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First time logging on an "advanced" forum. Any advice and critique is more than welcome. I'm just here to improve...
A little background stuff:
Age: 30 years old
Height: 6'0
Weight: 178 lbs "athletic look" around 8% bf.
Training history: first picked up a weight in high school at a soft 145 pounds. screwed around with encyclopedia of bodybuilding routines until 21 and gained about 15 lean pounds. Learned how to train, eat, rest properly (for my body) around age 22-23 and put on about 20 lean pounds over the next few years. Have not made any appreciable size and strength gains in the last 2-3 years, mostly have been "recomping" and trying to maintain a lean and athletic body type as I pursued playing basketball.
Training styles that have worked best for me (so far): Low to medium volume with medium frequency. Stuff like Upper / Lower or Push / Pull / Legs done every other day, or two days on and then one day off. I have made my best progress doing "power building" where I push a main lift to a 3-6 rep max range, then back down the weight and do 2-3 follow up sets of 8-12. After that I like to do high rep short rest bodybuilding type stuff for the smaller "accessory" stuff.
Old Strength PRs: 405 squat, 315 bench, 455 deadlift, around the time i was 25-26. The only one I'm still close to maintaining is the squat for basketball purposes.
Diet: I just finished a slow diet that got me down to 175 and 7% about a week or two ago. The diet was an intermittent fasting + keto style diet similar to the one NY MUSCLE has outlined in his amazing thread. I basically did no carbs Mon-Fri and had a refeed on the weekends. At the lowest point, I was eating 1800 calories per day M-F and doing 30-45 minutes of cardio per day.
Currently I am "reverse dieting" on a balanced diet with carbs every day. Goal is to reduce cardio and add in calories and carbs over the course of 8 weeks in a controlled manner (about +200 calories per week). Right now I am in week 2.
Training days I go for a 40% protein 30% carb 30% fat split. Non-training days I just subtract my intra drink and carbs from my post workout meal so its roughly ~80-100g less carbs.
Goal: to gain some muscle! Seriously though, I would love to put on 10 quality pounds and be a lean 190. Just trying to be realistic. The last time I was 190 lbs I was probably 14% body fat and it wasn't too pretty. I'm coming off of a well executed cut where I got down to 175 and 7% bf, and am in a good position to put on some clean weight.
Supplements: Intra-MD mixed with creatine during training. Plus the standard fish oil, multivitamin, calcium, vitamin D, zinc etc. I was using EC and Yohimbine during my cut but am transitioning off of it.
AAS + Peptides: No experience at all. But obviously I am here on ProM for a reason... I am interested in LGD 4033, MK 677 and will continue to research more about them. I have also been on the low end of the testosterone scale for much of my life and am in the process of trying to get on TRT. The lowest reading ive had was 110 ng /dL around age 24.
Last blood test in Feb showed around 380 or so. I plan to get another test in about two weeks when I visit my mom. I live in NYC and they don't allow privateMD labs and such here so I have to do it out of state. Depending on the TRT situation I would also be interested in using regular testosterone in a healthy manner...
Thanks for reading thus far. I'm here to learn and to grow so any and all advice is welcome.
A little background stuff:
Age: 30 years old
Height: 6'0
Weight: 178 lbs "athletic look" around 8% bf.
Training history: first picked up a weight in high school at a soft 145 pounds. screwed around with encyclopedia of bodybuilding routines until 21 and gained about 15 lean pounds. Learned how to train, eat, rest properly (for my body) around age 22-23 and put on about 20 lean pounds over the next few years. Have not made any appreciable size and strength gains in the last 2-3 years, mostly have been "recomping" and trying to maintain a lean and athletic body type as I pursued playing basketball.
Training styles that have worked best for me (so far): Low to medium volume with medium frequency. Stuff like Upper / Lower or Push / Pull / Legs done every other day, or two days on and then one day off. I have made my best progress doing "power building" where I push a main lift to a 3-6 rep max range, then back down the weight and do 2-3 follow up sets of 8-12. After that I like to do high rep short rest bodybuilding type stuff for the smaller "accessory" stuff.
Old Strength PRs: 405 squat, 315 bench, 455 deadlift, around the time i was 25-26. The only one I'm still close to maintaining is the squat for basketball purposes.
Diet: I just finished a slow diet that got me down to 175 and 7% about a week or two ago. The diet was an intermittent fasting + keto style diet similar to the one NY MUSCLE has outlined in his amazing thread. I basically did no carbs Mon-Fri and had a refeed on the weekends. At the lowest point, I was eating 1800 calories per day M-F and doing 30-45 minutes of cardio per day.
Currently I am "reverse dieting" on a balanced diet with carbs every day. Goal is to reduce cardio and add in calories and carbs over the course of 8 weeks in a controlled manner (about +200 calories per week). Right now I am in week 2.
Training days I go for a 40% protein 30% carb 30% fat split. Non-training days I just subtract my intra drink and carbs from my post workout meal so its roughly ~80-100g less carbs.
Goal: to gain some muscle! Seriously though, I would love to put on 10 quality pounds and be a lean 190. Just trying to be realistic. The last time I was 190 lbs I was probably 14% body fat and it wasn't too pretty. I'm coming off of a well executed cut where I got down to 175 and 7% bf, and am in a good position to put on some clean weight.
Supplements: Intra-MD mixed with creatine during training. Plus the standard fish oil, multivitamin, calcium, vitamin D, zinc etc. I was using EC and Yohimbine during my cut but am transitioning off of it.
AAS + Peptides: No experience at all. But obviously I am here on ProM for a reason... I am interested in LGD 4033, MK 677 and will continue to research more about them. I have also been on the low end of the testosterone scale for much of my life and am in the process of trying to get on TRT. The lowest reading ive had was 110 ng /dL around age 24.
Last blood test in Feb showed around 380 or so. I plan to get another test in about two weeks when I visit my mom. I live in NYC and they don't allow privateMD labs and such here so I have to do it out of state. Depending on the TRT situation I would also be interested in using regular testosterone in a healthy manner...
Thanks for reading thus far. I'm here to learn and to grow so any and all advice is welcome.
