At the beginning of this year I challenged myself to reach 90kg and then cut to a size where I would still look big but be lean. I did not reach 90kg but I reached 87kg from about 75kg which meant it was my biggest weight gain since 2011 when I started working out and gained 15kg in under a year. This gain in mass was due to the fact that I was able to consistently go to gym and I was able to consistantly eat above maintenance calories for a prolonged period with the aid of whey protein and mass gainer. I have been cutting now for the past few months, I started cutting when I reached a weight of 87kg (191 lbs). For a while my body seemed to want to stay around 84-85kg but since October I have drastically reduced the amount of food I eat and I do a lot of walking in and inclined environment.
Current weight and look
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| enjoying the perfect weather before the sun set in Camps Bay |
I am currently weighing 81kg (178lbs) but I do not look great yet, I was expecting to have visible abs at this point but abs have not come in yet. I have been doing a few abs exercises after every workout session. I do not like cardio but I am planning to add some steady state cardio probably 15-30min on a bicycle to see the effects. I plan to lean out and then start doing a slow bulk next year. The goal is to look as lean as the picture below then start slow bulking from that point, am hoping I do not have to lose that much more weight before I look like that again. I have not been drinking water aside from when I am in the gym so I should probably start drinking more water so that my body does not feel the need to retain so much water which is another contributing factor to how I currently look.
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| goal is to be this lean at a higher body weight |
It’s getting more difficult to lose weight now ( only lost 3kg in about 3 months) which is why I must add some cardio, because walking is not enough even if its more than 5km daily. I am not using any supplements at the moment and I am lifting the same weights I was when I was bulking, even making improvements with some exercises. My gym partner and I decided that for each exercise we do we must complete at least 30 reps and we usually start with a warm up set which we don’t count towards the 30 reps then followed by our heaviest set and we decrease the weight per set as fatigue sets in e.g for the flat bench we would start with a 60kg warm up set followed by sets of 100kg, 90kg, & 80kg. It’s up to you if you want to do 5 reps of 100kg, 12 reps of 90kg & 13 reps of 80kg or 10 reps for each of the weights as long as the total is 30 reps, and we always train a large muscle with a smaller muscle because of time constraints e.g. chest and triceps, back and biceps etc. We have noticed that training this way has enabled us to improve our lifts than training the way we did before where we would do 3 sets and on the heavy weight stop before getting to 10 which would lead to us not getting 30 reps in total for that specific exercise and we used to count the warm up set as part of our set even though lifting weights that you can easily lift without struggle shouldn’t really count as part of your workout.
