First Cycle

M

Myrmidon13

New Member
What's up All,
Been on the site for awhile now, just been a little shy to post. I've been reading posts so I can enlighten myself about HST and my first cycle. Here's a little info about myself. I've been seriously training for about 4 years now. I am 23years old, weight around 240lbs, and I am 6'4. I've used somewhat of a max-ot training style for the past year but I think it is time to try something new. So here we go. I'm looking for any input or critique from anyone because I am trying to really focus on getting in better shape.

Here's a list of the exercises I will be doing for my first cycle.
Squats
Sitting Calf Raises
DB Bench Press
Bent Over DB Rows
Tri Pushdowns
Seated Shoulder Press
Shrugs
Decline Weight Crunch
EZ Bar Curls

I will be using the traditional cycle for my first go around. 15's 10's,5's and 5's again since I don't have a training partner for negs. I plan on using this cycle for cutting.
Training will be done on Mon, Wed, Fri with cardio(30 to 45mins) on offdays. I've already found my 15's , 10's and 5's so at this point in time I am in SD. Looking forward to hearing all your comments/critiques. Thanks for looking.

PS During SD is it okay to do cardio everyday for around 30 minutes or should I just stick to offdays? Also, I will be training at night for the most part(with the exception of friday because my gym closes early) , this shoudln't be a problem should it?
 
I would stick to just around 20mins cardio on off-days if you're trying to put muscle on, you don't want to deplete your fuel stores too much with long-duration cardio. Not sure what effect it has during SD, but shouldn't do any harm as long as its not high-intensity and you're eating properly.

Whatever time of day you train, make sure you've got protein and energy in your system, so take a protein shake before gym, and plenty of carbs during the day so you have energy to lift.

Exercises look good to me, but others may offer advice. Since you've been lifting for 4 years you obviously know what you like to do.
 
you have horizontal pulls but you dont have vertical drop the shrugs and add pulldowns or chins,one is for thickness the other width.
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Thanks for the replies guys.

Peak_Power, I bumped up the cardio to around 30-45 because I want to actually lose weight. I understand I don't want to overdue it, but this spare tire has got to go. Diet is usually carb cycling. During the week, it's low carb and weekend I usually carb up with Low Gi's. I'll probably stick with oats and skim milk with some chicken breast or protein shake. Do you think I should change some of the excercises or they okay. I know what I like to do, but I have been sort of staggering in gains lately so I am willing to try anything new. Thanks for the input.

Faz, Will do. I will drop the shrugs and add in pulldowns. Only reason I didn't add in chins was the fact that I have to use assisted weight and didn't think that would be much help with what I want to accomplish. If you think otherwise please advise so. Thanks for the input.
 
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(Myrmidon13 @ Sep. 11 2006,20:39)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I bumped up the cardio to around 30-45 because I want to actually lose weight.</div>
You should know that its almost impossible to put on muscle and lose bodyfat at the same time. Doing one will be detrimental to the other. Its better off just trying to keep one the same, while improving the other (ie. trying to maintain muscle while losing fat, or trying to keep fat the same while gaining muscle). You're going to have to pick one and focus on that if you want decent results for all the hard work you're doing.
 
Keep a daily journal of calories if you don't already do it and don't try to lose more than a pound a week. I'd also drop all the isolation movements and focus on compounds. During a cut you don't want to lose any muscle and the higher loads will be more effective than the light loads used on isolations.

Forget the shrugs and do power cleans or clean pulls.
 
Faz, Will do. I will drop the shrugs and add in pulldowns. Only reason I didn't add in chins was the fact that I have to use assisted weight and didn't think that would be much help with what I want to accomplish. If you think otherwise please advise so. Thanks for the input.

do pulldowns in the15s,10s and try doing chins in the 5s
good luck
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I hate to be the contrarian here but I ALWAYS include some type of shrugs in my workouts. Nothing makes a person stand out better than a well developed set of traps, with or without a shirt on.

I do various types of shrugs including:

DB shrugs
Trap Bar shrugs
Behind back smith shrugs (my favorite)
Shrugs at the top of each deadlift movement

For deadlifts, I only do them with a trap bar as it puts too much strain on my lower back if I use a barbell. That makes it easy to incorporate the shrug movement. I also don't do front BB shrugs for the same reason.

You are already a pretty big guy. With well developed traps you will look huge.


******* &lt; O&amp;G crawling back under his rock
 
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(Old and Grey @ Sep. 12 2006,10:24)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I hate to be the contrarian here but I ALWAYS include some type of shrugs in my workouts. Nothing makes a person stand out better than a well developed set of traps, with or without a shirt on.</div>
I have to agree with O&amp;G.  My traps grow quickly and fairly easily, so I quit working them directly a looong time ago (25 years or so).    Well, I recently added them back, just one set, HST style with progressions, and they have come back again.

Man, I had forgotten how rugged they make you look.  If you grow them TOO big, sure you might look funny, but then just stop working them and let them settle down to size.  However, if you get them just right, they absolutely will distinguish your physique from a guy who just &quot;works out&quot;.

The way I see it, there are two basic kinds of male physiques out there.  There are the pretty boy physiques, and there are the caveman physiques.  Mine naturally tends towards the latter, so I have worked to make it &quot;prettier&quot; in the past.   But I tell you, growing these traps has made me realize what a mistake it was to ignore the POWERFUL looking aspects of your physique.  Traps, shoulders, triceps, make a man, look like a MAN (dont forget legs though!).

Ok, so I  DONT want to look like Captain Caveman, but I dont wan't to look like a sissy strong boy who just does bench presses and bicep curls. (No offense to any sissy strong boys on the forum either, I know a few &quot;sissy&quot; boys who look like they could crush a VW.)
 
Okay I have changed a few excercises and would like to get your guys opinion on them.

Squats
Straight Leg Calf Raises
DB Bench Press
Dips
Lat Pulldowns (15s portion)
Chins (10s and 5s)
Standing Shoulder Press
Ez Bar Curls/Straight Bar Curls
Shrugs
Skullcrushers/Close Grip Bench Press(Skulls run into CG for one set)
Weighted Decline Crunches

Peak_Power
Thanks for reminding me bud. It's easy to forget that at times. This cycle will be geared towards just cutting bodyfat down. I know it's damn near impossible to gain muscle and lose at the same time, so I will sacrifice some muscle while not much to cut down bf.

Faz. I will give that a try and see how it works out for my first HST cycle. I just didn't think it would do any good if I was using assisted weight.

Liegelord
Already there bud. I've used fitday for a couple of years now. I've done the HBE and all that good stuff to find out what my cals should be but I think thay they are too high for a cut IMO. I'll post diet in the appropriate sectoin.

O&amp;G $ Trad
I beleive in shrug excercises as well. I've been doing them for ahwile, just thought maybe I would try something different this time. Gains are staggering at the moment. I have incorporated htem though in my revises excercises list. Please critique.
Thanks Fellas. Awesome Board!
 
In general, it looks good to me although you seem to have a very high emphasis on arms. I would change the DB bench press to an incline DB bench press though.
 
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(liegelord @ Sep. 12 2006,00:49)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Keep a daily journal of calories if you don't already do it and don't try to lose more than a pound a week. I'd also drop all the isolation movements and focus on compounds. During a cut you don't want to lose any muscle and the higher loads will be more effective than the light loads used on isolations.

Forget the shrugs and do power cleans or clean pulls.</div>
I agree with liegelord. Yeah, traps are great and if you need shrugs for them to grow, then go ahead and do shrugs... but you are cutting, so obviously you can't expect growth at this time.
If you are cutting, what you should be doing is concentrating on maintaining your strength in the core, compound movements. Don't be worrying about what works for such and such bodypart, back thickness, etc. You don't grow on a cut, so who cares about that stuff?

If you can maintain your strength in squats, deads, rows, bench and overhead press, then chances are your muscle loss will be minimal during your cut.
 
What Tot said. Also, for next time around: if you are going to do a cutting cycle there's no need to SD first.
 
As most of you know, I am not a big believer in bulking and then cutting so I don't know a lot about what &quot;cutting&quot; programs should or should not be. However, I find it difficult to understand why a cutting routine should be different than any other routine. Muscles that are not worked cannot grow and may possibly atrophy, especially if you are on a catabolic diet. Why encourage a further dimunition in size when catabolically dieting by altering routines and omitting certain muscles that you would normally train?    
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I don't think anyone is suggesting leaving anything out. For example, someone mentioned shrugs. I suggested doing power cleans or clean pulls instead because not only will more than just the traps be hit, more weight can be used. The higher loads are better at maintaining muscle mass.
 
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(Old and Grey @ Sep. 13 2006,20:18)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">As most of you know, I am not a big believer in bulking and then cutting so I don't know a lot about what &quot;cutting&quot; programs should or should not be. However, I find it difficult to understand why a cutting routine should be different than any other routine. Muscles that are not worked cannot grow and may possibly atrophy, especially if you are on a catabolic diet. Why encourage a further dimunition in size when catabolically dieting by altering routines and omitting certain muscles that you would normally train?    
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og the reason tot recomended those exercises is they basicly work every muscle anyway,doing to many exercises on a cut would be overkill,
you are on a deficet so you will lose fat anyway all you need to do is hold onto the muscle you already have doing to many exercises on a deficet is catabolic.
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(faz @ Sep. 14 2006,04:18)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"><div>
(Old and Grey @ Sep. 13 2006,20:18)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">As most of you know, I am not a big believer in bulking and then cutting so I don't know a lot about what &quot;cutting&quot; programs should or should not be. However, I find it difficult to understand why a cutting routine should be different than any other routine. Muscles that are not worked cannot grow and may possibly atrophy, especially if you are on a catabolic diet. Why encourage a further dimunition in size when catabolically dieting by altering routines and omitting certain muscles that you would normally train?    
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og the reason tot recomended those exercises is they basicly work every muscle anyway,doing to many exercises on a cut would be overkill,
you are on a deficet so you will lose fat anyway all you need to do is hold onto the muscle you already have doing to many exercises on a deficet is catabolic.
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I understand what you are saying, its just that I don't understand the logic. If those exercises hit all the muscles, there should never be a reason to do any others. If that is what you mean, I can understand that although I may not agree with it. However, to reduce a &quot;normal&quot; workout that would typically include those exercises to a workout that excludes them just because you are cutting is where I get lost.

liegelord, I think what you are suggesting is fine although I prefer a more direct stimulation of the traps doing an exercise that allows me to use much more weight. It's merely a matter of personal preference.
 
The main thing about cutting is that you want to conserve energy. If you want to burn calories, do cardio. The upper traps tend to retain their size/strength much more easily than some other muscles, so what stimulation you get from deads, rows, etc should be sufficient, since it will be getting hit multiple times by all of those. I will admit that with shrugs, you can typically use a lot of weight, so if you find that your upper traps lose size when you cut, then you may want to add them back in, but I don't think it will be necessary for most people.

When I cut, I don't think in terms of growth, what hits which muscle, etc. I just worry about strength and maintaining strength. It seems to be a successful strategy for me so far, and several people whom I have talked to have had similar experiences. Generally, if you can maintain strength in deadlifts and rows, you probably haven't lost anything substantial in your back at all, and if you are losing considerably strength, then that is usually a sign that you should rethink your diet, not your training.
I recommend training with weights 2 to 3 times a week, watching volume and cutting back volume if you find you are getting burned out, then filling in 2 or 3 other days with cardio. That seems to be a wicked combo for cutting the fat, in my experience.
 
i dont actually agree with doing any cardio on a cut.
and i know a couple of natural top bbrs who dont touch it on a contest diet.
basicly you are on a calorific deficet so you will lose fat anyway, so doing cardio which will burn more cals and could end up catabolic.
you are not going to gain muscle so just do the basic lifts,to maintane what you have.
so cut cals=lose fat
lift weight= retain muscle
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