What are you doing to yourself?!

You're selling yourself short.

As I sit here, just about to have a protein shake, I'm thinking to myself. Why? Why did you not get organized on Monday, get up early and pre-prepare some meals. Monday, the first day of the blog, I woke up late, trained, had fast food. Today, the second day, I've eaten three fast food meals. Yes, its calories. Yes, I held myself back and had water all day, which is extremely good, because usually I would just buy coke each time, but its not good enough. The quality of the food is also extremely important.

So after these few days, I'm going to list the 'progression' in which I hope to use in the next few weeks. Remember, I'm 1st year university, 23 yrs old, so my social life and student status still play a part. But only in making it harder. NOT IMPOSSIBLE.

So here's the progression, the way in which I'm going to change my habits, something that's not easy to do considering how long (since I left school) I've been doing it...

1. Eat enough protein. Almost beaten by 'eat enough calories' but - by eating enough protein, it takes up a lot of my stomach space, in addition to overall energy intake, therefore, if I don't eat enough calories, I'm still giving my muscles something to utilize in building muscle. Whether or not I'm in a caloric deficit or surplus doesn't matter so long as the protein is there, enabling strength gains and muscle building.

2. Eat enough calories. In order to gain muscle, your body needs 'additional' nutrients to put towards building muscle. Giving only 'enough' calories will give the body only enough nutrients to supply energy and recover, but not enough to make it want to increase muscle size (make sense?). All professional bodybuilders BULK, all tall successful bodybuilders have bulked for extended periods of time. Getting up to an uncomfortable higher weight, before dropping fat to become stage ready.

3. Consistently TRAIN (to get stronger). Never miss a workout. Always train to beat previous sessions somehow. No excuses. Not because your hungover, not because your tired or need to study. Nothing is an excuse. Missing a training session leads to inflexibility, loss of strength, loss of motivation, increased chance of it occurring again etc.

4. Rest. I don't sleep enough. I need to give my body enough time to go into a deep sleep. The release of growth hormones whilst sleeping is important in allowing your body to recover and grow.

5. Peri-workout Nutrition. Giving your body enough energy from complex carbohydrates to power through a workout. Enough simple sugars to spike insulin, shuttling nutrients into the muscles. Getting enough protein to prevent muscle catabolism. I have no proof for this but - I believe getting in a significant amount of calories, peri-workout allows for greater recovery, and greater performance.

6. Flexibility. To allow muscles to be utilized efficiently and to grow they need to be able to correctly function and this means being able to be stretched to their full extent.

7. Cardio. As much as I hate doing cardio. Having a good cardio respiratory system enables better shuttling of nutrients throughout the body, in addition to enabling increased endurance through strenuous exercises (breathing squats) and in giving better overall workout performance.

Its these things that I need to get in order to be able to perform at my best, which in my eyes is - performing exercises correctly, with full hearted effort, being powerful and fresh in training, have enough energy to perform and enough nutrients and rest to recover and grow optimally. Once these things are attained and consistent. The next phase in worrying about energy source manipulation, frequency, training splits, competitions can be thought about.