Session XX: 31316 – 32616

Here comes the Spring shred!!!

Survival Protocol

Chapter III: Winter 122015 - 32616

Session XX: 31316 - 32616

Got back into town on Wednesday night up kind of late... woke up Thursday and back to the scale. Started what I'm calling Shred in the mornings, much jumping and running myself out of breath. i've been taking it easy on myself cardio-wise. The heavy lifting and the pull ups haven't been doing much to build muscle... not according to the scale anyway. Yet time and time again, i remind myself not to (over) trust the scale. I LOOK more muscular, to me anyway... my biggest fan/harshest critic. Nonetheless I decided that I need to do a lot more walking and a lot less heavy lifting. (This idea may be repeated elsewhere... the more often the better.) Also more shaping at home and more shredding outside. Having hit 177, my aim is on dropping to 170 and getting that muscle weight up to 82 lbs. This means, i think, more reps, more sets, bigger muscle groups. Spring comes this week... so energy, energy, ENERGY!!! And vanity.. if i can harness that. 

Here we go. Back from the Pisces tour and into the next level. Let's go. 

Here's a quick look at the chart that compares this year with last year on a weekly basis. 

Purple line is average weight, week by week from last year (2015). Green line is the corresponding week this year 2016... (Leap year will throw the count off slightly). Orange line is my weight goal. 170 I think is the lowest I should go, but I want and NEED to pack on some muscle, which is already a priority, so I may not get to the 170 bottom. I want to get 5 lbs of lean muscle now. I'll go by look, if the scale doesn't show me what I want.  

 Got back to live weigh-ins on Thursday and to my delight and surprise, I didn’t gain any weight, but dropped 2 lbs… (1.73 of that fat… that’s 86.5% fat loss!!) which I don’t think I would have lost in the City in the winter. So at least my theory that I have (5 lbs of) Philly fat on me has some emotional validity, if not scientific. The challenge has just gotten bigger, because I have to do more than maintain 3:1… I want to know if I can achieve 3.5 – 4:1… keeping in mind, I just had a birthday and all… but that never deters me. So my new plan is to SHRED, Shape and lift heavy. Most days I’ll shred which includes lots of walking. I may shape at night.. work vanity muscles and two days a week, heavy lifting, dead lifts, squats and such. We will see how that turns out… AND, I HAVE to be outside more this season. That’s all for now. Still playing catch up.

Day	Sunday 3-13*	Monday  3-14*	Tuesday 3-15*	Wednesday 3-16*	Thursday 3-17	Friday 3-18	Saturday 3-19	Ave.
Weight	177.4	177.4	177.3	177.2	177.2	177.2	177.2	177.2
Body Fat %	15	14.9	14.9	14.9	14.8	14.7	14.7	14.8
BF wt.	26.61	26.43	26.42	26.4	26.23	26.05	26.05	26.22
H2O %	62.3	62.3	62.3	62.3	62.3	62.4	62.4	62.3
H2O wt	110.52	110.52	110.45	110.4	110.4	110.57	110.57	110.4
Muscle mass %	44.3	44.3	44.3	44.3	44.3	44.3	44.3	44.3
Muscle wt.	78.6	78.6	78.54	78.5	78.5	78.5	78.5	78.5
MM:BF ratio	2.95	2.97	2.97	2.97	2.99	3.01	3.01	2.99

31316 [Sunday #270] –  Miami. Up early again.

Round I: [N] – about time. 50 laps in the pool, running short circles. Left big toe shredded. Upper body work in the gym, dumbbells.

Beach day with the Fam.

Family bowling night w/ Stazja & Jose.

Late night cob salad for dinner – paleo – meat salad avocado. Might be tricky getting back to my diet.

31416 [Monday #271] –  wake up Miami 0800 – Finally awake after sunrise. Got some decent tea. Lipton. Maybe some X-ZACT training with Stazja. Tea and H2O. Time to eat. More t-mix.

Lots of walking.

31516 [Tuesday #272] –  Miami – mostly chilli’ – walking. Beach day. 35 min power walk.

31616 [Wednesday #273] –  wake up – Miami. 9 months til freedom. Shred! Run in place, lateral moving and front & back drills will be vital. 10 burpees, bear crawls, fwd & bkd. Mt climbers, pull ups, bench dips, abs. stretch over an hour. This stuff will be running, climbing steps, heavy lifts, 2x a week, legs and back, legs and chest.. everything else will take care of itself. Back to supps and protein and cleaner eating.

Travel evening, pulled pork on a “Kaiser” roll w/ Stazja and Trvia in Ft, Lauderdale, then delayed flight, but home before midnight. Got to shred, clean house.

Decided to save the weigh in until tomorrow. I need to get tokens and a transpass for work. I should call out, but still I shouldn’t.

Need to get my strategy together and execute it.

 31716 [Thursday #274] –  Home… [2300] a few words before bed. Back to the routine. things have changed. Good morning, good night. 0200 – ish.

Wake 0800 after a few false starts. Not really. Excited to weigh in 177.2 – 14.8 – 62.3 – 44.3 – 2.99:1 and some change. Now maintain this and get more. Start this day. Shred!!!

Cleaning to do. I came in lighter. Stretched out the fast with tea and nuts.

Meal: t-burger and egg, and felt funny after. Runny nose. Vits taken and Vit C. 1 round so far. Doing housework. No stretch yet.

Round II: [T] – what’s normal anymore?

Round III: [F – K]

Good day today. Walked to 69 and back for groceries. Came home and shredded and walked to Mom’s for dinner.

I want to build on my 2.99:1. Let’s get proper 3:1, by month’s end, going into spring. Gig tomorrow. (Fat 26.22 lbs, so break the 26 lbs mark. Let’s not go back up. Runny nose today took 2 shots (1g each) of Vit C.

Good night. Good morning, Bally.

31816 [Friday #275] –  Philadelphia.. 0400 Shred!!! Round I… I’m five days late on the Torso Measurement… so here it is.

31816	Top	Middle	Bottom	Under
	95 cm	89 cm	92 cm	95 cm

Got a bit of an hour glass going on from the solar plexus to the belt line. Middle hasn’t changed, but the belly area is down by maybe 1 cm, but I’ll take that.

I got up pretty strong, no, actually I got up weak, the energy came from the AM Shred, lots of jumps, knees up, feet up, plyo pushups –

Weight in – 177.2 – 14.7 – 62.4 – 44.3  And this is 3.01:1. This is worth mentioning.

Lunch, Park’s 76% Turkey salad, cabbage, slaw, avos, toms, greens.

Round II: [N] –

Eats at the gig, cheese, t-mix, apple.

Walk 8^th & Race to 21 & South, then from there to 30^th & Market. Meal, brisket omelet and salad.

Round III: [X] – Honey’s.

Can’t remember what I did when I got home. I’m sure I had tea and maybe stretch or something.

31916 [Saturday #276] –   Philadelphia. Wake 0400. ? sleep. Get up, Shred 004 – used weights for the runs and jumps, squats, knees up, etc.

Weigh in.. same. Catch up on blog today. Tea.

Bkft –Turkey soup, not as spicy as usual. Shred stack.

Round I: [BF]

Lunch – Park’s 76% salmon salad.

Round II: [N] –

Home work – Upper Body. I decided I need to use lighter weights and increase reps and sets, so the idea was to do five sets of 15+ reps, for as long as I could. Most of this session was above the mid chest.

Incline press/seated shrugs – 30s, 1 set with 40s…. 4 sets of 16, one set of 10. I can use 40 lbs for this.

Front raise, 25 lb plate. Got to keep the ROM tight and arms straight as possible. Strong stance, no bending. No momentum. 5 rounds. And it was tough.

Standing shoulder laterals/raises: Somewhere between an upright row and standing flies, 20 lbs. 5 sets.

One arm bent row: 60 lbs. 3 sets, 10 reps each side. I’ve been putting this off out of fear of failure. There I admitted it! But of course that was dumb. Only got 3 rounds of these, but I wil get stronger, these are big, thick, back muscles.

Dumbbell curls: 20 lbs. 3 sets of 30 total and then maybe 1 or 2 more sets of less than 30… maybe 20.

And that was it. I was done after this. This will be my inside work on days I don’t shred. Upper body front & back is priority. Legs will be taken care of at the Y.

Protein, supps, Soup, tea, some snacks before bed, fruit & nuts.

Chlorella… and good night, before 2200. Sleep is another component.

End of Session 20: Part 1

This is the final table of the Winter Chapter and it’s worth mentioning that during this chapter I reached the 3:1 muscle mass to body fat ratio that one of the main purposes for keeping these kinds of records… just to see if I could do it and to see what it would look like. It’s not competition grade, or even close, although I don’t want to compete I want to look like I could. Secondly, I managed to keep my average weight under 180. That was a psychological/disciplinary goal for me. I think the average is 179.85… so I squeaked under… but still under. Now, if I can get to 175  +/-  2-3 lbs by the end of the summer, I’ll feel confident that I can get to 170 by the time I leave the gig in December. However, if/when the body starts growing enough muscle to show up on the scale, 170 might not be viable, so I am allowing say 13% body fat at a higher body weight. I adjusted my future body fat goal downward to 22 lbs, while I muscle goal remains at 82 lbs, (which is seemingly further out of reach…) and would be a 3.7:1 ratio, but I may have to dedicate myself to much more time lifting to attain this. They are goals. Overall I’d say Winter Chapter was very successful, the caveat being that I spent three weeks away from Philly in warmer climates, which probably made a notable difference.

Day	Sunday 3-20	Monday  3-21	Tuesday 3-22	Wednesday 3-23	Thursday 3-24	Friday 3-25	Saturday 3-26	Ave.
Weight	178.4	178.4	178.4	176.8	178.2	179.8	178.6	178.4
Body Fat %	15.1	15	15.1	14.5	14.9	15.4	14.9	14.9
BF wt.	26.94	26.76	26.94	25.64	26.55	27.7	26.61	26.58
H2O %	62.1	62.2	62.1	62.5	62.2	61.9	62.2	62.2
H2O wt	110.78	110.96	110.78	110.5	110.84	111.3	111.09	110.96
Muscle mass %	44.1	44.2	44.1	44.4	44.2	43.9	44.2	44.1
Muscle wt.	78.67	78.85	78.67	78.5	78.76	78.93	78.94	78.67
MM:BF ratio	2.92	2.95	2.92	3.06	2.97	2.85	2.97	2.96

32016 [Sunday #277] –   First day of Spring in Philadelphia is unlike most places in the country, as we are expecting snow. It will be light, if it comes at all, but that’s not the point. We, those of us who grew up pre-global climate change, have certain expectations, like sun, warmth and birds chirping; at least I do.

Wake 0400 – it came easier than I expected… or maybe I willed it, or trained myself to expect it. Shred 005! Lots of jumping and feet way up off the floor. Squats, plyo, balance and plange practice. Felt the sweat come. Just enough to know I got the job done.

Tea. Peetox over night.

Weigh in… knew it couldn’t last, numbers went away from goal, so I’m flagging orange. I noticed when I give myself less space for unacceptable results, I get more acceptable results. I know what needs to be done. Yesterday there was no walk, but there was weights training and protein after and a meal after that. The weight could very well be muscle, but the scale reads weight as fat more often.

Round I: [N] – Maybe skip lunch today and have a late/early meal. I might get a walk in. I should get a walk in.

32116 [Monday #278] –   wake 0400 – odd. Seems I dreamed I missed something in the Kybalion… but it was revealed in the dream. I listen every night, trying to soak it in. Good sleep, reminded myself that I got enough.

Shred – 006… keep track. Jump squats, balance on arms, exotic pushups.

Weigh in – 178.4 – 15 – 62.2 – 44. 2; Better, fat down, muscle up, too early to see a pattern.

Tea, bkft, lentils eggs.

Round I: [N] ?

Back to GX at the Y for the first of the Spring… should have a good walk back and pre-workout maybe. Steady-state run or intervals? Not sure yet. Intervals make sense, then walk home.

Gig – second bkft = t-mix (as usual); seaweed & cheese stick.

Add these to the Shred mix.

Pseudo Plange pushups,

Sphinx pushups

Handstand pushups (supported, but already doing them)

Pike pushups

Back bridge pushups.

Round II: [N]

Lunch – Park’s 86%. Turkey & Chicken – I can split this in two parts.

Round III: [XL] –

YMCA Action!! Went for heavy legs.

Dead lifts 135 x 15; 185 x 10; 225 x 5; 285 x 2; 301 x 1.

Leg press wt: 2 – 4 – 6 – 8 – 10 x 2; rep out as many as possible. Heaviest wt 3 reps. Go deep.

Jump squats 30 lbs; 8 – 10 – 12 reps.

Supps after BCAA’s & BY – walk home.. energetic.

Home – shake, protein, creatine, aminos 2 each. Turkey soup and lentils. 2x tea.

Body is sore – upper-upper.

Journal to bed 2200 +

It was a good day.

32216 [Tuesday #279] –    wake 0730.. sore.. extend the fast. Tea, eventually Shred – 007, but slow – working towards more balance and upper-upper body strength.

Round I: at wake. [N] –

Weigh in – 178.4; 15.1; 62.1; 44.1 – moved away.. small, but maybe it takes a while to work in… okay.

Bkft – turkey soup and fermented cabbage. Have more tea. Y today or upper at home and chores. Chores need to be done. Off tmrw too.. so that can be a Y day, or outside. Next heavy day is Thursday.

HOME WORK:

Incline press & shrugs 5 x 15 – 40 lbs.

Seated Arnolds & shrugs 5 x 12 20 lbs.

Incline bench front raise, 5 x 12 – 17.. 6 lbs ball, 10 lb k-bell, 12.5 lb plate. Get stronger here.

Break for Round II – work is getting done.

Upper back is on fire so I added icy-hot. Probably from hanging shrugs. Like the legs I must stay on top of the back, trapz and lats, especially. They will develop, then I’ll be able to train like the other kids. shred!

Bent flies 5 x 16 20 lbs. keep arms straighter.

Done. Time to eat. Protein shake, no actual meal, but small stuff.

Out to TU.. apple on the way. Supps before class. Rocked the class. Fun. Nice to get back. Bod is sore… immaculate!!!

Aqua – 1, Faith… aminos before, 2 ea. Taking 2 in the eves now, difference?

Still sore. Take the fat!!!

32316 [Wednesday #280] –   wake 0800..

Round I: [N] – tea, extended fast.

Shred – 008 – park, video, about 60 minutes. 4 rounds of jump ups, step ups, pushups, incline 7 decline. Brutal.

Supps, protein fruit shake for bkft. T-mix, about to go out in search of protein.

Weigh in 176.8 – 14. 5 62.5 44.4 – super good digits, best of the year. Day off, fit sessions. This weigh in was done right after the workout. So a bit biased.

Round II: [N] – walk to 69. 105 to GNC Wynnewood.

Meal; cob Salad sabrina’s… good, a small was plenty. And vits.

Walk to 63^rd and City ave. Check out those weight bands, maybe get a 50 lb. (got 60).

Walked from Wynnewood shopping center to 63^rd and City Ave., didn’t take as long as expected. (Video). Opted for the 60 lb band. Nothing like this at home. Figure I can fill in up to 100 and have a nice little set. Maybe a 50 at some point. These are easier to transport than weights.

Home and creativity, some band work and 10 lb curls 2 x tea and t-mix.

Chlorella and Round III [N] before bed:  break out the coconut oil. Full moon. I felt strong and confident. Worked with it today. Don’t feel bad. Tomorrow, back to work and lift heavy.

 32416 [Thursday #281] –  wake 0400. Got enough sleep, but it wasn’t straight through. Maybe the full moon kept the energy flowing or maybe it was the day, yesterday.

Didn’t go nuts with the Shred – 009, distracted by CPR admin stuff… But got it in and finished with floor abs work. Not done in a while.

Weigh in.. bounce back, which was expected after yesterday’s post Shred #’s. It becomes a goal, then the norm, then a warning.

Tea.

Bkft – stirfry and egg, seems I’m out of arginine. How did that happen?

Gig – Round I: [N]

Lunch – Park’s 875 salmon and turkey avos, peppers, etc.

Round II [N]:

YMCA Work – no pre-supps.

Bench Press – 135 – 160* good working weight, get 10 reps and move on. Get strong, make it seem easy.

Decline smith work to 160 and work from here… same deal. Will probably move faster on the smith. (It’s the smith.)

Scapula Hangs + DB pull overs (50 – 65) super sets. 5-6 sets, 10 – 8 hang/pulls.

Seated cable row (120) and calf raises (smith) – 275 5 rounds

Face pulls 5 sets 50 -60 ish, cables.

Suspension – back front push and balance stuff. Working towards planges and handstand pushups. Suspension planks.

Post supps.. walk home. Protein fruit shake w/ creatine. Guacamole and greens, some db curls and twisting and stretching. And bed 2200.

32516 [Friday #282] –   wake 0400. Shred – 010 – stretch and flex and strength. Tea.

Weight in RED ALERT!! Freaking out, but also realizing this is a back home adjustment and I may have to start interval training and taking long epic walks again. That, or go away. But I should be able to get to 175 here. Supps, protein and creatine back in the mix, probablyhas something to do with it.

Bkft – Mom soup and supps.

Gig – Vit C. too much sneezing yesterday. One bottle of Arginine left.

Note: 179.85 average weight during  the winter, so I made that goal. Now that spring is here, I’m looking at 175 lbs. I may have to vegge or juice for a few weeks.

Gig: Round I: [M]

Round II: [XL]

Lunch – Park’s 86% salmon salad.

Round III: [X]

Walk up 7^th st, 42 minutes to temple. Time to kill before CPR so large (too large) tea.

Round IV: [SS] – cabbage?? Have more of that.

Up late. Taking off from the gig tomorrow. Mental health day.

32616 [Saturday #283] –  Finishing up this chapter with a mental health day. Wake 0900-ish.

Shred – 011: Run in place, with wts. And an array of upper back focused work, however also did squat press, 20 lbs, 5 sets.. felt stronger. Bent 2 arm row, ankle weights on feet, leg laterals, 60 lb band pulls/shrugs, low pistol balance, getting better, got a few seconds balance with a 15 lb db for counter wt.

Weigh in.. better digits. Supps, protein, creatine, p-butter, cayenne, egg.. this was bfkt… good recipe, made with coconut water. Mom-soup left overs for second breakfast.

2 early rounds [M] and [X]

2x tea.

Much chores to do (laundry). May finish this chapter with some Fram time. Wow 3 seasons gone already.

90 days or so until BBC6! And everything changes during 6.

Harvest salmon salad and calamari w/ the Llama, and iced tea.

Blue Moons with the Fram (Pic) at Café.

Bed Late 00:00

 end of Session 20

End of Chapter III