3/19/2014 - Reviving the Blog!

Spring is here and now that the winter madness at the gym is winding down its time for the 3rd annual resurrection of the blog! Training goals include maximizing strength for the USAPL Massachusetts State Powerlifting Championships on May 31st where I will make an attempt (hopefully) at the state records for my weight class (220's). Secondly I will be getting ripped for the summer. While those two goals may seem contradictory I am playing around with my training progression and diet and building off of lessons learned from the past few years.

Physically there is much room for improvement... I am sitting at 210 lbs at about 7% body fat right now, and there is definitely room to grow. In order to maximize my performance at the powerlifting meet I want to be weighing 215-217 pounds.  I hold the belief that if I can continue to gain strength while having as low body fat as possible I will have a definite edge over the competition.  Once I achieve the body composition that I want (should be only a few more weeks) then I will be infusing more calories in to my diet to start a sort of clean bulk leading in to the competition. This is drastically different than the usual approach which is to be heavy leading in to the competition and try to "make weight" the day of competition.

I am in my third week of competition prep, which is a hypertrophy / repetition effort phase. Last year I played around with a rest-pause method inspired by Dante Trudel (doggcrapp training if you want to google it), and had fantastic results. The rest-pause nomenclature may be confusing to some but what I mean is that my final work set on a major lift is 3 sets to failure with 30 seconds or less rest in between. This condenses the workload and is a fantastic approach for building work capacity with heavy weights.  Today's workout was a lower dominant lift:

Warmup
Quad and Hamstring Curl - 6x12 no rest in between

Squats (beltless) - 135x10, 185x8, 225x8, 315x8, 365x5, 395x10+3+3
Deficit Deadlift (+1.5") (beltless) - 135x8, 185x8, 235x8, 335x8, 385x10
Barbell Walking Lunges - 100x3x20

I also threw in a few light sets of traps and biceps because, hey, why not? They are lagging bodyparts and I want to look good. As long as I am making progress on my squats and deadlifts I don't feel guilty! Training videos still being put on on my youtube page as well (https://www.youtube.com/user/nicguidice)

More info on diet coming in a future post. Suffice it to say I am still intermittent fasting (leangains style for those who want to google) - 3 years strong now - and love the eating pattern/lifestyle provided by this philosophy.

Whether you know me personally or not, or just stumbled here and are interested in hearing a different take on training and nutrition, please leave a comment on the posts. I would love to turn this blog in to a larger source of information and I need interaction from you! Subscribe and post if you like what you see :) :)