Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Hi. My name's David. I started posting on here about 2 years ago for a little bit, mostly just updating my training journal. Then I stopped, for no good reason. I could blame it on work / having a girlfriend / etc. but that's all nonsense. In the meantime - February 2011 I started doing Muay Thai and BJJ. It was awesome. I lost some weight, got stronger, and started feeling a lot better. We had some kettlebell instruction, too, which was great. Inevitably, I longed to lift again, and just this March I joined a proper gym and got back into it.

My first day back was March 17. A good friend of mine is a personal trainer, and gives a bunch of our crew a good rate to train with him. I've known it to be a passion of his for awhile, so it only seemed natural that we finally work together. The dude just lives for fitness - it's all over his blogs, twitter, etc. and he studies kinesiology at University. He started by correcting my form on the basic lifts, teaching me the horrors of things like Bulgarian Split Squats, and got me doing dips and ALMOST pull ups! (In my old log I lamented not being able to do pull ups...) We also changed my diet around a bit, and added some cardio - and I'm finally seeing the changes I've been wanting. Maybe sometimes all we need is that extra push.

Unfortunately, I fell on hard times a couple weeks ago (in between jobs, I start a new one Tuesday) and had to stop taking sessions from him, but am still going on my own until I can afford to train with him again (next couple of weeks.)

So, in the interim, here's what I've been doing.

Tuesday 5/29/12 (usually Monday, but Memorial Day was this week...)
-Warmup
-4 sets of 10 TRX rows (about 3 steps from the wall) and 10 pushups, 1 min rest between rounds
-Incline DB Press 90# 4 sets 8/8/6/5 reps
-Bench Press 130# 4 sets 8/8/6/6 reps
-Bent over Dumbbell Rows 35# 3 sets of 20 per side
-Dips 3 sets of 3
-Pull up Negatives 4 sets of 3
Notes: The TRX rows are still a little challenging at this angle, but I start every workout with this row/pushup cycle. I end every workout with the dip/chin cycle. When we started doing dips, I could do 3 sets of 2 with assistance. We did them every workout, until I could do 5 sets of 6, or 3 sets of 8, etc. When I had to start training alone, I figured I'd start slowly and build myself up with no assistance now. It's amazing. I have definition in the upper chest I never had before, and am just excited to be doing dips. The pull-up negatives have gone from being "jump up and try to control the immediate fall" to being able to jump and hold for a few seconds, and slowly lower myself. Great improvements. I've also been losing weight due to cardio and restrictive diet, which of course aids in these bodyweight movements.

Thursday 5/31/12 (usually Wednesday...)
-Warmup
-3 sets of 10 TRX rows and 10 pushups, one min rest between rounds
-Back squat 110# 4 sets of 10
-Bulgarian Split Squat 50# 3 sets of 8
-Lunge Walk (about 8 per side) 40# 2 sets
-Pull up Negatives 3 sets of 3
-Dips 3 sets of 3
Notes: My squat is relatively low, but we're slowly working on building up with proper form. The split squats were killer today, and I had to cut short the beginning/end bodyweight stuff to 3 rounds each because I was pressed for time.

Well that's a big post. I shall return to tell you of my conquest on Saturday!

Congrats on the new job David! So far your workout looks challenging enough to still make exceptional progress. How the diet coming along? How is your recovery and do you notice a difference in stamina during your workout? Are you taking any natural supplements to aid in your goals?

_________________
Vanessa Valdez
NPC Physique Competitor
Muscle Gauge Nutrition Sponsored Athlete

Yooooooo. Good to see you on here man. I am assuming this is dave from kingdom?

Yes, it is me, haha, Hi Matt!

WPChick,
My recovery is usually pretty alright, though I really pushed myself with the Bulgarian squats the other day, and my legs are still ON FIRE. Feels great. The diet is good, I've actually added some new stipulations to it as of 2-3 weeks ago, which I'll get into in a moment. For supplements, the only thing I take is Sun Warrior vegan protein, and some BCAA before and after each workout.

Here are my general diet guidelines:
Breakfast: High protein. I usually just have a double serving of Sun Warrior in unsweetend Almond Milk
Lunch: High protein, +fat. This one is kind of a challenge, since I don't want to have any sort of bean & rice combo which would introduce too many carbs, but also don't want incomplete protein. I recently read, however, that your body has amino acid "storage banks" so if I eat beans for lunch, and then rice for dinner, the aminos will find each other and all will be merry. I don't know how much empirical research has come out on this concept, though. For fat, I always eat an avocado, and also sometimes a banana with almond butter (SO GOOD.) Also, snacking on nuts.
Dinner: Protein, Fat, Carbs. This is the biggest meal of the day, which also ends up being my post workout on days that I lift. Recently it's been a lot of brown or red rice with seitan and bok choy, since it's so cheap to make.

*New Restrictions*
For the summer, I decided to cut sugar and flour. What this means is no candy, cake, pie, brownies, donuts...all the true building blocks of life. No flour also covers bread and pizza. This will go on until the 2nd weekend of August, where there is a big music festival here in Philly. I chose it as a good timeframe to be in excellent shape to see all my friends from out of town, and so forth. After this, I will most certainly go on a pizza/cake eating binge for a day or two, and then settle into some sort of more moderate plan. Probably one day a week where I can get cake or some other sweet, and limit the bready foods to what is reasonable.

Nice, I like how you shared your diet guidelines. A lot of people share different things that they eat and often they seem to eat the same things all the time. I can't do that, I get super bored quickly and I like trying new foods.
Also I find Kinesiology very interesting. Can you link your friends blog or twitter?

-Dylan

First off, C.O. Unfortunately, his accounts are private, and it's a personal twitter account - so you'll be seeing more "Game of Thrones is on!!" and "Disfear is my favorite band!" posts than anything else. If he ends up making a "business" profile, for lack of a better description, I'll be sure to share it with everyone.

That brings me to the second point: Good news! I talked to him today actually and he agreed to let me train with him for the next month before his band goes on tour, at which point I'll pay him back for all of the sessions I've accrued. So, that's a plus. We'll be doing more conditioning, which is great since I wouldn't really know how to do those kinds of workouts alone.

On to today's workout:

-Warmup
-TRX Row x10 / Pushup x10 4 sets total
-Bench 130# 4 sets of 8/8/8/7*
-Incline DB Press 90# 4 sets of 6/6/4/4
-One Arm Cable Rows (kneeling) 50# 3 sets of 20
-Dips 4 sets of 3
-Pull up negatives 4 sets of 3

* Still can't nail a full 4x8 at this weight. I'm thinking I ought to have stuck with 125 from the week before and increased volume to 4x10, then started at 130 with maybe 4x6 and so forth. This also affected the Incline DB Press. By the time I got to those my chest was shot.

Real quick, I want to outline some goals.

My biggest goal overall is to lose weight and get stronger. For looks, health, and better fighting. Hopefully by the time August rolls around and I reach the end of my strict dieting phase I'll be very close in that regard.

Another major goal is flexibility. I'd like to be able to pull off head kicks in Muay Thai pretty easily. I know that with strength comes flexibility, and hopefully once I've gotten a more solid base I can move into more serious stretching to get to this point. Should be a good journey!

hahaha the funny thing is for everyone that watches Game of Thrones we always already know exactly when it is on. Great outline of goals by the way.

This is true. The myth of getting a complete protein in the same meal was started like 30 yrs ago written in some book by someone who knew little about nutrition to start with. I can't recall the book and author off the top of my head right now but I can get that info. for you if you want. Or maybe someone else here knows it right off?

_________________
http://www.the-phytoathlete.com/

Here we go:

Warmup
Squat 135# 4 sets of 5
Bench 115# 3 sets of 8
Lat Pulls 110# 3 sets of 12
Push Up 4 sets of 10 juxtaposed with
Glute Bridge 4 sets of 10/side

So, when we last trained together, we were doing Monday Upper Body, Wednesday Lower Body, Saturday conditioning. Apparently the new plan is Upper/Lower/Conditioning all three days. So, since I (barely) benched 130 for 4x8 on Monday and had another 3x8 to do today, I decided to go with the 115 that one of the other dudes I was training with was on.

First thing yesterday morning I went for a bit of a jog. I'd say 1.3 or 1.4 miles tops. It sucks, I really want to be getting into the 3 mile neighborhood, but I can't even seem to break out of the 1.5-1.6 range. I get very tired/bored. I'm supposed to be doing 2 jogs per week as well as one set of sprints per week. I'll try to head out for another one tomorrow morning before work, and see what happens.

Didn't run today... But hit the gym after work:

Bench 95x8 115x8 135 2x3
Strict Dumbbell O/H press with 30s 3x8 juxtaposed with
Goblet Squats 50 lbs. x 10
TRX Row and 5 Second hold, 5x5

The rows were fun, it was good to focus on the back muscles for 5 seconds at a time. Also, getting 2 triples at 135 on the bench was a good sign! Now, it's time to feast!

Yesterday (Wednesday) I did:

TRX x10 / Pushup x10 4 sets total
Squat 135# 4x6 (compare to last week same weight 4x5)
Bulgarian Split Squat 25s 3x8 (same as last time, ready to move up!)
Dips 5x3
Pull up Negatives 5x3

Today was conditioning day!

Warmup
With a 16KG Kettlebell, we did 3 swings, a clean, and 3 presses on each side. At this point it was clear I needed work on my clean, so after 3 sets of this we did....
3 sets of 3 cleans per side, focusing on solid technique
4 sets of KB Circut: Double Clean > 5 Push Press > 8 Squats

Among all of this, whenever he yelled PROWLER, I'd have to run over to the prowler and sprint back and forth across the gym with it. (I'm not sure if this is a universal thing, or if there's other words for it since today was my first time with it, but it's basically a bunch of mats stacked up which provide resistance when pushed across the floor, and 2 45# plates on top just for fun. There were probably 5-6 total Prowls thrown in throughout this. Then came time for...

More prowler! 5 rounds of sprinting back and forth pushing the ungodly stack of mats, each ending in 5 pushups, 30 seconds of rest in between. I was dying at the end.

Then he had me carry the 2 45 plates back down to the weight room, which ended up basically being a 90 second farmer's walk, down 2 flights of stairs. Then when I came back we had to bring the Kettlebells down, and I carried 2 24KG bells to the same spot. This wasn't explicitly in the workout, but I'm sure as shit going to put these two farmer's walks in my log!

Lastly we worked on the form for Get-ups. Using just a small dumbbell, really focusing on getting it right. I had experience in them before, but had room for improvement.

Now it's time for some SunWarrior and eating everything else I can get my hands on!