Fight or Flight

[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

[mrodock]

Sun. 6/15

Back Squats
3x5x255

Bench
5x155
4x155
4x150

DB Snatch
3x5x70


Wed. 6/18

Back Squats
4x265 (tried to go too heavy, too quick, scared myself and quit after 2 sets)
3x260 (I had been increasing on squats by 10 pounds a workout for several weeks but this time it was too much, so I decided to scale back and give my body sometime to recover, see next workout)

Overhead press
3x5x110

Deadlift
5x135
5x165
5x205
4x255 (supinated grip)

Lying Face pulls
15x15
11x15

Push-up plus
15
14 (seemed to get in the way of bench progress so I'm temporarily eliminating them)


Fri. 6/20

Back squats
3x5x240

Bench
4x155
2x5x145

DB Snatch
5x75
3x75 (left) 5x75 (right)
5x70

Chins
7 (weaker than I was 2 months ago but I'm also 13 pounds heavier on 6/20)
2x4


Sun. 6/22

Back Squats
3x5x245

Overhead press
3x5x112.5

Romanian deadlift
8x115
9x140
8x175
7x205

Lying Face pulls
16x15
15x15
11x15


Tues. 6/24

Front Squats
3x5x135

Bench
3x5x135 (someone advised me to decrease my bench to break out of my lack of progress and then try to add 5 pounds per workout)

DB Snatch
3x75 (R)
2x70 (R)
2x5x65 (R)
3x5x70 (L)


Thur. 6/26

Back Squats
3x5x250

Overhead Press
3x5x115

Deadlift
5x135
5x175
5x205
2x245 (supinated)
5x255 (supinated)


Sun. 6/29

Back squats
3x5x255

Bench
3x5x140

Romanian Deadlift
8x120
9x145
8x185
9x215

Lying Face pulls
15x15
12x15


Tues. 7/1

Front squats
3x5x145

Overhead Press (BB)
3x5x120

DB Snatch
2x5x75
5x70

Grip Strength (BB)
4x205 (holding onto barbell with a double overhead grip just off the ground for about 15 seconds)


Thur. 7/3

Back Squats
3x5x260

Bench
3x5x145

Deadlift
5x135
5x175
5x205
3x235 (supinated grip)
5x265


Mon. 7/7

Back Squats
3x5x265

Overhead Press
3x5x122.5

Romanian Deadlift
8x125
8x150
8x185
8x225

Lying Face pulls
20x12.5
17x12.5
13x12.5


Wed. 7/9

Front Squats
3x5x160

Bench
3x5x150

DB Snatch
5x3x75

Grip Strength
4x100 (holding two 100 pound dumbbells for 10-15 sec.)


Fri. 7/11

Back Squats
5x270
3x270 (bad unracking)
5x270

Overhead Press
3x5x125

Deadlift
5x135
5x175
5x205
5x235
5x275 (supinated)

Lying Face pulls
22x12.5
17x12.5


Sun. 7/13

Front Squats
3x5x175

Bench
3x5x155

DB Snatch
3x5x60 (deload, shoulders started feeling a little sore)

Grip Strength
4x90's (hold two 90 pound dumbbells for 20-30 sec.


Wed. 7/16

Back Squat
3x5x270

Overhead Press
3x5x122.5 (I idiotically forgot a 5 pound plate on the left side)
2x130 (tried to make up for it with a heavy set but it didn't work so well)

Romanian Deadlift
8x135
8x165
8x200
2x235 (grip strength failed
4x225 (grip strength failed, probably warmed up too heavy, or did too much grip volume)


Sat. 7/19

Front squats
3x5x135 (deload)

Bench
3x5x160

DB Snatch
3x5x65 (deload)


Mon. 7/21

Back squats
3x5x190 (deload)

Overhead Press
3x5x127.5

Romanian deadlift (deload)
8x105
9x125
8x145
8x160

Standing! Face pulls
2x20x60
18x60


Thur. 7/24

Back squats
2x5x270
4x270

Bench
2x5x165
4x165

DB Snatch
5x3x70 (slight deload)

Standing Face pulls
18x72
15x72
14x72


Sun. 7/27

Front Squats
3x5x185

Overhead Press (too much weight, ended up being more of a push press)
3x5x130

Deadlift
5x135
5x175
5x205
5x235
3x265 (supinated grip)
5x285 (supinated grip)

4-1 minute intervals at an average of 22 mph with 30 seconds rest between on the stationary bike
---the darn bike didn't have any straps on the pedals, that wasn't fun


Note: On all exercises I do warm-up sets, but I only list them on deadlifts because I only do 1 work set of these. For back squats my warm-up sets are as follows:

5x45
5x95
5x135
5x185
5x225
2x250

If I do 3x5x270 for my work set this is a volume of nearly 8000 pounds. I do not know if this is particularly high or not but it is not suprising to me I could not recover after doing this and deadlifting heavy in the same work-out, so I will not be doing that again. For most other exercises, bench press, overhead press I do 4 warm-up sets.

[hg]

Matt
You are definitely a goal setter & must be a time management expert...it's awesome what you are doing. How do you manage your time between working, going to school & studying, working out, eating and sleeping, and slipping in golf lessons.

Can you elaborate a little and share your program on how you solved your back problems by making your hips more mobile and learning to activate your glutes.

Thanks for any help.

HG

[mrodock]

HG,

My answer is in a new thread I started: How I fixed my back problems

[mrodock]

Diet for Sun. 7/27

Woke up @ 8:45am

8:55a-10:45a

1 multivitamin w/o iron

Whey Protein Powder
-260 calories
-3 grams of fat
-10 grams of carbs
-48 grams of protein
-11 grams of BCAA
-8 grams glutamine

Pumpernickel bagel
-330 calories
-2.5 grams of fat
-67 grams of carbs
-12 grams of protein

Cream cheese
-135 calories
-12 grams of fat
-6 grams of carbs
-3 grams of protein

Raw honey (got out a lot more than I had intended)
-85 calories
-25 grams of carbs

Rolled oats
-380 calories
-7 grams of fat
-64 grams of carbs
-14 grams of protein

1190 calories
24.5 grams of fat
172 grams of carbs
77 grams of protein

1:15p-1:50p

Roast beef 197 grams
-385 calories
-10.5 grams of fat
-0 carbs
-66.5 grams of protein

Whole grain bread (3 slices)
-330 calories
-6 grams of fat
-60 grams of carbs
-12 grams of protein

A1 steak sauce
-45 calories
-9 grams of carbs

Raw walnuts 45 grams
-270 calories
-27 grams of fat
-0 carbs
-6 grams of protein

1030 calories
43.5 grams of fat
69 grams of carbs
84.5 grams of protein

3:40-4:00

Multigrain Oatbran cereal
-330 calories
-3 grams of fat
-72 grams of carbs
-12 grams of protein

Unsweetened coconut
-220 calories
-10 grams of fat
-8 grams of carbs
-2 grams of protein

550 calories
13 grams of fat
80 grams of carbs
14 grams of protein

5:45p
Whey Protein Powder
-260 calories
-3 grams of fat
-10 grams of carbs
-48 grams of protein
-11 grams of BCAA
-8 grams glutamine

6:30p-7:30p
Drank during and after workout
Frozen Blueberries
-160 calories
-38 grams of carbs
-2 grams of protein

Frozen Mango
-90 calories
-24 grams of carbs
-0 grams of protein

250 calories
-62 grams of carbs
-2 grams of protein

7:35p-7:50p
Whey Protein Powder
-260 calories
-3 grams of fat
-10 grams of carbs
-48 grams of protein
-11 grams of BCAA
-8 grams glutamine

1 multivitamin w/o iron

8:20p-8:30p
Qdoba naked burrito with cilantro lime rice, chicken, black beans, quacamole, and sour cream
-740 calories
-31 grams of fat
-74 grams of carbs
-40 grams of protein

11p-11:10p

Whey Protein Powder
-260 calories
-3 grams of fat
-10 grams of carbs
-48 grams of protein
-11 grams of BCAA
-8 grams glutamine

Raw walnuts
-180 calories
-18 grams of fat
-4 grams of protein

Bed 11:30pm

4720 calories
139 grams of fat ~28%
487 grams of carbs ~41%
365 grams of protein ~31%
44 grams of BCAA
32 grams of glutamine

[Vickie Lake]

Whew Matt! I have just printed out your information and will put it together so I can get a clear picture. Quickly,you are correct in thinking that pullups and other lat work will use up some of your energy and your bench total will suffer on that same day's workout. With that said you are looking for real problems with your shoulders if you are not maintaining a balance of tension between the back and chest. If your rhomboids are truly overdeveloped you could be realizing some restrictions of your triceps in their secondary role to your chest work. You could benefit by some tricep work with a focus on function. The extrodinary strength of your rhomboids on the inside of the scapula relative to the connection of your tricep on the outside of your scapula and then the participation of the rotator cuff muscles could be inhibiting your access to the greatest contractile ability of your pecs. Sounds like you have a lot of material so take a look at this. I know you are on a large muscle/compound program but sometimes you need to isolate your attention to these important secondary muscles and the alignment of the whole body.

Abs should be worked like any other muscle. Three days a week with a strong program should be sufficient since, as you already noticed the abs are getting a lot of work in your other body part exercises. Your abs will naturally thicken with the heavy squat, it is a consequence of keeping your upper body from collapsing under the appropriate weight to overload your legs.

Let me study the material you gave me and I'll respond with a more specif response. You are going to pay a price in your energy when you train this heavy. As you continue training you will become more efficient at creating energy and healing. Remember more rest might be necessary, 8-9 hours a night is not uncommon. You will also become more mentally tough and your golgi tendon will develop more tenacity. But as long as you are training at the height of your strength threshhold you will be taxing your energy reserves and also your bodies requirements for food and recovery.

Finally I will remind us all that the body is adaptive to any consisent information. Changing up your workout is one of the best ways to break through your plateau's. More on this when I study all this information. I can't wait to read your othr thread as well. I deal with lots of back problems and love that you are championing the cause of self diligence, self study, and self healing! Later

Vik