HEY! It's still me!
TL;DR: May 25th, 2014, starting // 1 year progress, April 30th 2015 // 21-months of training, March 20th 16 // Another pic
NSFW BUTT PICTURES BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I DO: Flexin' with some honeys // MY BUTT. TODAY.
Male, 27, 165lbs, ~12ish% bodyfat, 6 feet, vegetarian.
Previous Posts: 1 Year progress post
5 month progress post
First time moving a barbell around
I drink too much and my recovery sucks
I worked out in the forest for a while during the summer
My Instagram with the majority of my cool pictures/content: https://www.instagram.com/imchrisbrown/
I had a shit ton of information in my last progress post. This one won't be so good
What the hell is up with my life:
I feel this part is important because my life is hectic as shit. I trained consistently maybe 7 months out of the past 12 and haven't trained consistently in over a month. I'm going to lay out my life & travel and hopefully it'll give you some framework. It's going to sound like I'm bragging but I don't know how to explain my life and my training consistency (and lack of consistency) without talking about it.
Right after my 1 year progress post I went to Hawaii for a week then traveled all around Southern California and partied with friends. Tendonitis (golfers elbow) had come on pretty fiercly and I didn't train for a month.
After traveling & partying I moved back to Mammoth Lakes, CA and was able to train consistently all summer where I worked out in the forest and worked pretty hard for 2.5 months. I was laid off again and found a flight from LAX to Bangkok for $530. I had Credit Card points so the flight was freaking free. I spent 69 days in SE Asia. Thailand, India and Western Australia specifically. The flight was a little cheap to say no to, I wasn't working and I had $10k saved. I spent all my money. I got my scuba cert in Thailand, went to a full moon party, played with some elephants and made some great friends.
Met a girl at a yoga class in Thailand and she invited me to yoga school in India. I wanted to get my yoga cert anyways so I said sure and booked a flight to India. Spent a month in Rishikesh, India getting my 200hr Hatha Yoga certification for absurdly cheap. Hotel room, 3 meals a day & certification was like $1200 - way cheaper than getting it done in America. I also bungy jumped. 30 hours of Yoga a week was wayy too much zen.
My best friend lives in Perth, Australia so I went and visited him for 10 days and had a great time
Had a 12 hour layover in Singapore. That was cool
Returned to work in December and worked hard all winter. Shredded the mountain a fair bit too. I logged 50+, maybe 60+ days this winter. I was able to train consistently again and it was fantastic. I switched my programming to 5x5 and hypertrophy which i'll explain a bit later. I pulled 3 plates for a triple my 4th time deadlifting and pulled 4 plates my 10th time deadlifting with really awful form on a day that i decided to quit doing smolov jr for chinups due to tendonitis. (Side note: I stopped pulling heavy and dropped weight to work on form. Most recently I pulled 385 for 3x3. No spotter but form feels a lot better) Failed a 115lb chinup when testing 1RM for smolov jr but did manage to get 100lbs. No footage of the success.
It's currently May 25th and Im in Peru. In the past Several weeks I've snowboarded, driven trophy trucks in Vegas for my birthday, went to a country music festival, got food poisoning, officiated a wedding, went on a post-wedding party cruise flew to Florida to hang out in Key West for a few days and now I'm in to Peru to hike Macchu Picchu, visit lake titicaca, dip into chile, drink some wine and then fly down to Patagonia
This portion was not written out so I can brag about how cool my life is. My life is fun and I'm insanely blessed to be able to do what I do - I wrote it out in the scope of fitness though. My life is hectic and crazy and its near impossible for me to train consistently as a normal 9-5er due to the way I've structured my life. This is how I choose to live. I work incredibly hard for the 6 months that my restaurant is busy and try to make the most of my days. I just had my best winter ever and was able to save $15k in about 4 months. I make fitness a decently significant part of my life and I still seem to make gains. Tony Robbins says we make time for whats important to us. Training (& travel) is relatively important to me.
Programming since the BWF Recommended Routine:
I ran the RR program for ~13 months, definitely far longer than I should have. I felt like trash and wasn't able to recover between workouts doing 3x/week full body. I switched to a routine /@trinikiz suggested one day. I can't find it anymore but it was simple - and I like simple. I was traveling SE Asia (particularly Thailand at the time) and needed something shorter and simpler. It was a push/pull split where you selected a primary Push/Pull goal (Handstand Pushups, One Arm Pullups for example) and did 5x5 of Primary push/pull goal, 5x5 of secondary push/pull goal, 3x8 of an assistance exercise, some core work and some leg work if I wanted to. It was pretty simple and made sense.
I read up on a bunch of standard weightlifting and powerlifting programs and tried to develop a framework for what works into my brain. When I was in Mammoth for the winter I switched to a pretty standard Push/Pull/Legs 4 days split and saw some terrific gainz with the consitency. I would Squat my first and fourth session of the week and deadlift on either the second or third session - I liked the freedom that the programming gave me.
Programming was pretty simple. I was paying for access to a small gym within walking distance of my place. Working on advanced bodyweight movements wasn't ideal since there wasn't much space for me to do handstands or planche work so I decided to just progressively overload the shit out of basic movements; dips and pullups. Dips and pullups forever. Weighted dips and pullups forever. I hate dips and pullups.
I realized I was weak at the top of the pullup and wanted to work on that. I did 5x5 weighted pullups with a 3s pause at top. I believe I got up to +40lbs before I changed the programming. Added 2.5lbs a session/5lbs a week
I messsed around with some programming and tried running smolov Jr for chinups with a +100lb (271lb total) chinup and ran into tendonitis pretty quickly (and then i pulled 4 plates out of frustration). I stopped that, because tendoitis sucks, and went back to simple programming.
Push day 2x a week: 5x5 weighted dips, +5lbs a session. 2x8+20lbs dips for volume. 3x6 wall assisted headstand pushups. 5 sets max tuck planche. Squat or deadlift. My 5x5 weighted dips got to +80lbs at 170lbs bodyweight.
Pull day. 5x5 weighted pullups, +2.5lbs a sesion. 4-5 sets max tuck front lever. Squat or deadlift. Weighted pullups got to +45lbs or something, i can't quite remember, at 170lbs bodyweight.
I had read a bunch of stuff about how a bigger muscle has the potential to be a stronger muscle and since I had never run a proper hypertrophy mesocycle I decided that's what I wanted to do - besides, everyone want's bigger muscles. I switched to German Volume Training (GVT) for pullups/chinups and it sucked dick. I also added a hypertrophy day to my push work.
Push day 1: 5x5 weighted dips, +2.5lbs a week. Horizontal push & assistance work. Squat
Push day 2: 5x10 weighted dips +40lbs. Horizontal push & assistance work. Deadlift.
Pull day 2x/week: 10x10 pullups or chinups. 90s rest for the first 4 sets and then 2.5mins rest for sets 5-10. Volume work sucks and I would only get to 8 pullups on the later sets - i would have to rest-pause to get the final 2 reps in. Always got my 100 pullups or chinups for the day though. It sucked so much. Squat.
My squat got to +190lbs for 3x8. My squat sucks.
I'm at 189 bodyweight workouts in two years. So just under a hundred a year. Which is like two a week.
Yoga:
Funny, I become a certified yoga teacher and then go on my longest yoga hiatus ever. I got burnt the hell out from doing 30+ hours of physical practice a week in India. I wanted to be around friends, and drink, and lift heavy shit, and snowboard, and not pay for a gym that has yoga classes. I didn't want to do yoga so I didn't do yoga. Life's about living I guess. I wish I would have - I would've felt better, my body would've liked me more but that's not the way it worked out. A quick aside about yoga; yoga does not make you strong. I met the most bendiest flexiblest indian humans on the planet in India and they were not any form of strong. Yoga is a spiritual practice. Yoga can help with flexibility and stress management and spirituality. Yoga does very little for strength gains.
Supplements:
I take half a 200mg caffiene pill (so 100mg) prior to training and it's been fantastic for me. I take creatine and it's awesome. I just started taking beta alanine, zinc and magensium. Beta alanine to help with high rep/hypertrophy work, zinc & magnesium incase I was deficient to help with recovery/sleep and possible but unlikely low T-levels
Life moving forward:
I'm seriously fiending for some consistency and some ability to train consistently. I want to eat consistently and add mass while staying healthy. I plan on drinking significantly less this summer. I want to lift heavy shit and keep my recovery in check. I'm going to buy a new mattress so I sleep well. I'm motivated to get training back on track but I can't really do that until July when I return "home". I"ll be training sporadically in South America.
I had planned on saving a ton of money over the summer again and trying to pay for my parents to come to Italy with me in the Fall (oct/nov) so I could drink wine, eat Italian food and flirt with Italian women. I'm kind of tired of working super hard and spending all my money traveling though and am going to reassess the Italy plan since it interferes with my goals of saving money and training consistently for a while.
Closing thoughts:
Fitness creates a bigger mindset. When you get into the gym and lift heavy shit that you never would have thought of a year prior it sets up a positive feedback loop in your brain and then you just starting living life on a bigger scale. You start going for better, more attractive women, you create higher stakes bets with you friends, you work harder and earn more money, you respect yourself more, you travel further, you doubt yourself less, you laugh harder. It's just good. It's positive shit. People who don't train or who don't train consistently don't get it. When you train you get better at every single aspect of your life. When friends tell me they want to start working out I tell them it literally makes everything better and life easier. People like you more, men respect you, women touch you, you think a bit clearer and more positively because you're constantly pumping endorphins, serotonin and dopamine into your brain and they force you to view the world better.
I'm massively grateful to the community and the information i've learned from /r/bodyweightfitness and all the incredible contributors. The mod team at BWF is fantastic and I've made great friends in the chatroom and on the forums. I've learned some great stuff browing /r/fitness and /r/weightroom as well, especially the more indepth articles or videos on heavy lifts by world class athletes and coaches. I highly appreciate /@scarfo posts on www.strengththeory.com as they've helped shaped my mindset and programming about resistance training along with all the concept wednesday posts that consistently blow my mind. Also /@deborah123 has been a big help (along with the entire mod team here on bwf) and im excited for his book Overcoming Gravity 2.0
I'm around til tomorrow morning if you have questions about anything. Tomorrow I start a 5-day hike on the Salkanty trail to Macchu Picchu. Thanks for all that you, the community, has given to me. Sorry this post wasn't as good as my 1-year. I did a bit more life this past year. A LOT of people commented on my 1-year post and said I had motivated them to start training and they said theyd stick to it. Was that you? Have you stayed consistent? Lets see your progress posts! Hyped for my three year post!
TL;DR: May 25th, 2014, starting // 1 year progress, April 30th 2015 // 21-months of training, March 20th 16 // Another pic
NSFW BUTT PICTURES BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I DO: Flexin' with some honeys // MY BUTT. TODAY.
Male, 27, 165lbs, ~12ish% bodyfat, 6 feet, vegetarian.
Previous Posts: 1 Year progress post
5 month progress post
First time moving a barbell around
I drink too much and my recovery sucks
I worked out in the forest for a while during the summer
My Instagram with the majority of my cool pictures/content: https://www.instagram.com/imchrisbrown/
I had a shit ton of information in my last progress post. This one won't be so good
What the hell is up with my life:
I feel this part is important because my life is hectic as shit. I trained consistently maybe 7 months out of the past 12 and haven't trained consistently in over a month. I'm going to lay out my life & travel and hopefully it'll give you some framework. It's going to sound like I'm bragging but I don't know how to explain my life and my training consistency (and lack of consistency) without talking about it.
Right after my 1 year progress post I went to Hawaii for a week then traveled all around Southern California and partied with friends. Tendonitis (golfers elbow) had come on pretty fiercly and I didn't train for a month.
After traveling & partying I moved back to Mammoth Lakes, CA and was able to train consistently all summer where I worked out in the forest and worked pretty hard for 2.5 months. I was laid off again and found a flight from LAX to Bangkok for $530. I had Credit Card points so the flight was freaking free. I spent 69 days in SE Asia. Thailand, India and Western Australia specifically. The flight was a little cheap to say no to, I wasn't working and I had $10k saved. I spent all my money. I got my scuba cert in Thailand, went to a full moon party, played with some elephants and made some great friends.
Met a girl at a yoga class in Thailand and she invited me to yoga school in India. I wanted to get my yoga cert anyways so I said sure and booked a flight to India. Spent a month in Rishikesh, India getting my 200hr Hatha Yoga certification for absurdly cheap. Hotel room, 3 meals a day & certification was like $1200 - way cheaper than getting it done in America. I also bungy jumped. 30 hours of Yoga a week was wayy too much zen.
My best friend lives in Perth, Australia so I went and visited him for 10 days and had a great time
Had a 12 hour layover in Singapore. That was cool
Returned to work in December and worked hard all winter. Shredded the mountain a fair bit too. I logged 50+, maybe 60+ days this winter. I was able to train consistently again and it was fantastic. I switched my programming to 5x5 and hypertrophy which i'll explain a bit later. I pulled 3 plates for a triple my 4th time deadlifting and pulled 4 plates my 10th time deadlifting with really awful form on a day that i decided to quit doing smolov jr for chinups due to tendonitis. (Side note: I stopped pulling heavy and dropped weight to work on form. Most recently I pulled 385 for 3x3. No spotter but form feels a lot better) Failed a 115lb chinup when testing 1RM for smolov jr but did manage to get 100lbs. No footage of the success.
It's currently May 25th and Im in Peru. In the past Several weeks I've snowboarded, driven trophy trucks in Vegas for my birthday, went to a country music festival, got food poisoning, officiated a wedding, went on a post-wedding party cruise flew to Florida to hang out in Key West for a few days and now I'm in to Peru to hike Macchu Picchu, visit lake titicaca, dip into chile, drink some wine and then fly down to Patagonia
This portion was not written out so I can brag about how cool my life is. My life is fun and I'm insanely blessed to be able to do what I do - I wrote it out in the scope of fitness though. My life is hectic and crazy and its near impossible for me to train consistently as a normal 9-5er due to the way I've structured my life. This is how I choose to live. I work incredibly hard for the 6 months that my restaurant is busy and try to make the most of my days. I just had my best winter ever and was able to save $15k in about 4 months. I make fitness a decently significant part of my life and I still seem to make gains. Tony Robbins says we make time for whats important to us. Training (& travel) is relatively important to me.
Programming since the BWF Recommended Routine:
I ran the RR program for ~13 months, definitely far longer than I should have. I felt like trash and wasn't able to recover between workouts doing 3x/week full body. I switched to a routine /@trinikiz suggested one day. I can't find it anymore but it was simple - and I like simple. I was traveling SE Asia (particularly Thailand at the time) and needed something shorter and simpler. It was a push/pull split where you selected a primary Push/Pull goal (Handstand Pushups, One Arm Pullups for example) and did 5x5 of Primary push/pull goal, 5x5 of secondary push/pull goal, 3x8 of an assistance exercise, some core work and some leg work if I wanted to. It was pretty simple and made sense.
I read up on a bunch of standard weightlifting and powerlifting programs and tried to develop a framework for what works into my brain. When I was in Mammoth for the winter I switched to a pretty standard Push/Pull/Legs 4 days split and saw some terrific gainz with the consitency. I would Squat my first and fourth session of the week and deadlift on either the second or third session - I liked the freedom that the programming gave me.
Programming was pretty simple. I was paying for access to a small gym within walking distance of my place. Working on advanced bodyweight movements wasn't ideal since there wasn't much space for me to do handstands or planche work so I decided to just progressively overload the shit out of basic movements; dips and pullups. Dips and pullups forever. Weighted dips and pullups forever. I hate dips and pullups.
I realized I was weak at the top of the pullup and wanted to work on that. I did 5x5 weighted pullups with a 3s pause at top. I believe I got up to +40lbs before I changed the programming. Added 2.5lbs a session/5lbs a week
I messsed around with some programming and tried running smolov Jr for chinups with a +100lb (271lb total) chinup and ran into tendonitis pretty quickly (and then i pulled 4 plates out of frustration). I stopped that, because tendoitis sucks, and went back to simple programming.
Push day 2x a week: 5x5 weighted dips, +5lbs a session. 2x8+20lbs dips for volume. 3x6 wall assisted headstand pushups. 5 sets max tuck planche. Squat or deadlift. My 5x5 weighted dips got to +80lbs at 170lbs bodyweight.
Pull day. 5x5 weighted pullups, +2.5lbs a sesion. 4-5 sets max tuck front lever. Squat or deadlift. Weighted pullups got to +45lbs or something, i can't quite remember, at 170lbs bodyweight.
I had read a bunch of stuff about how a bigger muscle has the potential to be a stronger muscle and since I had never run a proper hypertrophy mesocycle I decided that's what I wanted to do - besides, everyone want's bigger muscles. I switched to German Volume Training (GVT) for pullups/chinups and it sucked dick. I also added a hypertrophy day to my push work.
Push day 1: 5x5 weighted dips, +2.5lbs a week. Horizontal push & assistance work. Squat
Push day 2: 5x10 weighted dips +40lbs. Horizontal push & assistance work. Deadlift.
Pull day 2x/week: 10x10 pullups or chinups. 90s rest for the first 4 sets and then 2.5mins rest for sets 5-10. Volume work sucks and I would only get to 8 pullups on the later sets - i would have to rest-pause to get the final 2 reps in. Always got my 100 pullups or chinups for the day though. It sucked so much. Squat.
My squat got to +190lbs for 3x8. My squat sucks.
I'm at 189 bodyweight workouts in two years. So just under a hundred a year. Which is like two a week.
Yoga:
Funny, I become a certified yoga teacher and then go on my longest yoga hiatus ever. I got burnt the hell out from doing 30+ hours of physical practice a week in India. I wanted to be around friends, and drink, and lift heavy shit, and snowboard, and not pay for a gym that has yoga classes. I didn't want to do yoga so I didn't do yoga. Life's about living I guess. I wish I would have - I would've felt better, my body would've liked me more but that's not the way it worked out. A quick aside about yoga; yoga does not make you strong. I met the most bendiest flexiblest indian humans on the planet in India and they were not any form of strong. Yoga is a spiritual practice. Yoga can help with flexibility and stress management and spirituality. Yoga does very little for strength gains.
Supplements:
I take half a 200mg caffiene pill (so 100mg) prior to training and it's been fantastic for me. I take creatine and it's awesome. I just started taking beta alanine, zinc and magensium. Beta alanine to help with high rep/hypertrophy work, zinc & magnesium incase I was deficient to help with recovery/sleep and possible but unlikely low T-levels
Life moving forward:
I'm seriously fiending for some consistency and some ability to train consistently. I want to eat consistently and add mass while staying healthy. I plan on drinking significantly less this summer. I want to lift heavy shit and keep my recovery in check. I'm going to buy a new mattress so I sleep well. I'm motivated to get training back on track but I can't really do that until July when I return "home". I"ll be training sporadically in South America.
I had planned on saving a ton of money over the summer again and trying to pay for my parents to come to Italy with me in the Fall (oct/nov) so I could drink wine, eat Italian food and flirt with Italian women. I'm kind of tired of working super hard and spending all my money traveling though and am going to reassess the Italy plan since it interferes with my goals of saving money and training consistently for a while.
Closing thoughts:
Fitness creates a bigger mindset. When you get into the gym and lift heavy shit that you never would have thought of a year prior it sets up a positive feedback loop in your brain and then you just starting living life on a bigger scale. You start going for better, more attractive women, you create higher stakes bets with you friends, you work harder and earn more money, you respect yourself more, you travel further, you doubt yourself less, you laugh harder. It's just good. It's positive shit. People who don't train or who don't train consistently don't get it. When you train you get better at every single aspect of your life. When friends tell me they want to start working out I tell them it literally makes everything better and life easier. People like you more, men respect you, women touch you, you think a bit clearer and more positively because you're constantly pumping endorphins, serotonin and dopamine into your brain and they force you to view the world better.
I'm massively grateful to the community and the information i've learned from /r/bodyweightfitness and all the incredible contributors. The mod team at BWF is fantastic and I've made great friends in the chatroom and on the forums. I've learned some great stuff browing /r/fitness and /r/weightroom as well, especially the more indepth articles or videos on heavy lifts by world class athletes and coaches. I highly appreciate /@scarfo posts on www.strengththeory.com as they've helped shaped my mindset and programming about resistance training along with all the concept wednesday posts that consistently blow my mind. Also /@deborah123 has been a big help (along with the entire mod team here on bwf) and im excited for his book Overcoming Gravity 2.0
I'm around til tomorrow morning if you have questions about anything. Tomorrow I start a 5-day hike on the Salkanty trail to Macchu Picchu. Thanks for all that you, the community, has given to me. Sorry this post wasn't as good as my 1-year. I did a bit more life this past year. A LOT of people commented on my 1-year post and said I had motivated them to start training and they said theyd stick to it. Was that you? Have you stayed consistent? Lets see your progress posts! Hyped for my three year post!
