So…..! What’s new? Well, after losing 1 lb during week one, I gained back that one pound after my third week. I adjusted my macros to 185 lbs once I had lost the pound, yet, I gained it back. Amazingly, it seems that I have gain muscle mass and dropped body fat based on the physical changes, weight and clothes. Again, I can’t really show anything more than one picture I took on day 0 there have been changes without doubt.

One thing is certain, using the proper lightning angle to help create better shadows of my muscles, my abs when flexed, are looking ridiculously good, and again, this has just been with 3 weeks of training.

Before I show the pictures, I want to make sure I mention I have done a couple of things different from what instructed in the program.

• First one is, although I have followed the total caloric intake suggested, and as close as possible the macro ratio, in many occasions I have altered the macro ratios, sometimes eating more fat than suggested and less carbs at some point, but always balancing the macros so at the end of the day I still have eaten the right amount of macros.

•Second, I have more often than I’d like to admit, ignored the 3 big meals and 2 small meals suggestion. At times I only have 3 meals and one snack, or 2 meals and 3 snacks. Again, always staying within the daily caloric intake.

• Third, for the cardio days, I’ve been implementing Lyle McDonald’s Stubborn Fat Protocol, only twice a week.

• Forth and last, I have added extra sets and in rare occasions extra exercises to some of my workouts when I have the energy and I have felt I can exercises more. One I always do is the abs crunches. I can’t just do 3 sets of 12 reps and be satisfied. In this case I do 5 sets of 15 reps of kneeling cable crunches with the maximum weight the machine allows me, and this is because my abs can handle it since before I started this plan.

With that said, here are the photo comparison of day 0 and day 24, and below the picture I took flexing with the light coming from above.

Be aware though, some of the info I’m providing here has been extensively criticized by the “know it all douches” from the MFP forums (I can’t wait for the day they get to see this post), the same people who also claim GMO, soda and McDonalds are as healthy and nutritive as organic food, and the same people who will criticize any approach or study other than the ones they chose to believe in. Truth is, at the end of the day we all believe whatever we want to believe, and it is all a matter of perspective. At least for me, it seems to work pretty good, to the point I’m pretty healthy, my blood test results shows everything perfect (even sometimes red blood count and potassium a little higher than what’s consider normal), and my fitness progress always seem to work as planned.

Before I continue, I want to clarify something. First and most importantly, at no point I consider myself an expert. Everything I’m writing here is either based on my own experience or what I have read/seen before. Results will vary from individual to individual, and even what works for you at some point might not work the same way after a while, which is why I always suggest flexibility, adjustment and experimentation, keeping in mind that undesired changes are NOT a cause to freak out, but just a sign to reverse the change made and head towards the opposite direction or simply try a different approach. And always be patient. Fitness takes time, and there is this absurd idea that if it doesn’t show out of this world progress in a short period of time, it doesn’t work. This same idea is what lead people to make the terrible mistake of eating too little hoping to get results faster.

With that out of the way, I want to start with something many new people to MFP don’t understand…. “Why to eat your workout calories back?” So here’s why:

I’m sure most of you got your numbers (calories) from entering your info in the MFP app, which calculates your calories based on your weight, age, gender, etc, and how many lbs a week you want to lose. Did you choose 1 or 2 lbs per week? Most people choose 2 lbs because they are dying to get rid of the extra weight as fast as possible, but here’s what you need to understand. MFP gives you an estimate based on what you selected (how active you are during the day and how many times a week you are willing to workout). Selecting a level of activity doesn’t really mean you’re being accurate and MFP only uses a range of numbers to come up with how much you should eat. What happens is, MFP calculates how many calories you should eat giving you a deficit so you lose that weight you selected (1 or 2 lbs per week) without exercising but knowing you will workout X amount of times a week, BUT (and this is the important part), the calories are calculated without knowing how much you will burn with each workout because even if you had the option to select a workout plan, each person burns different amounts of calories, therefore MFP leaves those burned calories out of the equation, and that’s why when you burn the X amount of calories, you need to eat them back, otherwise the deficit will be much bigger and it could be unhealthy to your body.

In other words, if MFP already had you with a 500 calories deficit and you burned 300 calories that you won’t eat back, your deficit increases to 800 (500+300), and while you might think the bigger the deficit the better to lose weight, you need to understand your body needs to eat and needs nutrients to work and perform properly, otherwise it will either store some of what you eat as body fat (body fat is nothing but stored energy) for whenever it needs the extra energy, or start using muscle fibers as a source of energy as well along with body fat, costing you some of that lean muscle you want or have.

Here’s my second advice. I would personally try to use multiple online formulas to calculate what’s your maintenance amount of calories in order to get an average from all the results you get. I don’t trust MFP calculations at all. Every time I have done a plan, whether to bulk up or lean down, the macros/calories I need to eat based on the program I’m doing are completely different from what MFP always suggest me to eat, and I always get the results I’m looking for when I follow the plans. So, if using these plans work, and they differ from MFP numbers, it could only means MFP is most probably wrong.

Update:
Although at the end of this post I have provided a link to a really good article posted on BodyBuilding.com about calculating calories and macros (which I suggest you to read), I’m feeling the need to clarify a couple of very important points you need to know in order to get as accurate as possible with your calories.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the amount of calories you need to consume to maintain if you were comatose. Please, do not confuse this with the amount of calories you need on a daily basis. BMR only calculates what you need to live while in complete rest, or coma state. If you use your BMR as your maintenance for a regular day of your life, you’re already under-eating big time.

NEAT (Non-Exercise Associated Thermogenesis) is the calorie of daily activity that is NOT exercise (eg: washing, walking, talking, shopping, working).

EAT (Exercise Associated Thermogenesis) is the calorie requirements associated with planned exercise.

TEF (Thermic effect of feeding) is the calorie expenditure associated with eating.

TEE (Total Energy Expenditure) is the total calories you require. It = sum of the above (BMR + NEAT + EAT + TEF). This could also be known as TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure).

This is why it is VERY important to know what you’re calculating in order to get your REAL and HEALTHY maintenance calorie amount. Again, you will find the formulas in this article Calories and Macro’s 

In regards to this topic, someone on MFP also suggested me to provide you (the readers) with a few formulas from different sources. I won’t be doing that. I rather you guys go online, look up different pages, and try them yourselves. What I will do at some point is, put together a small Excel or Google sheet with multiple hidden formulas (so you don’t have to worry about which is which), and provide you with an average result from all the formulas I end up using.

Now, to lose weight you need to eat with a deficit. Once you know how many calories is your maintenance, I personally believe a safe deficit would be no more than 500 calories a day for most people, but this depends on how many calories you need to eat for maintenance, which means, you have to eat your workout calories to avoid increasing that deficit goal. Something very important, when calculating your maintenance, you need to be as brutally accurate and realistic as possible with the information you provide to any calculating system you get to use. Considering the fact 3500 calories equal 1 pound, the more accurate your calculation is, the better results you’ll get assuming you end up using a 500 calories deficit a day, which means you could be losing one pound per week). So let’s assume you say “But Yass, I want to lose more than 1 pound a week”, and I’ll say, “Let’s focus first on adjusting your macros/calories first, and then focus on how much you want to lose”. The truth is, I’m keeping a secret from you, which is while you might have burned 300 calories during your workout and you ate those 300 calories back, your metabolism will continue to burn extra calories after your workout, which will increase the deficit whether you are aware of it or not.

So, let’s say you already have your maintenance and deficit figured out and you’re ready to lose that stupid body fat. Now you need to understand weight loss and goals, something many people overlook. Losing weight could mean losing body fat or losing body fat with muscle. Which one is the good and which one is the bad? I think it is pretty obvious. Scales don’t know the difference between losing fat only or fat with muscle, so weight can be irrelevant in most cases, especially when you don’t lose any weight, yet your clothes fit better than they did two weeks before. But how can this be? Well, since muscle is denser than fat (the eternal online debate that will last for as long as humanity exist), if you put 1 lb of fat next to 1 lb of muscle, the size difference is huge (see the image below). Basically, gaining a little bit of muscle can replace the equivalent weight of a bigger amount of fat you might lose, making the scale show you little to no weight you loss or maybe even weight gain. But who cares when you’re looking better and clothes fit better, right?

Fat vs Muscle

Now that you understand this, the weight number you had in mind originally might not be as important now since finally know it is more important to look great and be able to fit in whatever you might have in your closet that you haven’t been able to wear in centuries (ok ok not that long, but you get the point). So finally it is time to work on macros/calories adjustments.

I personally focus on macros and not calories (macros being carbohydrates, proteins and fats by the way). It is very important to know that 1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories, 1 gram of protein equals 4 calories and 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories. Many people use different macro ratios when putting together a meal plan. What can be yours? That’s totally up to you, but some examples are as follows:

C / P / F (carbs / proteins / fats)
35/35/30
40/35/25
40/30/30
30/40/30
35/40/25

Note: these ratios are percentages, not grams.

Now fats aren’t necessarily bad, in fact, they help a lot with metabolism, helping to burn body fat. Crazy, right? The important part is to minimize non-saturated fats and eat the good fats like those that contain Omega-3.

Honestly, you can pick whichever ration you prefer and try it out to see how it works for you, and if it doesn’t, you can always change it. By the way, I don’t want you to assume that whichever you pick will have an effect on you losing body fat faster than with another, remember that your original deficit is what counts towards your weight loss, not your macros ratio. Macro ratio helps with how much protein, carbs and fats you’ll eat and how your energy levels will be affected, since carbs are the energy source, protein your muscle builder and fats helps you boost your metabolism among other benefits.

To use as an example, let’s assume you have to eat 1600 calories a day to lose 1 pound a week, and let’s assume that you chose to eat 40% carbs, 35% protein and 25% fat a day. Now, let’s convert the calories to macros.

1600 multiplied by 0.40 (which is 40%) = 640 calories of carbs
1600 multiplied by 0.35 (which is 35%) = 560 calories of proteins
And for the fats you can either add 640 + 560 = 1200 and then subtract it from 1600 leaving you with 400 calories of fat
or multiply 1600 by 0.25 (which is 25%) = 400 calories of fats

That easy…. Oh wait, there’s more. We now need to figure out how many grams of each you need to eat a day. Well, this is even easier.

640 calories of carb divided by 4 = 160 grams
560 calories of protein divided by 4 = 140 grams
400 calories of fat divided by 9 = 44.4 grams

Now we are getting somewhere. REMEMBER, these are hypothetical numbers assuming your maintenance is 2100 calories a day and you are using a 500 calories deficit, leaving you with 1600 calories a day.

Note: Something I noticed recently, among the many issues MFP has, is that if you multiply your Diary’s total carbs and proteins by 4 and total fats by 9, adding them all to find out the total amount of calories for the day, it is different from the total amount of calories MFP shows in your Diary. The difference is small, but be aware that the calories displayed on MFP are not that accurate.

Note: At some point I had two different MFP accounts. One thing I discovered during that time was, that the nutritional facts from a specific food where different when accessed from each account. Therefore, my advice is to always go for the certified entries (they have a green circle with a check mark next to it), scan your own food’s barcodes, or enter them manually and save them if is a food you eat frequently.

The interesting part is finally here IF this post hasn’t been interesting yet. How many meals, and how much of each macro should you eat per meal?

The options are limitless and I’ll share my experience.

Some people like to split macros equally between each meal you eat, whichever amount of meals you get to eat. It could be 2, 3, 4 or 7 meals a day. Totally up to you.

Some trainers say macro timing is useless, the same as how many meals. Meaning, you can eat once a day, twice a day, 20 times a day and arrange your macros however the hell you want, and you’ll still achieve the same results, since what counts is that you eat your macros goal on a daily basis.

Some other trainers say macro timing is essential to get results and you should be eating at least 4 times a day. So let’s say you eat 6 meals a day, but you’ll need to distribute your macros in a way that your body takes full advantage of the nutrients and that way you’ll achieve the best results.

Which way do I follow? Since I got the best results with macro timing, that’s what I do. Is it really that important? Many people say it is total BS (especially the “know it all” in the MFP forums), but I choose to eat how I prefer based on my previous experience.

While lately I haven’t been super precise about macros distribution, I do follow one rule, the most amount of carbs I eat are distributed mainly before and after my workout. Carbs before working out give me the energy to workout, and after working out because they help with muscle recovery and protein absorption.

So ideally, I should be eating 5 meals a day, where proteins should be divided equally among all meals, carbs for my pre and post workout meal are around 50% total, and the other 50% should be divided between the other 3 meals. Fats should be divided equally between all meals, although I used to eat the least amount of fats with my pre and post workout meals. But that’s if you want to be ridiculously accurate like I was at one point. Now I focus more on the carbs for the pre and post workout and the rest I try to distribute between the other meals trying to keep a balance.

One more thing before I get to the last part of this post (by now you’re thinking, about damn time man, this is longer than a freaking book), I do carb cycling. What that means is, I have days with higher carbs, days with medium carbs, and days with low carbs. What’s the benefit and how do I do it? The benefit is that you should retain more muscle this way or even grow some muscle while losing body fat. Any fitness competitor would tell you carb cycling is one of the best tools they use to keep their gains from going away.

So how do I calculate it? Again, using the example numbers mentioned before, we know 1,600 calories a day is the goal. If we multiply 1600 by 7 (days of the week) we know you would be eating 11,200 calories a week. This number is magical, because no matter how you distribute your calories during the week, if you log your food and keep record of how much you can eat, you’ll always end the week with the same amount. So, when having a high carbs day, you only have those twice a week and leaving at least 2 days in between them. Then you have 5 days to decide which are the 2 days of low carbs and 3 days of medium carbs. How would your days look then?

If a normal day looks like this based on the above calculations
160 grams carbs
140 grams protein
44.4 grams fats

I would have the high day like this
220 grams carbs
140 grams protein
44.4 grams fats

And the low carb day like this
100 grams carbs
140 grams protein
44.4 grams fat

Basically what I did was, I took 60 grams of carbs from a day to make it a low carb day (from 160 grams of carbs to 100 grams) and added it to another day to make it a high carb day. You do this with 2 days, and by the end of the week you’ll still have your 11,200 calories.

Ideally, high carbs day are meant for days you either workout big group of muscles (like legs day or back) or muscles you want to maintain or get them to grow. Low carbs day on the other hand, are either rest days or cardio days, since your energy levels will be lower.

One thing I wanted to mention is, some of you found out about MyFitnessPal via the App Store or Play Store if you use Android. While the app allows you to do many things, I feel like accessing the account via a web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc), gives you a better display of your food diary, as well as other options like being able to upload a total of 18 photos to your album. So yes, in case you had no idea you could access your account via the browser, you definitely can and I suggest you do check it out.

Last but not least, once you get to calculate your numbers, like I said, don’t focus so much on your scale, but instead on your overall progress. Taking pics of yourself for your own record wearing underwear or swimsuit and measurements once a week is the ideal way to see your progress. Both pictures and measurements are equally important. Also, pick the same day of the week to do this, but avoid taking measurements and pics the day after high carbs, because you will be retaining water for a day after the high carbs day and lead you to think you aren’t getting any progress. So a normal day is more appropriate for that in my opinion. After two weeks, if you see you’re getting a nice progress, you can start reducing 5 grams of carbs from your daily goals for two weeks and then wait another week before you reduce another 5 grams. If the progress is somehow slow, you can reduce 10 grams of carbs one week, stay at that another week, then reduce another 10 grams of carbs, and stay there for another week. The idea is to see how your body reacts to those changes each week until you find what works best for you. Keep in mind you can always revert this changes if you see it didn’t work as you expected.

I want to finish this post with a link to a previous post where I talked about calculating calories and macros. It was written by a user on BodyBuilding.com but since the user doesn’t give permission to copy her post, even if giving her credit for the post, I can only post a link to it.

The article was written by Emma Leigh and it can be found in the following link

Calories and Macro’s

And if you ever have a hard time trying to add food to your MFP diary in a way that your total macros/calories hit your goal, just send me a message, and I’ll explain to you an easy way to achieve this.

How was my first impression in regards to the workout. While I had already written down on my notepad each set I needed to do, so when the time came I only had to write the weight and reps information along with any notes for future reference, I didn’t realize how intense the workout was going to be. Personally, I truly believe this program is really not beginner friendly. Let’s just say that even if a beginner was to use light weights, enough to achieve failure or a max amount of reps as stated on the program, they would probably end up light headed, throwing up or running out of energy before the workout is over.

The program claims that it should be completed in about an hour or so, and even though I timed my breaks between sets and exercises, it took me a little over 2 hours from beginning to end (I use an app to calculate my calories burned which I turn on as soon as I start working out and turn it off when I’m done). The intensity is really high. Each exercise during this first workout consisted of strip-sets, which by the end of each set your muscles were already hitting failure, which was the goal by the way.

There’s also a lot of running, which I think could be a major issue for those with bad knees or other health issues that running can be a problem. I’m guessing other alternatives could be used, like the elliptical or any other form of cardiovascular exercises.

In general, the workout really made me sweat, feel sore, and was completely different from what I’m used to, but again, I truly believe this isn’t beginner friendly. This first day was serious when it comes to intensity and even if a beginner finishes the workout, I suspect the DOMS will be an issue a day or two after the workout. The meal plan has kept me from feeling hungry, which is a good thing, but nothing I can really talk about until the end of the week where I’ll have studied how my body reacts to this plan. Until then, keep working out and bring the beast in you!

Left home at 4am to drive up to Tampa, with enough time to get ready for the race, including setting up my GoPro camera. Temperature was around 42º by the time my race was about to start, which is not a big deal, but when you’re about to run and most probably jump in cold water, it becomes one of those “oh crap, this is going to be fun…. not” moments.

Overall, I thought the race was tougher than my Super race from last year, but I think two main factors that got me to this realization has to do with to very specific issues. The first one, right at the beginning of the race, during the second obstacle, while helping a lady jump over the wooden obstacle, the force she applied in order to reach the top wasn’t downwards but find of forward, literally throwing me to the floor and hitting my knee and wrist against the concrete floor. Although my knee hurt just at that moment, my wrist was the one with more damage, which became worse as I had to keep using my hand throughout the race. The pain became excruciating and there was nothing I could do about it… because I wasn’t going to quit and I wasn’t going to do 30 burpees just to skip each obstacle. The second issue was the amount of stairs we had to climb during 75 to 80 percent of the race. I’ve never in my life climbed so many stairs before in a single day.

I’ll be honest, while I enjoy helping others to overcome obstacles, that initial injury that cost me having to deal with so much pain and ending up not being able to use my hand for a week after the race, taught me that not always I can sacrifice myself for those around me, especially during a race. The worse that can happen during a Spartan race is, that if you can’t complete an obstacle, you’ll have to do 30 burpees, and even then you’re getting something physically positive out of it.

My goal now is to prepare and focus for next year’s Beast race, which most probably will be in Atlanta, and for once I will try to focus on timing other than recording videos with my GoPro. This along with a Tough Mudder race and smaller obstacle races will keep me busy for a while when it comes about outdoors physical activities.

I bet somewhere along those lines would be the first thing to pop up in people’s minds when reading 3000 burpees. I mean, who would even consider doing such a ridiculous amount of burpees and claim they’re sane anyway?

Well, here’s the thing, people constantly talk about how they want to get stronger, how they want better conditioning, how they don’t have time to go to the gym and still want to get in shape, but when it comes about hard work and do exercises that will have a big impact in your body, most people change their minds and decide they are not ready. The truth is, we have been ready since we decided to change our lives and get in shape, whether because you don’t like how we look, we don’t have energy, we want to improve our health, or whatever reason you have. You need to realize the biggest obstacle to get things done is our own mind and how it will try to talk us into quitting our plans to feel better about ourselves by constantly asking us which would be prefer, to lay down on a couch watching your favorite show while eating your favorite comfort food or be doing a crazy ass exercise called burpees which suck tremendously?

The reality is, our minds need as much training as our bodies do. We need to train our minds to be and stay focus on our goals, and to change the mindset of comparing what got us sick, overweight or in the current state we are today to that mindset of how worth it and happy we will be when we reach our goals.

Hard Work Pays Off! This is a true statement. While any form of exercises, including walking, is beneficial to our health and bodies, the harder you work, the more results you will see, the faster they will happen, and the stronger you will get.

So 100 burpees daily for 30 days will probably suck depending on how many you do at once, but even if you can’t do more than 5 before running out of breath, that is perfectly fine. Do sets of 5 throughout the day until you complete the 100. Each time just try to do one extra rep on random sets. Look for ways to push your body little by little, always keeping in mind everything you do today will have a bigger effect tomorrow.

The time to start is today, not next week, not next month, but today! Make the decision, stick to it, and in 30 days look back and see how much you’ve accomplished and how much you’ve improved just because you decided to join this craziness and committed to the challenge.

Spartan races are basically obstacle races. There are four different races, the fourth one not being advertised or promoted as much or at all in comparison to the other three. The races are the following ones:

• Spartan Sprint Race- 3+ miles with 15+ obstacles
• Spartan Super Race- 8+ miles with 20+ obstacles
• Spartan Beast Race- 12+ miles with 25+ obstacles

The fourth race which is not talked about very much is called the Death Race. Not much is known about this race, other than the fact most people won’t finish it. It could easily take over 24 hours to finish and it challenges you physically, mentally and spiritually. I’ll include a video at the end of this blog about this race.

These races are as fun as they are tough, and although anyone can register to participate, I wouldn’t say they are recommended for everybody. To give you an example, some people are just not physically ready to climb ropes or doing the monkey bars. These among other challenges are part of the obstacles found in the Spartan races, and if you fail or skip any obstacle you need to do 30 burpees (here’s a video by Joe Desena, CEO and co-founder of the Spartan Race doing some burpees and explaining why burpees) in order to continue the race. So as you can imagine, if doing 30 of those is very difficult, failing any obstacle implies doing 30 of those, even if is the last obstacle after you have been on the race for over an hour.

Now, you may be wondering what this blog is all about and why I titled it Defeating the Purpose. The answer is very simple. I recently found out that the Spartan Sprint Race I registered for this year in Tampa, FL is somehow mostly indoors, or at least on hard concrete floor. Personally I think this is kind of ridiculous and doesn’t honor the true meaning of a Spartan race because of what I stated before; this should be an outdoors race. Running on concrete floor, jumping 6 or 8 feet tall walls and landing on hard floor is far different from doing the same on the grass or dirt. Even running is completely different and many people notice the difference on their knees.

I lived in Tampa for 3 years and I know for a fact there are plenty of areas and parks that they could have chosen for the race, yet, they decided to do the race on a stadium, and I still have no idea why this decision. If I had known this I would have probably waited to register at another venue, even if it meant for me to travel further to another city or state, like I will for the Spartan Beast Race in 2016.

While I think this could be seen as a challenge or obstacle part of the race, I think it is only fair if someone out there gets to read this blog post, that they are aware that this could happen, and if they prefer running out doors on the grass or dirt instead of concrete floor, to find out what venue will be used for the race, and to look up videos on YouTube for previous races at the same location.

Without further due, here’s a video of the 2010 Spartan Death Race

Death Spartan Race

As mentioned before, Shortcut to Shred seemed to be a promising solution to cut down or shred body fat. The concept, which is mainly based on reducing carbohydrates during a 3 phase setting, puts you on a caloric deficit, which one way or another would make anyone lose weight. Of course, the main goal is to lose body fat and little to no muscle mass, but this is where it gets tricky.

My Experience
I have to admit that, as much as I tried to stick as close as possible to the macros, I found it pretty hard to reach the amount of fats I needed to eat without affecting the protein and carbs quantities. It could have been easy to just add a spoon or two of olive or coconut oil to my meals, but I wasn’t a big fan of that idea. So other than the fats (which make for a lot of calories) I was pretty accurate with the rest of my macros.

During phase one, the amount of carbs gave me plenty of energy, not only to do the exercises in between each set, but also to lift very heavy. During phase one and two I was able to achieve new personal goals, lifting up to 315 lbs on my deadlifts, and over 800 lbs on legs press, but the motivation and happiness didn’t last long. Phase three requires to eat one third of the initial amount of carbs eaten during phase one. This, for anyone familiar of how important carbs are for energy purposes, was a major hit on my performance. My energy levels dropped dramatically affecting my workouts from the amount of weight lifted to the amount of reps, and in some cases sets. Forcing myself to reach the amount of weights I was used to lift during phase one and two became a painful experience realizing my body wasn’t capable of performing the same way without enough carbs.

One major problem with this program, and personally my biggest concern is, that while my body fat percentage dropped, I lost muscle mass during the time I did this program. This, is the one thing those of us who worked really hard for will want to avoid at all cost. I personally blame it on the constant low carbs during the third phase of the program. I think if at least there would have been some kind of cycling, it would have been the best option, not only to keep the energy and strength, but also to retain muscle mass.

Conclusion
If you are looking to drop weight, mainly from fat, but also sacrifice some muscle along the process, this program will probably be a great option. You’ll have to be mentally strong to fight the lack of desire to do cardio in between sets, especially during phase three. One thing is for sure, I wouldn’t try to do this program again, even if I was in a hurry to lose body fat in a short period of time, not unless phase three had me eating more carbohydrates.

Progress

ITBS is an overuse injury of tissues of the outer thigh and knee. The iliotibial band runs along the lateral or outside aspect of the thigh and is an important structure that stabilizes the outside of the knee as it flexes and extends. Inflammation of the IT band can occur as it crosses back and forth across the bony prominence of the femoral epicondyle as the knee flexes and extends causing pain on the outside part of the knee especially during running when the heel strikes the ground.

As I had mentioned before on my ITBFS or ITBS. What is Iliotibial Band Syndrome? I have been suffering from this for a while already. In fact, since my mid 20s I started experiencing pain on my knees, although it wasn’t until my 30s that I found out it was ITBS.

Many online articles have been written about what could be the cause, and different treatments. While in my opinion, the article I make reference too on my other post, has been one of the most complete in my personal opinion, I still didn’t find a way to get rid of my problem. After trying as many methods I could, I ended up giving up and not trying anymore.

My directed my focus towards working my legs from every possible angle, using heavy weights, trying to make them stronger and bigger. I mean, if I couldn’t run anymore, at least I wanted to have bigger lower extremities. What I didn’t know was, that by doing this I was already fighting ITBS and apparently making it go away.

Not until a couple of weeks ago, I decided to run again for warm up before my workout. Usually, with the knee straps I could get to two minutes of running before I started to get knee pain (without the straps it would be less than 2 minutes), but I noticed that somehow I ran 4 minutes and I didn’t feel any discomfort. This was without wearing the knee straps. I was surprised, but I didn’t want to push it and get to the point my knees would hurt. This stayed in my head, wondering what had happened that I didn’t get any pain. A few days after, I decided to try running 6 minutes, if possible, and see what the outcome would be. Once again, I felt no discomfort or pain at all. The excitement started to really wonder how far I could run before I would feel any pain, but my analytical mind kept me from doing something crazy and push my knees too far.

More recently I ran for 10 minutes and once again, my knees were perfectly ok with it. What is happening?, I thought. I haven’t really don’t any of the suggested therapy (stretching, foam roller, massages) but it seems my ITBS has somehow disappeared? Well, tonight I was committed to try not 15, but 20 minutes of running nonstop, which ended up being 2 miles even, and to my surprise, my kneed were absolutely fine.

I can’t tell you how excited and happy this makes me, knowing there was absolutely no discomfort during the time I was running for such a long time, at least for me. I began to realize, maybe the root of my problem was in fact weak hip abductors and glutes muscles, which I have constantly worked out since I decided to focus on my legs more than I did before. While I had done hip abductor exercises before, when trying different methods to treat the ITBS, it seems it wasn’t long enough to see any results. Now I’m basically doing 4 to 5 sets of 12 reps each using all the weight available on the machine, plus all the squats and other exercises I am doing, has been the solution to rid myself from this extremely frustrating condition.

While many treatments suggest to not stop running during the time ITBS is being treated, I eliminated running completely from my list, and it seems not running at all didn’t make a difference for me to get better. I will keep increasing the time and distance as I have an upcoming Sprint Spartan race. If it ITBS is officially gone completely, I finally see myself registering to run the Beast Spartan race in a near future.

During week three my body embraced the strength phase incredibly. During the first three days of the week, the reps goal was to stay between 2 and 5 reps per set, which allowed me to Military Shoulder Press 170 lbs, Squat 270 lbs and Deadlift 315 lbs. All of these I did without feeling out of energy after each set, but on the contrary, I was feeling super pumped to continue to the following set. My Cardio Acceleration sets didn’t affect my performance at all. In my opinion Week 3 was a major success.

Week 4, on the other hand, was kind of a disaster. The reason why is because of the drop on carbohydrates. Going from 1 gram of carbs per body weight pound to 0.5 gram makes a huge difference. The first two days were literally horrible. Deadlifting 275 lb and squatting 180 lbs felt almost impossible to do. My energy levels were super low during the whole day and my workouts weren’t as good as I wish they had been. In many occasions I had to skip the Cardio Acceleration sets because I just didn’t have the energy. By the end of the week my body was already adapting to this lack of carbs, and while I still don’t feel I have the energy I had during Week 3, at least I was able to do better than at the beginning of the week.

I’m positive I have lost certain amount of muscle mass, but for sure I have lost a lot of body fat, as you will see on the pictures below. Tomorrow, is the first day of Week 5, and the macronutrients adjustment wasn’t too big.

This is how my macros look, including how they were during Week 3

These are my current results

The following is a video of me deadlifting the 315 lbs and at the end of this post you can see my progress pictures, showing much better abdominal definition by the end of Week 4.

The Front Lever

It has been a little over two years since the last time I tried doing Front Levers. At that time I was working at a small private gym and weighting about 10 less than I weight now. I can’t really recall where I first saw this exercise but it called my attention making me want to try it. For me it was a time where anything that looked challenging enough I would try it and if I wasn’t able to do it, I would condition my body until I got it done.

My first attempt was a success, although I was never able to do more than 4 repetitions, and  my last rep would never get to be completely horizontal. It was fun though, since it is one of those exercises that puts your core muscles to the test, especially if there is no swinging to help and you use your muscles instead.

This time I was able to do 7 reps, and although I could have probably gotten to 10 I felt I was already having trouble reaching a full horizontal position, since I was trying to hold it for a split of a second each time and lower myself slowly to avoid swinging. Eventually I will work on holding it for a longer time until I am able to just stay there for a considerable amount of time.

For now, here I leave you with a video of the exercise.