starting strength gym
Page 1 of 56 1231151 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 554

Thread: Getting Down to 8% Body Fat with RFL

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Seattle, Washington
    Posts
    6,767

    Default Getting Down to 8% Body Fat with RFL

    • starting strength seminar april 2024
    • starting strength seminar jume 2024
    • starting strength seminar august 2024
    SKIP TO POSTS 3 AND 4 IF YOU DON'T WANT A LONG, BORING HISTORY OF MY ENTIRE TRAINING HISTORY!



    I apologize in advance for not using video and image tags, but my post wouldn't go through otherwise because I exceeded the limit.



    *DISCLAIMER*
    None of the following information is to be construed as factual in nature. This is strictly for entertainment purposes. None of the following information is to be construed as advice in any shape or form whatsoever. Nothing written herein is to be substituted for competent advice from a medical professional.



    For those who are completely unfamiliar with my training history, I have been training off and on since I was 16. I joined bodybuilding.com and made a very misguided effort at running SS back in 2006. You can see some of the funny things I was posting here: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...4#post11756014 Unfortunately, it looks like my training log was lost during one of their server updates so I can't tell you how that went.

    IIRC, I did little ~1-3 month spurts of Starting Strength style programs about once a year all the way up until 2009 when I finally got semi-serious and trained for a solid six months straight. And I only did that because I had finally gotten nice and fat at ~200lbs @ 5'4" (I'm ~5'6.5" now; and, yes I need that half inch). I used Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fatloss Handbook and eventually got all the way down to about ~142lbs. RFL is a protein sparring, modified-fast. In other words, you eat pretty much nothing besides protein to spare muscle catabolism. It is close to a starvation style diet. It is the fastest possible way to lose weight and it is actually easier for me to stick to these types of diets than it is for me to meticulously count macros or something along those lines. I tend to be a very, very extreme type of person. Moderation is hard for me.

    During this phase, according to a video I made and some old training logs, I half-squatted 315x3, benched 170, and pulled 355 at 142lbs.

    Here is a funny graphic I made of my facial fat loss progress (I thought this was a good idea at the time):
    http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...progress-1.jpg

    Here are some other progress pics:
    http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...pril26-200.jpg

    @~142, Half/Quarter-Squat 315x3, 170 Bench, 355 Deadlift:
    http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...ized-front.jpg
    http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...sized-back.jpg


    I made this video way back in the day to show my "progress" at the time, but the more informative parts are the before lifts so you can get an idea how my form, strength, etc. was in 2009:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ78Jy_yGrU

    At some point, I then started training for MMA and BJJ. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no records of this period, but I was up to the high 150s and nearly as lean as I was at 142. I trained for about 9 months. In that time period, I won a novice white belt tournament and was in line to be promoted to blue belt. I usually averaged something like 10+ training sessions a week. Again, I'm an extreme, all-in type of individual. Of course, as a beginner, I eventually ran myself into the ground with this schedule. I sprained my ACL in a friendly match one day. I was out for a few months and the burnout finally caught up to me. When I couldn't get myself to go back into the gym for whatever inexplicable reason, I ended up quitting MMA. Sometimes, I still regret this. MMA helped me tremendously. Now that I think about it, MMA was the first sport, instrument, activity, etc. that I ever stuck to for more than six months. I was born with an insane level of competitiveness and ambition, but MMA really helped me develop at least SOME sense of discipline and realism. Still working on that to this day...

    Anyways, because of MMA, I got had gotten used to regular physical activity and had developed an appetite that was no longer supported by a huge amount of grappling, sparring, and technique work. So I got fattish again. In 2011, at ~20 years old, I decided to do another run of Starting Strength. Using the discipline gained from martial arts, I finally had a successful run on the program. I went from ~165lbs with a 205x5x3 squat, 135x5x3 bench, and 225x5 deadlift to PRs of 365x5x3 squat, 205x5x3 bench, and 365x5 deadlift at ~199lbs. However, my waist also went from 34.5" to 39.5".

    ~165lbs:
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...2/IMAG0144.jpg

    ~199lbs:
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1.../WP_000109.jpg


    I dieted for a few months and improved my numbers insignificantly down to the low 190s. I then attended a Starting Strength Seminar and somehow managed to get certified as a Starting Strength Coach (just kidding, I know my shit with regards to the SS model). I promptly started up a "gym" in my garage. You can check it out here as well as many of our training sessions on the youtube channel:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHh55Py_73Q

    Proof:
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1.../WP_002227.jpg

    I made a half-hearted attempt to build a true clientele base, but mostly I just recruited all my friends from high school to lift heavy shit. I didn't take it seriously as a business. I put just about zero effort into making any money from my coaching even though I'm fairly good at it. Out of the two dozen or so guys that came through during the ~6-12 months it was open, I'd say about half stuck to the program for more than 3 months. Every single one of those guys squatted 315x5x3. About half of those guys stayed for six plus months, and every single one of them squatted 405+x5. Nonetheless, the "business" was really just a front for me to lift at home with a team that I created.

    Right around this time, I got bit HARD by the iron bug. I had the chance to meet some incredibly strong people and I made up in my mind that I was going to be one of the all-time greats in powerlifting. I wanted to set records and win world championships. I began to religiously sleep 10-11 hours a day, I cut out any social activities that kept me up past the sun going down, and I generally cut out ANYTHING that might even possibly be construed as interfering with performance. I started listening to interviews given by powerlifting greats like Marty Gallagher who talked about Hugh Cassidy pounding down two gallons of whole milk a day and how you needed to have 4lbs per inch of height on your frame to really "maximize your leverages" for powerlifting. I bought into the "get big" mindset.

    Being the naive, but highly game and intensely driven individual I am, I started the bulk to end all bulks. I drove my weight all the way up to a disgustingly obese 248lbs. I also increased my lifts to a 445x5 squat, bench 240x5, and deadlift to 395x5 (440x5 squat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEpPaKSSkeg). No body told me that if you're going to gain that much weight, you need to be on drugs... a lot of drugs. And even then, you're still going to get really fucking fat. I have no one to blame but myself. At the time, this was truly what I wanted: strength at all costs, the rest be damned.

    I have no pictures or data from when I was 248lbs, but I do have pictures after I had already lost 20lbs (228 in this picture):
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...ps855a8bc0.jpg

    At this point, my waist was still 43" and my body fat was certainly over 30%. I'm just estimating that I was probably pretty close to 40% body fat at 248 and my waist was probably something like 47-48". Really fucking crazy to think about in retrospect. I'd never been anywhere near that fat, EVER... and I did it on purpose. Thank God I don't seem to have loose skin or gyno, but the stretch marks are pretty brutal. Nonetheless, in only nine months, I had gone from 168lbs with a 205x5 squat to 248lbs with a 445x5 squat. That's a pretty remarkable rate of progress, but it came at a great price. I certainly don't recommend the dreamer bulk strategy, that's for sure.

    As I started dieting from 248lbs, I watched as the gains that I had fought for slowly slip away. I was still pretty strong, I guess (465x2 squat @ 225lbs). Right around this time, I started thinking about experimenting with legal, doctor-prescribed performance enhancing drugs. Hypothetically, the first thing I tried would have been HGH. At the time, from consulting with bodybuilders, I would have believed that HGH had magical fat burning qualities. I would have also thought that, because my growth plates weren't closed, it could help make me taller. I wouldn't have wanted to shut down my nuts and compromise my HPTA axis, but I was fine with growing taller and losing weight (lol @ the logic). Well, in my theoretical experiment, I hadn't considered that I might get ripped off and theoretically lose $700 on two bunk kits of GH.

    Shortly after this, I decided that I was going to shift to bodybuilding. I was tired of being fat and I wanted to look good. At the same time, I liked the sense of purpose that came from dedicating my entire life to lifting the way I had done with powerlifting. So I hypothetically experimented with testosterone. What I had not considered was that, due to the fact that I was so fucking fat, even a moderate hypothetical dose of 500mg/wk, would have driven my estrogen so sky high that I literally wouldn't be able to lose weight even while running RFL. In fact, hypothetically, I would have actually gained weight and gotten stronger during this period. In the end, all the foo-foo curls and side raises just made me miss lifting heavy shit. I just didn't love bodybuilding the way I loved powerlifting. So I went back.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Seattle, Washington
    Posts
    6,767

    Default

    I dieted my way all the way down to the low 190s and lost a massive amount of strength in the process. I actually think that had less to do with the diet than it did with the hypothetical post-cycle recovery. But I'll never know for sure.

    Here's my progress during that particular diet (~228 to ~196):
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...oreafter-2.jpg

    I competed in my first powerlifting meet in Feb '13 about ~18 months after I began seriously lifting using Starting Strength. I went 418/242/468. I squatted 415x4 and benched 250x3 in training before this meet so I considered it a massive disappointment. The deadlift, however, was a PR. You can see this meet here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXH8YOIib9k

    Before this meet, due to my gym "business" "failing", I had made the switch to a true powerlifting gym. I was around a group of people who were consistently benching 405+, squatting 5+, and many were pulling 6+. One of my homies was even totaling right around 2000. When you put me in an environment like that, I'm just too competitive to not do what it takes to start climbing the ladder. I ended up considering another hypothetical performance enhancing cycle. I theoretically would've have used more than last time, but not much more, and not many more legal, doctor prescribed compounds. For whatever reason, still not having learned my lesson I guess, I started eating with impunity. I drove my weight from ~196lbs on 2/24 to ~228lbs on 6/8. My squat went from 418(no wraps) to 551(with wraps), my bench went from 242 to 320, and my deadlift went from 468 (stiff bar) to 535 (deadlift bar). All in all, I added nearly 300lbs to my powerlifting total in 11 weeks. I probably added more like 150lbs considering the wraps, deadlift bar, and the fact that I managed to underperform so greatly on my squats/benches in the February meet. Nonetheless, I made a massive amount of gains.

    You can see the meet here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fF8gJRPJ9Q

    This is as big as I got from this meet cycle:
    https://scontent-a-pao.xx.fbcdn.net/...43914245_n.jpg

    I went 9/9 and had the single greatest athletic experience of my entire life. The few moments after pulling that last deadlift rank among my favorite experiences in life, ever. Period. I've never worked as hard at anything as I did for that meet. I was riding high after the success and I was ready to go all-in on powerlifting. Hypothetically, I would have prepared for recovery and started lining up a performance enhancing regimen that was on another level entirely from the "just getting my feet wet" type of stuff I had hypothetically experimented with in the past. I hired Jordan Feigenbaum to do my nutrition (heavy focus on macro counting). I actually got stronger during recovery while losing weight. I benched 275x8 paused (~350 bench max), I squatted 465x7 in wraps @ RPE 7 (~600+ squat max), and I pulled 425x5 from a 4" deficit when my old 5RM was 405x5 from the FLOOR (405x5 got me 535 at the meet). I was WAY stronger and I was down to ~210 or so after the first 8 weeks. Things really started to drop off in that third month in terms of strength, but I was still stronger than I was at the meet.

    I began my next hypothetical experiment. Then my mental health basically collapsed. There was a certain dietary ingredient involved in my experiments that is known to very commonly have adverse mental side effects. We'll call it train bologna. Hypothetically, I would have started having murderous nightmares and my temper would have been nearly out of control. I watched a close friend nearly ruin his entire life because of a chemical problem. I saw the seedy underbelly that people warn about, but that you can't really know until you've seen it. The craziest thing is that what I was most worried about at the time was the fact that my weight was going up again and I couldn't lose weight no matter what we did with my macros. So I stopped any considerations of a hypothetical experiment very soon after. And ever since then, I've been in a huge funk training wise.

    I decided that I simply wasn't willing to sacrifice my health completely for a sport that I didn't feel was my true life's purpose. Not only that, but it was never going to pay me anything or lead to any sort of fame whatsoever. I was also in the unenviable position of not being able to return to the USAPL even if I wanted to be 100% natty peanut butter (I don't). I didn’t really see a path in powerlifting that I could sink my teeth into and obsess over. For me, without obsession, I usually can't see the point and it is hard for me to have fun.

    So, I spent a good six months not really training the powerlifts. I did squats (beltless high bar mostly), benches (sometimes), and pulls (almost never), but not with my competition forms or techniques. I thought this would help create mental distance from the sport so that I wouldn't do anything crazy while determining what my next goal was. It didn't help at all and it just decreased my mental well-being as I got a bit weaker month by month. Nonetheless, I did manage to diet all the way down to about 186lbs or so. I did this almost entirely via macro counting. That weight was both fully carb depleted and dehydrated.

    These pictures represent from about 220 to 190:
    http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...psff716bf5.jpg

    When I thought about my goals for 2014 as 2013 winded down, one thing became very clear to me with regards to my training: getting to single digits body fat is my #1 priority this year. Because I don't have any meets or events scheduled in the near future, I decided that macro counting doesn't make the most sense. I'm not really prioritizing maintaining performance so there is little sense in trying to cut slowly. I might as well get this shit over with. I've spent the last six months in a caloric deficit and, frankly, I'm sick of it. I want to get back to gaining and RFL will get this over as soon as possible. Nevertheless, I still do care about strength and muscle mass. I'm not geeked up on the idea of being a twink. So, I have hypothetically begun another experiment at extremely reduced dosages alongside some ancillaries that should address any issues that I theoretically might run into (such as high estrogen). For the curious, feel free to PM, but let's just say theoretical Vitamin T intake is around 250/wk.

    Seeing as how I spent six straight months in a deficit, I decided it would be a good idea to follow Lyle's recommendations regarding diet breaks before beginning RFL. In those two weeks, I went from 186lbs to 200lbs. This is after hypothetically adding vitamin T and creatine (literally) back into the mix. I didn't binge. I did, however, still gain a lot of weight. A lot of water, but not all of it is water, of course.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Seattle, Washington
    Posts
    6,767

    Default

    So, that brings us to today and to 2014. My primary goals for 2014, in order, are as follows:
    1) Get to 8% body fat (measured via the navy method)
    2) Improve my mental health with regards to training
    3) Get stronger, my most recent S/B/D is 405x5/255x3/365x5
    4) Gain some size on arms (mostly biceps/forearms), chest, and lats

    To achieve these goals, I'll be doing the following:
    Diet: Rapid Fatloss Handbook by Lyle McDonald
    Macros will be approximately 220p/45c/20f/25fib

    Programming (during RFL):

    Monday:
    Bench:
    50% (of top set) x 5
    60% x 5
    70% x 5
    80% x 5
    90% x 5
    100% x 5
    I will AMRAP the last set in the first few weeks until the quick gains stop. Remember, I haven't benched more than 2-3 times in the last 3+ months.

    Squat: same as bench
    Chinups: 50 total reps, if I get them in less than 8 sets, I'll add weight


    Friday:
    Bench: same as monday
    Deadlift: same as squats/bench
    Chinups: same as monday

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Seattle, Washington
    Posts
    6,767

    Default

    Week 0 Measurements:
    1/1/14:
    Height: 5’6”
    Weight: 200.0lbs
    Waist: 37.25”
    Neck: 17.25”
    BF%: 21.1% (navy method)


    Today was my first workout.

    1/3/14
    Weight: 193.8lbs

    Paused Bench (all reps paused):
    45x5x3
    95x5
    115x5
    135x5
    160x5
    185x5
    205x5
    225x7@8-8.5

    Notes:
    I am currently lifting at Gold's Gym. I have no spotters or training partners so I bench in a rack. Even though I have the spotter arms in good position, I am not trying to miss any reps right now. I'm pretty sure I had 9, but I know I had 8 and 8 would've been easy. I racked it because I dinked the fucking upright on the way up and it threw me out of my groove.

    ~0.5-1" Deficit Sumo:
    135x5x2
    185x5
    225x5
    255x5
    295x5
    335x5@7-8 RPE, impossible to tell

    Notes:
    One of the worst deadlifting experiences of my entire life. I wanted to kill myself the entire time. This gym has NO ROUND PLATES. They are ALL 10 sided. And you have to put mats on the floor to pull. So, I'm standing on fucking mats, pulling from a deficit because these stupid fucking plates are sitting on their edges, and after every god damned rep the bar would either bounce backward RIGHT into my shins or way forward so I'd have to pull it back in. And the fucking thing wouldn't roll because the plates have edges. Holy fuck. I was so pissed. Blood everywhere (from shins). Cursing. People staring. Fun stuff. I was gonna go up to 365, but that was just not in the cards today. No fucking way. I'm only in town for another week so I'll probably have to go to the YMCA or something next Friday. Not ever pulling with these hex plates again. Jesus Christ. Fuck me.

    yes, mad

    Chinups: 9,6,7,4,4,4,5,4,4,3


    And for those unfamiliar with RPE...
    My RPE (rate of perceived exertion) Scale:
    7 - 3+ reps left in the tank
    7.5 - 2 reps left in the tank but could've used a little more weight and still had 2 left
    8 - 2 reps left in the tank
    8.5 - 1 reps left in the tank but could've used more weight and still had 1 left
    9 - 1 rep left in the tank
    9.5 - no reps left in the tank but could've used more weight and still gotten the same reps
    10 - nothing left in the tank, a true max effort set

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Hillsborough, NJ
    Posts
    1,590

    Default

    Fuck yes norchez

    Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Virginia Beach
    Posts
    475

    Default

    Tom, thanks for posting the details of your experiences. This community is better off as a result.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Seattle, Washington
    Posts
    6,767

    Default

    Thanks, glad to hear that. Because it was difficult to write.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Virginia Beach
    Posts
    475

    Default

    You are candid about your perceived failures, but what I see is courage and strength.

    Kill it!!

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    454

    Default

    Are you going to keep crossposting this entire log, Izzy? Just wondering.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    Fort Worth
    Posts
    4,830

    Default

    starting strength coach development program
    Alright real deal.. Good luck with your goals. I hope you can get the mental/ body health thing worked out.

Page 1 of 56 1231151 ... LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •