Mission 2 plan revealed
Mission 2 - Length:
Like Mission 1, Mission 2 will be 100 days in length. It will begin on February 3, 2008 and end on May 13, 2008.
Mission 2 - Goals:
Specifically, I am going to do 4 weeks of cutting and 11 weeks of bulking during this mission. I want to pack on some serious muscle! Here is a chart that outlines some specific goals for Mission 2:
| HC | LC | |||||
| Week | Date | Weight | BF% | LBM | Calories | Calories |
| 1 | 2/3/2008 | 224 | 13% | 194.88 | 3000 | 2600 |
| 2 | 2/10/2008 | 223 | 12% | 196.24 | 3000 | 2600 |
| 3 | 2/17/2008 | 222 | 11% | 197.58 | 3000 | 2600 |
| 4 | 2/24/2008 | 221 | 10% | 198.9 | 3000 | 2600 |
| 5 | 3/2/2008 | 220 | 9% | 199.15 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 6 | 3/9/2008 | 221 | 10% | 199.4 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 7 | 3/16/2008 | 222 | 10% | 199.65 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 8 | 3/23/2008 | 223 | 10% | 199.9 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 9 | 3/30/2008 | 224 | 11% | 200.15 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 10 | 4/6/2008 | 225 | 11% | 200.4 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 11 | 4/13/2008 | 226 | 11% | 200.65 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 12 | 4/20/2008 | 227 | 11% | 200.9 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 13 | 4/27/2008 | 228 | 12% | 201.15 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 14 | 5/4/2008 | 229 | 12% | 201.4 | 3500 | 3000 |
| 15 | 5/11/2008 | 230 | 12% | 201.65 | 3500 | 3000 |
My specific goals are:
- Cut for 4 weeks (2/3/2008 thru 3/1/2008)
- Bulk for 11 weeks (3/2/2008 thru 5/13/2008)
- Body circumfrence:
- Biceps +1"
- Chest +1"
- Thighs +2"
- Calves +1"
- Abs -3"
- Weight lifting 3 days a week
- Cardio 4 days a week (3 HIIT/Max-OT style and 1 steady state)
- Be within 5% of my calories (+/-) daily
- Weight of 230 lbs
- Body fat of 12%
- LBM of 201.65 lbs
- Nutrition cycle: 3 days low carb (40/40/20) and 1 day high carb (50/30/20)
- eBook released
- New website launched
- Personal trainer certification process started
- Daily blogging and pictures
- Weekly audio podcast
- Bi-weekly video podcast
- Bench press 300 pounds 1 time
- Squat 350 pounds 1 time
- Deadlift 400 pounds 1 time
Mission 2 - Nutrition:
I will be utilizing the Tom Venuto Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle nutrition plan. I will cycle my carbs and have a refeed day every fourth day. I will have a cheat meal every 12 days (3 cycles). In my new accountability planning chart I will get points for being within 5% (+/-) of my targeted calories for a given day
Mission 2 - Workouts:
I will use my New Rules of Lifting program during my cut phase of this mission and I will use Max-OT training principles for my bulking phase of this mission.
Mission 2 - Focus:
My focus will not be on the scale. The scale will give me a marker for my progress, but as you can see from my goals, I will intentionally weigh 6 pounds more at the end of Mission 2 than I will at the start of Mission 2. I will stay focused on my goals and achieve all of them. I will maintain my excitement and motivation as I move ahead into this next mission.
Mission 2 - Accountability:
I will continue to blog daily. I have posted my blog link on Facebook and am now including it in all personal email and all forum posts I do. This will up the accountability. All videos will have the blog link and eventually the website link as well. Your help is needed in the area of accountability. I know I can count on Mike Groom to push me hard on my plan, but I need as many people doing that as possible. Say it like you see it. Don't sugar coat anything. If I'm messing up, say so. I want you to be brutally honest.
The conclusion is that I've got my plan and now I have to work it and work it hard.
Until later...GET BACK TO LIFTING!
You can certainly count on me checking in with you every step of the way through Mission 2!!! You better stay focussed and on track (I know you will) or I'll be on your case
You have a really well thought out plan which will certainly make it easier. There's quite a bit of work to do, so get to it!
You don't need luck, so I won't wish you "good luck", but I will wish you every success.
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I know you'll be watching. It is funny because I often think about you when I'm in the gym as I try to figure out the weight I'm going to push. Thanks for holding me accountable!
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Great stuff! Extremely well thought-out plan. You're so on track - it's just a matter of time now.
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Looks like a great plan and looking forward to seeing your results along the way in "real-time", and the final result at the end of this mission.
My only concern is the weekly targets you have set for yourself in terms of LBM.
While I agree that the idea is to drop you body fat down to 9%, if you look at your body composition goals during the first 4 weeks, you are gaining approx. 1.3 lbs of LBM, while losing a scale weight of 1 lb. This means that you will have to drop 2.3 lbs of fat.
Then when you look at your "bulking" phase, your lean mass gains are only coming out as approx. 0.25 lbs/week, yet a scale weight gain of 1 lb, which means a fat gain of 0.75 lbs. I would hope that when you're bulking that you could put on more LBM than when you are cutting!
I know this dosn't change your plan and won't change what you do, since your plan is solid and you should see awesome results. However, I think you need to recalculate your weekly targets based on how much fat mass you want to lose first, and how much lean mass you want to put on.
For example, if your goal for cutting is 9% BF, you can either do it by being 214 lbs if you maintain your current LBM. This means a fat loss of 10 lbs in 4 weeks. This of course means more than 2 lbs/week (2.5/wk). Even if you put on 1.3 lbs of LBM (which might be very hard if you're going for that much fat loss), you would still need to lose 2.3lbs/wk of fat to hit 9% in 4 weeks. So maybe the target should primarily be lose 2lbs of fat/wk, count any LBM gains as bonus, and come in somwhere between 10-11% BF.
Then on the "bulking" portion, you could probably set a primary target of 7.5 lbs gain in the last 10 weeks or 0.75 lbs/week. Then set a "maximum" fat gain of 0.3-0.5 lbs/week, and if you gain less fat than your maximum, it's counted as a bonus as well.
As I said before, this shouldn't change your plan, but it should change your weekly targets which will then give you a better idea of what you are ultimately trying to achieve.
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Raiden,
Thanks for the great comment. I thought about that and really, it is the body weight that is the issue in that calculation because what I did for the cut phase was "budget" 1% of body fat cut each week for 4 straight weeks to get myself down to 10% so that I would feel comfortable bulking. 10% is the goal number before I want to bulk. I guess I didn't calculate enough body weight loss during that time. I just now adjusted it so that I'm losing 7 pounds in 4 weeks instead of 4 pounds in 4 weeks. As for the bulking phase, I read that the average person who gains muscle in an average manner can gain between 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of dry muscle mass a week. I am more of the type who has a hard time packing on muscle and gains fat easily, so I went for an LBM change of 0.25 each week (which is lower than the 0.25 of dry muscle mass because some of the LBM will be water weight). I then calculated an increase of 1 pound each week as an estimate to see the body fat percentage. With the tweaks I just made I end up with the following adjustment:
I start and finish at 13%, but since bulking is the goal, I end up with a net gain of 3.17 pounds in LBM and a gain of 4 pounds overall, which is just a net gain of 0.83 pounds of fat. This may be inaccurate and maybe my goals aren't agressive enough, but if I reach this level, I will be happy. I just know my body and it doesn't pack on muscle as fast as it packs on fat. I'm counting on the extra muscle to help me cut back down to 10% in Mission 3 and then another bulk to gain more muscle during Mission 3. Let's hope I just shatter my Mission 2 objectives!
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