When Do You Actually Make Progress

Think about when you made your biggest gains. That time is probably the same time period you saw your biggest strength gains.

For some reason we get stuck at "2 plates" or "100 pounds", but it is all mental. I'm guilty of it as much as anyone. In order to gain size, you must gain strength first.

I'm switching up my workouts. For the next 6 weeks I'm going to push it HARD to up my weight I can lift. Sticking to 6-8 reps. I am going to push past the mental block that is hard to get past.

Saturday Morning -- Clean Up Day

Saturday morning. This is the "clean up" day. As a dad with two young girls, there are times where you just can't make it to the gym. Don't get me wrong, I usually can make it to the gym at least 4 times a week. The day you miss you just flip that day to Saturday morning before your family wakes up. Today I missed shoulders, and my arms day was just pathetic. So I did shoulders and arms.

If you want to be truly successful in all aspects of your life, you have got to get used to waking up early. The day is 24 hours long, and that is not enough time for everything you need to do if you don't wake up early. I wake up at around 5:20am on weekdays, and 6:00 on Saturday. Sunday is church so I sleep in, have a good breakfast, and go to church and relax. Saturday is the day where you can clean up the rest of the week and finish what you need to get done.

Potty Training

Weird title to my post right? Well there is a point to this. The last 3 days one of my daughters has been potty training, and wouldn't you know the other one has 2 ear infections. I've been getting about 3 hours of sleep a night. The reason I am telling you this is because there are things that are more important than working out. Family is first. So I didn't work out for 3 days in a row. What I do when I can't work out is I watch what I eat really close. I try to stay away from carbs as much as possible. Lunch is egg whites, dinner is a whole wheat burrito with black beans, rice, chicken, and a little bit of cheese.

Legs Day

Legs day sucks. There, now you've seen me say that upfront. Now let me tell you what doesn't suck -- AWESOME LEGS.

How do you build your legs? Squats. Squats with good form so you don't ruin your back or legs. If you can't do perfect form on squats, rack it up and lighten up. 12 reps of 135 is way better than 6 shitty reps at 225.

Do you want to make your legs wobble in less than a 45 minute workout? Do this:

Squats: 7 sets. Start SUPER light. I mean like 100 pounds and do 12 reps. Work your way up to your 8 rep max each set. By your 6th set you should be on your heaviest. Take a rest before your 7th set. On your 7th set, do as many as your body will let you, and then do one more.  I want you to be 30 seconds from needing to pass out.

Leg Extensions: 7 sets of 15 - 30 second rest between sets.

THAT. IS. IT.

As you get more advanced you will need to do more exercises, but if you push it super hard then you shouldn't really need much more than that. It is a Dorian Yates style workout (google him).

Nutrition Part 1 of who knows.

I've said it more times than I can count now... it's not how you work out, it is how you eat. I go to the gym every day and I see the same people there, and a lot of them look phenomenal. It got me thinking. What sets one person apart from the other is how much pain can they handle. I'm actually not talking about physical pain. I'm talking about social and mental pain.

Picture this: you are at work and all of your friends decide to go eat at an Italian restaurant. You get there, and everyone is ordering pasta, and breadsticks, and drinks. What do you do in that moment? Do you just go with the flow and eat some normal Italian meal? Or do you order a salad with the dressing on the side, and get the guaranteed wrath of your friends. You have to explain to them how you eat, and why you eat, and it is painful. Then you go home and eat your cold, dry chicken and rice.

That's what makes the difference. That is the difference between the person that looks in shape but isn't at that next level, and those next-level people that are shredded.

The pain of eating right is all social and mental. Once you overcome that, then things get a lot easier. I promise you that.

I'm Back

I am back. It's been a while since I've really trained hard but here I am. Since the show my wife and I had our second baby so obviously I had more pressing things in my life than training hard and eating perfect.

I'm going to do a show in September, and I will use this blog as a medium to show what my prep looks like.

Phase 1: Clean bulk for 12 weeks.

What is a clean bulk? Simple. Eat a ton of food, but make sure it's clean. I'm still taking in 40% carbs, 40% protein, and 20% fats. But instead of being at 2100 calories per day I am pushing it to right around 2500 calories per day. Remember this is different for everyone but it is working for me.

My goal: I want to gain about 12 pounds before I start cutting down again. I assume that will be about 10 pounds of lean muscle and 2 pounds of fat.

I track my progress on MyFitnessPal app. Feel free to follow me on there. My screen name is seanfrazer7.

How I Trained For My Show

On the left I was 173 lbs. The right I am 143 lbs. The time between these two pictures is about 26 weeks.

I have been asked by a ton of people since my show how I did it. How did I workout and how did I eat. I figured I would resurrect this old blog to try to help out as many people as I can to reach their goals.
First off, I didn't do this alone. I had a great support system. If you are serious about losing weight or doing a show, get a coach. There are some great ones out there. I have 2 that I really recommend.

How long did the whole thing take?
I started training hard and dieting for the show at about 26 weeks out. That's about 6 months. I lost a total of 30 pounds and 12% body fat. If you notice that means I lost about 1 pound a week. That is the healthy amount to lose per week.

How did I workout? 
I worked out the same as I always do. I train 6 days a week for about 1-2 hours a day. I workout in the morning because that way I won't miss my workout if other things come up. My routine went as follows:

Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Quads
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Arms
Saturday: Hamstrings

Did I do a ton of cardio?
No I didn't. In fact, I only started doing cardio hard during the last 4 weeks before the show. I did the stairmaster for 20 minutes a day 3 times a week during the first 22 weeks. The last 4 weeks I did about 45 min to 1 hour a day of cardio. I did interval training on the treadmill. At an 8% incline, switch between walking for 4 minutes at 3.2 then running for 1 min at 6.5. Easy stuff.

What was my diet like?
This is where it all happened. Here is what my diet looked like for the first 20 weeks:

This came out to be about 220g protein, 220g carbs, 50g fat per day.
Meal 1: 6 egg whites, 1 cup oatmeal.
Meal 2 (post workout): Protein powder mixed in water.
Meal 3: Chicken, Steak, Rice.
Meal 4: Chicken & Rice
Meal 5: Some sort of lean meat (chicken, turkey, steak), veggies, rice.
Meal 6: Casein protein powder.


Last 6 weeks I changed my diet to look like this:

This came out to be about 300g protein, 150g carbs, 40g fat per day until the last 2 weeks.
Meal 1: 10 egg whites
Meal 2 (Post workout): Protein shake, 1 cup yams.
Meal 3: Ground beef, green veggies, and rice.
Meal 4: Ground beef, green veggies, and rice.
Meal 5: Ground turkey, green veggies, and rice.
Meal 6: Ground turkey, green veggies, and rice.

In the last 2 weeks I cut out the green veggies and rice from my diet. I lived off of 50g of carbs which was the 1 cup of yams after my workout.

A couple important notes:
(1) I DID NOT CHEAT ONCE. I'm not kidding, ask my wife. I did not cheat on the weekends, holidays, or any special events. If I had to go out I would stick with the basic principles of the diet. No desserts, drinks, or any extra calories other than what was planned. I tracked everything to the point of obsession. I had one real cheat day during this process that I specifically planned for Thanksgiving day. Other than that, it was tupperware and prepared meals. 
(2) THIS IS NOT A SUSTAINABLE DIET PLAN. This diet was for show prep purposes. It was not good for every day life. I had to miss out on a lot of social events because of this diet. I was willing to do that because I decided that nothing was going to get in my way. 

What supplements did I use?
Multi vitamins, protein powder, and pre-workout.  My protein powder has BCAA's and Glutamine in it, or I would use those also. That's all I used. No fat burners or anything like that.

How did I stay motivated?
I decided to do the show and to me that was it. Once I truly set my mind to it, nothing got in my way. I visualized the show every single day. I probably had a bit of an unhealthy obsession with my goal to do the show, but that's what got me up every day. Motivation was never a problem for me.

Was I hungry all the time?
No, not at all. I ate 6 times a day which means I was eating every 3 hours or so. I was rarely hungry. I did crave carbs at the end and that got really hard. What I did to curb my cravings when I almost couldn't take it anymore was made protein pancakes and ate them plain. That is 10 egg whites mixed with about 3 scoops of protein. It makes a batter consistency and you cook it on the stove like pancakes. It doesn't taste like pancakes or bread, but it fills you up like carbs do and it saved me quite a few times from being horribly miserable.

In the last 4 weeks I had a specific show prep coach that I would send pictures to every week and he would tell me how to adjust carbs. He was a good 3rd party to tell me an objective view on how I was doing.

If you have any questions you know I am available to chat! My email is seanfrazer7@gmail.com. Feel free to email any questions.