”So did you get your body fat measured when you first joined the gym?”  I inquired.

”Yes, that was almost 2 months ago.” replied my friend.

”So go in and get tested again to see where you stand.” I commented.

My friend did just that, going in for another body fat analysis only to find that they were still at 23% body fat.  With great discouragement, my friend informed me that they could not understand how this was possible since they had obviously dropped 10 pounds on the scale.

”Think!  What have you lost?” I prompted.

My friend thought about my comment and claimed to not understand.

”You used to weigh 175 pounds and now you weigh 165 pounds.  You’ve lost lean body mass for the most part!” I proclaimed.

My friend could not believe it.  There was a look of shock on the face.  I did the math and here is what I found.

At 175 pounds and 23% body fat, my friend had 135 pounds of lean body mass and 40 pounds of fat.  After working hard at losing weight for 50 days, my friend was at 165 pounds and 23% body fat.  This translates into 127 pounds of lean body mass and 38 pounds of fat.  My friend has lost 8 pounds of lean body mass.  Why?

The problem is that all my friend did was cardio.  There was absolutely no weight training involved at all.  As a result, instead of at least maintaining lean body mass and dropping fat, my friend dropped mostly lean body mass. 

Matty’s Workout Log:

One other thing that I find mind-boggling is that I am just 32 days away from 500 straight days of blogging.  I have now worked out a way to automate my picture processing that I’m going to test starting this Sunday.  It will remove the one roadblock I’ve been experiencing lately.  Processing all the images for my blog has been taking far too long, so I wrote a process that will make it happen much faster and easier.  That will help alot because most of the text of my blog is written days in advance, with the picture and image processing being the main time consumer in the final process.

I am currently finalizing my plans for M6.  I have 11 days left in M5 and based upon the results I’ve gotten and the changes I’ve seen, I have decided to call the next mission “Getting Competition Ready” in honor of the process I am about to begin.  I have 6 months until the competition I want to win.  That is a long time and a short time at the same time.  In order to make that goal a reality I am going to have to take things to an extreme level and very soon.  When I unveil my M6 plans on February 14, 2009 you will see exactly what I mean.  This next mission will not be for the weak of heart.

I have my workouts planned for the entire M6 time period.  I will be doing some very different things. I will be spending 3 days a week directly working the abdominals with some standard exercises and then 1 day weekly working the entire core using some techniques I’ve learned from Firm and Flatten Your Abs by David Grisaffi.  That alone will be a major change because I plan to work my abdominals extremely hard and from every single angle imaginable.  I will also be doing a High Intensity Training program that is going to change things up alot.  First, I will do the “full body slam” with super slow repetitions just like the HIT Squad and then I will be doing the same workout, but with 20 repetitions for the lower body and 15 repetitions for the upper body to change the pace up a bit.  I will be upping my cardio an extreme amount.  I will be doing cardio training just like a boxer.  It is going to be an insane burn. 

Matty’s Workout Log:

I recently had an experience with this during a conversation with Carlos DeJesus.  Carlos and I were going over my M6 plan and he mentioned a few things that got me thinking.  He made one statement about how quickly I would see results if I did a certain thing (not to be revealed right now).  I found myself thinking “Why wait until M6?  Why not just get on this now?”  I was extremely tempted to jump on this new idea, but something came over me.  I realized that I had been carefully tracking my results during M5 and that I am more than satisfied with what has been happening, so why jump ship and change plans now?  I have 12 days left in M5 and I am going to stick with the original M5 plan until it is completed.

Yes, there are probably good reasons for changing your plans at times.  However, I strongly believe that if you take the time to carefully plan things out there is no reason to make drastic changes to a plan.  I do believe that minor adjustments are necessary as you never know how your body is going to react to the changes you make.  These minor adjustments are just that—minor. They involve things like a slight modification (up or down) in total caloric intake or an increase in the number of cardio days you have, but the plan should still be completely recognizable.