5 months to Super Hero

Five months from now I will turn 30. It didn’t really hit me till I turned 29 cause when your 28 you still feel like you are in your 20s primed up ready to go and conquer the world.

I can't really stop getting older but I do have the strength and time right now to do something about my fitness and health. I can't really afford to Who knows, maybe my 60+ year old version will thank me later.

I know fitness is a long term process but for now I would also like to focus on a short term goal. In 5 months I would like to have a stronger version of me, maybe not super hero status, but a better me =).

I have looked into several strength/hypertrophy training programs and basically most common themes are as follows:

• Plan for a ramp up and overreaching phase followed by a deload week
• Deload week is usually recommended after 4-5 weeks of pushing yourself to the limit. Some of the veterans in the fitness industry really put an emphasis on this, I think it would be a good idea to heed their advice.
• Going all out on full body routine can lead to burn out so switching it up to upper/lower split before it happens helps. Once your body starts getting acclimated to upper/lower, it’s time to push yourself once more with full body workouts and the cycle repeats.
• Performing a lift on different rep ranges(heavy, medium, light) is a must to maximize strength and hypertrophy. You can plan for this on one single workout, one microcycle(one week), or separate each on a different phase(think months).
• Take care of your joints. It is alright to switch up barbell to dumbbells from time to time once you start noticing join pains. Also, having gymnastic rings helps when doing daily chins and pushups to allow your wrist to rotate and avoid unnecessary stress.

The Plan

First 2 months I’ll be focusing on increasing strength followed by 3-4 weeks focusing on endurance and followed by 4-8 weeks focusing on strength and size. The end goal is to have a good base strength, low body fat and some size on my 30th birthday. This plan is actually from Max Muscle Plan, lame title but actually a good read with science to back it up. Here we go!

Core exercise- deadlifts, squats, bench, weighted chin ups, pendlay rows and overhead press (maybe weighted dips also).

Microcycle Block 1 - Full body routine

Week 1 - Work up to 3 sets of 4-5 rep max on core exercise(Currently here!)

Week 2 - Work up to 3 sets of 2-3 rep max on main lifts

Week 3 - 3 working sets of 5RM, 3RM, and 1M

Week 4 - deload week, light weights, use dumbbell etc

Microcycle Block 2 - Split into upper/lower workouts

To be continued (I’ll make another post when I’m about to start on this phase).

I’ll also be doing sprints 2-3 times a week to keep my conditioning up and also do some good old fashion running around the park when I can. As far as diet goes, I have a pretty good feel now on how much protein, carbs, fat I need on training and non training days. Basically eat enough and don’t eat crap. It’s ok to enjoy life of course but don’t make almost every meal a re-feed/cheat meal.

Here is my starting pic, I can’t wait to revisit this photo 5 months from now and compare how awesome I am them =)