Five days left to go before I don the red cape!
I'm at 188 lbs. Time to start "cutting," a.k.a. dropping body fat, in order to show off the muscle underneath. As a hard gainer, I can lose the necessary three pounds many, many different ways: Reduce meal size, cut carbs, do cardio, or hit the gym a little harder. I've chosen to go the low carb/cardio route.
Anyone who has done contest prep knows, because I'll be working at a calorie deficit, I won't have the resources to fall back on that I typically do, so going whole hog in the gym would tempt injury. It isn't enough to just lose a few pounds: I have to make sure I lose the right weight—fat, not muscle. My mission is to eliminate the remaining flab (and water weight) and maintain the muscle mass I've created.
Cutting, also known as "conditioning," is how bodybuilders get the veiny, road mappy, I-just-got-done-working-out look (think Hugh Jackman as Wolverine*), on top of tweaking their glycogen levels.
I'm at 188 lbs. Time to start "cutting," a.k.a. dropping body fat, in order to show off the muscle underneath. As a hard gainer, I can lose the necessary three pounds many, many different ways: Reduce meal size, cut carbs, do cardio, or hit the gym a little harder. I've chosen to go the low carb/cardio route.
Anyone who has done contest prep knows, because I'll be working at a calorie deficit, I won't have the resources to fall back on that I typically do, so going whole hog in the gym would tempt injury. It isn't enough to just lose a few pounds: I have to make sure I lose the right weight—fat, not muscle. My mission is to eliminate the remaining flab (and water weight) and maintain the muscle mass I've created.
Cutting, also known as "conditioning," is how bodybuilders get the veiny, road mappy, I-just-got-done-working-out look (think Hugh Jackman as Wolverine*), on top of tweaking their glycogen levels.
I started the glycogen preliminaries last week by upping my sodium and dropping my carb intake. Now it's time to get serious with Phase 2: I'm slowly depleting the sodium I've built up. I'm doing this by keeping my Na intake to 2g (before rationing down to 500mg the 48 hours before Halloween) and flushing my system by chugging two gallons of water each day. After this comes fluid restriction, wherein I'll limit myself to half a gallon before taking in only a soda can-full of the precious liquid on the final day. This is when I will also start loading up on carbs, a.k.a. "carb loading." |
I'll be honest, I'm a little anxious about this: I've read that this process isn't pleasant, but I'm nonetheless excited because the ever-so-slight hint of victory is beginning to fill the air.
7-time Mr. Olympia Phil Heath in 2016. Expert conditioning results in a thin layer of skin and very little body fat shrink-wrapping the muscles |
* - Reminder to my fans: My target body fat percentage is 10 percent, just enough to show off the division between muscle groups as Hemsworth did for the Thor films. I am by no means going to attempt to slim down to the professional bodybuilder level of 3 - 5 percent, which is the body fat neighborhood Jackman was in for the X-men movies.
#ThorChallenge #BeYourOwnSuperhero #Bodybuilding #WeightTraining #Conditioning #ContestPrep #Glycogen #CarbLoading #Sodium #SodiumDepletion #WaterWeight #BodyFat #BodyFatPercentage #Wolverine #HughJackman #XMen #PhilHeath #MrOlympia
https://primitivarum.weebly.com/thorchallengeblog
#ThorChallenge #BeYourOwnSuperhero #Bodybuilding #WeightTraining #Conditioning #ContestPrep #Glycogen #CarbLoading #Sodium #SodiumDepletion #WaterWeight #BodyFat #BodyFatPercentage #Wolverine #HughJackman #XMen #PhilHeath #MrOlympia
https://primitivarum.weebly.com/thorchallengeblog