Hello and welcome to my weekly journal. Over the next 24 weeks I will be writing this journal every Sunday and discussing my plans for the upcoming week and what I have learnt from the last. The first 12 weeks of my journal will focus on my attempt to gain mass and the second 12 weeks will focus on my attempt to get 'cut'. I will deal with training, nutrition and supplementation as well as share any experiences that I learn along the way. So here goes....

WEEK 1: Monday, January 22- Sunday, January 28, 2001

The first thing I decided I must do when beginning this phase is to set goals and to have a plan. There is nothing worse than getting in a car and having nowhere to go, unless you have somewhere to go but don't know how to get there. My goal is to gain mass, my route is lots of hard and heavy training and eating.

How much mass?

According to Chris Aceto, a well know dietician in the bodybuilding industry, half a pound a week should be the minimum with 2 pounds a week the maximum. Being the eager man I am, I am aiming for 20-25 pounds over the 12 weeks. Now I can hear some of you laughing or even praying for my ignorant soul but this is my goal. Not everybody can reach there goals. Many men have climbed Everest and had to turn away only an hour from the top. But that doesn't stop people trying to achieve their very best in everything they do. The best part about my goal is if I fall just short I still will be over the moon.

What is my route??

Well I am dividing the 12 weeks into blocks of 4, creating 3 phases.

Phase 1: During this first phase I will be doing something many people would not expect during a mass gaining period. Specializing in arm training (because as you know your arms are so big compared to the rest of the body that they will help you increase you overall size- right :) However I am focusing on my arms for two reasons.

Reason 1: I want big arms. Simple. Anybody who doesn't want big arms is a blatant liar. I'm sure nobody sees Manfred Hoerbel, Rod Steiner, Ronnie Coleman or Arnold and says I glad my arms aren't that big. I am aware you need to take steroids to get that big and I am totally against their use, but I still want the biggest arms I can naturally achieve.

Reason 2: Possibly the main reason. My triceps suck. They are woeful. They have no size on my arm or strength and I feel my other lifts (e.g. bench and shoulder press) suffer because of it.

Because of these reasons I will beat my arms into submission over the first four weeks while still concentrating on my other areas once a week.

Once a week? You should only workout once a week while building for mass.

Personally I have found if I only train a body part once a week, especially chest and arms it does no good. While many people argue different it is a fact muscle begins to shrink 72 hours after stimulation unless it is stimulated again. Various supplements can probably counter this but at this stage my supplement regime will be very minimal. Also having said this, if I am sore I won't train or at least won't train that body part until I recover. I must admit though I seem to recover very fast these days and am rarely sore after the hardest of workouts.

This is what my training will look like this week:

Monday: Arms
Supersets:

Barbell Curls + Close Grip bench
Dumbbell Curls + Pressdowns
Concentration curls + one arm overhead extensions
Cable curls + one arm pressdowns

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Arms

Friday: Rest

Saturday: Chest, Back, Calves
Chest, compound sets of:

Bench press + cable crossover
Incline Press + Incline Flyes
Decline Press + Decline flyes
Each exercise 6 reps making each compound set of 12

Lat pulldowns
Bent over barbell rows
Deadlifts

Leg press raises
Standing raises.

Supplements:

This week I will begin a cycle of creatine and Z-Mass PM.

The only other supplement I will take is protein which I don't really consider a supplement at all.

Nutrition:

I will try to ingest at least 30g of protein every 2 hours. This first week will involve lots of tweaking of my food routine so I will publish it in detail next week.

Stats:

Just so you know whether I succeed or fail here are some vitals you can compare my final results with.

• Weight: 102 kgs (224 lbs)
• Calf: 17.5"
• Quad: 25.5"
• Chest: 44"
• Arms: 16"

Until next week,

n_10_ct@hotmail.com

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