Archive for the ‘Training Cycles’ Category
photo credit: derekGavey
So, I’m back at it now. Not that I’ve been away from training so much, but I’ve certainly been out of the web documentation game. My son is now 15 months old and just started walking! I feel like I have more time now to devote to documenting my practice for anyone interested. I also just finished teaching the first ever Creative Evolution Intensive Retreat at Circle Yoga Shala outside Jasper, AR. The Shala is owned by Matthew and Holly Krepps. Matthew was my yoga teacher in Little Rock for years, and we are now something like creative partners in the whole Creative Evolution concept. You can check out our collaborative musings at myCreativeEvolution.com.
This particular workout cycle is called my Happily Hyper Hips. It will be aimed at overall muscular hypertrophy and increased hip mobility. It will consist of four five-day micro-cycles. Monday is a weight training, hypertrophy day. Tuesday is strictly join mobility using Dance of Shiva. Wednesday is Triune (asana, vinyasa, prasara) Yoga day. Thursday is bodyweight hypertrophy. Friday will be high-intensity intervals. The weekends will consist of play and of getting outside with my wife and son.
Various replicas of bodyfat
Well, the book photo shoot was postponed until February 14, 2009 after my photographer had to leave the country for a couple of weeks at the last minute. Just spent about a week just doing joint mobility and yoga posture practice to clean the slate from my Book Photography Cycle. Preliminary results from that cycle show about 7 lbs of fat loss. Lean mass up about 2 lbs, while I lost .5 inches on my waist and picked up .75 inches in both my chest and shoulder measurements. Very happy with my muscle gain. I think I could have done better in the fat loss category over this period, but my nutrition was not as tight as it could have been. That was certainly my fault. Damn pizza and beer!
So now I’m going to take advantage of the extra three weeks to really tighten up my nutrition and initiate the Fat Loss Cycle from the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution program put out recently by CST Head Coaches Ryan Murdock and Adam Steer, with the ambitious goal of losing another 7-10 pounds of bodyfat. I’ll keep ya’ll updated!
Cycle Dates: January 26, 2009 thru February 18, 2009
Cycle Goals: Losing about 10 pounds of fat, leaving my bodyweight between 165-170 lbs with a bodyfat percentage around 10-12%.
Specifics: I will be working the Fat Loss Cycle as described in the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution program.
I will continue with the Intermittent Fasting a couple days a week, but will now be really working hard to maintain as many of the 16 Steps on Scott Sonnon’s Flat Tummy Diet as make sense to me. Most of them are fairly intuitive to me as it is. However, roughly a quarter of them will prove difficult. Numbers 2, 3, 6, 12, and 13 are the steps in question. 2 only because I will be fasting intermittently, which will get in the way of the 3 meals a day step. 3 because I often end up eating around 7 or 7:30, which isn’t too far beyond the suggested 7 pm. There’s no doubt beer and wine (and cheese) are my major weaknesses when it comes to caloric consumption, and I really don’t plan to quit beer and wine altogether (step 6), though a serious cutback will be in effect. 12 and 13 sort of go hand in hand, so I’m hoping to get better at slowing down and chewing my food more thoroughly. I’ll let ya’ll know how it goes!
Okay, I’ve got just over a month to finish typesetting the book and to prepare physically for my photo shoot. Seems like a good excuse for a new training cycle to me!
Cycle Dates: Roughly December 22, 2008 thru January 19, 2009
Cycle Goals: Improve physique by losing about 10 pounds of fat while adding a couple pounds of muscle.
Specifics: Current weight is somewhere around 180, bodyfat about 16%. I’d like to get my weight down to 175 with bodyfat of 10-12% for the photo shoot. This means losing about 10 pounds of fat and picking up a few pounds of muscle.
To do this, I’m going to use an adapted Brickhouse Bodymind training cycle similar to the ones you’ll find in the book. This will give ya’ll an idea of what to expect from the book. The main difference is that I’ll be using free-weights on the resistance training days instead of the bodyweight exercises found in the book. It will be a five-days-a-week adaptation instead of the four-day rounds as in Scott Sonnon’s 4×7 paradigm. It will hit all three components of his Circular Strength Training system (external resistance, internal resistance, and joint mobility).
Nutrition will also be important. I’ll be utilizing intermittent fasting and eating “real foods” whenever possible, just like I describe in the book.
Ya’ll follow along if you like by clicking the tag “Book Photography Prep Cycle” in the a.d.s. tag cloud above, or by subscribing to the rss feed here. By following along, you’ll get a good idea of the full Brickhouse Bodymind physical flow program in my book. Let’s see if I can walk the walk and use it to reach my own goals!