[M / 32 / 5’10” / 165-190-170]
TL;DR
Busy dad of three small kids makes moderate progress during one year of focusing on consistency, hitting a 208-workout streak. I ran nSuns’ 531LP 4-day routine, did a decent job of bulking and cutting, and didn’t sleep nearly enough.
Bonus post-bulk chonk pic @ 190
| Lifts | Starting\* | Current\* | 1RM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bench Press | 110 | 145 | 185 |
| Squat | 130 | 235 | 275 |
| Deadlift | 170 | 255 | 315 |
| Overhead Press | 50 | 75 | 115 |
\I’m giving these as the heaviest set in my weekly routine rather than just a 1RM or TM. I feel it’s more representative of the work I actually put in and reflects how much I deloaded at the start of the year.*
Streaking
I’m putting this at the top because it’s been the key to my results over the last year. This is the most important progress pic of all, my 2019 and 2020 calendars. Every day I complete a workout I highlight it on the calendar (deloads are blue), and I can’t believe how motivating just crossing the day off has been. That tiny act gave me the motivation to start a streak long enough to develop the discipline to keep going through family challenges, frequent work travel, nagging aches and pains, and several bouts of illness. Every day I don’t feel like working out I’m not just asking myself, “Do I feel like working out today?” It’s “Does the streak end today?” The answer is no.
Most dedication: our whole family was coming down with stomach flu, so before the nausea got too bad I got my ass downstairs and did Squat Day before spending the night vomiting. Streak preserved!
Closest call: one week in December dealing with aches and pains, holiday stress, generally poor mental health and family conflict, I ended up deloading my last two workouts of the week, cutting a lot of the accessories, and doing them both on the last day of the week.
Background
My fitness journey from 2003 until late 2016 consisted mainly of semi-consistent running with periodic spells of messing around with bodyweight exercises in the gym. I’ve always been a fairly active person – my friends would call me “fit” – but I never really focused on one thing with enough consistency to see substantial results, nor did I really know what results I was looking for. From track and cross country in high school to several years of trail running, I found my way to lifting in late 2016 because I wanted to improve my core strength and stability on long training runs.
Late 2016 through March 2018 was my true beginner period. I ran StrongLifts 5x5 for four months, starting with the bar and eventually transitioning to tinkering with several of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 templates. I learned a ton in this time and did get stronger, but I probably only hit 75% of the workouts in a typical month. I would fall off the wagon, come back and hit it too hard, experience some minor injury, and repeat. I also struggled to balance my lifting and running while training for 10-20mi trail races and didn’t have a clear sense of my training priorities.
In late March 2018 I injured both of my knees. On April 2 my twin sons were born, and in late May our family relocated cross-country to be closer to family. As you might expect, this triggered a six-month period without any training whatsoever; we were all just surviving. By November I was starting to feel ready to be active again. I finally set up my home gym and ran out of excuses. It took a couple of months to get consistent, but by the beginning of February 2019 I started a streak of workouts that brings me to today.
Exercise
I started my current streak by deloading substantially across the board, with a focus on form and finding reasonable, accurate, sustainable working weights. I spent a lot of time reflecting on my prior lifting experience and selecting a program, opting for the four-day version of nSuns’ 531LP program, to which I’ve made gradual tweaks over the course of the year. Here’s that link to a typical current week again. While I’d like to someday move to a five-day routine, the four-day program has given me the flexibility I need to hit 100% of the workouts.
The main lifts are programmed in the template, but I did spend a lot of time finding accessories that match my functional and physique goals. My number one priority is building a stronger, thicker back, and I’ve adjusted the routine over the course of the year to add back volume. This is followed by improving my shoulder health, combating computer posture, and getting enough core volume.
The most substantial change I’ve made, after a bout of PT for nagging shoulder and neck pain this summer, was swapping close-grip bench for barbell row on the second bench day and adding exercises to strengthen my rotator cuff. I’ll be happy to answer any questions about my programming decisions in the comments.
Finally, I take a low-key approach of listening to my body. I don’t recover from workouts like I used to, so if I have a nagging pain I back off for a week or two, and I take deload weeks when I can tell I’m getting beat up and need a break.
Diet
After a month or two of streaking without focusing on my diet, I spent six months between March and August gradually bulking without tracking calories or macros; I just didn’t have the mental space to try and manage that while focusing on just hitting my workouts.
While bulking from 165 to 190 I did have two goals: eat a lot of food and get ~30 grams of protein every 3-4 hours. That’s all I focused on. Prior to this period I spent literal years tracking my diet, so I know from experience that I maintain weight at ~2800 calories per day. More importantly, I have an intuitive sense of how much food that is. That said, I put on some excess weight bulking and perhaps could have done it “cleaner.” Key bulking foods for me: homemade yogurt and granola, protein granola bars, big bowls of cereal, a couple of protein shakes per day. I like MyProtein Impact Whey, which I buy unflavored in the giant 11lb sacks and mix with milk and 3g of creatine per day. Toward the end of my bulk I felt huge, full all the time, and ready to lose some weight.
From September through mid-December I cut from 190 down to 170 using intermittent fasting. I tracked my diet religiously during this point, shooting for 2300 calories/day and 105-120 grams of protein. I prefer to eat a moderate-fat diet based on foods I like, so I found it difficult to increase my protein intake beyond this level while maintaining a deficit. I did not reduce my workout volume while cutting, except to deload somewhat more often. My lifts didn’t decrease much over this period.
When doing IF I’d fast until noon, then eat an 800 calorie lunch, a 200-300 calorie afternoon snack, and the remaining 1000-1300 calories at dinner. I enjoy a beer or two in the evenings and like to feel full. I wasn’t religious about timing my final calories for the day to start my fast.
Since mid-December I’ve taken breaks from fasting and fasted a little here and there. My weight is basically unchanged.
Lessons Learned
My big takeaway from the last year it that it’s hard to build new habits and you really have to choose your battles. Could I have bulked more efficiently? Could I have cut harder or longer? Could I have made more aggressive progress in my lifts? Maybe, but I might also have been spreading myself too thin, fallen off the wagon and wound up where I started. As a thirty-something dad with three kids under five years old, my time, energy and mental space are so finite, and I think I’ve spent my limited resources in the best possible way this year.
Of course, I also feel a tremendous sense of pride. I’ve seen physique progress for the first time in my life, but more importantly I feel stronger and more functional in challenging tasks. I feel like I’ve built the foundation for my future gains.
Finally, never underestimate the power of a streak, or finding whatever little psychological tricks you can play on yourself to get where you want to be.
Next Steps
As for the future, I’m writing this with an ice pack on my groin recovering from a vasectomy so rest is on my mind. I’m going to continue the streak with something light tomorrow and spend the next two weeks on a long 50% deload. I want to focus on resting up, easing the various aches and pains, and getting stoked for another year. I’ll probably never bulk more than 10lb at a time again, but once I hit 180 I’ll cut 5-10lb off and generally just gradually try to get bigger and leaner over time. My major training goal for 2020 is to focus on time under tension and really quality reps.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I’m happy to continue the discussion in the comments.
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* This article was originally published here
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