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.

1- A Spartan Race Trifecta
• Spartan Sprint
• Spartan Super
• Spartan Beast
2- An Olympic Triathlon
• Swim 0.93mi (1.5km)
• Bike 24.8mi (40km)
• Run 6.2mi (10km)
3- The 50 mile Fakawi Mountain Bike Fest

Now, you might think with so many fitness programs I’ve done I shouldn’t have any problems achieving these goals next year, but that’s where you (whoever is reading this blog) is wrong. You need to understand two very important aspects of my fitness background. I don’t do cardio and I suffered from major ITBS. I have focused on weight lifting, and either circuit training or HIIT for my cardio since ITBS wouldn’t allow me to run for more than 5 minutes before my knees would be in major pain. Then, knowing long cardio sessions are not recommended for those trying to gain muscle size, I always avoided any form of cardio, except for my latest hobby which is riding mountain bike. Yet, I have done two Spartan races (since you get to stop every now and then to complete obstacles) and recently I did a 30 mile Fakawi Mountain Bike Fest.

My first training goal is to get to run 6.2 miles, which is something I haven’t been able to do EVER. For that, I’ll be using the Easy 10k With Jeff Galloway app for iOS. Knowing the Triathlon won’t be until next year, I have plenty of time to train and see if my knees can handle this first phase of the training, by not getting back any of the ITBS pain. If I am able to reach that goal, my second goal would be to ride the 24.8 miles on a road bike, which that isn’t an issue at all, followed by the 6.2 miles run. That right there would be another achievement. And last but not least, I need to train swimming the 0.93 mile, and combine it with the bike ride and run. While I know how to swim, I haven’t swim in a long time, and my swimming technique is not the proper one, so I’ll have to focus on that as well to avoid wasting unnecessary energy.

That training alone would be more than enough to do the 50 mile Fakawi ride, and to finish each of the Spartan races (at least the running/endurance part). Now, for strength training I have a different plan. I’ll be dividing the training in phases, mainly because I will do different fitness programs to put my body through a variety of weight lifting training.

First I’m going back to my roots (so to speak). P90X was my first major fitness program to try which gave me amazing results. This time I’m going to try P90X3. The idea is to break the gym routine for 90 days, getting leaner and helping with my endurance. After that, I’ll jump back in the gym for the all famous StrongLift 5 x 5 (<<< not sure if that’s the real website or it is just a random website that talks about this program), followed by a strength targeting program put together by me.

Also, as part of doing the P90X3 routine, I’m going to be building a Muay Thai punching bag stand which will allow me to do pull ups and dips with hanging rings instead of using a static or fixed pull-up bar and dips handles (I’ll post the instructional video to build one below). The cool thing about this is, I’ll also be able to train my punching and kicking techniques while getting some cardio done at the same time. All part of the endurance training.

It is a lot to do, but this training will help me get physically and mentally ready as well for a year full of accomplishments. And unless the 5×5 training helps me get to my 400 lbs deadlifts new goal and break my 265 lbs bench press PR, I will focus on my one-rep max goals after I’m done with all the races.

Here’s the instructional video for the punching bag stand.

It is unfortunate that I cannot give a detailed example of why I am stopping this program by showing you the actual list of the workouts and diet, but I will try to explain the best I can why this program is 100% crap. I’ll try to do this in a short summary below, and then I’ll explain in better detail everything there is wrong about this program.

As I posted yesterday, last week’s training was a very intense, so intense that I honestly said this program wasn’t suited for beginners. From an excessive load of strip-sets to very short breaks between sets, and relatively low caloric days when it came to cardio and days off, plus a ridiculous amount of coffee on a daily basis, made it a tough week even for someone like who spends over an hour a day 6 times a week, lifting heavy all the time and not wasting any time talking or taking extra long breaks. Now, all of the sudden, I start the second week with an increase in macros (or calories if you prefer) in comparison to last week, with a workout that other than the warm up run and push ups, I didn’t get a drop of sweat out of my body. We’re talking about a one set per exercise with very few exercises in general. To explain better how different this workout was compared to last week’s workouts, is like comparing a marathon to a 5k race. So for anyone to tell me, this kind of plan can get someone ripped with a muscular body in 45 days, is the biggest lie anyone could ever say, leading me to the conclusion that MP45 is one of the biggest scams every created.

If after reading this short summary you still feel like reading more of what I have to say, then feel free to continue reading below, otherwise, by now you should already know is not worth it spending a minute of your life reading anything related this program. You’ll do 110% better watching youtube workout videos and getting a gym membership than dedicating any of your time to MP45.

Anyone with a little knowledge about how muscles work is aware that in order to make a muscle grow you need two things, eat and lift, and by lift I mean lifting enough weights to put stress on the muscle fiber which will cause macro-tears on that will lead the muscle to grow in size and strength. Of course, you can do this the right way (minimizing the amount of body fat you gain along the process) or the wrong way (increasing your body far tremendously along the way). Similar concept applies to body fat loss. With proper eating and exercising you will lose body fat, but just like with gaining muscle, you can lose more body fat than muscle or lose a lot of muscle along the way, depending on how you eat and exercise. Anyone that spends lots of hours a week at the gym trying to gain muscle knows how hard that is and how horrible is the experience to lose muscle because of a poor diet and exercise plan. So far MP45 has demonstrated to me that it is a bad plan that will make anyone who has worked hard for their muscles lose their gains and those without much muscle won’t gain any at all.

For a workout plan to put me through a day of exercises that literally didn’t get my muscles exhausted, burning, feeling a “pump” and sweating like I always do, that says a lot about how bad this plan is. And believe me, this wasn’t because of me not giving 100% of me or using enough weight. One exercise of one set only for back, chest and shoulders is not going to make absolutely anyone lose body fat or gain any muscle ever, especially when the total amount of calories today is even higher than during last week’s excessive lifting. And while earlier today after I finished the workout, I refused to even look at what was due for tomorrow, I just did and is exactly the same thing than today. A couple of warm up sets followed by 1 set for the lower body, that includes 4 weights exercises and some body weight squats and lunges. Not to mention Wednesday is rest day. What in the world…..?

I have tried many programs since I got into fitness, some made by companies like BeachBody, other programs made my trainers, and even some by online fitness celebrities, and in all the years I have been trying programs, I’ve never come across with such a horrible workout program. This is literally the first time I have stopped using a fitness program ever, and on top of that only after a week of doing it. When I started this program I was already convinced it was a scam based on the claims of getting results that usually take months, and sometimes over a year to achieve. In fact, the reason that got me into trying the program was because of this false claims. The one thing I didn’t know was how bad this program really is, starting with the absolutely horrible grammar and layout. It feels like the person putting it together at times was thinking of one exercise when he was supposed to write another exercise, making it very hard to understand the exercise flow. And last but not least, the PDF files have a LOT of pages, which means you’ll spend a lot of time reading explanations about so many things that in my opinion are trying to create this image on the reader’s mind that this program is the best in the world by following all this scientific explanations when the reality they’re just justifying the $97 dollars the reader just paid.

Conclusion: Do NOT spend a dime or waste your time in this program even if you get it for free from a friend. It won’t provide you with any benefit whatsoever. Any of those muscular people posting pictures of them wearing MP45 gear and claiming their looks are thanks to that program are lying and getting paid to attract people to buy the program through the affiliate program MP45 offers.

Is this how I look after completing one week of MP45? By the end of this post you’ll know whether or not that’s the case.

This is my first official review of the MP45 fitness program after one week of following both the exercises routines and meal plan. The workout plan doesn’t get any easy, although I’m disappointed at the description of phase 1 of getting acclimated by the creator of this plan when stating “focusing on full body workouts 3 times during the week plus 2 cardio workouts on different days”. My main issue with this, being someone who has been working out for a while, is the lack of focus on muscle groups. I’m a huge fan of giving each muscle group plenty of attention, especially working my shoulders a lot since they are muscles I’m trying to develop more, but for now I’ve been limited to what the program suggests. As part of my review I have to stick to the plan, even if I would prefer to be doing a wider variety of exercises and targeting muscle groups directly. But in order to be accurate and prove this plan can’t give the results they claim, I have to just go with he flow.

So, what other issues I have encountered with the program? When it comes to the PDF, it is very poorly written. There are instructions that make no sense at all. For instance, one of the instructions seems to ask to increase weight on each set after already fatiguing your muscle on the previous set, making it absolutely impossible to increase the weight. Now, this is an assumption because the note is absolutely confusing. I even asked a friend to help me decipher the instructions and she agreed with me it is far from being clear and possible indicated what I assumed. Also, in various occasions the plan indicates to do warm up sets for an exercise (legs exercise), but right after tells you to do a different exercise (arms exercise). Or to warm up for a muscle group and then describe the exercises you already did for another muscle group. Kind of insane if you ask me. 

When it comes to meals, sometimes the plan asks you to eat 8 times a day, while others you have 6 meals… if you can describe a small amount of protein with water as a meal. The amount of coffee suggested to drink is ridiculous, especially for someone who doesn’t drink coffee like myself (Wait, what? You don’t drink coffee? What a weirdo).

In general, and as I mentioned on my previous post, this isn’t a program for beginners. I guarantee you if you do this program without previous muscle conditioning, you will either be sore for weeks, or you won’t be able to finish a full workout if you really push yourself to meet the reps and sets goals.

So, what’s the MY plan then? The plan is to weight and measure myself by the end of each week plus take daily pictures (which by the end of the week I realized this is tiring and totally a waste of time, not only because those daily transformation people are showing are not real, but also because once a week is more than enough to show results if they happen), to track the progress. Things I will be looking for are body composition changes, including increase or decrease of muscle mass, body fat, and weight (this one is kind of irrelevant). Muscle and body fat are the two main factors I’ll be paying attention to very closely, mainly because I will hate if I lose muscle volume because of a program with a poor meal plan (not saying that’s the case YET) that doesn’t go hand to hand with the amount of exercises that need to be done. And of course, body fat because as expected, it needs to decrease (supposedly in 45 days you’ll go from being a Sumo Wrestler to a Lazar Angelov physique).

In any case, here are small reviews of how each day went for me during this past week.

Day 1- As mentioned before, while I’ve been working out for a while (even if my current pictures makes you think I haven’t), I don’t consider this program to be beginner friendly. The level of intensity, if each set is done properly, looking for failure, is very intense. Also, even when timing the breaks betweens sets and exercises, it was literally impossible to finish the workout in one hour.

Day 2- A cardio based workout with lots and lots of running. This could be a major issue for those who either have bad knees or don’t run at all. I got to the point my left knee was bothering me a little. I was able to finish the workout, but I see myself looking for an alternative. Either running for warm up and then replace the actual running workout with elliptical or other form of cardio, or I’ll have to see what can I do to get to run without having my knees get affected.

Day 3- This workout was a little harder than Day 1 considering the fact the break time between sets was 45 seconds. The amount of exercises is just ridiculous. More exercises have been added to the routine which extended the total length of the workout to over 2:30 hours.

Day 4- Rest day. Very much appreciated and nothing to talk about here. I’m not sore because prior to beginning this program I was already lifting a lot. BUT since I’m not a runner, my tibialis anterior and probably the fibularis brevis are kind of sore.

Day 5- Today’s workout proved to me that whoever put together this workout is out of his f*cking mind and those who have posted reviews praising this program as the best world are 110% full of S…. Now, why do I say that? Because who in their right mind would think it is healthy or productive at all a workout that asks you to do a full body workout where all sets are strip-sets (more than 3 times dropping weights), looking for failure reps each time and only getting 30 seconds break in between sets, and I’m not talking about 30 seconds break between dropping weight, that only takes a couple of seconds when changing weight using the machines, I’m talking in between each full strip-set. Not only this is definitely NOT beginner friendly, but also, even for those who lift weight regularly like myself (6 times a week), it is absolutely insane. I can’t talk for professional athletes, but if I had to guess, this kind of workout would be more like what they would do. Therefore, today’s workout has been crowned the King of the ________ (choose any of the following: impossible, puking, passing out, stupid, crazy ass, idiotic, wtf) workout. Thank you very much.

Day 6- Today was pretty much a mess if you ask me. Low calories was already giving me a slight headache, add to that a cardio session, of course it would be kind of hellish. I was hungry the whole day and in my own personal opinion, calories were too low for my body weight/composition.

Day 7- Rest day. Once again, very appreciated but looking forward to the new phase tomorrow to see what’s next with this program.

PROGRESS

Below you can see my pictures, taken everyday in the morning before drinking any water or eating any food. Underneath you can see the pictures of one of the people who claim drastic changes in just one week. Which changes do you think are more realistic?

And last but not least, at the end of this post you can find the measurements taken before and after this week doing MP45. So, go ahead and be the judge and leave any comments if you’d like.

MP45 Week 1 Progress Pictures

NOTE: The following pictures are what this guy claims to be his progress in one week. Obviously, there are more than a few things wrong about the pictures, besides the fact this is definitely not a one week progress. Posture is a big issue in these pictures. He seems to be pushing his stomach out on the first and second picture. shoulders forward and kind of curved back, as he takes the other pictures he contracts the abdomen giving the impression of losing the belly, pulls the shoulders back and gets a more straight posture, all giving the impression of a transformation that anyone would love to have if this was possible to achieve in one week.

MY STATS

Note: My initial weight of 196.6 lbs might have been affected by the fact the two previous days my diet was kind of high in carbs, which of course causes water retention, so the whole 6.2 lbs drop in one week has to be wrong considering it surely has to do with water.

In conclusion, the only thing that me and the picture at the beginning of this blog have in common is how I feel on this low caloric days and how ridiculous is the working out with 30 seconds break between strip down sets.

Update: See my final review for this program >>HERE<< and why I truly believe this program is a scam.

#MP45 #MP45review #MP45reviews #MP45workout #MP45workoutreview #MP45workoutpdf #MP45pdf

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!

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.

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.