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Hey all,

I recently picked up jogging a few months ago as I was approaching the end of my bulk in April, as I wanted to supplement my diet over the summer with light cardio. I've been lifting heavy for years now and used to do track back in high school (hurdles and long jump), but I've NEVER been an endurance runner, so I started out fresh this year. I love it so far, it's a welcome break from weightlifting for so long. However, since I just started I don't really know much about it besides what a few friends have advised me. I definitely need more advice on running as a whole.

I currently run on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I can't go for very long though due to my lack of endurance, so I generally brisk walk 10 minutes to warm up, jog 30 minutes, and cooldown walk for 15 minutes. I stretch before and after my warmup a bit (10-15 seconds per leg muscle), and then stretch for 30+ seconds after finishing everything. I don't carry a pedometer on me, but I mapped out my general route once and it ends up being 3 miles of jogging and one mile of walking. If I happen to run and lift on the same day, I always run after lifting rather than before.

I don't have any hardcore running goals to be honest, I would just appreciate any general rules of thumb as well as tips on preventing injury and improving endurance. I would be happy to eventually be able to jog for 5 miles 3-4 times per week.

I eat no sugar, no processed foods except for one serving of tofu and 2-4 scoops of raw vegan protein a day, and everything else is whole foods, as raw as possible. I do not eat any "vegan junk food". On the 80/10/10 I just ate raw fruit and raw veggies. Nearly passed out. I have been working, this week, to push myself to eat 2000cals a day. It makes a significant difference in the gym but the extra cals are freaking me out. BTW, I lift 4-5x per week. 4x/wk cardio.

2000 calories per day? With 4-5 days of training per week (not even including the cardio)?

That's probably your energy problem right there. I have a raw vegan friend at Cornell who specializes in endurance training. She eats easily 2.6k-3k per day, and she rarely lifts. She's thin as a pencil, too.

Might want to start jumping up the calories in anyway you can.

Never heard of it, but I'll definitely keep an eye for it. We have a lot of organic food stores where I live, so hopefully one of them carries it. Thanks!

My macros are fine; furthermore, I don't abide by the ALAIFYM. I make sure to get plenty of Omega-3s and essential fatty acids from a wide variety of sources including tree nuts, hemp, and chia - after bulking and cutting for 2.5 years, I have personally found that my biggest problem in success is continually putting on weight past 205lbs. When I gain weight, my power and physique skyrocket. If I don't gain weight, they stay the same. It's a simple matter of managing to get past these BF% plateaus for me.

I'm thankful enough to know that for me, personally, calories DO equate power and muscle mass (as long as the macronutrient ratios for those calories are correct and not entirely from soy or nutrient-poor sources).

Thanks for the suggestions - really, anything could work as long as I can eat the mounds of food. I never thought about taco seasoning - I should try that.

I've reached the point of my bulk where I need to be eating 4.5-5k calories a day to see any noticeable difference in weight. However, eating 5 cups of cooked quinoa is incredibly difficult to choke down.

What sauces/spices can I add to my typical carb sources to help me eat them faster? Brown rice, white rice, lentils, quinoa, split peas, any specific information would be extremely helpful.

Hey! This is a dumb question, but I love your WTF-Stew ingredients and want to start cooking it on the regular during my bulk. How do you use a slowcooker? Do you add water, what temperature do you set it at, how long etc etc. I want to be able to replicate this recipe 100% because I've been searching for an easy way to eat a lot of carbs really fast.

I'm preparing to make the jump to clean workouts/no PWOs. Over the past 2 years they've honestly gotten me through really heavy lifts and helped me do days that I really had no desire to do, but now that my workouts are as much apart of my day as waking up, they're more of a cost than anything. Let alone this whole energy problem.

Hey everyone. For the past month and a half, I've noticed that my preworkout supplements have started to feel very abnormal. Whenever I take them before my workout, I only feel little-to-moderate levels of energy during my actual lift. Then, for literally HOURS afterward, and as of recently the rest of the day, my heartrate is elevated just enough that I'm at an extremely uncomfortable state of energy and alertness. Even if I go all out and hit the gym hard (deadlifts, power movements, bench etc) for 1.5-2 hours, I still just feel absolutely wretched feelings of alertness afterward. I can't read, concentrate, study, or relax, which in college is not a cost I can afford.

I've tried not only taking the preworkout longer and longer before my lift (waiting up to 1 hour before heading to the gym), but reducing the amount as well. With preworkouts I used to take 2.5-3 scoops of and feel absolutely fine. Now I've reduced it to 0.8-1 scoops and the feelings of adrenaline just get worse and worse.

I'm thinking maybe I'm not getting a specific vitamin/mineral in my vegan diet that I wasn't aware of? I know I don't eat much iron - maybe that has something to do with it?

I use calorieking.com whenever tampering and writing down food for my diet. It allows you to manually input numbers of servings and sizes of food until you reach the calorie/macronutrient amounts you're looking for, and its database has a ton of popular and rare food brands.

Hey all. Currently I have a leg day for my 4 day routine, and on this day I do 4x10 squats for 3 weeks, then in the next 3 week cycle I do deadlifts 4x10. The deadlift weeks are obviously extremely tiring and prevent me from doing the other auxiliary leg exercises I usually do on the squat weeks (ie. leg press, leg extension, leg curls, DB RDLs etc).

Is it okay to insert a 5th day in my routine where I solely do deadlifts? The leg day would be solely dedicated to the 4 sets of squats whereas later in the week would be the deadlift day. I currently do chest/back on fridays so I'd rather save my energy for chest those days and not waste it with deadlift sets prior.

Hey everyone. So I started by doing solely negative sets - 4 sets by 10 reps each going down as slowly as possible and squeezing the hell out of my lats. It's three days afterward now and my lats are flaring up with wonderful pain. Honestly I can't remember the last time my lats hurt this good; it's been a long, long while. Thanks to everyone for their advice. This week I'm gonna try jumping it to 4 sets 15 reps each before actually attempting a pullup, but I'm eating plenty to build myself up to that. I may invest in bands in the near future for that as well, too, although I've never used bands before for anything.

So many responses and pieces of advice. Thank you to all, you're all great. We do have an assisted pullup/dip machine at my gym, but my partner has been very stubborn and refuses to let me/help me do assisted pullups because he believes if I force myself to do unassisted it will help me get much better at them than doing assisted/lat pulldowns. I'm going to start with negative sets and work my way up from there.

Thank you both so much. I'm going to try this immediately. I wasn't sure about negatives just because I wasn't sure if negatives could help my explosiveness upwards.

I have a grave problem. I cannot do a single pullup (wide-grip or close-grip) unassisted, and it's awful. I have a relatively good physique so it's embarrassing to be hanging on the bars at the gym struggling to pull my body weight up. I do weigh a decent amount (currently at 203 lbs), but it still doesn't make any sense that I can't do a single one. It's starting to show on my physique as well because I have absolutely no lat spread. My partner who weighs 190-195 lbs can easily do 5-8 reps. At the beginning of the fall I was able to do a single pullup, and now nothing. Just struggles.

I cannot get past this plateau at all. In the past 4 months I've bulked up 12lbs but my pullups get worse and worse. My barbell bentover row is steadily increasing, along with cable pulls and lat pulldowns and other such back exercises, so it does not make any sense why lat pullups aren't increasing. Please help. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

It's pretty soft, to be honest. Not hard at all.

Hey all, I currently live in Michigan where we have a local company called Mama Mo which specializes in homemade seitan and hummus. I buy my seitan from both this company and the prepackaged chicken-style seitan from Nasoya, and both companies store their seitan in liquid just like how prepackaged tofu is typically stored.

The problem is that when I try to cook this seitan over the stove, it's often still rather "soggy" tasting and takes a long time to cook. What's the best way to cook this seitan? I've never dried seitan or tofu prior to cooking before, so I'm not sure what the best technique is.

Let's go Derek!! One small competition for a vegan, one giant step for vegankind!

Whoops sorry, didn't make it apparent. In my last meal I either have tempeh or seitan, the 83g is for the former and the 90g is for the latter.

How long can boiled/stir-fried vegetables last in the fridge? I think my biggest issue is that I'm unsure how to prepare vegetables ahead of time unlike the rest of my meals - I'm going to start investing in quick frozen veggie bags.

I'm not absolutely 100% in tune with my body, but generally higher-fat diets don't have that bad of an impact on my physique. When the time comes to start trimming off the pounds, I can generally cut off most of the fat off my body through diet until 5-6% bf. By then my fat gets very stubborn and I have to do a ton of cardio to burn it off.

I definitely do NOT have the patience to bake bagels on a normal basis, hahaha. I actually buy them frozen at a local Whole Foods - they are MIRACLE breakfast foods with their macronutrient ratio and easy preparation. The company that makes them is called French Meadow Bakery: http://www.frenchmeadow.com/products/bagels/hemp-bagels. They have a store locator to see if a nearby grocery store carries them for you.

Thanks for the advice! Shortly after I put this up, I decided to try and jump up to 3.4-3.5k calories with fruit and vegetables. I usually cook about 1-2 servings of vegetables in my meal before bed (forgot to put it in) as well. I USED TO have an awesome blender over the summer where I would almost always make a delicious green postworkout smoothie with bananas, berries, and tons of kale, but my friend currently has it and he has been difficult with giving it back. :/

Bah, I'm an idiot. I never thought to see what some of the more experienced people on the board have been writing in their logs. I'm going to do just that right now. Again, huge thanks for the advice!

It's Michigan... we ALWAYS have cold air, hahaha. Luckily I moved up here because I like the cold in the first place. Anyway, I totally understand your dilemma. I always eat healthy, but the problem comes from the fact that things that are easier to eat will almost always be eaten in higher proportions, aka nut butter sandwiches, cereal, oatmeal etc. It's pretty damn time-consuming to stand at a kitchen stove and stirfry your vegetables or cook some quinoa/lentils. So... like I said before, pick a solid hour one day of the week to cook a ton of food that can preserve in the fridge and feast on that throughout the week.

Michigander here too! Welcome to the forum - your goals are definitely possible with smart eating and training. I had the same problem with finding time to eat healthy food since I'm a college student and work at the same time - it's possible, you just need to start getting in the habit of buying tubberware containers and precooking all of your meals on a single day of the week.

Hey guys,

I'm attempting a (general) clean bulk for the next few months and was wondering if people could critique my diet. I've never done a clean bulk before, let alone while I've been vegan, so I'm sure it needs more work.

Current Stats:

Weight: 198 lbs

Bodyfat Percentage: 8-9%

Goal: 212-215 lbs by January 1st

Meal 1

1 Hemp Bagel Calories: 280 Protein: 19g Carbohydrates: 22g Fat: 8g

1 cup Oatmeal Calories: 300 Protein: 10g Carbohydrates: 46g Fat: 5g

1 cup Hemp Milk Calories: 110 Protein: 2g Carbohydrates: 12g Fat: 5g

2 tbsp nut butter Calories: 180 Protein: 8g Carbohydrates: 0g Fat: 16g

Totals: Calories: 870 Protein: 39g Carbohydrates: 80 Fat: 34g

Meal 2/Preworkout Meal (This one can vary since I eat whatever my university dining hall offers)

2 cups brown rice Calories: 300 Protein: 6g Carbohydrates: 64g Fat: 3g

Fruit (Apple, Banana, or Melon) Calories: 100g Protein: 1g Carbohydrates: 25g Fat: 0

Vegan burger Calories: 240 Protein: 24g Carbohydrates: 20g Fat: 6g

Whole Wheat Bun Calories: 200 Protein: 10g Carbohydrates: 34g Fat: 4g

Veggies Calories: 100 Protein: 7g Carbohydrates: 12g Fat: 1g

Totals: Calories: 840 Protein: 48g Carbohydrates: 155g Fat: 14g

Intra-Workout:

1.5 scoops Scivation Xtend BCAAs

Post-Workout Meal:

1 scoop Vega Protein: Calories: 120 Protein: 26g Carbohydrates: 4g Fat: 0

1 cup pineapple: Calories: 100 Protein: 1g Carbohydrates: 25g Fat: 0

1 cup quinoa Calories: 300 Protein: 12g Carbohydrates: 48g Fat: 5g

1 tbsp Nut Butter Calories: 90 Protein: 8g Carbohydrates: 2g Fat: 8g

Totals: Calories: 610 Protein: 47g Carbohydrates: 79g Fat: 13g

Before-Bed Meal:

1 cup lentils Calories: 230 Protein: 18g Carbohydrates: 25g Fat: 1g

5 oz Seitan Calories: 180 Protein: 37g Carbohydrates: 0 Fat: 2.5g

OR 1 serving tempeh Calories: 200 Protein: 22g Carbohydrates: 0 Fat: 9g

1 tbsp hemp seeds Calories: 60 Protein: 4g Carbohydrates: 0 Fat: 4g

Nut Butter Wheat Sandwich Calories: 340 calories Protein: 16g Carbohydrates: 20g Fat: 15g

Totals: Calories: 810/830 calories Protein: 75g/60g Carbohydrates: 45g Fat: 22g/29g

Final Totals:

Calories: 3160

Protein: 209g/194g

Carbohydrates: 359g

Fat: 83g/90g

My biggest worries are that I'm not eating enough carbs and too much fat. I'm unsure about my protein consumption, either. It's hard for me to tell just because my base lean mass is so heavy (even before I lifted weights - I have not weighed less than 170lbs in 5 years and I've only been lifting for about 1.5 years now).

Hey! Sorry about no response for so long, I haven't stopped training or lifting but my buddy who I took pictures with was gone for the summer and I was pretty busy working, thus no time and help to take model photos/bodyfat percentages. Now that my semester's in full swing and my lifting partner is back, we've been making GREAT progress. Pics to follow soon.

My cut wasn't the best, but I'm happy I did it because I understand how my body both puts on and takes off fat so much better now - the knowledge I gained will be immensely useful next time I decide to cut. I only got a handful of non-serious photos of me at my lowest weight (around 192 lbs, roughly 5-6% bodyfat. I'm a heavy, heavy boned guy). I'll put those up with my next ones.

I started bulking again mid-August and am trying to do it as clean as possible - I've got goals to reach by the end of the year. Hoping to weigh a good and heavy 215lbs by the end of December! Right now I'm at 198-200 lbs, so so far so good! I started a new routine too (Y3T by Neil Hill - very intense 9 week program you can find on bodybuilding.com), and the stress of it has already paid off.

In terms of competing, I plan on doing a quick cut to get my feet wet at a novice Men's Physique show at the Arnold next year. I REALLY want to do an absolutely clean bulk after that into the summer and hopefully do an amateur show by the end of July/August.

I gained 6 additional pounds on my bulk switching to veganism. If you're already 99% vegan, I doubt switching out your protein powder will make a very noticeable difference in your physique (other than how much food you're eating).