myamericanway

Well well, its been 3 months since my last post and I guess you could say a LOT has happened since then. It appears that blogging comes and goes at my convenience: emerging at times of great introspection and leaving when its time to get work done.

This entire year has been crazy in terms of my personal growth, but I consider the end of Winter Quarter 2011 a major catalyst. With a week of nothing to do but get drunk, work out, and think about the significance of my final quarter of college, finally everything started coming together.

The next quarter ended up being one of the most drama-free, yet thought provoking time of my life. I saw everything differently, more clearly, and I started to control my world rather than simply be a part of it. I figured out who I was…and that was it, the smallest in perception equating to an infinitesimal shift in reality.

In 102 days I will take the LSAT and in 423 days I will enter whatever law school comes out of this summer of study. I’m excited to share my thoughts as well as hear your comments and opinions during this quiet before the storm of post-academic life begins.

Bulking is the process of gaining as much muscle mass as possible, taking on and controlling fat gains as well. The human body is an amazing specimen as evidenced by the Colorado Experiment. Although it was an atypical case, it did show that the human body is able to suck in and keep as much as 63 pounds of muscle within 28 days. Casey Viator was able to accomplish this with 8 thirty-minute workouts, highlighting the ineffectiveness of most gym-rats workouts.

Now these thirty minute workouts aren’t about achieving “the pump” which Arnold Schwartzeneggar talks about way too enthusiastically. These thirty minutes are pure torture, it is nothing but reaching total muscle failure for as long as humanly possible. These workouts would make NFL players vomit, even the Terminator left after one session claiming it was too difficult.

Now of course I am not trying to replicate the gains, nor the regimen, but there are crucial lessons to be learned. Lifting weights can be a therapeutic experience, and given the large amount chatting and cliques at the gym, its a social experience as well. However, in terms of gains, these 3-hour workouts really mean nothing except maybe acting as cardio. In terms of gains, all that matters is TMF: total muscle failure.

I am no longer a stranger to the gym. I am an ecotomorph, with long thin bones and digits, and extremely hard-gainer. This means I have a genetic excuse as to why its so hard for me to gain muscle, and why I lose it so damn fast. My body is on accelerated metabolism (although my belly doesn’t show it), and I am pre-disposed for my own “survival mode”. I was able to bypass a lot of this with some artificial motivation (supplements that act as stimulants) and from sophomore year to early senior year I grew from 165 lbs to 198 lbs, a 33 lb muscle gain…sweet! However, within 1 quarter of stopping, I dropped to 181 lbs, a 17 lb loss. Obviously my body doesn’t like being that big. Now, here I am, with 1 quarter left in college, and I want to get back into bulking. “Armed” with experience (and some muscle memory) and an improved regimen, I plan on gaining back my losses and surpassing 200 lbs within the quarter.

Key components of my new regimen:

Mandatory protein calculation: I need anywhere from 1.5-2g of protein for every kilogram of muscle. That means I need around 150g of protein a day. To put this in perspective: a whole egg is 6 g, an egg white is 3g of protein. This will by far be the hardest part of bulking, just nonstop shoving food into my mouth to hit that goal.

Mandatory muscle failure: There’s a lot of bravado and ego involved at the gym despite the fact that I usually go alone. Everyone seems to be keeping tabs on each other and how much they can lift, it is really strange to get mad-dogged by someone simply because they can lift slightly more than you.  But none of this should concern me. The only point of my being at the gym is only Total Muscle Failure. My current method involves only doing 4-2-2 reps for every exercise at the absolute maximum I can. That means if all goes well im only pushing a weight 8 times an entire workout. Now this is obviously not possible given the instability of some exercises. For example, shoulder raises cannot be done with the same contracted intensity of a bench or shoulder press, there’s simply too many variable muscles involved. For those I vary to 6-6-4 reps, but I dunno, this will probably change  all the time. The main point is I cannot leave an exercise with “gas in the tank” so to speak.

Allowing for ample recovery: This part is pretty difficult as well, but working out the same muscle multiple times a week is not doing it any favors if you’ve already failed it. The reason Viator got away with 63 lbs of gains in 4 hrs of workouts is that he had the specific intention of stimulating growth, and letting it do its thing. More workouts would’ve only hampered his growth, like picking a scab on a healing wound. As excited as I am about getting huge, I have to hold back and trust the system.

Well thats what I’ve been up to this week, I’d take pictures right now but I’m much too shy. I’ll update with my progress tho.

Hi everyone!

I’m making a new blog, and this time around I’m planning to address key deficiencies in my previous efforts in podcasting and radio. (In other words, this shit will be awesome!)

With any type of information creation, I feel like there are two main objectives:

1. To provide targeted specific information for a specific audience interested in this information. This is “blogging for others”.  I would spend deliberate time finding things viewers care about, and I would care a lot about the viewer reaction. This makes it very difficult to inject any sort of personality and does feel more like a job or a chore.

2. The other purpose of a blog would be for personal fulfillment. I would write things that would be personal in nature and involve deeper unique analysis. It becomes more of a mixed bag what I’d be talking about, but the only constant would be that I am giving my opinion on things. My radio show got to the point where it wasn’t even something I would even want to listen to. So I plan to strictly talk about what I’m interested in, but keep the segments smaller so that people can pick and choose what they listen to. Enjoy!

P.S. I really want to get a video segment up in the near future as well.