This post will probably not be as in-depth as part 1 (click HERE to read part 1).  Dumb, I guess, since it’s been so long coming, but there isn’t as much that I have to say about this part of things.

Or maybe I do.  Who knows.

Changing my diet was hard.  Is hard.  It’s a daily bummer of a change, and likely will be as long as I’ve got left on the planet.  The foodie who only eats super healthy stuff is no person to be.  Almost as hard, though, was the transition to gym rat, which I have fully become.  I go to the gym at least 5 times a week, occasionally more, occasionally jogging or walking even if I’ve already been.  I go to the gym on vacation; in fact, when my gym recently shut down one of my major limiting factors in selecting a new one was national availability.  I’m not on the road a ton, and I can make do without a gym, but it’s nice to have the option right there in front of me, should I need it.
I’ve mentioned before that I’d been starting to work out heavier before everything blew up, but when I think about what that means in contrast to my life now, I can see how maybe it wasn’t enough.  I dunno.  I’d lost a couple pant sizes and stuff so I suppose it was working to some degree.

But now..

Now instead of hopping on my bike occasionally or doing a set of pushups and some light body weight work, I’m doing real stuff, seeing plans and routines through to completion, and planning ahead to my next batch.  I’ve been doing this on some level since I was well enough to walk further than to the top of my street and back without wanting to die.  I got the gym membership a few months later and turned that into a regular thing but, as I posted a while back, I realized I’d kind of plateaued.  I  was going to the gym on schedule and I was doing cardio and pushing weight, but I was never pushing harder than ‘this is what I need to do to keep hopefully not dying’. And then I realized that’s what I’d been doing and decided it was time for that whole ‘phase II’ thing, in which I went the same amount of days and time, but actually pushed the hell out of myself to see if I could gain any more progress.

From that day on I’ve been hitting it hard.  I developed a workout plan vs the mostly upper body and occasional set of squats and leg presses I’d been doing, and I began to stick to it.  For the first round of this it was still pretty ad-hoc and I don’t think I was really doing an adequate job of making the exercise well-rounded, so when the six weeks were up, I sat down and dug deep into the inter webs.  I ended up on bodybuilding.com, because I tended to gravitate toward the way they lay everything out.  For a guy like me who could still probably be considered a fitness n00b, it’s really nice to read a plan that says ‘ON THIS DAY YOU WILL WORK THIS MUSCLE IN THIS MANNER FOR THIS AMOUNT OF THINGS’ rather than ‘bruh, it’s all about hitting those supersets and ripping some massive tissue for teh gainzz’.  So I made a compilation based on what seemed like a really solid rotation of muscle groups and, a few days ago, clocked in week six (with a one-week break at week four due to life and muscles being overwhelmed).

Here’s my last six weeks:

• Day 1: Chest workout 1 & abs
• Day 2: Back, biceps
• Day 3: Shoulders, triceps
• Day 4: Rest, praise the deities.
• Day 5: Chest workout 2 & abs
• Day 6: Legs
• Day 7: Rest, praise additional deities.

I follow the plan the way it’s laid out in the chest workout. Click each day for a link to the routines for each. I try to start and end most of these with 10-15 minutes on the treadmill but since I’m trying to gain some muscle back I’ve been cutting that here and there (bad, I know, whatever..it’s my life/death). In that 6 weeks I’ve upped my eating a ton to maintain my mass and sate my hunger. Nothing exciting, just extra veggies and the occasional chicken breast or piece of fish in the morning or evening if I’m still hungry, which I ALWAYS am when I hit the gym hard. The cool thing about this plan is it’s varied; some of the muscle groups have multiple rotations of days or alternative exercises, and within each one is generally a variety of methodologies, from upping weight, to upping reps, to supersets, to rack runs, etc. Each one of these is as brutal, or as mild, as you need it to be. To maximize my SWEET GAINZZ I push, as recommended, to weight at about 80% or so of failure for each set and by the time each is done I’m pretty destroyed.  I will say plan for a longer workout day 3 (it feels like it’s never going to end) and plan to hate yourself and everything on/after leg day.  Seriously, I have always had pretty strong legs, even in my fattest days, but nothing prepared me for 2-3 days of god I want to die every time I stand up or walk anywhere being a thing.  I lamented the other day that, shockingly to me, I had become ‘dreads leg-day’ guy.  Who’da thought.

In this six week period I’ve put on 7 lbs of muscle and am starting to feel like a monster in new and strange ways.  I get massive post-gym intensity, that is still a new experience to me (strange to get your first ‘pump’ in your late 30’s), and at the gym, once I’m in the rhythm of the day, I find myself strangely at harmony.  When I look at progress in the mirror there isn’t a massive observable change, but everything does look slightly bulkier, and there are places where new definition is starting to show (my chest, sides, back, etc), awesome places I’ve always wanted definition and never dreamed it would appear.  I was described as ‘chiseled’ the other day by someone I hardly know.  I can, hand to god (or whomever) say that never in my wildest dreams would I expect to hear that word in relation to me.

Here’s me after the 6 weeks, obviously still loving the whole taking a picture of myself thing.

Sometimes I wonder where I’d be if I started this whole routine before I got extra fat.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Takeaways, for me, are as follows:

• Just going to the gym is a super important first step, but it’s not the only step.  There’s more to anything in life than just putting in the time, whether it’s your job, your friends, yourself, or making sick-ass gainz.
• Variety is king.  For a long time I felt like i was doing a good job, but all I was doing was working the same things over, and over, and over again.  Not only did I plateau, but after a time I started to feel like I was just burning everything out.  Keep things moving, keep them changing, even within whatever structure you decide to use.
• Yeah, it sucks.  I still hate that I have to go to the gym.  I’m a gym-rat now, but I’m not a gym guy, and I doubt I’ll ever fully grow used to it.  At the same time, I feel weird now when I don’t go; it throws off the rhythm of my life.  I also feel myself getting addicted to the pain and sweat and that pump everyone talks about so much.  It is real, it is super weird to me, but it absolutely feels awesome when it’s there.  I highly recommend searching for it.
• Always have headphones.  Wireless headphones are the greatest gift ever bestowed upon humanity.  Gym music is the worst abomination thrust upon it.  Avoid hearing gym music and grunty dudes at all costs.

So yeah, like I say when I post stuff like this, I’m not a pro or a doctor and everything works differently for everybody, so results may vary, but I feel like the general plan laid out here, coupled with my strict diet have gotten me looking and feeling ways I didn’t even experience when I was ‘in my prime’.  I’d recommend this, at least on a provisional basis, for anyone medically capable of running through it without doing damage to themselves and the cool thing is, if you use the days and groups as a guideline, the combinations of plans and exercises you can come up with are infinite.

Personally I’m going to give this plan another six week run, pushing myself as hard as I am physically capable of to increase the weight on each action performed. I’ll post another update at the end of that run, assuming I’m still alive and breathing, and note any suggestions or modifications I come across.