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I feel great the day after my first conditioning session. Was a bit afraid I would have shaky knees and sore hams/quads but instead I feel fresh and rejuvenated. It seems I shied away from conditioning because of my experience with longer duration aerobic work (~30mins) and longer HIIT (40 minute bball games) - but now I believe i've got a good compromise which is easier to recover from. If my body can handle it, I might add a 2nd conditioning session. Double the bodyfat loss, pretty please.

Training
650m FTM (AM)
2km walk (PM)

If i'll be lean (? 10%) at ~75kg(165lb) - I don't think I'll get there on this cutting phase. Probably will take a diet break after ? 15% - for about 2 wks, reset my hormones and shit back to normal before resuming the cut from ~15% to 10%. If my calculations are right (ha) - i'll be ~15% at around 79.5kg (175lb). So i'll keep cutting to 175 at which point I should be legit ? 15%.

Incidentally my estimates are based on the following calculations that I am at 19% right now



So glad I added some carbs (wheat) into my diet about a month ago. I started eating 2 slices of wholemeal toast for breakfast. And 2 roti for dinner. Game changer.  Makes life easier, takes away hunger andI have better energy thru the day and best of all, fat loss is unaffected. The extra fibre and nutrients are nice too.

Post workout milk's quite good. If your diet allows for whole milk that might even better

One study did find that full fat milk promoted protein synthesis better than skim milk following training but nobody is sure why.  

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/milk-the-new-sports-drink-a-review-research-review.html
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/muscle-growth-and-pos-workout-nutrition.html

Gatorade is okay if you're sweating a lot but if you just lifted weights then protein+carbs will prob be better. Btw milk is pretty good at hydrating too if you don't mind drinking milk.

A gallon a day of milk will keep any athlete healthy, happy and well hydrated  

New Program : Phase Ripped Abz

Conditioning will be on a mountain bike. I'm thinking tabata sprints 3 mins and 30-60mins w/o sprinting. For variety or in bad weather, once a month i'll play basketball with my old team.

Upper body assistance will be an exercise from chinups, banded chinups, curls, widegrip bench press, push presses, cable curls, cleans or rows.

I'm doing descending sets for backsquats and bench press btw.

When I feel like it, I can take Tue or Sat completely off.

Time to find those abs, great form, become stronger and powerful,  jump higher and run fast.

Body Comp Goal

I'm going for a hard and fast 5lb loss over 3 weeks to start off this phase. No excuses.



Target is set at 178 on the morning of October 1st.

No more fucking around.

Training
650m Fasted TM (AM)
BP 5x81.5, 6x75, 6x72.5, 3x5x72.5 (wide grip, PR)
BS 2x100, 1x115, 1x120 (high, bad form, dont count it)
FS 3x100, 4x92.5, 4x90, 4x87.5
PC 2x60, 1x65 (ok form), 3x70F (I wasn't pulling these high enough to rack. Not sure why but I did get 1x70 yesterday on my first attempt at PCs in like 2 years but it wasn't happening today. May stick to only trying these on Sundays.)
PCDLs 2x3x90 (2nd set was good)
RDL 3x127.5 (PR but bad set, rounded LB, i guess i went too long btw RDL workouts), 10x102.5 (PR, good form)

BW: 83kg (182.98lb)

I always learn something new. I never thought to think of shoulders up. Chest up yes, but I can keep chest tight while moving it up or down, but shoulders up would fix it in place. Thanks!

Nah man I use oly shoes and never come up on my toes.

Have you ever tried putting a block under your TOES (not heel). Wonder what will do for quad activ

Maybe you stay a ton on your heels or something?

what do you mean, while squatting? yeah but you're supposed to lol. also i just noticed im sore around my hips too and bizarrely lats. front squats man, they're some exercise.

Thanks lance. I appreciate the information, from your description the SSB sounds promising and 'll try find a gym which has one so I can test it out before I think of ordering one. Here is what I understand from what you have described about my issues - which I am grateful for because it's cleared up the picture in my head.

Basically - from a long time of LBBS squatting, i've got ingrained issues with driving hips out of the hole. This is only a problem because in the hole my back is inclined the greatest amount. In this inclined position that my back is in at the bottom, the additional factors of a)the weight bearing down, wanting to push my chest lower, rotating my torso to the ground, and b)my hips driving up hard, making the rotation i described even more likely. The SSB helps here because at the bottom, I can self-spot myself to stay upright, and all the while pushing hard against the floor with my legs - making it a leg dominant exercise because i have addressed the desire of the torso to rotate towards the ground. This is what you've described and it sounds spot on.

I just realised something now. When I first got my WL shoes, I hated them because the high heel would make it easier to tip forwards out of the hole in my low bar squats. But what I didn't know then was that was because I was driving hips first out of the hole and combined with the forward lean causing lower back placement, it made the whole situation worse. But i'm wondering now is if I put the bar in a high bar placement and then use WL shoes with a normal high heel, if that will help rather than hinder with staying upright. I wish I hadn't had my WL shoes modified now. I should have rather modified my squat to high bar.

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2. I have a friend who is about  25, 6' tall, a good athlete in his day and weighs a fat ~90kg/200lb (maybe a few kilos less than this). He's got a wicked first step and very quick to accelerate from stationary even though he's fairly overfat. How does this work? Is it just genetics? I ask because he's far from the 10% I would need to be athletic, he's probably closer to 30% and yet the excess (dead) weight doesn't seem to stop him from being able to accelerate quickly when guarding him

Can be a number of different things, his timing, high rate coding/excitable cns, and even with the extra weight he may still have a fairly decent strength/bw ratio.   but to make your first step lethal, watch where the defenders weight is.  The second you get them back on their heels, or too far forward, make that step.  It will appear 208% faster to the defender, even though its the same speed as your usual steps, its how you timed it.  Also, 98.576 % of statistics are made up on the spot.

great tip, can't wait to try it out! i forgot to mention when I weighed ~30kg more than I do now, Lance my standing vertical was still around 22" .. which is where it had been since my teen years when i was about 40kg lighter.  I would have expected it to have gone down but it never did.