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Very fun. Got crazy soreness too everywhere as if I wa not training regularly.
No ski, I wish. Just Xmas off, consuming stupid quantities of deadly poisons, mostly in the form of whiskey and cigars. Back to gym next Monday.

Back, happy new year everyone!

The aftermath of the xmas holidays was not that bad, i am around 85,5kg(188,5lbs) morning net weight, 90cm(35,5'') waist. Online and BI scale estimate around 17% bodyfat. That is how it looks too, no changes in mirror test except from an increase at the love handles ( yup, alcohol ).

Sooo, where do we go from here? What do i do now?
I think of changing things up a bit, doing something different. I think i have been attached to being 'jump-ready' for too many years. Always having some kind of reactive stuff in, MSEM, trying to create room for freshness/peak each week etc. Which is not bad, ok, but want to go a different road:
-I am going to chase strength for a couple of months. Really challenge my legs. Not with a neural gains method ( 5-3-1/RSR ), those work great for me but i seem to lose the gains pretty fast after. I will go the hypertrophy road, increased frequency AND volume.  I need some GPP now anyway, since i got derailed mid-December, so it fits. For squats i am thinking of alternating between 4x10 and heavy 3s+MEBM days.
-After that block comes the change. I will lay off the strength road for a while. Will go 'functional', make sprinting and bounding a priority, see if i can get some juice out of this rusting body. Of course i will still be squatting to preserve whatever leg strength i can, but i will be taking it easier. MSEM, maybe some LTMP, stuff like that, also lots of o-lifts.
-Nutrition will follow the above plan, bulk while is strength mode, and then go for a big cut. Willing to go down to 80kg ( 176lbs ) or even lower, in the high 70s ( low 170s ).
It is pretty simple, it is actually a two-step periodization, peak strength and then taper on it. With the extra element of bounding that i have never done so far.
Ok, let's see how it goes. Objections/opinions always welcomed.

It seems sensible if the bodyfat measurement is off...   However, I don't like the sound of this if the bodyfat is accurate..   IMO a male who is 17% bodyfat shouldn't go on a bulking diet ever.  Period - (tbh I don't think any power athlete should go on a short term bulking phase).  Not if they care about strength to weight ratios (dunking, sprinting, etc - sure it's different if your an NFL long snapper).   At 17% bodyfat it's feasible to gain muscle and strength while you lose muscle.  I've been through two major injuries and subsequent layoffs and gotten to around 20% bodyfat...   Once I get the past the initial soreness accompanied with a return IF you can stop dwelling on what you used to be capable of it's honestly the funnest time to train.  Training at that bodyfat is like being on the best drugs ever...  Every week things get better!  You get stronger, you get leaner, you get faster, BW things like pullups go from hard to extremely easy, you feel better, etc.   It's the training in the single digits that can be a drag where you find yourself choosing between getting really strong and heavy and fat OR feeling lethargic and light...    OF course while relative gains are great when your fat... Your performance surely won't be maximized...

As I said above - I don't like the idea of short term bulking/hypertrophy.  IMO there are really only three phases to being a relative strength power athlete.

1) Get lean enough for you.   This might be 6% bf, it might be 12% bf.   It does depend on the individual - but it's highly unlikely it's 17% for most men.   IF you play a dynamic sport frequently and competitively (basketball, soccer, track - not powerlifting) then chances are you are already at this level even if you don't love how you look in the mirror.   If you don't play a sport but used to play one then you can aim to weigh about what you did when you were highly competitive in your sport (plus a bit more for added muscle).    If you have never played a sport you can clean up your diet and do 16 weeks of high-intensity GPP with interval running to figure out where you sort yourself out.   Ideally we achieve this "lean enough for you" without extremely restrictive dieting and moreso through training. 

Now that you are lean enough there are two phases:

A) Minor growing and improving.  You should be in this phase for 90% of the time.   This is the phase where you make improvements - you get stronger, more flexible, improve mobility, add muscle, etc.  This phase has some periodization and allows for increases in fat that don't radically affect body composition...   Your diet should be clean but you should eat to make gains**.   Maybe you are 180 and 10% bodyfat and squat 350.  You get to 185 and 11% bodyfat and squat 400, and then 190 and 12% bf and squat 430, and then you keeping eating to make gains and get to 450 but start to see your bodyweight pushing 205+ and your bodyfat creeping up...  You stop.  It's not worth it.  We don't want to return to that first phase.  Maybe you won't ever squat more than 450 as a relative strength athlete...  Maybe you will but not by increasing leverage by adding weight - maybe years later when axillary lifts have been increased you can slowly push past...   

**Eat to make gains is just what it is - you eat just enough to make gains in stength/performance.   It sounds harder than it is when your lean and it is harder than it sounds when your fat.   This is why you must be lean enough.  When your lean enough you can squat and tell pretty quickly how helpful food is - you can see the benefit of a bowl of rice the night before a squat session.  You feel it.  You can also see it's unnecessary to add two bowls of rice.  So you don't.   This is the benefit to clean eating and maintaining leaness...  When you are fat and try and bulk you are simply eating more and most likely overeating.   

B) Peaking and Cutting.  The second phase is the phase where we realize our gains.  In the first phase we avoid things that make performance better but derail improvement - we don't cut and deplete glycogen, we don't get dehydrated, we don't stop resistance training to have better performances in races, etc.   Depending on our sport this phase might have to involve some semi-extreme dieting.  But it's short.  We do this a couple times a year to optimize performance and rest our bodies from the work they put in the most of the year...

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That said if you are 17% I would get into phase A as soon as possible.   I would recommend you do a GPP type training program - I have one for my athletes that works wonders - and do not attempt to nutritionally bulk.  Clean your diet up but don't go crazy on cutting and watch the fat melt off.  You will probably gain some strength too even if you won't be lifting massive weights during the session.  3-4 months of this and you will be ready to see major improvement by summer that you didn't think was possible...

inb4, first workout of the year.

4 January 2016

Bodyweight@session : ~87,5kg
Soreness : chest
Injuries/aches : none

SQUAT:
8@70kg
8@70kg
8@70kg

BENCH PRESS:
8@55kg
8@55kg
8@55kg

LAT PULL DOWN:
8@150lbs
8@150lbs
8@150lbs

STANDING CALF RAISE MACHINE
15@70kg
15@70kg
15@70kg

Weights were light, reps above 5 was hard. Normal.

Very nice reply, thanks!
I don't disagree with anything. Also my bad for mentioning 'bulk', it is not called bulk that i have in mind, it is rather re-composition. Eating a little above TDEE on gym days and a little below all other days. Keeping it at +500kcal on gym days and -500 all other days has proven to lead me to a steady weight loss, while adding some muscle mass too. It is like a repeated bulk-cut daily micro-cycle. Not even sure if such a thing exists, just something i have done in the past and works great for me. So for the GPP period i would just up the off-days kcals a bit ( still keeping it below or at most equal to TDEE ) to lead to a small weight gain. I am willing to change that plan though if it is nonsense.
As for the bodyfat numbers, yes, i am very well aware that bulking while being over 15% is considered nonsense. However, 15% is pretty much very lean for me. I do my cuts, I eat very clean, high protein, i keep active, yet those calculators and BI scale wont give me under 15%. To be honest and play the devil's advocate on myself, i never went under 80kg the recent years to see what would happen. But back in my mid 20s, being extremely active ( working out 4-5 times a week, running, swimming, playing basketball ) and weighing around 75kg, i never ever saw more than a faint 4-pack, the same that i can do now when i cut. I was leaner than ever last year at 82kg, felt an looked like 14% and calculators agreed.
So, if we forget the number per se ( 17% ) and just suppose i am around 3% more than my very-lean status, would you still be against doing that 'recomp' thing during my upcoming GPP phase? And going on a cut to reach 'as lean as possible' right after that? Note that all this planning is also very well timed with the weather here ( aka ability to go out and run ).

Sorry for not getting back to this for a bit...  A few points:

1) Yeah, if your just using BMI calculators and such you don't really know your bodyfat %.  If you have the means and it's possible to get hydrostatic or MRI done I suggest you do it; but if you don't then any estimate is pretty much guesswork...  Funny, how people you and people on this board (entropy) seem to overestimate bodyfat pretty considerably.   To be totally honest I don't even think bodyfat % is as useful as total fat mass...  The dangers of low bodyfat are primarily hormonal - really important hormones like leptin circulate in proportion to the amount of bodyfat we have - someone who suffers from low leptin with moderate amounts of fat will need to maintain higher fat mass than someone who can empty a larger proportion of their fat cells without leptin being affected.  But really this is in accordance to fat mass rather than bodyfat (athletes should store very little intramuscular fat).  For myself I know that i suffer if I start to go near 10 10lbs of fat.   But this means if I can get down to 180 my I need to keep my bodyfat above 5.5% but if I get muscular enough to be 225 my bodyfat should above 4.5%...  It's not a huge difference but it matters especially if you are less lean...

2) That said if you have never gotten really lean there is no time better to do it now... Well, in your case I guess when the weather warms up would be more ideal...   It's easier to get back to being really lean when you have been really  lean before - so if you plan on going bulk - lean it would be easier to go lean - bulk - lean...

3) The bottom line is now that you have clarified your "bulk" I don't think your programming is way off base.   It looks like you have the right idea IMO.   It's not ideally what I would have you do if I was training you*** but it's the right idea.  Everyone's body is different so if you feel like you perform best at +500 plus cals on training days and -500 cals on rest days then by all means do it - however, while I have often seen this type of diet/training approach recommended and called a "zig-zag" diet - I see no evidence that it works.  I put it in the same class I meal timing and the necessity of postworkout nutrition.  It's sensible but research shows the body doesn't actually respond differently to short-term dietary manipulation on a day to day basis...   If anything upping the calories on the day before you do something like heavy squats is probably going to be more beneficial than upping them the day you do squats and restricting them the day before you train...

***If I was training you I would write a program that involved shorter rest intervals, higher volume and gradually increasing weight - if you are 17% bodyfat you could recomp (lose fat and gain muscle/strength) and if not you could at least gain muscle and strength while gaining as little fat as possible!  Remember there are ways to get into lactate without being outdoors, they just are not as fun!

7 January 2016

1½ hours full court bball.
Very pleasant surprise. Good endurance, fresh legs, bouncy, fast etc. Never saw that coming, i expected the exact opposite.
Even did a few rim jumps. They felt totally uncoordinated, sluggish, terrible. Yet 10'1''-26'' SVJ and 10'5'' / 30'' RVJ were easy and repeatable. Not a bad base at all.

11 January 2016

Bodyweight@session : ~88,25kg
Soreness : none
Injuries/aches : none

RDL:
8@85kg ( +5 kg )
8@85kg ( +5 kg )
8@85kg ( +5 kg )

BENCH PRESS:
8@55kg
8@55kg
8@55kg
8@55kg ( extra set )

LAT PULL DOWN:
8@160lbs ( +10 lbs )
8@160lbs ( +10 lbs )
8@160lbs ( +10 lbs )
8@160lbs ( +10 lbs ) , ( extra set )

STANDING CALF RAISE MACHINE
15@75kg ( +5 kg )
15@75kg ( +5 kg )
15@75kg ( +5 kg )

-Catching up is easy and fun. Also is very nice to work back from lower weights for form correction stuff.
Started counting calories. Yesterday's sample , ~2900kcals / 187g protein.

Very interesting and insightful as always.
Yes, we are not far off. Gaining strength and muscle with minimum fat gain was the idea. And then use more activity to both lean-out and get more 'functional' when the weather is better. I do hate indoor cardio stuff, you got me. Silly excuse, I know, but I do. Willing to try to fight through it it though. Already did a start with stationary bike if you noticed, no HIIT yet though, just LISS as a finisher after weights.

I wasn't suggesting indoor cardio.  I don't do any cardio because it all sucks.  I don't like LISS stuff for athletes.  Lactate work is good but it doesn't have to be boring.  My suggestion was to do a whole body intense lifting split that will allow you to recomp and keep that fat off - basically what I have all my lower level athletes do to turn them into beasts.   Idea is similar to german volume training in that the volume is great enough to keep you from gaining fat - only I try to mix it up so you can still train dynamically.   Here is the whole body split I have people doing that works really well.  I aim to go back on it when my knee is healed as well.   

Requirements: (1) A squat pad and a squat rack and weights.   Weight suggestions given for a bench/squat/dead of 225/315/405 and should be adjusted.

Set 1:
* Set up a bar on the inside of the rack and a bar on the outside of the rack. 

Superset Squats/Military Press:   4x6 & 4x8 @ 225,135

Set 2:

* Using the hex bar and and the squat pad as a fulcrum do the following superset:

Bulgarian Split Squats/Pullups:   4x8 each leg, 4x10

Set 3: 

* If you have a slant bench you can use that for leg raises otherwise stick with pullup bar for leg raises:

Glute Thrusts/Leg raises:  4x20,15,10,5  &  4x20

Set 4:

If you have an energy after this is done do band squats with 135-225 for two sets of 30 seconds each as many reps as possible.  This will induce lactate and cramping.   

This  workout should take 1 hour. 

As for the leanness, i was never really lean indeed but i don't know if i can be. My point about the 20s era was that i should be ripped back then. I would go to the gym ( which had a track and a swimming pool ) and i would do ~4km jog, then lift and then do 20-40x50m swim tempos. 2-3 hours. 4 to 5 times a week. And yet i wasn't ripped. I was lean, but average lean. Bringing it further back, in my teenage years, i was a roadkill, around 15yo i would be about 5'9''/175cm and weigh... 52kg/115lbs. Even then, no abs! I am the definition of skinny fat, got tiny wrists and ankles, yet never ever looked really lean. So the point was i don't think it is realistic to expect some serious leanness. But yeah, all that history doesn't mean anything. Ok, i can't look lean. So what? looking lean does not mean the same with being lean. I gotta get as lean as i can and that is all to it, it does not matter what it looks like. Do i have excess fat to lose? Yes i do, i should try to lose it, period.

Well swimming and leanness are about the worst combination ever.  Their is a wealth of data about their paradoxically high bodyfat.  I dont think you can't look lean.   You might not look as lean as some people but if you stay away from swimming and train right you can look leaner than ever before.

So I ( you ) already made up my mind, i will adjust my diet with the goal of maintaining current weight for now, or even lose a little. I trust i can achieve both as you say, keep gain some good strength and muscle and lose some fat too. I do like being on caloric surplus when i lift. Makes me feel more confident. Maybe it is placebo but it works, as soon as i restrict calories on workout days, strength suffers. My daily program fits well for daily zig-zag AND same-day overfeeding too. I train late (9pm or so ) , so i can have a heavy lunch ( 1000+kcal ) 7-8 hours earlier, a pre-workout snack ( ~500kcal ) 1-2 hours earlier and then a big post-workout meal ( 1500+ ). No-gym days is the same plan but adjusted portions to get to the desired kcal deficit ( numbers mentioned are just indicative ). And i have been on that daily zig-zag with good results in the past, so it is trustworthy. +500/-500 is a cut scheme for me, i will go for something like +300/-300 to keep it steady and adjust on the way.
I do reckon that cut-bulk-cut would be a better choice than recomp-cut that i am set to do, the latter just feels/fits better currently. And i do feel i want to push strength for a while currently and don't feel at all like going in a cut. I don't think the difference will be serious. Let's see, is that a fact so i am up to some serious shit, or is it just wishful thinking & no-reason stubbornness so i will just spin my wheels? 

I'm sorry I just assumed you train in the morning...  I can't fathom how people don't train in the morning BUT if you don't then sure you should eat during the day.  My mistake.  I train in the morning so what I eat sunday night fuels my squats on monday morning...   But in your case that wouldn't work.  I think you are totally on the right track and that recomping is the way to go.   You are fat enough and small enough that you should recomp rather than worry about cutting exclusively...  Just don't bulk!