different rates throughout your monthly menstrual cycle due to the role estrogen plays with water retention).
If you get to a point where you are loading all day on Saturday from waking to going to bed (and this will happen the leaner and more depleted you get) then you may wish to bring your load forward to a few hours of Friday night – this should help you eat more as you can fill up on Friday night and wake up hungry on Saturday morning.
They key benefit to skiploading for me is that it works – plain and simple. I don’t care about the science or lack of science behind it, I don’t care that nobody has published a study on it or that it’s a bit left field from the norm and gets some bodybuilders knickers in a twist. Whilst you continue to get leaner you also have the added benefit of retaining strength due to glycogen replenishment and retention which is fantastic as cuts usually involve a loss of strength. Using a Saturday load as an example; on any training days Sunday – Wednesday you may even get stronger!
I have also found skiploading helps me maintain my focus – mainly in part because I know that come Saturday I can go mad on sugary foods. Coincidentally I have also found that I do not crave carbs until the load weight has dropped off – which is great because Sunday – Wednesday keeping diet on point is effortless.
There are some negatives with skiploading so it’s only right of me to bring these up so you can decide if this is something that may work for you. The load itself could potentially pose health concerns for 3 reasons;
1 – Holding excess water is not good for the heart. However, I have yet to read of anybody that has put on excessive water weight and held it for longer than 3-4 days. Long term water retention is bad, in the short term not such an issue in this writers opinion. Many anabolic steroid users hold water weight in excess of 7lbs for prolonged periods of time (up to 20 weeks) without causing heart or health problems.
2 – Such a large volume of high GI carbs will cause a massive insulin spike. Insulin has been linked to cancer growth and cholesterol deposits. I think this is only problematic if you have cancer or genes that make you high risk of getting cancer. If you are healthy with no family history of cancer (ie your mum had cancer and her mum had the same cancer type of thing) there is nothing to worry about in my opinion.
3- Skiploading can be very addictive. After weeks of skiploading your body adapts and realizes that at a certain depleted state you are going to be ingesting high gi carbs. This means that you get extreme cravings for carbs. I’ve experienced this and its completely unreal – the moment you get to a depleted level all you can think about is carbs and before you even know what you are doing you’ve gone out got a load of food and have waded your way through 3 boxes of jaffa cakes, pancakes, a jar of jam and some weight watchers cake bars (yes I have been there and done it!!)
A lot of bodybuilders who poo-poo skiploading seem to focus in on the first 2 key factors, but will, ironically run anabolic steroids, npp, clen, t3 or ECA in their own contest preparation – all of which pose more potential health risks than eating sugary food. I think a lot of these guys are set in their ways and think that dieting has to be torturous and hard.
You can download skips longevity DVD for free from his own Intense Muscle website. The important chapters, should you not wish to download them all, are the 2 for the Seminar and the skiploading addendum which is an add on to the seminar. Having done this twice now on a bulk and a cut I can share some interesting thoughts…. This works 100%. Interestingly after you’ve done about 8-12 weeks you can “listen to your body” in that your body will dictate to you when it needs to reefed. At one point previously I found myself moving from a load every 7 days to 5 days because my body was telling me to reefed. At this stage I stopped losing weight and body fat, but was not gaining any weight or body fat either. My bodies way of forcing equilibrium if you like.
Typical macro break down for a skipload day (based on 6 hours) for me is likely to be 300g PRO, 1000g CHO, 40g Fat = 5560kcals.
In my opinion you can add an extra 200-300g of carbs to the above for every additional 2 hours added. I have done the shop for the morning, and to give you an idea of my skip load on the menu for the first 6 hours of tomorrow will be: Coco Pops & Rice Krispies, pancakes and syrup, white bread toast with strawberry jam, jelly babies, weight watchers cake bars, jaffa cakes, Jamaican ginger cake, white baguette, pop chips, sorbet, ben and jerries frozen yoghurt, kellogs square bars
For me the above pans out to be 7am-1pm with meals at 3pm, 6pm, 9pm being back on normal diet terms. Also d-day in terms of scales tomorrow. Hoping for a 1lb loss. Have definately dropped 1% or so of fat this week as top 2 abs making a reappearance.
As today is my dreaded carb free day there was no pwo (post work out) shake. Just a walk home to prep/cook all my food for today and to shower up. Today’s meals looks like this:
7:15am – ¾ scoop of whey and 5g BCAAs mixed with 200ml egg whites and a spoon of coffee and omega oil blended with ice to make a mocha frappacino. 2 rashers smoked lean bacon medallions, 3 whole eggs
10:00am – 200g chicken breast marinaded in a little nandos lemon and herb peri peri sauce. 10g greens powder. 25g beef jerkey (from grass fed beef).
13:00am – 50g whey mixed with 25g natural almond butter and a little water – this makes what I like to call protein sludge .
15:30 – 250ml egg whites mixed with 25g whey and 5g BCAA. 1 tea spoon of cashew butter.
18:15 – 300g Sirloin steak trimmed of fat and a 1 cup part cooked broccoli (to ensure vits and minerals aren't boiled out)
21:00 – 300ml egg whites mixed with 1 scoop whey and 5g BCAA blended with ice to make frappacino . 1 heaped tea spoon of natural chunky peanut butter
The above is about 2200kcals (400 less than a workout day)
Water intake through the day, and every day for my diet, is likely to be 7 litres. 2 litres of which consumed during training. I’ll elaborate on the high water intake at a later date.
Tomorrow is the only true day off from training, its also Skipload day (hooooray!!!).
Skiploading is probably going to blow your mind a little so the following is a brief overview and a slightly adapted version of an article I wrote and that was published for Fit Mag last year.
A serious cut, for the most part, is energy sapping, mentally draining, and can feel all too much like self torture. I’d therefore, like to introduce you to a way of cutting that I have found to be revolutionary.
Last year I decided to cut in a different way and in this write up I’d like to provide you with the overall concept of this method of cutting/dieting and my findings so far. SKIPLOADING – this is the brainchild of Ken Skip Hill, and started life as simple shit-loading. Shitloading is the term given to a massive binge-out pre-bodybuilding contest to increase fullness in the muscles and give a full hard look on stage (along with water and sodium manipulation). More often than not the aim on a strict cut is to only use shitloading pre-contest, but as your will fails many find that they lose the ability to say ‘no’ to what they are craving and end up going into a massive binge-out (shitload) at the end of a long week of depletion or calorie restriction. This happened to Ken Hill, and he realised that even by stuffing crap like doughnuts down his neck one day a week that he could lose the weight he put on, and more by the following week…. And look better, harder and leaner. SKIPLOADING is basically the evolution of this process through Ken Hills own trial and error by both himself and the many athletes and competitors he has gotten into contest shape.
Lets face it. If you have to diet and lose weight you want to do it the easiest possible way you can right? Skiploading satisfies that attitude because you essentially break your diet down into 7 day cycles whereby you are never more than 6 days away from food heaven. So why do you need to skipload at all? Well, dieting involves creating a calorific deficit either by a reduction in calories or additional calorific expenditure (exercise) or in most cases both. As you diet your metabolism slows down and your leptin levels drop. Leptin allows you to release fat for energy and you want to keep your metabolic rate as high as possible as this will promote fat loss (the more calories you burn at rest the less of a calorie deficit you will require). Therefore dieting is, to a certain extent slightly counterproductive over long periods of time. Further to this the body is a clever thing and sooner or later will adapt to your diet and stall progress. Ultimately the point at which your metabolism slows down to match your calorific intake and/or your body adapts will be where your progress stalls. In a normal diet this is where you would either expend more calories or consume less. Often you can perform this several times over until you are either consuming too little, or exercising too much. At this point your body will eventually go into starvation mode. Starvation mode is bad news because this is where muscle will be burned for fuel. Yes you’ll lose weight, but also muscle and you’ll therefore get softer and smaller. Again we want to avoid this because you want to cut up to the lowest body fat percentage possible, whilst maintaining as much lean body mass (LBM) as possible. This is where skiploading comes into the equation as it solves all issues. It allows you to supercharge your metabolism, to the point where you may break into a sweat as you eat, and will increase your leptin levels. The huge calorific surplus every 7 days will stop your body adapting to any kind of diet. You’ll end up bigger and harder than ever before and it will be easier than ever to achieve it.
It’s important to remember that this article provides a basic overview of skiploading and how you can make it work for you, and that Ken Hill tailors loads to his individual clients (who pay $thousands) and learns from, and adapts their loads and diet on a weekly basis to hone in on the desired end result. In my opinion skiploading works best if you are on a moderate-low carb diet. It is also very effective if you are using something along the lines of a Keto diet. Most of the available information I have found on skiploading is from people on low carb (for the sake of argument sub 150g carbs per day) diets. According to Skip’s longevity DVD and Seminar it will work regardless of if you have a high carb vs low carb diet, cutting or bulking so do bare this in mind.
The best day to skipload is usually Saturday or Sunday. Mainly because most people are off work on these days, and most people tend not to train on these days. These days do not have to be set in stone – just pick a day you are not at work and don’t train. Its best to be at home on a skip-load as it allows you easier access to food and as the load can cause some flatulence issues which isn’t great if you’re out in public places. The idea behind not training is to ensure that you are not using the load to fuel or recover from immediate exercise. This is to ensure that you can maximise glycogen replenishment and retention. Eating an excess of calories (which you definitely will during a skipload!) will also significantly rev your metabolism. If you train you will dip into these additional calories, potentially reducing the metabolic kick in the face your load will provide to your body whilst at the same time altering the way your body will want to use the excess of carbohydrates.
The principles behind skiploading:
• Weigh yourself before your skipload (upon waking is best)
• Start with a 6 hour window of Skiploading. Usually it’s best to go from Breakfast and time 6 hours. When 6 hours are up go back to your normal diet • Eat high carb foods- the higher the GI the better, but make sure its low fat. Yes that’s sugary foods such as pancakes in syrup, malt loaf covered in jam, jelly sweets, marshmallows, kids cereals, sorbet, white bread etc. The skies the limit here.
• Keep water intake to a minimum! This is important because the carbs will act like a sponge in your stomach and drinking water at your normal levels will make you feel very bloated, full and uncomfortable.
• No dairy (it slows down digestion). If you opt for kids cereals then mix them with a protein shake (be warned coco pops mixed with chocolate whey shake and chocolate syrup = chocolate overload!)
• Eat your carbs, do not drink them. This means no fruit juice drinks or bottles of fizzy pop.
• Use your hunger as a guide as to when to eat. If you are hungry eat. Don’t stick to set meal times as you normally would – think about the load as a 6hour graze. If you are full don’t eat again until you are hungry.
• PERSONAL PREFERENCE – Start on high GI carbs and taper onto more savory or starchy carbs such as low fat baked crisps, low fat oven chips, potatoes, pasta, low fat pizza (pizza express is particularly good) etc. You will find that there is only so much sugar you can eat before you feel terrible (although over time you will significantly increase your tolerance). You can increase the GI of more savoury foods by dipping them in BBQ sauce, ketchup, syrup, jam or sprinkling sugar onto them etc.
• Ingest protein at the usual 2-3 hour intervals you would on a normal day or with each meal if they fall near these times. The carbs will shuttle the protein straight into your muscles at a quickened rate and the huge spike in insulin will aid with muscle growth/repair if protein is available as a resource.
Your skipload will add instant next day weight to the scales, but fear not, it’s only going to be water weight or the weight of food still in your guts. Expect to put on anything from 1-10lbs depending on just how much you can eat.
Your job every morning following the load is to stand on the scales and check your weight. You are aiming to baseline (return to the same weight as before your skipload) by Wednesday mornings weigh-in. If you baseline early then add 2 hours onto the following weeks load. You may baseline as late as Friday, and this can be scary and a bit demoralising, but you should still lose weight by the following Saturday. If you lose no weight you need to knock off 1 hour the following week. If you gain weight you need to knock off 2 hours. Women (oh yes this works for ladies too!) please bear in mind you need to log your hormonal weight fluctations or be aware of them prior to starting as you will retain and excrete water at different rates throughout your monthly menstrual cycle due to the role estrogen plays with water retention).
If you get to a point where you are loading all day on Saturday from waking to going to bed (and this will happen the leaner and more depleted you get) then you may wish to bring your load forward to a few hours of Friday night – this should help you eat more as you can fill up on Friday night and wake up hungry on Saturday morning.
They key benefit to skiploading for me is that it works – plain and simple. I don’t care about the science or lack of science behind it, I don’t care that nobody has published a study on it or that it’s a bit left field from the norm and gets some bodybuilders knickers in a twist. Whilst you continue to get leaner you also have the added benefit of retaining strength due to glycogen replenishment and retention which is fantastic as cuts usually involve a loss of strength. Using a Saturday load as an example; on any training days Sunday – Wednesday you may even get stronger!
I have also found skiploading helps me maintain my focus – mainly in part because I know that come Saturday I can go mad on sugary foods. Coincidentally I have also found that I do not crave carbs until the load weight has dropped off – which is great because Sunday – Wednesday keeping diet on point is effortless.
There are some negatives with skiploading so it’s only right of me to bring these up so you can decide if this is something that may work for you. The load itself could potentially pose health concerns for 3 reasons;
1 – Holding excess water is not good for the heart. However, I have yet to read of anybody that has put on excessive water weight and held it for longer than 3-4 days. Long term water retention is bad, in the short term not such an issue in this writers opinion. Many anabolic steroid users hold water weight in excess of 7lbs for prolonged periods of time (up to 20 weeks) without causing heart or health problems.
2 – Such a large volume of high GI carbs will cause a massive insulin spike. Insulin has been linked to cancer growth and cholesterol deposits. I think this is only problematic if you have cancer or genes that make you high risk of getting cancer. If you are healthy with no family history of cancer (ie your mum had cancer and her mum had the same cancer type of thing) there is nothing to worry about in my opinion.
3- Skiploading can be very addictive. After weeks of skiploading your body adapts and realizes that at a certain depleted state you are going to be ingesting high gi carbs. This means that you get extreme cravings for carbs. I’ve experienced this and its completely unreal – the moment you get to a depleted level all you can think about is carbs and before you even know what you are doing you’ve gone out got a load of food and have waded your way through 3 boxes of jaffa cakes, pancakes, a jar of jam and some weight watchers cake bars (yes I have been there and done it!!)
A lot of bodybuilders who poo-poo skiploading seem to focus in on the first 2 key factors, but will, ironically run anabolic steroids, npp, clen, t3 or ECA in their own contest preparation – all of which pose more potential health risks than eating sugary food. I think a lot of these guys are set in their ways and think that dieting has to be torturous and hard.
You can download skips longevity DVD for free from his own Intense Muscle website. The important chapters, should you not wish to download them all, are the 2 for the Seminar and the skiploading addendum which is an add on to the seminar. Having done this twice now on a bulk and a cut I can share some interesting thoughts…. This works 100%. Interestingly after you’ve done about 8-12 weeks you can “listen to your body” in that your body will dictate to you when it needs to reefed. At one point previously I found myself moving from a load every 7 days to 5 days because my body was telling me to reefed. At this stage I stopped losing weight and body fat, but was not gaining any weight or body fat either. My bodies way of forcing equilibrium if you like.
Typical macro break down for a skipload day (based on 6 hours) for me is likely to be 300g PRO, 1000g CHO, 40g Fat = 5560kcals.
In my opinion you can add an extra 200-300g of carbs to the above for every additional 2 hours added. I have done the shop for the morning, and to give you an idea of my skip load on the menu for the first 6 hours of tomorrow will be: Coco Pops & Rice Krispies, pancakes and syrup, white bread toast with strawberry jam, jelly babies, weight watchers cake bars, jaffa cakes, Jamaican ginger cake, white baguette, pop chips, sorbet, ben and jerries frozen yoghurt, kellogs square bars
For me the above pans out to be 7am-1pm with meals at 3pm, 6pm, 9pm being back on normal diet terms. Also d-day in terms of scales tomorrow. Hoping for a 1lb loss. Have definately dropped 1% or so of fat this week as top 2 abs making a reappearance.
Thursday 19 September 2013
Leg Day
Leg Day
In the last brief post I covered the basics of what I want to achieve, in this post I’ll cover todays training session, and tomorrows planned session and then at the weekend I’ll get round to laying out diet with macro’s etc.
Today was legs day. I love training legs, but I hate the prospect the night before of having to get the workout done, if that makes any sense? There have been more than one time that I have thrown up during a legs session, or felt like throwing up after a legs session. Nothing quite smashes your CNS (central nervous system) like some heavy leg work and nothing drops lbs on the scales (for me at least) like a brutal leg session.
Typically my training has always been about lifting the heaviest weight possible from point A to point B as many times as possible. Last year after my DVT and through the subsequent recovery I essentially had to drop all my weights back to beginner levels (I couldn’t even bench 60kg!) due to muscle wastage, which at the time was a real mental and ego blow. This turned out to be a really beneficial thing in the long run as I was able to build up the weights again using proper form and technique. It’s at about this time that I really started concentrating on the negative portion of every movement and lowering weight for a lot of movements to 3-4 second counts elongating the muscles time under tension. This leads to greater stress in the muscle and more stress ultimately equals more growth. In the last few weeks I’ve put much more focus and emphasis on the “mind muscle” connection and really squeezing the muscle. It’s a completely different challenge – true bodybuilding if you like, really sapping the strength and reps out of you.
Workout
Below is a write up of todays workout and some commentary around exercise selection and my thoughts around proper techniques follows.
Whilst weights aren’t important, I’m going to lay them out so that progress can be tracked.
AIM: Heavy Week – Ideally sets of 8-12 reps
Warm Up - Seated Leg Raise – 50lb:25 reps, 60lb:25 reps 100lb:15 reps
Smith Machine Squats – 50kg:15, 90kg:12 115kg:10 135kg: 8, 140kg: 6
Leg Press – 270kg:12 x3 sets (slow 4 second negatives on this)
Barbell Walking Lunges – 45kg x 8 strides each leg x3 sets
Barbell Romanian Deadlift – 105kg x12; 105kg x10; 105kg x 10
Seated Leg Curls (FST-7’s*) – 100lb:12, 100lb:12, 100lb:12, 100lb:10, 100lb:10, 100lb:8, 100lb:8
Calf Raise Tri Set – 150kg on leg press x15 into 90kg seated x12 into bodyweight on step x10 (performed 3 times over with no rests and alternating foot position)
Abs Superset 1: Cable Crunches with Laying Leg Drops and Walking Plate Twists x 3 Cable Wood Chops; 12 each side x 3
Commentary:
OK so the idea with the leg raises is that they are an exercise for this session to simply wake up the muscles and get some blood flowing in my quads and around my knees. You can see reps were high and weight low to moderate with strong squeezes at the top of the movement .
I use smith squats because it allows me to go heavier than barbell squats. Since the dislocation prior to my DVT episode last year I have not been able to barbell squat with any decent weight without severe discomfort in my knee. For one reason or another this doesn’t happen on smith squats, with the bonus of a) being able to place my feet slightly closer together b) being able to get my feet ever so slightly out in front of me further c) I can get much lower. Points A and B really allow me to use this move to hit the quads whilst point C allows the hams, glutes and hips to come in to play. At the top of the movement I refrain from completely locking out my legs keeping tension on my quads and then squeezing.
Leg press is an interesting one. Our gym maxes out at 320kg and I got to that stage earlier this year for 15 reps. I had to search for alternative ways to make leg pressing harder and have therefore adopted a 4 second negative on this. Its brutal stuff and I’ve been steadily working up from 200kg to 270kg. When I get back to 320kg I’ll drop the weight all the way back to 200kg and add a 2 second stop into the bottom of the movement… After that all I can do is keep adding more reps or change gyms!
Barbell walking lunges are a great move for legs. 45kg is the biggest short bar we have at the gym and the Olympic bar is too long to use without smashing it into stuff so I’ll have to start adding 2 extra steps per leg on this move. I do alternate with dumbbells so not too much of an issue.
Barbell Rom Deadlift, for me, is the most under-rated and under-used movement, and unfortunately when I do see a few guys doing it their back is so round it makes me cringe. Key to this great move is to keep your chest up and your head forward and to do the negative nice and slow, and to only go as low as you need to whilst feeling it working. If you go too low or drop your head/chest it becomes a back move more akin to a rack pull. I found my grip was failing before my hams so now use hooks or straps to ensure it’s my legs that can’t take any more. I can add more weight to this move but 100kgish seems to be the sweet spot for getting that mind muscle connection – Any heavier and I just feel it in my lower back and this is not back day!
FST-7 leg curls. These sort the men from the boys. This is a fancy new term coined by Neil Hill for “pump sets”. 7 sets of curls with only 30 second rests in-between each set. These fill your hams with so much blood you don’t know where to put yourself. To really make this work you need to relax your feet so that your toes point down and this then takes calves out the move. You also have to squeeze for 2-3 second counts at the top of the movement lowering to a 2-3 count. Yeeeouch.
Calf raises – your calf muscles are slightly different to most in the body in that they can fully recover from intense stress in 30 seconds or so. It makes sense when you think about it as they are worked with every step you take. Through trial and error volume work with short to no rests and big hard squeezes is where its at. I see a lot of guys training calves and they just get it all wrong. They don’t squeeze at all thinking its just about going from heel to toe (A to B philosophy), they perform the reps far too fast, they don’t rotate foot position to hit varying parts of the calf, they don’t hit up various available equipment (such as standing smith, incline leg press, standing on a block, seated raise, donkey raise etc) – again this restricts where and how you can hit the muscle, they don’t use anywhere near enough volume and they hit up 2minute plus rest periods which is just not necessary. Without sounding a tad arrogant its why they all have shit girly calf muscles with no definition, and why I have big defined vascular calf muscles. If you are going to train these muscles do it my way or just don’t fucking bother! If you hit these muscles properly you’ll know about it 48 hours later. If they don’t hurt and then some 48 hours later you have got it all wrong.
Ab-wise I just want to hit a few various angles to hit, lower, side, obliques etc. I prefer super-setting abs so you can really fatigue them quickly. I want to feel them hurting to know they are working. I hadn’t ever seen more than a hint of my top 2 abs until earlier this year and that was achieved by just working them hard at least every other workout…. The good news is they are actually pretty thick-set so if I get to the conditioning I want to be in they should stand out pretty well. My only concern is my lower abs as I have some excess skin from the days of being 25stone and I don’t know how much I can shrink this back.
Tomorrow is a "day off", but only from weights. I'll still hit the gym, maybe laying in for an extra 30 minutes, and will hit up about 40 mins of steady-state cardio achieving a heart rate of 130-140bpm. I'll also hit up some abs and stretches and then its job done.
As part of my cutting diet I have 2 carb free days per week, both on non-workout days and tomorrow is therefore unfortunately a carb free day. It'll be a day filled with shed loads of egg whites and I'll be absolutely drained by the end of it.... but on Saturday morning I get the most special 6 hours of the week - more on that tomorrow though!
Wednesday 18 September 2013
"The Pre-amble"
To those that have ventured here, welcome.
The purpose of this blog going forward is to contain all the musings of my mind as I embark on a 22 week cut. I'll be rambling about my training, my diet, general bodybuilding topicss and using the log as a means to track and chart my own progress. I also hope it will be a useful tool to reflect on after the whole ordeal is over so I can see where I can do things differently next time.
The purpose of this blog going forward is to contain all the musings of my mind as I embark on a 22 week cut. I'll be rambling about my training, my diet, general bodybuilding topicss and using the log as a means to track and chart my own progress. I also hope it will be a useful tool to reflect on after the whole ordeal is over so I can see where I can do things differently next time.
Lets get through some basics. Why am I cutting? Because I want to see if I can get into single digit body fat percentage numbers. Actually, I want to take it one step further than that. I want to try and get to stage conditioning. Think of those guys wearing budgie smugglers and shit loads of fake tan hiting poses.... yeah thats what I am aiming for - to be so lean it looks like you have no skin..... But why I hear you ask? Well lets briefly rewind to July last year...
Whilst most people were enjoying the build up to the Olympics I was laid in a hospital bed in Milton Keynes. 3 blood clots in my right leg after a dislocation of the knee that cause 2 ruptures of my quad and internal bleeding into the knee had turned the whole of my leg into one giant blood clot. I drifted in and out of consciousness, and for the first 3 days I was maybe fully lucid for a total of 6-8 hours and in those 6-8 hours I was in so much pain. Not many people will know how it feels to feel like part of your body is literally burning from the inside out, like your organs or deep veins are exploding with pressure. It wasn't a good time at all. During this time I wondered if I would lose my leg or worse, and thought about all the things I hadn't accomplished in life, but had always said "maybe one day". Due to medical conditions arising from the whole debacle some of those dreams, such as completing a triathlon, will never now be accomplished... but there are others I can do, will do and now am trying to do.
Most people just don't get bodybuilding at all, and that's fine. I'm not hear to justify myself to anybody else. Lifting weights and trying to improve my physique year on year is what I do. Ever since I lost 10 stone in a year training and solid nutrition has been engrained into my lifestyle. That will never change.
Not many people can drag their ass out of bed at 5am in the middle of winter when its dark, hammering it down with rain and the temperature is sitting at sub freezing temperatures, but this is what i do. Come rain or shine, hot or cold I haul ass. For that 1-2 hours I am in the gym its just about me and the weights and continuous improvement and progression.
Anyway that will do for a first post - it gives you an idea of what I am aspiring to achieve here, and why I am going to try and do it. Next time I'll elaborate on training routines and diet.
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