2 wks Out Jr USA

by: Joe Lyons - May 4th, 2008

This past week was a challenge because of the amount of work I knew have to be done. Cardio is the most boring activity that you can do in a gym, and I was doing 2 hours daily. The first 30 min of each session is HIIT (high intensity interval cardio) and then it's 30 min of a moderate difficulty level. I try to stay in the 125-135 BPM range.

I made some pretty dramatic changes in my appearance, but it wasn't enough. The idea was to push it for the week and then hopefully be able to back off a bit and prep my body to be filled out. From the front, I was very excited with all the changes I saw. I couldn't wait to get the pics taken to send to Justin and see what we were going to do next. Unfortunately, when I looked at the shots of my back poses, I still saw low back fat that was being stubborn and didn't want to let go. I haven't heard back from Justin yet this weekend, but I know I will continue to do what I did last week. 1 High, 1 medium, 5 low carb days for the week with 2 hours of cardio. I'm going to bust my butt till all the fat is gone from my low back and glute area. The lowest my body weight has gotten was 202lbs this past week.

One of the issues this last week was signs of a slowing metabolism were starting to appear. I was constantly cold, no energy, and sleeping 3 hours a night. Justin decided that Saturday (yesterday) we would have a mega high carb day and see if that would jump start my metabolism. I had to eat every 2 hours all day, and have 100+g of carbs in each meal. I would have a 3oz piece of meat with with 100+g of carbs from grits, white rice, cold cereal, red potatoes, glycomaize, 2:1:1 recovery, apples, and wild berries. Obviously that's a lot of food to digest, so I had to drink some of the calories or I'd never get it all in.

Here's what the carb meals looked like;
2:1:1 Recovery with a Medium Apple
5 Cups of Applejack
2 cups white rice
1.5 cups grits with 1 scoop glycomaize
2:1:1 Recovery with Medium Apple
16oz of Red Potatoes
2 Cups White Rice
16 oz of Red Potatoes
2 Cups Grits 1 cup berries

What was the results of all that food... I'm sweating my butt off again just sitting here. I couldn't sleep because my pillow was drenched. That's a sign things are fired back up. Thankfully, I needed that. I'm going to struggle to get this last bit of fat off. I also weighed 212lbs this morning. LOL

Training is going great. During this entire prep I may have lost 5-10% of my strength. The only body part I'm not as strong as I was during the off-season is my legs, and that's more of a safety issue for me. I'm not trying to squat 500+lbs right now and doing my working sets with 405X10-15 reps. My chest, back, and shoulder core exercises are as strong or stronger then when I started. I'm not able to hold the intensity as long during the workouts, but the initial 2 lifts are very intense and strong. Most people believe you Have to get weaker during a contest prep...I wanted to prove differently and have.

I start this week off on Monday with another High Carb day (400g this time) and am going to a Disturbed and Five Finger Death Punch concert. That ought to really motivate me to bust my butt in the gym! I'll write again mid week to let everyone know how I'm progressing.

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