My quest for 6.7

Going to update whats been going on. I’ve been on a healthy diet for the past month since I ended my outdoor season. I’ve lost 8lbs and am feeling fantastic. I took a couple weeks off and then resumed lifting and doing random explosive workouts. Sometimes accels, sometimes jumps ect…

This is me at 191 this morning. I plan on getting down to 180-85. Keep in mind this is me flexing, I dont look like that just static, lol. My strength is up, squatted 355x8 and am not feeling any major detriments from the calorie restriction. When I hit my goal weight I’ll just increase calories to maintenance levels. Lyle’s site has helped me tremendously plan out my diet correctly.

I have been talking to my old coach from my school and we are working things out together. He asked if we could work something together and I welcomed the change. I’ve been sharing my ideas and a lot of info I have learned from this site with him. He will now integrate this into a program and I will help plan it with him, but he will administer it and help coach me. This should be a good change because I wont have to worry about the workouts and such. Plus there is a fairly big group with him already so it will be much more social.

The gist of the setup so far will be accels 2x/week, 1 on falt surface, 1 uphill and 1 long hill session. I’ll be keeping the medball throws, weights and plyos in as well.

My vert is getting up there with this weight loss. I was officially clocked in with a 37 inch vert the other day with the digital pad (straight leg landing). I was 200lbs when I ran 11.05 into a -1.4 wind. Be interesting to see what being at a healthy weight will do. Realistically, my diet is healthy now and I’m probably on par with calories. My old diet was shit and I was a fatty.

First workout back:

3x3x70m hills with 2mins break between reps, 8 minutes between sets

70’s were done in 9.5-10.5s.

The hill is quite steep. My head was spinning at the end of this one. The circulating lactic is quite high.

This will be my lower high CNS day in the mix. I havent quite planned out my weights yet because I’m going to wait and see what the rest of the week is like.

I’ll probably do 3x8 squats and 3x12 weighted hip thrusts.

I did end up doing squats on sunday but needed to wait several hours until the lactic cleared from my brain.

3x8 squats @ 335lbs
3x10 weighted hip thrusts @ 225lbs

I’ve planned out my lifting for GPP and it will be very simple and involve squats 3 days per week. 2 days of 8 rep squatting and 1 day of 4 rep box squatting. This is based off of my lifting from last season where I concurrently did 10s and 5s and this worked very well for my lifting and helped match the CNS demands of each training day. I switched up the reps scheme a little though to add some variation. As we progress through GPP and get into SPP I’ll switch one of the 8 rep days to a 4 rep day to match the increasing CNS intensity. I might change things up by switching to front squats for a month, and then to banded box squats ect…Eventually, the 8 rep day might be removed completely I havent planned that far ahead yet.

I’m thinking of leaving cleans out for this season. I’ll replace them with a higher volume of explosive throws. I think the throws are fantastic, closer on the force-velocity curve and not nearly as technical. My clean form just isnt going anywhere. I think I need some technical lessons from an actual Olympic lifter because most coaches here just cant teach it properly.

Tonight is an acceleration day and my highest CNS day of the week. The workout will probably consist of Accels, throws, plyos and lifting.

tonights workout:

2x4x20m accels, superset with 15m sled pulls with 45lbs
2x20m with no superset

15x overhead medball throws 8kg

Plyo circuit of sorts
2x20 stiff legged hops
3x12s tuck jumps
2x12 box jumps
3x10s high split jumps
3x10 large amplitude vertical jumps

The plyo circuit killed my legs so I’ll have to rearrange my lifting around this. I’ll stick to 2 lifts per week for now until we move past these plyos circuits.

great success with the loss. It seems you are quite muscular. Cut it down under or around 6% of body fat and you’ll look terrific! I’m not saying you are fatty now, just you know with every other percent down you get much more ripped and eventually faster :wink:
Good luck!

For me it would be impossible to work with my old coach. It’s great that there are coaches who would accept something new and wouldn’t hesitate to try it out.

Today:
4x2x100m hills, 1.5 minutes rest between reps and 8 minutes rest between sets (best one was 12.6s)

Pretty tough hill, its a steep one.

4x4 box squats @ 345lbs
3x5 vertical medball throws

Long workout today:

Hills

3x60m 3mins break between reps, 6 between sets
3x50m
4x40m

1x120m

Plyo circuit
2x20 ankle hops
2x10 pause jumps
3x12s tuck jumps
3x10 tuck forward jumps
3x14s high split jumps
2x10 low split jumps on each leg

Went to the gym and just really messed around. Tried doing bench press again but my damn shoulder still hurts when I go it. Its been 3 months now since I’ve injured it and it only really stops me from doing bench. Oh well.

4x2 sets of easy cleans @ 205lbs
3x8 decline shoulder press with 50lbs
3x12 tricep cable extension
3x8 cable cross overs
50 pushups

Weight is at 189.5lbs now, finally broke the 190 barrier. I’m sitting at about 10% body fat just from a visual point of view. I’ve been tested before, like 14 sites or something crazy, at 9-10% when I was 196. But that wasnt true 10% bodyfat. Anyway, weight down, strength up, cant complain.

How steep is the steepest hill you use?

The hill is around 35 degrees and very flat and constant for about 150m.

Today:
5x30m
4x submaximal flying 30s

3x8 squats @ 335

2x5 vertical medball throws

Quick workout today, had a meeting afterwards so planned for a little something less. My coach wanted me to hit some up right sprinting today just because we’ve been doing so much hill stuff. So we went submax on the flys.

Strictly for sprint performance, do you think hill sprints are better or sled resisted sprints?

And you getting any tempo in? or just some here and there. I haven’t been doing that much tempo… will get in more during SPP + some int. tempo… but do you think it’s gonna affect me much going into speed endurance work later on? if the 200 isn’t my focus at all…

I think sleds have a better transfer to accels than hills. I’m not a huge tempo guy, but I get it in on a weekly basis just to keep fit and burn some extra calories. I also find it helps with recovery, I hate going cold from nothing the day before to a sprint workout. Although, its really not fast at all and my volumes are quite low compared to others.

Today:
4x2x100m hills with 1.5 minutes break between reps, 10 minutes between sets
4x5 vertical medball throws
6x4 box squats @315
4x5 incline bench press

I tried hitting the gym a little harder, since overall CNS stress is pretty low these days. I kept the weight that I would use for 5 reps and dropped it to 4 reps but rather than my usual 3 sets I did 6. The end result was much more difficult. Good workout. Incline didnt hurt my shoulder, which is odd, must be the specific joint loading of the flat bench.

Started practice today with a standing 30m time trial today. The coach didnt want me to do many so I only did 2. It was more for the tryout squad.

I clocked a personal best off the bat. Which is phenomenal for this time of year and surely related to my weight loss.

2x30m electronic with touchpad, 3.85 3.90. Previous all time best was 3.88 right before i tore my hamstring in phenomenal shape 2 years ago and ended running a 6.97s when I recovered a month after the injury. Last seasons best was 3.93 right before I ran 7.04.

Then I did my workout

4x20m with 30lb sled
4x30m with 20lb sled

Plyo circuit
2x10 pause box jumps
4x13s tuck jumps
4x10 tuck forwards
3x10 high knee bounds
2x12 on each leg, 1 legged low box jumps

3x10 weight hip thrusts @225
3x8 decline shoulder press @ 55lb dumbells

Thought I would share a little bit about my diet throughout the day since it has worked wonders for me.

Meal 1: 2 whole wheat cinnamon raisin toast, 3 hard boiled eggs, 2 cups of tea, 2 fish oil caps, 1 multi and 2 Mpower from Rivalus

Meal 2: Handful of almonds, bowl of raspberries and 1 scoop of whey

Meal 3: 1 can of chunk tuna (or sometimes chicken), 3oz of cheddar, 2 cups of water

Meal 4: BBQ Salmon with brown rice (sometimes replaced with steak or lean ground beef)

Meal 5: Vegetable snack, cucumber with balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Meal 6:3/4 cup cottage cheese with a handful of almonds and a scoop of whey

On workout days I eat pretty much the same but I have a post workout shake that is 30g protein and 75g maltodextrin.

Goodluck, I just had nuggets, fries, and a big cup of ice cream…

Well done Syrus, keep it up. I ate a similar diet back in my training days in 1999-2000 and it really helped. I even slept better!

You definitely sleep better with a better diet.

All in your head…

I recently had a cheat day and ate tons of garbage, it was amazing.

At first I couldnt wait until cheat day and go all out. Eventually I got used to the diet and when cheat days came around they would make me feel awful. So my cheat days became cheat meals. When I made that change my metabolism took a hit, so I switched back to full cheat days again and boosted my metabolism throughout the week.

I am in a caloric deficit to lose weight and initially, I had lower energy levels. My brain felt fuzy at times. So I had to adjust carb levels appropriately and eventually found a good spot. Strength is up, weight down, speed up so things are going well.

When I my goal weight, which is either low 180s or when I visually think I’m low enough, I’ll increase cals by about 300 to start and see how that goes.

Just remember lighter weight doesn’t always equal faster speeds, I know from experience.