Photos, my workout plan and a healthy dose of narcissism.

I woke up this morning earlier than normal, feeling awesome and knowing I was going to get to the gym today. Then I went back to sleep for an hour and woke up feeling lethargic and sore. Nevertheless, nothing was going to stop me getting to the gym today and knowing that I was going to blog about my workout meant that I was going to have to write this blog post about my workout plan and goals and ..post pictures. *sigh*

November 1 Photos
It was bound to happen sooner or later if I'm to be serious about this blog and tracking progress, so rather than bitch about it here are my photos as of the start of this month:

 Okay, not so bad but still not as defined as I wanted this close to Summer. That said, right now I'm pretty much defined as I've been - but as an ex-chubby guy, I hold myself to high standards (plus I'm somewhat narcissistic, oh well). I'm not sure what body-fat percentage I'm sitting at and I'm dyslexic when it comes to calipers but if anyone wants to estimate, feel free to comment.

*Quick segue - Google and Blogger both rock, my SSD crashed while I was alt-tabbing to Facebook and I was sure that everything I had written thus-far would be gone but no! Blogger somehow managed to save it via its awesome auto-save/caching and I didn't lose a thing! If I recall correctly, a PC crash caused me to stop or give up on writing something else because I didn't want to try and rewrite what I had lost. Very impressed Blogger, good job.*


Measurements
As with calipers, I'm dyslexic with the tape-measure but I'll give it another shot later when I'm not feeling so lazy.

Training Program
Weights
The weight training program I'll be following will be that of a slightly modified StrongLifts 5x5 protocol. It'll consist of two workouts (A & B) that I'll alternate between 3 times per week. For example: Tuesday - A, Thursday - B, Saturday - A, Tuesday - B etcetera.

The workout looks like this:

StrongLifts 5x5 Workout A	StrongLifts 5x5 Workout B
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench Press 5x5	Overhead Press 5x5
Barbell Rows 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

The whole idea behind the workout is to make use of compound exercises to follow a less is more approach. Compound exercises, as opposed to isolation exercises, are those exercises that work two or more muscle groups at once. For example your typical bench press has the pectoralis major (chest) as the main targeted muscle but the anterior deltoids (shoulders) and triceps are also activated to assist the lift. As mentioned, the alternative is isolation exercises which target one muscle per exercise, such as bicep curls (guess what they work).

The other thing to note regarding the workout plan is that it involves a lower amount of repetitions per set, this is due to the objective of the workout being aimed more towards strength gain rather than size. Before I get too far, hypertrophy is simply 'is the increase in the volume of an organ or tissue due to the enlargement of its component cells' - thanks Wikipedia! - which is basically the whole point of lifting weights.  I can't be bothered looking for references at the moment but in a nut shell it's generally believed that lower repetitions and higher weight lead to myofibrillar hypertrophy - that is growing and thickening of the fibres within muscles which leads to increased functionality. I.e. being able to lift more. The other type of hypertrophy is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, this is where the amount of sarcoplasm (fluid) within muscles (inside and between muscle cells) increases, causing them to look bigger yet without the associated strength gains. It's generally believed that high repetitions and lower weight are the best ways to achieve this. I find this pretty funny because I know of females who are afraid of lifting heavy weights because they don't want to 'get big and bulky', so the weight training they do (if any) will be limited to low weights and lots of reps.. Go figure.
Anyway, here's an article I found when trying to remember the specifics:
http://www.relentlessgym.com/2010/12/19/sarcoplasmic-hypertrophy-vs-myofibrillar-hypertrophy-building-the-right-type-of-muscle/

Meanwhile back at the ranch, when I say 'slightly modified', I mean I'll be adding on a little bit of assistance work as I feel necessary at the end of the main exercises. Those who know of StrongLifts will know that extra exercises on top of those prescribed by the program are advised against however I feel that if I have something extra in the tank, why not, especially if I'm going to do work a body part that the next workout will not hit. For example, adding on some Incline Dumbbell Flies at the end of workout A.

I'll generally do the workouts on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday but I'm flexible and will move workouts where necessary but ensure that I have at least one day of rest between.

Cardio
For cardio, I intend to try and complete at least one lap of the Lake Burley Griffin Bridge-to-Bridge run - which is around 5km if you believe mapmyrun.com's estimate. I plan to find out exactly how long the run is using the RunKeeper application on my Nokia.
I'll also be playing basketball as much as possible but since I do that for enjoyment rather than specially for exercise, I won't count it.

Goals
Being as generic as possible, my long term goals are as follows:

• Get ripped - lose enough body-fat so that I can see my complete 6 pack. 
• Get strong:
• Bench 1.5x my body weight.
• Squat 2x my body weight.
• Deadlift 2.5 my body weight.
• Get fast - do 2 laps of the Bridge to Bridge run in 45 minutes.

That's setting the bar quite high and I realise that, so my short term goals are the following:

• Get ripped - lose enough body-fat so that I can see my complete 6 pack. I think this is still possible in the time frame.
• Get stronger:
• Bench 75kg for 5 sets of 5.
• Squat 100kg for 5 sets of 5.
• Deadlift 120kg with perfect form
• Get fast - do a lap of the Bridge to Bridge run in under 24 minutes.

By short term, I mean by the end of the week ending the 10th of December.

Diet

Ahah! The vital bit - I'm going to be doing a ketogenic (I'll write an essay length blog post on this later) diet consuming around 1900 calories per day and following an IF protocol.

Supplements

Again these are something that I could spend ages writing about and I like trying new things but for the most, the main supplements I'll be taking will be fish oil, a multi-vitamin and protein powder (post-workout). I like using pre-workout supplements for motivation (they're basically caffeine and flavoring half the time) and BCAAs (Branch Chain Amino Acids) for recovery but they're hardly essential.