I've just finished my third round of HST. I did a cutting cycle this time - after the holidays, my trousers were a little too tight around my waist for comfort.
I did a six-week cycle, starting with the 10s. For the negatives, I estimated my "zero-rep maximum" (i.e. just a little higher than I could lift even once) and did a standard progression of weights over two weeks. This turned out that the first week of "negatives" was the same weights as the 2nd week of fives, so I basically did the second week of fives again (three sets of five) and then a final week with heavier weights, using drop sets or negatives where necessary to do two sets of five.
Routine:
Slight-incline dumbbell bench press
Dumbbell bent-over rows
Dumbbell shoulder press
Assisted Chins \
Assisted Dips As a superset
Assisted Pull-ups /
Crunches
Squats
Nutrition:
I aimed to eat 500kcal below maintenance, but didn't stress too much about it - if I was hungry, I'd eat something. However, I can definitely say that the weeks where I was strict about it were significantly more successful that the ones I was a bit laissez-faire about watching what I ate. I made sure to eat 1g/lb/day protein. Supplements-wise, I used protein powder (MetRx Protein Plus, which I was quite impressed with. I should have bought more when it was on special), creatine, flaxseed oil, multivitamins (which I'd use on a bulking cycle too) and then added CLA and ephedrine+caffeine.
Results:
<span style='font-family:Courier'> 7 Jan 17 Feb Diff.
Weight lb 184 178 -6
BF % 20.7 16 -4.7 <-- !!
LMM lb 146 149.5 +3.5
BFM lb 38 28.5 -9.5 <-- !!
Waist " 33 31.1 -1.9
Navel " 36.5 34 -2.5 <-- !!
Hips " 37.4 36.1 -1.3
Neck " 14.5 14.75 +0.25
Chest " 40 40.5 +0.5
Nipple " 37.7 38 +0.3
Bicep " 12.6 12.9 +0.3
Forearm " 11.5 11.7 +0.2
Thigh " 23.7 24 +0.3
Calf " 15.3 15.5 +0.2</span>
I'm quite pleased with the results. I hadn't planned to gain any muscle-mass, so that was a total bonus.
Next:
The same again, except I'll be replacing the dumbbell rows with barbell rows... because I ran out of dumbbells heavy enough. Woohoo! I'll also be throwing deadlifts in there.
Chris.