[mrodock]

Vickie,

I will provide some more background and hopefully answer all of your questions today. I am extremely grateful for all the help you have already provided.

Body fat percentage. I have heard that the validity of a caliper test is highly dependent upon the expertise of the person doing it and the number of sites they test. I also have heard the digital readings are not particularly accurate +/- 4%. A dexascan which is around $70 is however quite accurate. I decided I would focus on my waist measurement and make sure I was not gaining too much waist and too little weight. Perhaps there is someone in the area that is really good at the caliper test, I have not researched that. All I know for sure is the largest part of my waist (around the belly button) was 31 inches when I was 147 pounds on 3/9/08. Now I am 172.2 pounds and the largest part of my waist is 33.5 inches. I tend to carry weight in my stomach much more so than anywhere else. Please advice on what you think I should do in regard to body fat testing.

Goals:
I currently hit the driver about 260 yards. After I graduate from school (3 years from now) I want to really concentrate on taking my game to an elite level (compete at the natural amateur level) and I figure a big piece of the puzzle is learning to hit the driver further and under control. I am working with HennyBogan on the swing and that is coming along nicely, now I want to build a body that can perform at a higher level.

Before starting my physical transformation I knew I did not have enough fast twitch muscle fibers. It seems my brother got a lot of them as he has been able to hit the driver 300 yards ever since he was 14 years old and 110 pounds. I read about developing fast twitch fibers and the most significant things I learned were that it is easier to build more fast twitch fibers when:
1. the muscles are stronger
2. the muscles are larger
I also learned that the stronger you are the easier it becomes to get large, hence I am doing a strength program for at least a year before I start working on a bodybuilding protocol. Once I am big and strong I will be working on power and speed development. Although I will do this some along the way by doing some of my warm-up sets fairly quickly and mixing in an olympic type lift every week. My goal is in 3 years to be able to hit the ball 320 yards comfortably by building an extremely different physique. I want to go from 150 pounds and about 12% body fat to 200-210 pounds with 8% body fat. Because I figure this is how big I'll need to be in order to have the ability to develop adequate fast twitch fibers to achieve my goals. Also, this physique transformation is about doing something I never thought I would. I have had back problems for the past 6 years which I finally resolved about 5 months ago through study and working with 4 physical therapists. The truth is the physical therapists did not help much, reading Stuart McGill, Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, and Dan John is what gave me the tools I needed to fix the problem. Essentially I needed to make my hips more mobile and learn to activate my glutes.

I think for strength I want to be able to squat and deadlift 400-450 pounds with putting slightly more emphasis on the deadlift, also I want to be able to front squat 300 pounds and do the dumbbell snatch with 120 pounds. Above all I will pay attention to how my body feels and try to keep healthy while pushing myself in order to consistently improve.

I feel as though I escaped overtraining. I no longer feel fatigued and I was able to handle 270 pounds on the squat reasonable well. I took an extra day off and then lifted light on lower body 70% of normal weight and feel a lot more positive and motivated now. I will no longer go heavy with deadlift and squat on the same day and will only go heavy on squat 1 time per week (previously it was 3 times per week). I will work on this protocol for awhile and see how I feel.

As far as my lifestyle is concerned I never drink alcohol, I rarely go to bed later than midnight and I generally sleep 6-7 hours at night on weeknights (sometimes 8 hours) and 8-9 hours on the weekends. About 90% of days I take a 30 minute to 1 hour nap. I don't eat desserts or junk food, I drink nothing but water. I have realized in order to eat enough calories to gain weight I may have to eat things that I consider less than ideal, but I always eat foods that are as close to whole as possible. Sometimes I feel as though I don't have as much energy as I should and I wonder if trying to gain weight is a huge energy zapper. At work we have had a person do health assessments and I have good blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.

I look forward to riding the exercise bike after the workout today and am curious if you think I would be a good candidate for creatine. My rhomboids overpower back currently, at least so far as I can tell my looking at my back on video and reading Shirley Sahrmann (Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes). I have winged scapula (not nearly as bad as it used to be) and from what I can tell the lower traps, upper traps, and serattus anterior are weak and inhibited. I was thinking I would wait to do traditional rowing exercises until this issue is completely straighted out and will do face pulls and add in straight arm pull downs so I have an exercise directly targeting the lats. I was doing chins consistently for 3 months before I started this program and I actually have good hypertrophy of the latissimus dorsi. I tried to add in chins to my program but found my bench press suffered and I was already having a lot of trouble getting better at that so I figured I would put the chins on hold for another month or two.

I will add in core work as I am slightly decreasing my volume and I will plan my diet a little better so when I get home from work a couple of times a week I feel like doing it. When I am trying to eat all the time it becomes hard to get the core work in and after doing heavy squats, deadlifts, or DB Snatches my core feels pretty tired so I don't really want to do it following a regular workout. I know core work is very important and I did a lot of it in the 3 months preceding my program and I just need to make it a priority again.

Now I will type out my workouts for the past 6 weeks and tonight I will post my diet for the day.

Thanks for your interest Vickie!

Matt