Tyler’s Workout Log – The PHAT Experiment – Day 4 of 28 – Heavy Legs

Lisa and I went on a long bike ride yesterday to Delray Beach and back.  By long, I mean 9 miles each way.  I’m not absolutely sure why this was hard for me.  We used to do 30-mile bike rides fairly easily.

I think it had something to do with the wind in our faces, the backpack full of glass tupperware on my back, the high heat, the excessive humidity, my uncomfortable seat (if you’re a dude, you know what I mean), and the fact that the backpack straps are positioned in such a way that my hands would go numb after about two miles.

It was hard.  We had fun once at Delray Beach, but the ride back especially was not fun for me.  Lisa had fun, though.  She wasn’t even tired… Cardio freak.  🙂

How to Lift Weights

Photo Credit

For building Muscle Mass:

When you’re trying to build muscle mass, you have to find ways to stabilize your body so that you’re only working a select set of muscles at once.  You can think of this in a bench press exercise where your legs and core are minimally involved because they’re resting on a bench.  Your pushing muscles are the only muscles being stressed to a great extent.

This is the type of exercise you have to do if you want to gain muscle mass.  You have to use exercises where specific muscles are targeted.  Full-body exercises just don’t work as well for muscle growth.

Tyler’s Workout Log – The PHAT Experiment – Day 1 of 28 – Hypertrophy Legs

For the last three weeks, I’ve been refining my own version of Layne Norton‘s PHAT (Power Hypertrophy Adaptive Training) lifting methodology.  Essentially, it has you doing two days of heavy (around 5 rep) lifting and then three days of hypertrophy (around 10-15 rep) lifting per week.

My only tweaks were to make it slightly more applicable to real-life movements and put a stronger emphasis on single-legged movements.  Also, I’m not a fan of 15-20 rep sets, so I try not to go over 14.  I’ll do a later write-up explaining this in more detail.

The results from the last three weeks?  0.38lbs of muscle gain and 1.78lbs of fat loss.  At least that’s what the 7-site body fat caliper protocol says.

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 24 – Heavy Lower Body

Well, despite the regression on the cleans, I’d have to say this was a good session.  Everything else went up.

Also, I think the regression on the cleans was largely due to my back still being sore.  Oh well.  Life goes on.

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 22 – Hypertrophy Legs

Ok.  I added a couple more exercises, and this wasn’t easy at all.  I hope it feels better next time because I got to the beginning stages of nausea.

Oh well.  It was still fun.  🙂

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 18 – Heavy Lower Body

A good day.  I added a couple extra exercises to what I did last week.  Also, I hit each goal I set for each exercise.  That’s always nice.  🙂

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 15 – Hypertrophy Legs

A nice day of progression.  However, I did sweat through my whole shirt.  Lol.  It just looked like it went from a lighter olive color to a darker olive color.  Gross?  Yes.  Somewhat awesome?  I like to think so.

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 9 – Hypertrophy Legs

To add to my neck troubles, I woke up with allergies.  So, I had a headache and some level of fatigue along with the neck problems.  Great.

I thought about it and realized that working out for high reps on legs wouldn’t make my neck, headache, or fatigue any worse.  So, I went and pumped out the session.  It wasn’t all that fun, but it was necessary.  Also, I haven’t done higher reps for quite a while.  As a result, these numbers were pretty terrible.  Ha ha.  But it’s all good in the neighborhood.  At least it will be easy to progress from these.

Tyler’s Workout Log – Day 6 – A New Experiment & Heavy Legs

For the last two months, I’ve been experimenting with full-body workouts.  I mainly did so because it makes so much sense.  We rarely use the body just one part at a time, so it makes sense to me that working out the whole body at once would be the best way to exercise.  That still sounds rational to me, and someday I’ll probably try it again but have it slightly modified.

But as for now, I’m going back to what I know has worked for me in the past.  In all honesty, I’m fairly irritated at losing muscle mass, so this change is largely the product of frustration.