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The Fitness Mistake That You Should Never Make

February 28, 2016Body, Mindadmin

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This is the very humbling and annoying story of how I gained close to no muscle in 11 months.

Now this wasn’t because I was lazy or was not working hard in the gym – I was working my socks off.

What on earth happened?

First, let me explain to you what my target was: I wanted to cut to below 10% bodyfat then lean bulk for as long as I could – sounds ideal right?

When I started in January I weighed about 73kg at 13% body fat, and I began to cut – woo!
I managed to successfully cut and drop quite a bit of weight until the end of February where I got down to 69kg at 11% bodyfat. abs

Now at this point I thought I was lean enough; I had abs, and I figured that now was a good time to make some lean muscle gains.
I calculated my the calories and protein I was meant to eat, and trained hard – here are where the problems began.

My obsession with staying lean whilst bulking got the better of me.

I was constantly obsessed with keeping my six-pack whilst bulking, so whenever I saw the littlest bit of fat, I overthought it and reduced my calories. After a few days I would be like ‘Oh my calories are too low!’ and would increase them again to try and gain muscle faster.

Even the slightest bit of belly, even from being bloated after dinner, resulted in me becoming so self-conscious and thinking that I was putting on too much fat.
This resulted in me going through many little cutting and bulking phases which gave me no progresss.

If you look at the ‘lifts’ section of my the spreadsheet I made here you will see my variation in weight.

You can see my dodgy phase from the end of February until the end of March where I kept bulking and cutting – this resulted in me gaining very little muscle mass as I was not in a consistent state for my body to thrive in.

Instead, I just kept on shocking my body and giving it no time to really settle down and be efficient in either losing fat or building muscle, which led to me building very little.

At the end of April I was a bit more decisive and stuck to my bulk a bit better, putting on about 3kg (6lbs) of weight over 6 months – this is around the time I benched 100kg!

However, I was still obsessed with getting abs and being lean so I decided to cut again – this is the worst mistake I have made in my fitness journey.

I should have continued bulking; I was really getting into my stride, and could have really made some amazing strength and size gains.
Instead, I decided to go on a long-ass cut all the way back to 68kg – because I wanted to be ripped… and I wasn’t even happy with the result.

Why wasn’t I happy? Because there is no point looking lean if you do not have the muscle to back it up; you just end up looking skinny – the exact opposite of what I wanted.

So yeah, that basically sums up my interesting 11-month journey.
I finally sorted myself over the past two months and have gone on a serious bulk; I intend to go on it until I say goodbye to my abs and to a point where I am satsified with my gains.

Any plus sides to my adventure?

HELL YES!

Somehow my lifts were going up wonderfully!
My bench went from 90kg to 105kg
My squat went from 104kg to 145kg
My Deadlift went from 160kg to 200kg

I would consider these pretty impressive strength gains considering the circumstances, and I believe that these increased strength gains will help me put on more mass during the bulk (I have no science to back this up – just a feeling)

Also, I have learnt that overthinking often does more harm than good.
It led to me developing an unhealthy relationship with fitness where I got obsessed with all the tiny details surrounding it – I would have actually done better and felt happier if I just focused on the wider picture and sticking to the fundamentals.

This is exactly why I created UNIGAINS, to help keep fitness simple and straightforward for you, to help you enjoy it and stop you from making the same mistakes I did.

Hope this helps!

-Mike

Want to ask me more questions? Email me at mike@unigains.com or @unigains on Twitter

Should I Eat Less On Rest Days?

February 28, 2016Body, Foodadmin

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This question has bothered me a lot.

I have never quite understood it, and have spent years pondering and changing my diet because I was preoccupying myself over this; I didn’t want to put on any more fat than I needed to and wanted to gain pure, lean muscle.

The idea behind this is that on workout days your body is utilizing more energy and your muscles are more fatigued, so you need to eat in a surplus to make sure that you muscles repair and grow.
However, on non-workout days you are not working out, so there is no need to eat extra calories, as presumably the extra calories will just turn into fat as you are not fatiguing your muscles.

A lot of us forget that our muscles grow whilst we are resting; if we think of it this way we should be eating more on our rest days… however some studies indicate that the rate of growth is highest straight after a workout – so what should we do?

Stop sweating the small stuff

To keep it simple, to gain weight and build muscle we need to maintain a surplus in calories on average over a period of time.

Unfortunately, we will never truly find the ‘perfect’ answer to the exact rate that your muscles are growing at particular times after a workout, so we can’t precisely measure exactly how many calories to consume to only gain lean muscle.

Also, is it really worth the effort?

The most important lesson I have taken away from fitness is that if you could get 90% of the results whilst only using 25% of your effort, is it really worth using that other 75% for that final 10%?

Furthermore, worrying about things like this normally does more harm than good mentally… in fact, the obsession to only gain lean muscle was the reason I gained no muscle for a whole year – I actually lost weight.

Please, just keep it simple. Do not overcomplicate things and just eat in a surplus each day – this way you can almost guarantee that you will be building muscle without letting fitness take complete control over your life.

-Mike

Got any questions about eating on rest days? Contact me at mike@unigains.com or @Unigains on Twitter

How To Not Get Injured

February 26, 2016Body, Mindadmin

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Yeah – I injured myself…

I did not workout at all over Christmas because I was lazy, didn’t have access to a gym (no car), and was too busy eating food.

When I got back into things, I really wanted to get stronger and bigger – fast. Therefore I decided to hop on to my UNIGAINS program and really go for it to make some Unigains!

All was going well at the start; I was getting my strength back, and was feeling strong and powerful – Good! However, me being me, I decided to add even more volume to my program, not take any days off, and had a few days of poor sleep (5-6 hours).. not a good mix.

This toxic mix led to me getting a little injury in the chest, meaning that I will not be able to bench press for at least a week.

It was stupid by me, but I know a lot of you out there may be facing the same issue as me – you just want to build muscle fast! However we keep on forgetting that more volume, more intensity, and more frequency does not necessarily mean more size; it’s all about finding the perfect mix that your body can handle.

The way I see it, you need to find your limit of how much you can push your muscles in a workout which will allow you to recover for your next session.

If I was training chest once a week, I could always go until failure as I would definitely recover by next chest session. However for my program, I train chest 2 to 3 times a week, and so going till maximum fatigue would not let me recover in time, which would not be too smart as my muscles will not be recovering or growing.

The reason my program works each muscles 2 to 3 times a week is because I have found this to be the optimal frequency for training muscle groups when the correct volume is chosen. For me, doing 3 chest sessions of 6 sets each is far more productive than 1 session of 18 sets, and most likely is for you too.

Please learn from my mistakes (that’s what I’m here for); when I felt like I was not coming back to the gym as strong I should have dialled back the volume a little, in order to fully recover for my next session, instead of trying to plough through it. In my case, I could have done with taking more a day off, as that would have given me the necessary break from a pretty hectic week.

If you are on a program and you are finding that on average you feel that you are getting more mentally fatigued over 10 days or so, you may need to consider getting more sleep,or reducing the sets performed in order to allow your muscles to fully recover for when you work them again.

The same applies to my program; one size does not fit all! Your friend could be fine going 6 days a week, but you may only be able to handle 4 – that’s fine! You will be consistently making progress as long as you are pushing yourself whilst being able to recover well for your next workout (make sure your diet is on point too).

Remember that muscle is built outside the gym, and sometimes less is more!

-Mike

Got any questions? Comments? Email me at mike@unigains.com or @Unigains

How to start your fitness journey

February 26, 2016Mindadmin

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When it comes to fitness, people seem to have an all or nothing approach; either you go to the gym excessively or you don’t go at all, or you either eat amazingly healthy each day or you eat shit…

Where did this come from?

If you want to get in to shape you don’t have to dedicate your whole life and soul to it… all you have to do is something which will make you fitter and healthier than you were before.

Here is a typical situation:

Joe Bloggs is quite an unhealthy, overweight guy who would love to be able to go out and run for an hour without collapsing half-way through.
However, Joe Bloggs is extremely busy; he works a 40 hour week and has 3 wonderful kids who he has to look after.
Joe thinks that because he doesn’t have the time to run 5 days a week there is no point trying at all, and so chucks that idea of getting into shape to the back of his mind and continues being unhappy with his body.

But..

On a Wednesday evening Joe drops his kids off at karate, and normally just sits for an hour in the seating area watching Sky Go.
Now, in this time Joe could go for a 5 minute walk (episodes are normally 40 minutes long anyway), but Joe still doesn’t do this because he thinks it’s pointless; 5 minutes is not enough to make a difference, right?

NO.

When it comes to fitness, every little helps. 5 minutes of walking each week is 3 hours of exercise a year more than you would have done previously.
This may still seem miniscule, but when this accumulates over a few years it can make a huge difference.

Fitness is all about long-term consistency; why go all out and fail when you can just take it slow and make steady and consistent progression?

Another important point is the change in your mentality; making a conscious effort to go out and do some exercise does wonders to your mindset.
When Joe goes out for this walk, he feels good because he did something that will make him healthier. As a result he subconsciously becomes a bit more aware of what he eats, and puts slightly less on his plate. After a few weeks he notices that when he is playing with his kids he does not get tired as quickly, and work collegues are starting to give him complements!

Joe is now embracing his walks; he actaully wants to go on them – heck sometimes he actaully feels like running!

This is the sort of progression that can happen to you. Your body will thank you for every good thing you do to it; I’m not saying this is going to make you look like Thor, but it will definitely lead to you being that little bit prouder about yourself.

So what are you waiting for!? The park is just round the corner!

-Mike