WB Archives 20181026 - Farewell to Arms

 

Farewell to Arms

Well boys, it is over. Nine months ago we dug into an intense training and diet program and we kicked ass. I watched all of you go through this program and get physically and mentally stronger. I have seen your bodies transform and heard you overcome fears and push past your own boundaries.  I saw some of you guys on day one saying you couldn’t do this and then in month three ask for more. I am proud of you guys.

When I first started WB Fitness it was almost as a bit of a joke. I was going to keep a

Team WB Fitness

running blog of my progress and give a couple of tips and pointers here and there. Well it is October 26th and my domain host let me know that it is the one year anniversary of WB Fitness and man oh man did it grow into something I couldn’t have begun to even dream of.  Instead of just me giving workout tips, we formed a bond together. We worked together to make sure everyone pushed through. We shared our insights, lifts, diets above all supported each other through the lulls that are inevitable during a program as long as intense as this. I can’t say enough that Team WB Fitness is really just that, a team, and it is due to the hard work each and every one of you guys put in.

First off, before I go into the season recap, I want to thank a bunch of you guys.

J.Nyx.

Almost two years ago you texted me and asked me to help you get into shape. That took a lot of courage. I watched you struggle with programs that I made just as intro

J.Nyx grows traps slowly the way I grow chest slowly. Next year I am going to make his traps look like this if it kills him.

level workouts – programs you probably wouldn’t even break a sweat with now. I watched as you deadlifted outside in the snow. It was your idea for me to use WB to reach more people and I have to thank you for it. The intensity with which you hit the program made it so there was no way that I could slack and as a contributor to the website, your articles helped me as well as the rest of Team WB. With a wife, a job and three children you manage to get your dumb ass out of bed at 430 am every day and hit it hard. I remember earlier this year, walking to the gym in the snow, wanting to stay home and seeing your texts….already at the gym….and I knew I couldn’t sleep in.  Are you ready for season three?

Lou Skunt.

You brought so much good to the team I don’t know where to even start. Whether it is your excellent articles bringing your wisdom from many years in the body building

Just attach a hook to your wrist and go lift
-Lou Skunt

game or helping me, when my hand was broken, figure out ways to lift around my injury so I didn’t give it all up. I am glad to have you as a contributor, a team member and a friend.

Red Hood’s Assault

The only guy on the team I have met in person! The difference in your physique from when you came to now is incredible. You came looking to learn with an open mind and quickly became a serious power player. Your upbeat attitude, hard work and willingness to keep pushing has brought every member of this team up at some point.

Jump-n-Jive

You came to team WB as king of the dad bod. Despite having the responsibilities of a family, which, like J.Nyx, includes three children, a job, and being a youth counselor for your church you hit it and hit it hard. You tightened up your diet, killed the weights until

Stop Bitching About Leg Day

they almost killed you and grew stronger. Just for fun go an take a look at your first picture and your most recent one. You look like you killed that other soft guy and ate him as a post workout snack. Good work. Enjoy a bit of downtime because before you know it, its going to be time to ramp it up to 100% again.

Consolation of Philosophy

Where to even start with you. You were running in circles kicking yourself in the ass when you came to the team. Lifting way too heavy, not eating nearly enough and just injuring yourself. I do not know what caused it, but you allowed yourself to become bit of clay. Whether it was the program, the diet or the weekend challenges, you showed up. And what happened? Holy shit dude! You got jacked! And you came in after the program even started. I can’t wait to see what the next season does for you.

Stoic Nihilist

While injuries kept you out of the game this year, I have faith you will be there with us next year. I do want to single you out, however, for what was absolutely the most

This Happened

interesting birthday present I have ever received. I don’t know if anyone else has a 4 foot square hand painted acrylic on canvas painting of themselves in a wifebeater taking a gym selfie, but if not I wholeheartedly suggest you find a friend to send you one.

As for you guys hanging out on the periphery putting a toe in and watching – iattacku, bem, champ, dckhead, Automatic Slim and Nihilist, I want you to think about something over the next few months. The guys who killed it this year were all ages, some had injuries, everyone had busy lives with jobs and kids and other responsibilities, it was really hard for everyone.

No one liked waking up at 430 in the morning. No one liked feeling sore, especially the first few months. But you guys watched, some of you even tried a little, and you saw what happened. Despite injuries, despite life, despite exhaustion the guys on this team doing this program all got leaner, more muscular, stronger and healthier. You have a few months to seriously think about this. I know the issues facing each of you and why you haven’t jumped in with both feet and I am telling you that it is all bullshit. There is no reason that this time next year you couldn’t be a much better version of yourself.

So team, at the start of this season I said I would turn you into either corpses or gods….as far as I am aware none of you are dead. How do you feel? Let me know. I

Troof

know for a fact that you all look great and I do believe you will be bringing the A game again next year. Come hell or high water, team no fucking excuses is going to have its next season and it is going to make this one seem like a warm up.

And last but not least, a special thanks goes out to:

Mrs. WB.

While not an active team member doing the workouts, she was an active member of WB. Whether it was editing articles for the blog, meal prepping my lunches, understanding that she was going to be a gym widow for several hours a day or simply putting up with my protein farts, she has helped a lot and I appreciate it.

Ok, well, it is time for my season recap. As the title suggest, the off season is seeing a drop off in some of the muscle I was showing and boy am I going to miss it, but it is time for a rest, to let myself get A LITTLE soft and mentally and physically prepare for next season.

So, how did I do? Despite a set back with a broken hand and moving to a new apartment I feel I did alright. My best stats this year  had me at 201.9 pounds with a skeletal muscle mass of 112.7 and a body fat mass of 8.4 pounds for a 4.2 body fat

Simple, not easy
-Bem

percentage.  My chest was at 46 inches and my unfexed arm, at its largest was 18.5 inches. All in all, for a guy whose hand was broken and in a cast for a month, I think these numbers are pretty damn good so I will say that this year was a success. That said, there is a lot of room for improvement. Let’s talk about what I did wrong and what I did right.

What I did Wrong

Well I did a lot of things wrong and I want to mention a few specific ones that really need to chance.

• If at all possible, while you are in an instense workout cycle, DO NOT BREAK YOUR HAND. There are many reasons not to break your hand. First off, it makes
  

  Don’t do this to your hand.

  lifting difficult (had to modify lots of lifts and use a wrist wrap with a hook…thanks Lou!) but more than making lifting difficult it hurts like hell and makes scratching your ass incredibly difficult. So yeah, avoid breaking your hand or, really any other bone.

• I was lazy with regard to measurements and progress photos. You need, once a week, to track you measurements for chest, waist, hips, quads, arms and neck. This is a game and those are the scores. We can’t play the game without keeping score….after all, we are not communists. I did this intermittently rather than doing it every single week and marking down the numbers so I could track my progress. That has to change
• When I hit my best numbers of weight and bodyfat percentage I celebrated by
  

  But I really want pasta!

  eating a shit load of junk food. I don’t know why this happens, but talking to you guys and other people as well, it seems that this is a common occurrence. IT ENDS NOW.

• Not packing my bag the night before. I don’t know what the hell got into me! I have been packing my gym bag at night for the next morning for years. Why did I stop? It was stupid! A gym bag needs to be fully packed the night before the gym so when you wake up you have nothing to do other than to grab it and hustle your ass off to the iron.
• Not having a pre-workout meal. I have never been one to eat anything before I work out and it really was never a problem. Food in my stomach always gave me a cramp and my lifting was always done fasted. But now it has started to sap my energy. Next season I will be eating a small apple 20 minutes prior to lifting and some watermelon afterwards
• No preworkout. I avoided preworkout most of the time this season. I believe next season I will change this. I will use pre workout on particular days. I haven’t fully designed the program yet so I do not know just how, but I will be incorporating a preworkout.
• Multi Vitamin. I was spotty with my vitamins. I would forget (probably because my bag wasn’t packed the night before) and that is no good. I wound up getting horrible cramps and often feeling very run down.
• Forgetting what is important. Too often this season I had my eye on the clock and would leave the gym before the workout was done because it was time to
  

  Go to the gym. Stay there.

  go. I will not be doing this again. What happens in the gym is what allows me to grow and be strong. If I am not strong, if I am not happy and if I cannot be who I want to be then I am of no use to anyone else. It is not that I have to prioritize the gym, but rather I need to prioritize myself. This means that getting my work done in the gym doesn’t end because it is time to go….time to go gets pushed back because I am not done in the gym.

• Opting for convenience. I go to a chain gym and have a membership that allows me to go to gyms all over the city. There is one of these gyms just a block away from me. However, the vibe in that gym isn’t conducive to a hardcore body builder. The branch near my office is, as are several others that with a very small amount of effort I could go to. Surroundings matter. Even if you never say one word to anyone in the gym, the energy they give off needs to match yours or you will feel out of focus. I will be more thoughtful about where I do my workouts next season. Of course, if it is snowing and I need to be at a gym at 5 am I will go to the one closest, but as the weather improves I need to be in places where I can mesh with the energy.
• This last one is a biggie. I deprioritized my strengths. Here at WB Fitness we have said time and time again that Arnold is totally right when he tells us to prioritize our weaknesses. If you have something you aren’t good at, don’t avoid it. Rather, when you have a weakness do it first, do it more often, push it harder than anything else. As you guys know, my weakness is my chest and my strength is my traps. I have to push my chest twice as hard as any other body
  

  Chest did come in tho

  part in order to get size and definition in it. I don’t know why, but I know it is true. Because of this, in the past, I avoided chest exercises. Why? Because they aren’t as fun. This year I did a good job of hitting the hell out of my chest. I banged my chest out so freaking hard there were days breathing hurt. And guess what, I put some really solid size and definition on my chest. But this came at a cost. Because I went at the chest so much more and because I am on a schedule, I had to take the extra time I spent on my chest from somewhere and since my back tends to grow and get defined pretty quickly I took from my back. While prioritizing my chest I deprioritized my back and wound up asymmetrical again…only this time it was my chest that showed the gains while my back didn’t get the definition it has in the past. This goes back to the amount of time….yes, next year I will continue to prioritize my chest…but that doesn’t mean less time on something else, it means MORE TIME IN THE GYM. Why are we trying to get out of the gym? We are there because we love it and watch the clock waiting for it to be over. That ends next year.

 

What I did Right

Despite having some serious room for improvement, I did a lot of things really well this year.

• In prior years I would set a program and follow it. This year I was much better at paying attention to parts of the program that weren’t delivering in full and looking for new way to hit the muscle mid workout. One of the many examples was my skullcrushers. I was not getting the pump from them that I thought I should. After reading a bit, consulting with team members and spending a “rest” day in the gym trying different things, I wound up changing my form. I started going behind the head, rather than the traditional to the forehead, and instantly noticed it felt better. This repeated itself with different grips on the bar for various lifts, different foot position for squats etc. This is a practice I will continue and suggest everyone does
• Gorilla walk. (Gorilla Walk) I had my gorilla walk dialed in this year. I have always done it, but after writing my post on it I really focused on how important it was. If you don’t do the gorilla walk, you need to start. It makes a difference.
• Yes, flexing and posing makes you look like a giant douche. That said, it is not just for show. Thanks to Lou’s excellent article on the importance of posing and
  

  I wonder where all those people are that told me volume lifting wouldn’t increase strength when I’m doing two 120 pound dumbbells for reps

  rereading Arnold on how in between sets it is important to Flex to keep blood flow going in the muscle, I began to start flexing. Next year I want to work harder at proper posing form but I am happy with the start.

• Body composition tests. My gym offers free body composition tests. You can’t get all greedy and do them every week, but there would be no problem doing them once a month. I did this after I found out about it. Unfortunately, that was towards the end of the program but next year I will do a monthly body composition test.
• The right shoes. Yes. It is annoying to carry multiple pairs of shoes to the gym, but this year I did my leg day in Nike Romeleo 3s and it made such a huge difference. We all know proper footwear is important. I can’t stress enough just how different squatting or doing other leg dominant exercises is when you use lifters. If you don’t have a pair, consider investing in one.
• Having a blog! Yes, having an outlet to write articles about the observations in the gym kept me dialed in quite a bit. I really do love writing my little posts here and next year, everyone who does the WB Fitness program should make AT LEAST one blog post to the site. Having an outlet to express you observations is an amazing help.
• Back extensions. I have always kinda shit on back extensions. Bending over on that little cushion has always seemed odd. Why not just do good mornings. But this year I threw back extensions in at the end of every back day and they made a huge difference in back strength
• Pre-exhaustion. I have always been and still am a huge fan of supersets, but they are not the be all and end all. This year I changed up my chest day a little. Instead of supersetting chest flyes with bench presses I did my chest flyes first and then did bench presses. The chest flyes pre-exhausted and fatigued the stabilizer muscles so when it came time to bench press, while the weight I could move was less, the lift really isolated my chest and it made a huge difference in size and definition
• We all cheat at this. You know it. I know it. But this year I was much better about making sure I did stretches before AND after my lifts. Yes, it adds time at the gym but it also helps your body an immeasurable amount.
• Having a team. I have always lifted in isolation. Headphones on. Music loud.
  

  This was the product I delivered this year

  World blocked out and go. I always said this was the best way to do it. But this year I had a team. You guys were there with me for every lift. The sense of community and fraternity I felt every day in the gym pushed me harder. I had to push harder, I had to get all my cardio, I had to make every lift, I had to put everything out there because I needed to do my part on this team. When I first started out it was just me checking in with Jake to keep him honest. Now there is a whole chat channel where we support and help each other. You guys know how a really professional singer might say they were off after singing a song, they sounded flat or whatever? And you are sitting there saying “sounded perfect to me” right? This is how the outside world sees us. I complain about my body at 4% body fat and you guys know because you are in the grind. Having a team and lifting partners, even if they are remote, is so incredibly important. I would have laughed at this idea a few years ago, but now it is as integral a part of my workout as my sneakers or the weights themselves so, again, thank you guys.

A few last things. There was some great gym gear I found this year.

First off, Jessica and Jason Fitness makes such great T-Shirts. They are pricy for tshirts but totally worth it. Also, they rotate sales on a lot of them so while they are usually 23 dollars each, I just picked two of them up for 10 bucks each on sale. There are also always promo codes. Can’t say enough about how these shirts fit the body of a person with muscles. They are terrific.

Jed North. I have come to really love Jed North workout gear https://jednorth.com/  I pretty much wear their stingers and shorts exclusively. Yes, I do love Gasp (http://www.gaspbb.com/) for everything, but they are really expensive. Jed North makes amazing and durable workout clothes for much less. Check them out.

225 for 3×15 @ 9 RPE
The shoes matter.

I mentioned above that I started using lifters and love them. The ones I tried were Nike Romaleos 3. They are fantastic. I got them from www.roguefitness.com and with the sale plus discount code they were about half the retail price.

This year I used headphones by https://www.grippedfitnessaudio.com/ and I have mixed feelings on them. They were absolutely fantastic headphones. However, they are not very durable. I mean, normal use yes…but are you guys easy on your equipment. I broke two separate pairs this year. So while they are great for their fit, sound and being sweat resistant I really cannot recommend them because of how easily they break. I am going to try something new next year. Seriously considering the JBL Under Armor headphones that are part of Project Rock, but it is a bit of an investment so I am not sure yet.

In closing, I want to say thank you again to my team. I am proud to train you guys

Yeah it’s a canoli. You think yer better’n me?

and I am proud to call you my friends. Starting next week we will be putting out more regular content again including weekend challenges. I am working on this years program now and will be very excited to unleash all hell on you guys next season.

In the meantime, enjoy some time off. Enjoy some of the foods you like. Let your bodies heal and try not to get too fat. 2019 is coming and we are going to make 2018 look like a warm up. We were all wife beater ready this year and next year will be no different.

 

Grind On.