Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

First some background information on me.


I started out in the world of fitness at age 5 when i started doing soccer and cross country training. My uncle, whom i lived with growing up, was a fitness fanatic so i worked very hard, that coupled with country food made me a decently athletic kid. Around the age of 10 i moved back in with my father who was very sedentry and whose only claim to cooking fame was his ability to make a mean hotdog to go along with the frittos and pepsi. Things were similar for a long time except that i expanded my food intake and did not excersize gaining a massive amount of weight and loosing muscle in the process. I went to college very early at the age of 15 so i was away from home and it was here that i started making changed. I was almost 17 years old and I was to go to the colleges winter formal, naturally i needed to clothes shop. When i went into town there were no pants that would fit me correctly so i bought a slightly smaller pair and shoehorned myself into them. This depressed me so much, especially because my two best friends were super athletes that i endevored to change things. I stopped drinking soda, replacing it with either water or juice and went on a very restrictive calorie diet. This eventually allowed me to drop 50lbs or so. I had not thought to factor in excercise at any point during this time. I left college when i was 18 and came home trying to find work, i partied for a couple of years going to various raves dancing until dawn. During that time i droped around 15 more lbs or so It was when i turned 21 years old that i went vegetarian for a month and then switched to veganism. But since i did not have the nutritional background that i needed I became a junkfood vegan for a few years. I walked alot and still went out to dance a decent amount. About two years ago, depressed about my life and my poor body image i became anorexic and surivived for three months on less than a 1000 calories a day walking 6 miles total too and from work. It was when i reached 145lbs that i realized that no matter how thin i was i would never be thin enough. So i started eating again learning about nutrition and cooking for myself. I started doing pushups and situps but i never really got into it. For the last year and a half i have been doing home pilates off and on flirting with bodyweight workouts, which brings me to now.

I fear that i am not strong enough to do weight lifting and it is something while appealing for me does not seem to be made for me. While i wouldnt mind increasing my size something about lifting weights is sending panic signals to my brain so im going to start a bodyweight workout and gain strength and stamina.




6 feet tall
weight: 161lbs
measurements to come

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

I have two exercise groups i do on alternative days:

Group A:

Donkey Kick
Dive-bomber(Hindu pushup)
Dirty Dog
Lunge
Side Straddle hop(jumping jacks)
Back Extension
Wide Pushup
Side Crunch
Crunch

Group B:
Pushup
Crunch
Lunge
Steam engine(kind of like a stand cross crunch)
elbow-to-knee crunch(diagonal)
prone flutter kick
hip adduction
side leg raise
diamond pushup

The break down is this.

For the first two routines I did one set of 5 for each
For the second week I am doing one set of 10 for each
This will continue for two weeks.

Then I will be doing 1 set of 20 for each for two weeks-4 weeks.

Once completed i will use these exercises and a few others to make a 3X15 routine incorporating some more advanced moved.

Also i have taken to walking three times a week for one hour at a time.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

Week One:

The exercises left me a bit winded, but i muscled through and i feel great. I can already feel a firming up of my muscles that have been out of work for some time. I have slight soreness in my glutes and my legs, which is good. I have been craving fats and eating more. I also have taken to drinking a glass of soymilk after i work out for more muscle growing benefits. I fell stronger for it.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

Week Two: (in progress)

I feel a lot stronger, as well as more lean. Today is workout 3 of the week in my 1X10 routine. I am not looking forward to it as the other workout was very difficult but ultimately satisfying.

I will post before and after pictures this weekend.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

Week 3: (in progress)

On tuesdays workout i did the excersizes fairly quickly without stop. I am still having trouble double 10 diamond pushups as well as the 10 regular pushups in a row. This for me is a serious blow as i was able to surpass ten the last time i was working out.

Thursday:

I felt really weak today and i am unsure as to why. I ate some flat bread before i worked out and perhaps this did it but i feel as though my arms are getting smaller. I could barely get to 5 pushups today and I had to finish the rest of the 10 in series of two pushups. I think because i feel like i cheated the pushup aspects of my exercise plan that i will do 10 more pushups and diamond pushups after work.


I am thinking about starting to perhaps regress to three sets of 5 for a week or two to see if it would make it easier to get up to 10 or three sets of 10. Usually i feel like I am not doing much the day of the workout and feel disheartened but the next days i feel pumped and energized and stronger, so we shall see.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

Hey. I'm not stalking you, man, but I was checking out everyone's training journals (for inspiration) and noticed something in your training that seems to happen to me a lot. It looks like you do fine for the first week, improve your numbers in the second week and end up hitting the wall in the third week. That is basically my training schedule for the past couple of years.

I've been messing around with Pavel's PTP for weight lifting, but I think you can apply it to bw stuff as well. The basic principle is that your body needs to learn an exercise by doing numerous "easy" sets. For pushups, let's say that your max is 10. A two week cycle would look like this:

Mon- 2 pushup
Tue- 3 pushups
Wed- 4
Thur-5
Fri-6
Sat-off
Sun-off

Mon- 7
Tue- 8
Wed- 9
Thur- 10
Fri- 11 (hooray, new max!!!)
Sat- off
Sun -off

The next cycle would start at 3 pushups and you would end up at 12 in two Fridays. This allows you to progress for two weeks, cut back before you hit a wall and then build up for another two-week cycle, ideally hitting new maxes every two weeks. I think it might be cool to take a couple days off, find your rep maxes for whichever exercises you want to do and write out cycles for each. You may want to take the best exercises from your two routines and combine them into one routine for this program, since the exercises don't change.

I hope it helps!

Mike

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"If you're not growing, you are dying!" - James Arthur Ray

This is an interesting proposition. What if you have at least 5 reps as your max to start off with on certain excercises like crunches? would you start your cycle at a higher point.


In other news interestingly enough I said i only wanted to gain 5lbs in a year but i gained 5 lbs in two weeks..... Holy crap.


Phil

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

5 lbs in two weeks?!? Congrats!!!

With each cycle, you can use any number you want. Say you can do 50 crunches. You would want to do 51 in two fridays, so you count back:

Mon-42
Tue-43
Wed-44
Thur-45
Fri- 46
Sat- off
Sun- off

Mon- 47
Tue- 48
Wed- 49
Thur- 50
Fri- 51
Sat- off
Sun- off

The next cycle would start at 43 and end at 52. I suppose you could count by 5's too, starting at 10 and adding 5 every day until you hit 55 in two Fridays. Then, starting the next cycle at 15 and ending up at 60.

Mike

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"If you're not growing, you are dying!" - James Arthur Ray

I think that i might do this but first i want to see where the training excercise routine i developed will take me for a few more weeks.

Also i found out that I can trade labor for a free rock climbimg membership at this bad ass gym, that has pilates, weights, and rock climbing. Needless to say i am on this!

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

So on Saturday I tried doing 3x5 and i feel it made a difference so i will be doing the 3x5 routine for a week and then moving up to a 3x10 routine. and then eventually 3x20 for the strength gains.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

I missed a week somewhere.

Anywho I think this is week 4.

I only worked out once this week and plan on doing so today as well. I was working out every other day but i think I feel stronger at only three times a week.

I have started increasing my reps to

3x7 next week will be 3x10 or so. I gained about 4 lbs from beer on my vacation, unless it was muscle which would be cool but i doubt it.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

ah sometimes you gotta let lose be it beer, food, resting, what have you. Don't stress. The 5lbs from before is still all there and i'm glad you gained way more than expected in lbm. It's always that way when you start out. First month always has BIG BIG gains.

Hope you got that email I sent to you about the routine. I tried my best to give constructive advice.

Where was the vaca? Shall I see you in july for VV??

Hope all is well, keep up with the training!

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Where do you get your protein?
http://www.VeganProteins.com

hey L&G,

Thanks for the encouraging words. I recieved your email and started to reply to it only it became busy at work, needless to say i completely forgot about the email. lol. Ill respond tomorrow at work to it.

The vacation was in northern california. My sister was released from prison after being there for two years so I thought i would come down and see her to help her re-acclimate to life outside the confines of a jail cell. I had a blast though. I was suprisingly active. I jumped on trampolines played 4 swuare for hours at a time went on a bike ride.

As far as the training is going its weird but the less i work out the better i feel my gains are. I worked out only twice this week and today i still feel that right after work flex you get, where im more tight and prone to feel my muscles as i move. I think im going to pair it down to 3 times a week and take the weekends of perhaps ill do some rock climbing or biking then. I quite doing any form of cardio as i have had to work during my lunch to make up for the vacation time. I have an hour so its a perfect time to take a nice brisk walk.

I started volunteering for the rock climbing wall one hour a week in exchange for a free membership.

It includes weights pilates yoga and cardio equipment. I am uncertain though how rock climbing should be taken in the confines of a work out plan should it count as one of the days i work out per week or just one of those icing of the exercise cake?

Thanks for all the advice l&g i wish that more people from the board lived here so i had a knowledgeable workout partner, there is only so much you can glean from books.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

As an update i weight 168lbs currently I am pretty sure at least one lb is fat but thats good since a month ago i weight 161lbs. I will be reintroducing cardio at the end of month two so that the result of three months will be more noticeable. Then i think i may hit the weights.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos

I ended up only working out once last week. I started smoking again when i visited california but quite on sunday again. During that time i was not motivated to work out and i ate way below my daily caloric intake to even stay at my normal weight. as a result im back down to 163 lbs. I had a stellar workout on monday in which today i still feel tight and strong like i just worked out. I also realized i did the same workout twice in a row but its a good one so i cant complain. I must say though as far as only working out once per week the last two weeks i feel stronger and more noticably muscular. perhaps i should do a two times a week deal and then rock climb one day. We shall see how i feel this week, in which i am going to do the standard 3 workouts.


Ill have updated pictures soon as my fitness challange with my friends ends the 1st.

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My Training Journal

before and after accountability photos