Day 6

Today is a rest day, which is great to focus on your nutrition.  Always get your meals in and it's especially important for me since I'm trying to gain weight.  In the morning I'm always eating 8 eggs with 1-2 yolks with brown rice.  An hour or 2 later I'm drinking a protein shake with some almonds and fruit like an orange or banana.  2 hours later, I'm eating another meal with some sort of meat and brown rice.  2-3 hours later is another protein shake with some more almonds.  2-3 hours later is meat, brown rice and vegetables.  2-3 hours later I eat a snack with multi grain crackers and another orange.  I play basketball late night so this is around the time I go to the gym and I play for awhile so I bring as protein shake for in between.  I'll take that in a couple hours.  It's roughly 7 meals in the day, which is pretty tough to maintain and eat, also considering I need to drink at least a gallon of water per day.  Tomorrow is a legs day.

Day 5

Today is a shoulder and tricep day.  I like mixing these two muscle group together because you use your tricep in a few shoulder exercises, but not as much as chest exercises so you're not as burned out when you get to your tricep exercises.  Be sure to do a ton of warm up sets with shoulders because it is a body part that is easily injured when lifting.  


Our first exercise was my favorite exercise, the military shoulder press.  We did 3 sets of that and I did a drop set on the last set.  The second exercise we did was side raises and we super set it with front raises.  These are especially tough for me because my shoulders get sore and burn out really quickly.  Pushing yourself through pain is key when working out.  If you can't then you'll have to learn and work your way up.  Our fourth exercise was cable extensions and we super set that with dips.  You probably won't be able to do as many dips, but do as many as possible.  Our final 2 exercises were tricep cable extensions and overhead rope extensions super set.  Tomorrow will be another rest day.

Day 4

Today was a back and biceps day.  I couldn't deadlift because my legs were still too sore.  Basically did all of the other basic back exercises like single arm rows, cable rows, wide grip pull downs, and hyper extensions. For biceps we just did curls and cable curls.  I'm not really too focused on biceps anyways.  All of our rep ranges for most of the program will be 6-12 reps.  For cardio I played basketball.  Tomorrow is a shoulder and tricep day.

Day 3

Today is a rest day and my legs still hurt.  Tomorrow is supposed to be back and biceps, but I honestly don't know if I can deadlift tomorrow.  For today I will just be doing 25 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and working on my diet.  My diet is for gaining weight, so I can eat a lot, but it has to be clean food.  Lean meats (egg whites, lean steak, fish), complex carbs (brown rice, wheat pasta, oats, sweet potatoes), fruits, and good fats (peanut butter, almonds, yolks).  This is pretty much all I will eat for 12 weeks.  The biggest thing I need to avoid is cheese...  I'm pretty sad I can't eat it.  Tomorrow is back and biceps.

Day 2

Today is day 2 of my new diet and exercise program.  I actually only need around 250 grams of protein.  If you want to gain muscle mass quickly, I've been told to eat 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily.  I currently weigh 162 so 240-250 grams of protein will be ideal.  My legs hurt from yesterday, luckily today will be a chest and triceps day, which doesn't need too much legs.  I also hate the taste of my new pre workout.  It gives me great energy and focus, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a weak stomach.  It's pretty awful tasting and hard to stomach.

Today we started of with a small pyramid of bench press.  We did 3 sets and went up each set.  Our second exercise was incline dumbbell press.  We did 4 sets and on the last one was a drop set.  Our third exercise was seated decline chest press.  We did 3 sets of those.  Our 4th exercise was cable crossovers, which is probably my favorite chest exercise because I get the best stretch and squeeze from it. Everyone is different and their bodies react differently to exercises...  Mike likes bench press.  The final chest exercise was pec dec which we focused on really slow negatives.  For triceps we just did bench dips and machine dips.  Most of the rep ranges are 6-8 and 8-10 and will be for most of the next 12 weeks.    Tomorrow is a rest day and I'm pretty happy about that because my legs are tore up...

Day 1

The last month I've been hitting the gym kind of lightly and eating horrible foods. I've eaten jack in the box, taco bell, mcdonalds, and other pretty unhealthy stuff.  Luckily i haven't really gained weight.  I got an email from bodybuilding.com about a "transformation" contest and the winner gets 100,000 dollars.  Winning is impossible since most of the winners are kind of obese to start with and well I'm not.  So today I started a new diet and exercise program where I'll be eating extremely clean and pushing myself harder for the next 12 weeks.  It will be difficult because there's a lot of things I'm trying to do here.  Build muscle mass, burn fat, and get stronger.  I have to be extremely strict with my diets and actually push myself when working out.  My diet will be extremely boring from here on out.  Here's kind of my guidelines for what I'll be eating.

Meal 1
8 Egg Whites and 1 Yolk with Brown Rice
Meal 2
Protein shake with 50g protein
Meal 3
Meat, Vegetables, Brown Rice, and some almonds
Meal 4
Protein shake with 50g protein
Meal 5
Meat, Vegetables, Brown Rice
Meal 6
Post Workout Shake with 50g protein and 70g carbohydrates

So I will be eating "6" meals a day, but it's really 3 with 3 shakes.  The goal for protein is roughly 320 g per day. which I don't think I'm hitting with this current meal plan.  I will be taking a pre workout called 1 More Rep, an intra-workout bcaa called Scivation Xtend, protein called Myofusion, and my carbohydrate drink is called Vitargo.  Hopefully this diet will be good enough.

Today I started off with a leg workout.  I did 9 sets of squats which was probably the most I've ever done.  I did 2 warm up sets and I did a pyramid for 5 sets where I went up in weight every set, but did slightly less reps.  After those 5 sets I went back down and did 2 sets of 10.  The second exercise I did was leg press.  You are supposed to go all the way down, which is something I have trouble with because it's somewhat unnatural feeling, but I will just have to train myself to do it.  Third exercise was leg extensions where I did a 7 set pyramid and did 12-15 reps each.  My fourth exercise was hamstring curls which was just 3 sets of 10.  Tomorrow is Chest and triceps.  It will almost always have to be chest and triceps after leg days because my legs will hurt too much to do deadlifts.

Day 19

Today is a back day and back days are my favorite because we get to deadlift and it's the one exercise that I am fascinated with and want to improve.  The one problem is form and I found out how bad my form was today.  On my third set, I heard multiple cracks in my spine and I was done with deadlifts for the day.  Now here's the good news.  My friend had told me of this guy who power lifts and said I should ask him about deadlifts if I ever had questions.  It just so happens the guy was standing next to me and dead lifting 455 to get rid of excess energy.  So I decided I would talk to him and try to learn.  This guy was awesome, first of all he's a power lifting instructor and second, when I asked him about dead lift form, he had so much passion for power lifting that he was excited to help me out.  So he explained to me that there's 3 parts to the dead lift.  The initial lift, the explosion upward, and the lockout on top.  Then he explained that he does a lot of secondary lifts to improve each section of the deadlift and that he actually does not deadlift that often.  Then he helped me with my set up.  He said your feet should be faced slightly outward, shins should be touching the bar, your arms should be tight, grip the bar tight, look up, shoulders back, and your ass should be pretty low and almost in a seated position.  Then when you are ready, you take in a deep breath, tighten your abs, drive your heels to the ground, pull the bar up and when you are in the middle of your lift, drive your hips forward.  Your back is supporting the whole lift, but you need your hips to take some of the load off.  He was a great instructor and even watched me do a few lifts.  He also said its best to practice your form on a medium weight because a light weight will allow you to get away with horrible form.  You need to be able to feel what you are lifting. We did do secondary lifts, but they weren't very good because I injured myself.  The next 2 days will probably be rest days...  Here's a little video of Michael's dead lift.