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Messages - maxent

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2116
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Age vs Vertical
« on: February 26, 2016, 01:45:24 pm »
Tbh there's degrees of low carb. I was going off lowcarb diets but now i'm back on the wagon. If i had to shed lots of fat really quickly (say an anniversary or summer holiday or something) i'd go with as close to zero carb as possible - permitting up to 50g a day if it helps sleep. If I had to train (bball, lift etc) then i'd only go as low as 100g a day with one or two days going up to 200g (refeeds).  The former would give more fat loss than the latter but it's a trade off for performance sake. I'd save the carbs for dinner as much as possible to facilitate sleep again. I'm assuming we're talking about a person with decent amounts of bodyfat who is probably insulin resistant so less carbs = good.

And low fat doesn't really come into it. i would never do a diet with fat more than 50g a day. I aim for about 35g a day. Fat's full of calories so if you're cutting calories you should always cut fat way down imho.

2117
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / W1D3 of 4wk peaking phase
« on: February 26, 2016, 05:48:08 am »
Weighted Dunks ~ 18 @ 85kg (LPR)
Pickup Bball ~ 45 mins

BS 1Fx127.5
OHP 6x3x60 (LPR)
RDL 8x140 (LPR), 6x150 (PR)
BHT 2x8x120 (PR)
WCU 3x100, 5x97.5

BW: 76.05kg / 167.66lb (blah)

Bodycomp notes:
Sucks how the scale hasn't really moved from  ~76kg ... praying for the day i wake up magically low 75s / high 74s . damn :/ i need a steady stream of progress to keep me motivated. been stuck around here for ages. and to make things worse the longer i cut, the fatter i look which sucks .. makes me think i was right about needing to diet down to 70kg eventually to be lean which is what i realised last time i got in the low 70s in 2014. Anyway im just gonna keep at it and see where i end up by tournament time.
Bbball notes:
Had the bright idea do a weighted dunk workout on the high rim with my heavy oversize 14 shoes. Then i did some vestless and could do tomahawks easy. But here is the depressing thing. In dec i think when i last came here, i was doing the same dunk while weighing 85kg LOL. So pathetic, tbh tho, the rom and movement pattern with the vest might be the main reason i cant land tmhawks with the vest. Doesn't matter, just gotta keep working at it. In addition to being vestless, i was also quite a lot lighter from sweating because i did that dunk after pickup .. so that's prob another factor, weighing around 77kg (including shoes+clothes) makes it a very submax, meaningless thing.

Played pick up in the vest. Missed 100% of everything, shots and layups. i'd blame the vest but im just shit. I met one of the guys who organised the team i played for end of last year, asked him if he could let me fill in during march. he took my number but i dont really think he'll call me  :( oh well, we'll see.

I realised im prob not getting any game time dunks .. as a RL jumper i want to approach from R side of the rim but as a left handed player i'm stronger offensively on the L side So im just a hot mess .. better basketball player on one side and more powerful athlete on the other!! . And im not even sure how it translates on defense, need to figure out which side im better on.  It prob depends whether im facing the rim or away? If im shot blocking or rebounding it's a trade off either way i'd imagine. Any thoughts on this welcome.
Lifting notes:
On a day i failed my BS warmup of 127.5kg on the 2nd rep of a triple, i convinced and forced myself to go through with the workout anyway. In hindsight, thankfully. I got PRs across the board on RDLs and BHTs and LPR on OHP. Woooho. If my stupid bodyweight was ≤75kg that would be a 2xbw RDL set as well .. but it's fine, i'll go for 8x150 when im ≤75kg.

On barbell hip thrusts i took a 20kg jump from last week's PRs of 2x8x100 .. next wk i'll prob go for 2x8x140kg? My goal is 2x8x150kg by tournament time. Or if i can keep taking big jumps maybe even 2x8x160kg which is more pleasing cause the 2x10kg plates are more aesthetically impressive. This is either a meaningless lift that is doing nothing for me (probably) or it's helping my hip strength but like ive conjectured before .. my posterior chain is strong compared to my quads (in my humble opinion) and i need to bring up my weak point (leg strength) to become more athletic. Still, if it helps me squat more then my quads will also grow so it can't hurt. Lets just give it a chance and see what happens, ive never really done posterior assistance exercises like RDLs and BHTs .. so it's worth experimenting there even though i think my squat style already has that area covered (imho).

2118
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 24, 2016, 12:01:22 pm »
Quote from: T0ddday on February 23, 2016, 09:58:57 am
1.  Despite all the silly things you do.... congrats on doing them.  95% of people with dumb ideas like "i should cut into the 150s at 6'4"" dont have the dedication to actually do it.  You do.  Then you supply us with data which I appreciate. 

2. Stop making unverified claims that are easily verifiable.  Its clear you have some type of body dysmorphia.  Common in athletes.  But do you have female fat storage and low testosterone?  Are you insulin resistant?  I dont know. But you could easily find out.  Hell, when you come to LA you can come to my hospital and an hour we can sequence your genome, measure your free testosterone, hemoglobin A1c, and fasting glucose.  My bet is your far more normal than you think. 

3. 20kg is far too much weight to you.  Your slow and light.  Thats almost 30% of bodyweight.  Studies have results at 10-15%.  I like to push the envelope, so I have tested as much as 16%....    Although I think percent is far less important than adaptation.  If you add a 5-10lb vest and cant jump within am inch or 2 of PR you have too much weight.

1. Thanks, that's quite the compliment even though we disagree fundamentally about my bodyfat% i am okay with it because I know i am an extreme outlier somehow and it's easier to believe i am exaggerating and dsymorphic than believe the less plausible possibility that i am right about my high bodyfat levels!

2. Wow that's an incredibly generous offer and i'm more than thrilled to accept! Sure thing, happy to do any test you like :)

3.  Agree 20kg is too much for me. I found out today that 87.5kg was too much given my morning bodyweight is 76.1kg .. so that means i was using 15% of morning bodyweight. But here is something to consider if i use my gym weight it was around 78.2kg so was ~12% of gym bodyweight. And yet here is another thing to consider, we're probably working on the assumption that most ppl who do this experiment wil be reasonably lean (10% bodyfat), if i'm higher than that, say 15% then that shud be factored in. I guess lean body mass would be the best thing to use in that case? But if you're reasonably lean then lean mass ≈ morning bodyweight ≈ gym bodyweight so it doesn't matter too much.

2119
News, Announcements, & Suggestions / TIL: Resizable Reply box!
« on: February 24, 2016, 11:54:48 am »
So i always thought the reply box was too small (vertically). and if i was quoting a longish reply i couldnt see the whole reply in the reply box, leave alone the text i was adding in reply.

But i found out today that triangle with a little triangle inside it on the bottom right corner is actual a resize widget you can drag down to  resizethe reply box vertically! So cool .. this is a game changer!

 :wowthatwasnutswtf: :wowthatwasnutswtf: :wowthatwasnutswtf: :wowthatwasnutswtf:

2120
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / W1D2 of 4 week peaking phase
« on: February 24, 2016, 05:22:15 am »
BS 1x132.5 (LPR; 1.74xbw)
JS 2x8x152.5 (PR; 2xbw)
Barbell Calf Raise 15x170 (LPR; new ex)
Push Press 3x5x62.5 (PR?)
Depth Jump 3x6x20" @78.2kg
Weighted Dunks  ~ 10 @ 84.5kg (PR; new exercise)
HIIT Sprints 6x(20s on, 25s off)

BW: 76.1kg / 167.77lb

Squat notes:
Next week i'll double 132.5kg while weighing less. Can't wait!! My erectors are about to get stronger which is exciting cause i can usually push my squat up once that happens.

Upper body notes:
Figured out something about my PP technique (on locking out) which i wasnt doing before. So should be able to go for a PR of 3x6x64.5kg nxt week which will be exciting. Or maybe if im ambitious even go for 3x6x65kg tho i may not be capable of that jump. Will see.

Dunking notes:
Left home wearing the weightvest weighing 87.35kg .. could not land a single dunk. In fact, even just touching the rim was challenging enough. Went back to my car and took out some weights to what i thought was around 85kg. Then i could dunk, with some warming up and technique refinement. It's interesting how being overweight forces you to be more efficient. Then i took off the vest and did some easy tomahawks. For training effect i used my big heavy size14 shoes. Of course later on when im testing and peaked i'll switch to my better fitting, lighter bball shoes. I do think if i had one more weight i could prob have dunked at 85kg - nevermind. Next week i'll go for .. 86 or so? But the other change i want to make is dunk on the highest rim i know. That way i'll get more training effect.

Im not doing the hypergravity experiment yet by the way. waering the vest for weighted dunks on weds only. Later on i might consider wearing it chronically but not right now while im still below PR vertical levels.

Conditioning notes:
Did sprints a lot better this week! Felt good. Was a lot quicker and covered most of the ground (~125m) on each sprint. Next time slightly less rest, maybe reduce to 22s? Last week i did 5 intervals, added an interval. Going to stick with 6 from here.

2121
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 23, 2016, 03:21:50 am »
BW: 75.9kg/167.33lb (2016 PR)

Visibly leaner with skinfolds diminishing around the waist (abdominal & lower back). Now my female fat storage patterns are starting to appear more prominent as my upper half of the body looks skinny/small while the lower half looks big/flabby! Moobs still unchanged though. I will have a six pac way before my chest/legs/hips/butt is lean .. which sucks cause what remains will be that hard to mobilise stubborn fat. Much much more difficult to lose in comparison to the usual male fat storage areas. So maybe hours and hours of fasted cardio  needed in addition to dieting lol. That's a job for a future cut of 164 ->159 sometime after the late march bball tournament.
Finally got around to opening my replacement weight vest. MY experience with the last one was really awful so i had put it off til now. First impressions are this one is a lot better than the previous model which I returned. But i dont know if it will last long, the other one literally fell apart in a few days use. It feels more comfortable than the last. There is a weird factory smell just like with the last one which I find repulsive .. sigh. Looking on amazon, americans are really spoilt for choice, so many nice weight vests. Only cheap shitty chinese stuff available here though :( I took out half the weights so shud have about 10kg on there now (didn't count). I'll weigh and check in a bit.

effective bodyweight = 87.5kg .. feels somewhat burdensome on my legs .. haha, wonder how long it takes to adjust to it. Will keep it there for a while then work up to +20kg by tournament time to get peaking benefits (if there are any). I cant imagine dunking at this bw though so maybe it's too heavy and i should start lighter and progress it? Piece of shit sand bags. And the shoulder straps limit ROM so im not sure i could even dunk with it even if it were lighter. Oh well.

2122
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 22, 2016, 11:18:51 am »
Quote from: T0ddday on February 22, 2016, 03:42:48 am
Quote from: maxent on February 20, 2016, 05:57:51 pm
From competitive bball, yeah i think im just bout done with the sport. From vertical trainign and stuff, idk, probably there too, it may not be possible to do much better than what i've achieved .. did start with a 20" vert so im not sure there is much left but diminishing returns from training. Will see though, once i stop playing bball i can explore other things like using PEDs and that may allow me to unlock more vertical gains but not really sure about going down that road tbh.

PEDs to unlock vertical gains?  Dunno about the utility of that, haven't seen PEDs benefit any male explosive athletes yet.  There is this one PED called food and muscle that will do wonders for you.   The idea that there are diminishing returns after the move from 20'' to 27'' is really one that is so defeatist it's actually disheartening.  I would bet a lot of money on the idea that I could get you to 35''.  Your extremely disciplined which is the number one untrainable thing - everything else can be fixed.   

The biggest problem you have is a lack of belief and a lack of positive motivation/competition.   I really don't know anything about Australia so I don't know how much you can change this but if you were in a different training environment you would be shocked to see what you could do.  I hardly even dunk because my knees can't take pounding but today I trained a dunker along with a football player.  Having never trained a pro-dunker before was eye-opening, a local guy whose internet name is young-hollywood came to one of our sessions to learn about speed and rehab and just seeing him jump was so motivating.  I was always skeptical of internet dunkers and videos and imagined a lot of camera artistry and exaggerations about height... But this guy was no more than 5'11 and had a legitimate 50'' two footed jump.  Even though I didn't plan to jump I was motivated to jump at the vertec and got some 11' 3-step vertec touches in for the first time I can remember.  That of course is slightly below the guys standing vertical.  Lol.  The motivation a group of positive athletes has on each other really is helpful, you could unlock gains you don't know exist with the right environment - far more than what PEDs can give you.

I think that is fair about lack of belief and positivity. I'm guilty of that, and ive been told that by someone else recently too but unrelated to training.  And i do agree if i could find even one person (not online) who had similar interests and wanted to train hard to improve athleticism i'd benefit from it greatly. But i think a lot of as are in pockets of isolation where we don't have the group training dynamic .. except yourself i dont know anyone else who has that here, at least that i can recall reading about in logs.

But i must say im kinda optimstic a little  .. not about anythign in the short term .. that's all too daunting at the moment .. but in the medium term when ive got lean enough to start gaining muscle and strength.. i do think i can do some amazing things for my athleticism. I just have to do the hard work now and stick it out through these dark times. Sucks having to psyche up for a dunk (when not cutting it's natural like walking, cud do a tomahawk submax getting out of bed cold!) or even a lift that is usually a warmup becomes a 2RM effort that now needs psyching up.

 i really wanna become the hip dominant athlete you described earlier.. still dont know how to go about it and im not in the mental state to start reading random internet training gurus either .. dont really need training ADD right now.

2123
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / chasing windmills (W1D1) continued
« on: February 22, 2016, 11:10:07 am »
Food:


I got tired of eating chicken breast wrapped in a roti or just straight up (as in rest days) so decided to make a pizza. Surprisingly do-able and quite good with macros .. so i might make this my go-to active day meal. Extra bonus the protein content makes for a very filling pizza, after the first slice or two i felt full .. normally i can eat a fast food pizza in minutes and still be able to polish off a good fraction of another and then dessert so that was insightful .. i guess if i make clean eating my normal regime i will be able to make good use of such satiating qualities of protein. 



Interesting macros of the lowfat cheese was the almost zero carbs? That's interesting. I didn't know that was a thing. In australia at least it's new and im no stranger to dieting ive never come across cheese with such macros in the local supermarket. Cool!

Activity:

According to the fitbit i had a TDEE of around 2700.. which is cool!

2124
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 22, 2016, 07:50:42 am »
So merrick i have to agree with you that getting down to 165 (actually ive settled on the goal of exact 164lb instead of the vague <165) is not so good for basketball. When i weigh 180-190 and I drive ppl dont wanna fuck with me and get in the way cause i have hte momentum of a steam engine and ppl will stay  away. Everythign changes when you are a lightweight cunt .. they step up and challenge you on a drive cause they dont fear you in any way and welcome physical contact because they fancy their chances. Now im not even say pppl are consciously thinking about this shit during the split seconds of a basketball game, it's def subconscious but ppl do size you up in the heat of the moment and decide whether they wanna contest or not based purely on these factors. Very interesting to say the least.

Another observation i made today,  on defense when i consciously slow myself down and setup for a double leg jump on defence i block the shit out of a player. WIth the important caveat the offensive player is not very good and doesn't take advantage of quickly launching a shot before you can do that Otherwise im going off SL and im beyond mediocre SL. So yeah, basketball does not in any way suit me .. im so bad at this sport ... i have no redeeming skills whatsover lol

2125
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / chasing windmills (W1D1)
« on: February 22, 2016, 07:38:44 am »
BS 2x130 (LPR; 1.70827x multiplier --PR?), 6x102.5
BBall ~ 1hr (first decent bball session of 2016)
Dunks 3x5 (1 legit tomahawk .. low rim but)

BP 1x92.5, 5x85 (LPR), 9x77 (BWxreps PR)

BW: 76.1kg / 167.77lb (2016 PR)

Squat notes:
Repped ≥130kg for the first time since 29th January when i doubled 132.5kg. Also first time i've squatted ≥ 130kg since 5th Feb when I did a single at 132.5kg. The kicker? Today was supposed to be a light day but i had something to prove to myself and got the LPR. Feels good, i know i can end this cut doubling 132.5kg at which point i'll push it up aggressively to 135-140kg double which should bring me closer than i have ever been to a 2xbw BS. Fuck yeah.

Baskeball notes:
I dont care what anyone says .. the absolute best way to get in basketball shape is 1v1 against a variety of opponents. So that's what i did after we finished playing 3v3 for about half an hour. The quick small guard and long big guy athletic guy being ideal opponents 1v1. Today i played against the latter ... he was beating me like 6-1, i brought it back to like 3-6 or something (we were going for 11) .. but then he walked away for some reason. I'm not even saying he was a better basketball player. But he's young, long (6'2"-6'5" and in shape) and he solidly beat me cause he's in waaaaaay better shape. I love it. I love getting my ass handed to me in 1v1. Motivates me to get better and better until i can beat the opponent. Hope he's there next week too.

I played bball lowcarbed which is good cause with my obese insulin resistant ass it burns a tonne of bodyfat.. i finally remembered how good this shit is in getting me lean.. watch the fat melt way in these last 9 days!!

oh and dunking was aite, i got my first tomahawk which is an LPR. Good esp while lowcarbed, it's hard to do athletic shit like dunking when carb depleted so im happy with that. I felt it though, could only do sets of 5, was done before i could attempt my 6th rep which so settled for 3x5 instead of my goto 3x6.

Bench notes:
The 92.5kg flew up! I have long arms and am in the tail end of a long cut weighing 168 doing close grip bench press only benching 1x a week. Also thought it might be interesting to see how many reps i cud do with BW and got 9 but i didn't fail. I figure when i reach my goal bw i'll be able to do more which is promising that im on the right track.

2126
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 21, 2016, 08:13:03 pm »
Quote from: Merrick on February 21, 2016, 05:44:44 pm
I'm no nutrition expert, but aren't you getting very low fat?  It's usually recommended to get minimum 0.5g/lb of bodyweight in fat to meet hormonal needs I think

I dont know, the fish oil shud cover the EFA requirements? THe book i was reading actually says that i might be having too much fish oil. The author suggests max 6 capsules (of 1g each) a day to avoid blood clotting (or something). I will reduce it to 6g after the diet.

2127
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 21, 2016, 07:11:54 am »
BW: 76.15kg/167.88lb (2016 PR)

Activity:
Played pickup .. didn't want to, but felt compelled since the team is low on morale/numbers. Was fasted and lowcarbed (100g) yesterday. I wanted to and took it mostly easy but had an opportunity at a dunk under the rim and rattled one in .. my back didn't like the impact of landing but it's not too bad. IProbably should have just rested for lifting tmr .. but whatever.  My fitbit already shows 5k steps for the day.. oops.



Food

So much for a rest day, FML. But the food intake above will be my goto for rest days for the remaining 9 days.

2128
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 20, 2016, 05:57:51 pm »
From competitive bball, yeah i think im just bout done with the sport. From vertical trainign and stuff, idk, probably there too, it may not be possible to do much better than what i've achieved .. did start with a 20" vert so im not sure there is much left but diminishing returns from training. Will see though, once i stop playing bball i can explore other things like using PEDs and that may allow me to unlock more vertical gains but not really sure about going down that road tbh.

I do want to go into the tournament in the best shape of my life.. and as athletic as ive ever been. But time is not on my side and i have left too much left last minute.. (body comp, strength, peaking etc) .. so may have to settle for less than that. i'll try my best ofc but it seems pretty unlikely at this point.

the gains im looking for are from a)accessory work (rdls, hip thrusts) and getting my squat going again despite my changes of bodyweight, and b)going from a catabolic state (cutting) to a more anabolic one. Anyone who goes on a cut will lose some performance, 10% is not unusual. If coming off the cut usually will give a boost in strength and athleticism which will be cool. c)explore weight vest for peaking. and a few other things im forgetting now but i could try to peak my athleticism. The little things add up. d)stopping fasting always helps me train better.

2129
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 20, 2016, 03:45:47 pm »
No i've always held the individual is different and that's the message others are missing because they're projecting their assumptions of what a person should be (based on BMI which is bullshit anyway) at a given height and weight. I'm not the one arguing against individual variation, they are!

It's common knowledge that you can improve your T-levels by reducing bodyfat % and decrease it by increasing bodyfat%. And insulin sensitivity does improve when you're leaner and it does worse when you get fatter. These things are good reasons to get lean regardless of the messenger but the main reason I believe in becoming lean first is the because bodyfat amount (in grams) will go up when you gain weight and if you start off with too much fat then you will end up too fat. To gain muscle you obviously have to gain some weight so that's unavoidable.

But yeah i'd just ask everyone to be patient and defer their criticisms until i've finished this cycle (<75kg/165lb) in ETA 10 days time. After that im going to stop cutting per se and just focus on getting stronger and gaining some muscle while staying at 75kg or less. For a while. And i'll get the DEXA scan for your edification so we can get an objective 3rd party opinion on the mystery of my bodyfat%.

I dont know if my vertical has not gone up cause i haven't focused on peaking it since i lost this weight. But of course that the next phase when i get off the cut will be to peak my vertical which should be interesting to see. I do expect PRs though, just dont know whether it will be low 30s or more than that.

TLDR:  i'll update with photos in 10 days after finishing this cut. And after some weeks of stabilising at 75kg/165lb, will get a DEXA scan done.


2130
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: chasing athleticism
« on: February 20, 2016, 01:43:14 pm »
I actually have 2 pairs of calipers.. and ones a good quality one. Never use it though. It's not very useful. I can tell when im leaning out by skinfolds getting smaller, jiggle test and not to mention mirror test. Calipers would just show diminishing skinfold measurements in mm which don't really matter. Actually, the data might be useful to see where the fat is coming off .. but it would be too much effort to track regularly .. hmmmm. But if that's what you wanna use the calipers go ahead, it will be useful. What it's not so useful for is coming up with an accurate bodyfat percentage.

Anyway. Suppose you go to the effort and take 8 site skinfolds.. then you plug them into an equation and get back a magic bodyfat measurement.  That's your bodyfat percentage, right? Not quite. The equation is made from a model taken from a sample of a population .. it might be way off for a given individual, especially out of population the original sample was taken from. So for me since I know i have little in common with the average white man it wont be accurate, similar for someone of african descent or south asian descent. If someone did make a model for my race it might be more accurate for me but nevertheless it's just an estimate and doesn't have to be accurate for an individual but for most of the original population sampled. Btw this same thing applies for DEXA too which is why i dont put much stock in it either.

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