Cork

No offense, but going to a female vegan and asking for nutrition advice is a waste of time. Women rely on food for emotional support and very few understand how to put together a diet. If you are vegan, you do it for belief and not to live a healthier lifestyle, though many vegans will claim the latter. And Andreas Cahling ate eggs; animal protein.

I've always been the carb sensitive kind of guy, so I keep pretty low carbs even when I'm not doing contest prep. I honestly don't track my macros perfectly right now. I get them all set at the beginning of my prep, but they change depending on how I feel. I normally run pretty low, about 100-150g a day, all based around my workout. I do refeed days about once every 5 days of ~250g cho.

Ha, silly math. I even typed 225 but for some reason I had 325 in my head.

Sucks to hear about he pain @Colored Guy. Hopefully PT works well for you and you heal up fast. @hogg A 2xBW bench is damn impressive. I'd say 88lbs BW with dips isn't too far from a 225lb bench. How do you setup on the bench and what is your sticking point? I'm sure your technique could use some work. Pick an appropriate exercise to work on that weak point and your bench should go up. Also, get your body weight up and do your upper back work. A more stable body means bigger weights can be handled. I'm stilling going strong with my contest prep. I sort of psyched myself out by looking at the competitors who have done this show in the past couple years. They are in damn good shape and top 3 is going to be hard to get. I just have to hope that I got big enough in the last year and keep on charging ahead. One of the worst parts of competitive bodybuilding is all the damn mind games you play with yourself.

That's a pretty good leper geisha. It looks like half the pics in those galleries are ripped off.

That's the worst Steve Buscemi tattoo ever.

My supplementation is off the charts right now. My diet is very strict with no variety so I have to supplement to make the whole food add up easy. I take the multivitamin, fish oil, ZMA, melatonin, probiotic, vit C, whey protein, and soon a Vit D cocktail. I take a combination of all of these twice a day, once with breakfast and once after dinner. I take the after dinner dose with about 2 shots of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water. I don't remember who asked since I'm just catching up on this thread now since I was on vacation, but for bulking, you'll want to get at least 2 grams pro per kg of body weight, like someone else mentioned. Depending on your diet, you'll want to modify this, but it's a good baseline. For example, I run carbs only around workouts and on refeed days, so my daily protein intake is higher than normal. I weigh 88kgs but I consume probably over 250g of prot a day. Gotta get those calories in. If they don't come from carbs, you have to get them from somewhere, otherwise you can kiss your muscle good bye. And it's very ironic for a Crossfit coach to talk about being an elite human when Crossfit's goal is so far from becoming elite at anything....

Haha, you'll get it eventually. Not to mention the utility of this stance while out camping in the middle of the woods.....

Eventually you'll be able to hold it as your flexibility settles in. You could also grab a barbell with plates on it and pull yourself down into the position resembling the start of an olympic snatch. That could be one way to work the stretch faster and harder.

Exactly Rory. Moderation. Here is something that Arthur Saxon and his brothers used to drink. I find it amusing. For reference, Arthur Saxon was one of the best old time strongmen.

A real box from EFS or something of the like would be ideal, obviously. At my gym I use these little step things up to a height where I break parallel.

The ARMY owns you once you sign up. Not to be a dick, but if you don't like the changes, then you shouldn't have signed up in the first place. And, by "you" I don't mean you specifically, irezumi. I just mean "you" as in the general Military service population. Although, that does suck being required to get rid of something awesome. I feel sorry for hogg's friend.

@lving4today Don't do long static stretches before working out. I do that stretch either early mornings (when I lift in the afternoon) or my non-leg days. @hogg The box squat is an incredible tool. The bench squat, not so much, haha. @Jaycel Adkins I can respect kettlebell training, it can be pretty hard and fast paced, but I can't say much more on it. It does not provide the results that I am interested in. Although, I do take my 35lb KB and throw it for height. That's fun. Practice for the Highland Games, haha. FWIW I used to use Chucks but I can't find a comfortable pair that fit my wide foot. I've been lifting in Vibrams for about 5 years now.

You have the exact problem I did and it's easy to fix. It just takes time and patience. @lving4today First off, box squatting to a bench will never get you the proper depth unless you are about 7' tall. Caveman squat (see pic below). Hold it as long as you can, up to about 3 minutes. Focus on pushing your hips forward, knees out, chest up, and your lower back arched in the bottom position, this will help stretch A LOT of the connective tissue in your hips and open up your range of motion dramatically. Another thing, you are trying to sit back too far. In a squat you do need to sit back, but not so much. Your upper body should be able to hold a static upright position instead of leaning forward. This comes from too much emphasis on sitting back, which throws off your center of gravity. A lot of butt wink can also come from the inability to properly fire your glutes and hams, causing you to rely on your quads. When you wink your butt, you lose tension on the glutes and hams, making very hard to drive out of the bottom properly.

I pictured you with more tattoos, haha. Pretty huge though. You stay that lean year round?

Thank you for the compliments guys. Kyle I'd like to see your pics too. I know an old head in London who competed so much it almost killed him. I don't know how much into the scene you are, if you might know Jim Moorey? @hogg I'm jealous of your setup except for the lack of head room. That's a nice hill too. 6 sprints just starting out is pretty good. I do 3 on flat ground and feel like I'm going to hurl. I push myself to 5 and I've got the shakes for the rest of the day, haha. And yes, any excuse to skip split squats is a good one, haha.

@ChrisvK For cutting, a normal weightlifting routine is fine. You want to keep your weightlifting anaerobic as usual to prevent muscle loss. I assume you're suggesting full body for more of an aerobic effect? Just work on your cardio and diet and you'll be good. I personally hate running, and I use the stepmill/stair climber or incline walking as my cardio of preference. @kylegrey let me just be the first to tell you that I don't consider myself a bodybuilder, even though I compete, haha. I'll take any criticisms. Here is a crappy cell phone pic that I just took 5 minutes ago.

This weekend will be 11 weeks out. I've been prepping since mid January.

@Scott R I'll be sure to do something impressive to help out that motivation, haha. @hogg Cool, I didn't know he competed. I've done it before a couple times so I know what to do. The last ones were a huge learning process. Right now I weigh 200lbs and I'll probably end up around 180-185lbs. I don't have a target weight. The federation I compete in does classes by height. I'm always in the tall class, being 6'0". In 2010 I competed at 170. 2011 was a year for growing and working on weak spots. I still have weak points but they aren't so bad, except for my calves. They are still terrible.

I don't mind talking about some of my workouts and I always like to see what other people do. I only ever compete with myself in the gym so I have no reason to lie with my numbers. If anyone wants to call me out, I'll gladly take video :) Right now I'm tentatively preparing for a bodybuilding contest so it's going to get pretty intense. I am too small to be a really good bodybuilder, but it's a good excuse to get ripped. Plus, In a couple years who knows how much tattoo coverage I am going to have, so I may as well do the contest while my body is mostly clean and it won't hamper my scores. I just had an all overhead workout, not very bodybuilder style, but I'm sort of deloading this week from my most recent macro-cycle. Just tried for a max effort military press. I almost got 200lbs. It felt heavy, but doable. Probably another month before I get that. Then I just messed around with heavy DB clean and jerks then a lot of rotator cuff work. The worst part of contest prep? No alcohol. The diet, easy. The workouts, easy. Hours of cardio, easy. No beer? BAH!

I'm no geography pro, but I'm pretty sure that it is.

It's actually really good for the tendons in your knees when you drop below parallel. It causes stretching and strengthening to occur. That's why I always yell at people who say squats are bad for the knees. It's the complete opposite. I don't think going to parallel will leave you any more open to injury, but you're definitely not getting the benefit of the full lift. I think PL depth is the best judge to go by. Let the hips break parallel with the knees.

Squatting can be frustrating. I had to take about 6 months and completely fix my squat, now it is my second favorite lift (dead lifting will forever hold a special place in my heart). From the squatting issues that I have seen, almost all cases it comes down to a lack of hip flexibility. While you guys know I'm not a big fan of crossfit, there is a guy who knows what he is talking about when it comes to keeping loose. Check out MobilityWOD and you'll be doing your hips and shoulders a favor.

I see what you're saying. You'll have to just give it a shot and see if it works. I don't know if the 2 weeks will be less or more effective. It takes a lot more than normal rear delt work to fix bad posture. Do a lot of chest stretching, and do TONs of external rotation work. You'll have to strengthen the mid and lower traps as much as your rear delts. One thing I find that helps good posture is to force good posture as often as you can. When walking or sitting down, just take a second to set yourself in the proper posture. Eventually you'll be doing it often enough that it will become natural to you. Here is a great article/video on fixing shoulders. Rehab/Prehab Work for Your Shoulders

Petri, I'm not sure I understand your goal. You want to do 1 day a week in the gym, doing zerchers, deads, and push press all in the same workout? If that is true, then pick one you want to prioritize and put that first so you'll be nice and fresh for it. I like to work off of percentages of my 1rm so that there isn't any guess work. I write it all down ahead of time so I know what the plan is. A 3 week plan might be better than 2 weeks. I'll suggest something simple first. Say you start with deads, and we assume that the max you've done is 300lbs. So for the first week you could do (stopping one rep short of failure); Week 1 Set 1: 75% 1rm Set 2: 80% 1rm Set 3: 85% 1rm Week 2 Set 1: 80% 1rm (beat the reps set last week) Set 2: 85% 1rm (beat the reps set last week) Set 3: 90% 1rm Week 3 Set 1: 85% 1rm (beat the reps set last week) Set 2: 90% 1rm (beat the reps set last week) Set 3: 95% 1rm For the rest of the workout, I would just train the other 2 exercises as assistance work, aka 3-4 sets and 8-12 reps depending on how I feel. That is basic periodization. Depending on how that cycle goes, set your new max, rinse, and repeat or switch to push press or zerchers first.