On Season Transitioning Part II – Applying what the coach says.
December 9, 2011
It was the Sunday after the Natural Olympia, which was my last show of the 2011 season. The team and I had just finished our respective workouts at Healthy Bodies Fitness and already I was making my starting offseason training plan. We were in the car heading back to my house and Eric said a few words that will ring in my head for quite some time, “Guys, what do we think is Brad’s biggest weakness?”
I was lucky in that unlike Brian Whitacre, I did not have to e-mail or contact anyone to assess my weaknesses. I had three Natural Pro’s right there with me in my car to assess the chinks in my armor. Taking into consideration my very wide waist and lack of good structure, it was a unanimous decision that I needed to add width to my back and, to a certain extent, my delts. Jeff also added that I needed to improve the “depth” of my upper and mid back. I was in complete agreement with the team. We also agreed that my chest is a strong point, so there should be less of an emphasis placed on it in comparison to my back (still with the mindset of overall improvement, of course). Upon arriving back at my house, the Team and I sketched out a training and nutrition plan that I would follow for the next few weeks and months.
Making the Plan
In the second and third paragraph of Part I in Alberto's article, he talks about the importance of,
1.) Assessing the “Man in the Mirror.”
2.) Designing a structured Plan.
After the team and I had assessed my physique’s needs, we got to structuring a detailed offseason plan.
Training
Day 1 – Strength/Hyper Pull
2 - 3 exercises 20 – 50 total reps Vertical Pulling for Strength
2 exercises 30 – 60 total reps Horizontal Pulling for Hypertrophy
Day 2 – Pressing – Delts and Chest for Strength
Day 3 – Strength/Hyper Pull
2 – 3 exercises 20 – 50 total reps Horizontal Pulling for hypertrophy
2 exercises 30 – 60 total reps Vertical Pulling for strength
Day 4 – Legs – Quads, Hams and Calves for Strength
Day 5 or 6 (Depending on Recovery) – Deadlift for Strength, hypertrophy for the rest.
Deadlift working up to 2 or 3 good doubles
20 – 50 total reps isolation/hypertrophy for Biceps, Triceps, Delts and Abs
Day 6 and/or 7 Off
Without even so much as a de-load, I got back into the gym that Monday and started on my mission for more width and better symmetry. I was wisely conservative with my weight selection, but at the same time, way too eager to wait any longer. The plan is to run this protocol for a good month, then change things around a bit and run a week or two of speed work on my basic compounds before starting the whole thing again.
To be more competitive in the pro ranks, the team agrees Brad must emphasize his back.
Nutrition
Unless you have been training out of a cave for the last 5 years, you know the importance of “reverse dieting” after the contest season. For most of us, not having a structured exit plan not only leads to pounds and pounds of unwanted and unneeded body fat, but will leave you with deep-offseason levels of body fat without a metabolism to match. This makes it nearly impossible to keep your weight down on even modest amounts of food and makes it much harder to diet down for future contests. That is another subject all together though. In my case, I was very fortunate to actually have started my exit plan before I even stepped on stage.
What I mean by this is that after dieting down for months and months, the team and I started increasing my carbs day by day while keeping my fats at a lower percentage of my total calories. We started this strategy a week before peak week. So the day before I started peak week, my macros were 24f/315c/200p. The first three days of peak week were roughly 40f/475c/200p. The way I figured it, my body was handling those macros without a problem so it should be able to handle them upon exiting my diet. So that is exactly how we structured the rough draft of my offseason diet:
45f/320c/200p x 6 days per week
40f/500c/200p x 1 day per week.
As Eric walked out my front door, he said, “I think at this point while you’re still really lean and I’d rather make your protein 225g per day.” So that’s exactly what I did, and what I’ve stuck to since then. The plan was to walk up my carbs slowly, 15g or so at first, then 10g daily after a week or two just as we did before peak week. It’s working like a charm. For the most part I am maintaining my contest weight and I am now up to 390g of carbs on my low days. The end goal is to keep bumping carbs every so often until my regular days and my re-feed days match.
All work and no play makes Brad a dull boy
Now that’s not to say that I have had every meal at home with perfect macros being tracked every day. After all it’s the holidays, and as I type this I am on vacation in Oregon with my parents. I was able to track my Thanksgiving dinner on a myfitnesspal.com app on my cell phone and I got pretty close to my re-feed numbers. I was a little over on my fat, (damn pumpkin pie) and ended up taking in 61f/519c/182p. Most athletes in this sport just don’t realize how easy it is to track your food with today’s tools. In years past, I would have never known what my macros were for Thanksgiving dinner. In today’s world though, you can enter in, “Homemade Shrimp Salad with Mayonnaise” in any search engine or nutrition app and get ball park numbers. Take it from me, dieting is so much easier now than it was even 10 years ago and I am looking forward to staying on track this holiday season AND indulging in some sinful food now and then.
Day dream and start visualizing NOW!!
Take a moment and recall your top 3 memories this contest season. Whether it was the exhilaration of having your number called as the judges moved you toward the middle of the lineup, the rush you felt when the crowd applauded your routine, or the gratification in your prep coach’s reply: “HOLY CRAP dude, you are shredded!” For me, I loved the feeling I got when other competitors at the Olympia expressed to me their amazement and respect for the conditioning I’d achieved. Having one competitor tell me I looked like an anatomy chart on stage was simply an amazing feeling. Having Kiyoshi Moody private message me on facebook to congratulate me on my conditioning at the show made me feel incredibly proud.
Now take those memories and grab on to the one that really stands out. The one that really makes you want to go hit the gym as hard as you can RIGHT NOW!!! Take that particular moment, and expand on it. Exaggerate it as if you were going to BS your buddies about it no matter how unrealistic it might seem (you know how the fish you caught a few years back gets bigger each time you tell the story). Just like when you were a kid and you’d pretend that Darrell Green had nothing on you as you effortlessly smoked him catching pass after pass from Joe Montana. After all it’s yours, so exaggerate it all you want.
For me, the one memory that will stand out above all others is standing on the side of the stage as the top 5 at the Natural Olympia were called out (I talk about it in my latest team blog, “Reflecting back on the Natural Olympia”). I’m embarrassed sharing this with you, but I have been taking that one memory and expanding on it over and over just like when I was a kid. Almost as plain as the numbers on my keyboard, I imagine myself center stage as one of the top 5 called out. I can see 5 or 10 bodybuilders in my peripheral vision as the judges are putting us through our paces. I can see some of the faces of our current 3DMJ clients making their pro debuts, eagerly awaiting their turn at center stage as I am duking it out with Jeff Alberts, Moji Oluwa, Alberto Nunez, and the afore mentioned Kiyoshi Moody. We are all doing our best to show that we are each worthy of the top spot. Pose after pose the judges keep calling them out. They re-arrange us as they make comparisons and then call another pose. I can see and feel myself going through my mental checklist as I hit each pose with efficiency. To myself I think, “set your feet, dig them in, flex your legs, arch your back, chest up, lats back, open up, flex the arms, smile and make it all look easy”. Like I said, when creating an inspirational vision, make it as grandiose as you want! But, you don’t have to share it like I did here!
In closing, it’s one thing to read the great words that Alberto put on paper last month, but it’s all just good advice until you put it into practice. Now it’s time to follow through. To paraphrase Emmitt Smith’s quote, “make your dreams into goals”. I have showed you here how I have applied his great advice, putting it down on paper en route to making my dreams reality, now it’s time for you to do the same. Get out the pen and paper, or in today’s world, open up “Word” on your computer and start taking those steps to your dreams NOW!!!!
I was lucky in that unlike Brian Whitacre, I did not have to e-mail or contact anyone to assess my weaknesses. I had three Natural Pro’s right there with me in my car to assess the chinks in my armor. Taking into consideration my very wide waist and lack of good structure, it was a unanimous decision that I needed to add width to my back and, to a certain extent, my delts. Jeff also added that I needed to improve the “depth” of my upper and mid back. I was in complete agreement with the team. We also agreed that my chest is a strong point, so there should be less of an emphasis placed on it in comparison to my back (still with the mindset of overall improvement, of course). Upon arriving back at my house, the Team and I sketched out a training and nutrition plan that I would follow for the next few weeks and months.
Making the Plan
In the second and third paragraph of Part I in Alberto's article, he talks about the importance of,
1.) Assessing the “Man in the Mirror.”
2.) Designing a structured Plan.
After the team and I had assessed my physique’s needs, we got to structuring a detailed offseason plan.
Training
Day 1 – Strength/Hyper Pull
2 - 3 exercises 20 – 50 total reps Vertical Pulling for Strength
2 exercises 30 – 60 total reps Horizontal Pulling for Hypertrophy
Day 2 – Pressing – Delts and Chest for Strength
Day 3 – Strength/Hyper Pull
2 – 3 exercises 20 – 50 total reps Horizontal Pulling for hypertrophy
2 exercises 30 – 60 total reps Vertical Pulling for strength
Day 4 – Legs – Quads, Hams and Calves for Strength
Day 5 or 6 (Depending on Recovery) – Deadlift for Strength, hypertrophy for the rest.
Deadlift working up to 2 or 3 good doubles
20 – 50 total reps isolation/hypertrophy for Biceps, Triceps, Delts and Abs
Day 6 and/or 7 Off
Without even so much as a de-load, I got back into the gym that Monday and started on my mission for more width and better symmetry. I was wisely conservative with my weight selection, but at the same time, way too eager to wait any longer. The plan is to run this protocol for a good month, then change things around a bit and run a week or two of speed work on my basic compounds before starting the whole thing again.
To be more competitive in the pro ranks, the team agrees Brad must emphasize his back.
Nutrition
Unless you have been training out of a cave for the last 5 years, you know the importance of “reverse dieting” after the contest season. For most of us, not having a structured exit plan not only leads to pounds and pounds of unwanted and unneeded body fat, but will leave you with deep-offseason levels of body fat without a metabolism to match. This makes it nearly impossible to keep your weight down on even modest amounts of food and makes it much harder to diet down for future contests. That is another subject all together though. In my case, I was very fortunate to actually have started my exit plan before I even stepped on stage.
What I mean by this is that after dieting down for months and months, the team and I started increasing my carbs day by day while keeping my fats at a lower percentage of my total calories. We started this strategy a week before peak week. So the day before I started peak week, my macros were 24f/315c/200p. The first three days of peak week were roughly 40f/475c/200p. The way I figured it, my body was handling those macros without a problem so it should be able to handle them upon exiting my diet. So that is exactly how we structured the rough draft of my offseason diet:
45f/320c/200p x 6 days per week
40f/500c/200p x 1 day per week.
As Eric walked out my front door, he said, “I think at this point while you’re still really lean and I’d rather make your protein 225g per day.” So that’s exactly what I did, and what I’ve stuck to since then. The plan was to walk up my carbs slowly, 15g or so at first, then 10g daily after a week or two just as we did before peak week. It’s working like a charm. For the most part I am maintaining my contest weight and I am now up to 390g of carbs on my low days. The end goal is to keep bumping carbs every so often until my regular days and my re-feed days match.
All work and no play makes Brad a dull boy
Now that’s not to say that I have had every meal at home with perfect macros being tracked every day. After all it’s the holidays, and as I type this I am on vacation in Oregon with my parents. I was able to track my Thanksgiving dinner on a myfitnesspal.com app on my cell phone and I got pretty close to my re-feed numbers. I was a little over on my fat, (damn pumpkin pie) and ended up taking in 61f/519c/182p. Most athletes in this sport just don’t realize how easy it is to track your food with today’s tools. In years past, I would have never known what my macros were for Thanksgiving dinner. In today’s world though, you can enter in, “Homemade Shrimp Salad with Mayonnaise” in any search engine or nutrition app and get ball park numbers. Take it from me, dieting is so much easier now than it was even 10 years ago and I am looking forward to staying on track this holiday season AND indulging in some sinful food now and then.
Day dream and start visualizing NOW!!
Take a moment and recall your top 3 memories this contest season. Whether it was the exhilaration of having your number called as the judges moved you toward the middle of the lineup, the rush you felt when the crowd applauded your routine, or the gratification in your prep coach’s reply: “HOLY CRAP dude, you are shredded!” For me, I loved the feeling I got when other competitors at the Olympia expressed to me their amazement and respect for the conditioning I’d achieved. Having one competitor tell me I looked like an anatomy chart on stage was simply an amazing feeling. Having Kiyoshi Moody private message me on facebook to congratulate me on my conditioning at the show made me feel incredibly proud.
Now take those memories and grab on to the one that really stands out. The one that really makes you want to go hit the gym as hard as you can RIGHT NOW!!! Take that particular moment, and expand on it. Exaggerate it as if you were going to BS your buddies about it no matter how unrealistic it might seem (you know how the fish you caught a few years back gets bigger each time you tell the story). Just like when you were a kid and you’d pretend that Darrell Green had nothing on you as you effortlessly smoked him catching pass after pass from Joe Montana. After all it’s yours, so exaggerate it all you want.
For me, the one memory that will stand out above all others is standing on the side of the stage as the top 5 at the Natural Olympia were called out (I talk about it in my latest team blog, “Reflecting back on the Natural Olympia”). I’m embarrassed sharing this with you, but I have been taking that one memory and expanding on it over and over just like when I was a kid. Almost as plain as the numbers on my keyboard, I imagine myself center stage as one of the top 5 called out. I can see 5 or 10 bodybuilders in my peripheral vision as the judges are putting us through our paces. I can see some of the faces of our current 3DMJ clients making their pro debuts, eagerly awaiting their turn at center stage as I am duking it out with Jeff Alberts, Moji Oluwa, Alberto Nunez, and the afore mentioned Kiyoshi Moody. We are all doing our best to show that we are each worthy of the top spot. Pose after pose the judges keep calling them out. They re-arrange us as they make comparisons and then call another pose. I can see and feel myself going through my mental checklist as I hit each pose with efficiency. To myself I think, “set your feet, dig them in, flex your legs, arch your back, chest up, lats back, open up, flex the arms, smile and make it all look easy”. Like I said, when creating an inspirational vision, make it as grandiose as you want! But, you don’t have to share it like I did here!
In closing, it’s one thing to read the great words that Alberto put on paper last month, but it’s all just good advice until you put it into practice. Now it’s time to follow through. To paraphrase Emmitt Smith’s quote, “make your dreams into goals”. I have showed you here how I have applied his great advice, putting it down on paper en route to making my dreams reality, now it’s time for you to do the same. Get out the pen and paper, or in today’s world, open up “Word” on your computer and start taking those steps to your dreams NOW!!!!
Posted by Brad Loomis. Posted In : Team 3DMJ
Team 3DMJ is comprised of Champion Natural Bodybuilders Alberto Nunez, Brad Loomis, Eric Helms and Jeff Alberts. United their goal is to share knowledge and to promote the sport of natural bodybuilding as a whole.
