FWC#01, Part 3: Rapid Muscle Growth, Day 15 of 28

This update for this particular Four Week Challenge may end up being the most crucial of all five final parts, even though it’s only the third post.

The reason is because I hit a psychological roadblock during Friday’s workout that caused me to re-evaluate the entire challenge.

I’m going to give you the story, then provide the overview and analysis at the end. I’m going into detail with my particular experience the past few days. If you’re not used to working out frequently like this, or even if you are, I would imagine that you’ll encounter the same issue that I have.

My response may not be correct, but the process of it and the story leading up to it will hopefully provide you with additional insight should you run into the same situation.

Finally, you deserve a straightforward response and as much information about my experience as possible. This is why you and I are both here.

And if you really want to skip the story and get right down to the insight, go to the section heading that says “Results So Far”.

What Happened on Friday: 3 Key Mistakes

My first mistake on Friday was that I went rock climbing right before working out. Now, I had done this in the first week as well, without a problem, so I assumed that there would be no problem here. I was, in fact, wrong. By the time I got to working out, I was so exhausted from climbing that I lost almost all motivation to work out.

The second mistake on Friday was that I allowed myself to get psyched out. I dragged my feet to actually work out, let my body slow down after climbing, and therefore once I started working out, I wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped and lost further motivation.

My third mistake was that I focused more on the amount I was lifting, rather than the quality of the actual exercise. I got so stoked and wrapped up in the idea/goal of doubling my lifting weight in less than two weeks, that I lost focus and pushed too hard. I did have pain in my shoulders in the workout Friday, and it continues to persist today.

Fourth: I stopped my workout just over halfway through.

My Re-Evaluation of the Challenge

At this point, I became incredibly disenchanted by the experience and decided to spend some time re-evaluating it, which I did throughout the entire weekend.

I had set an interim goal of doubling my weight on that Friday. I missed it. Failure response ensued.
I began experiencing pain in my shoulders.
The consistency and lack of variety with the diet was beginning to wear thin on me.
I wasn’t experiencing the one pound a day increase that I had seen several reports about.
I have been feeling considerably more tired and have slept a lot more than usual. I attribute this to an adjustment away from caffeine combined with a significant reduction of carbohydrate intake.
I wasn’t seeing a measurable decrease in body fat percentage, while I was able to see it visually.
The inconsistency of body fat percentage measurement became annoying in its apparent inaccuracy. I also became unsure of my possibly inconsistent tape-measurement practices. This being the case, I had already seen ways to improve the project, making me want to set those in motion immediately.
Due to the long rest periods and schedule, it was keeping me from progressing in rock climbing.

All of this added up and culminated in a sustained moment of frustration and questioning.

On Saturday, having figured out why I felt like possibly giving up, I told myself to stop being so rash about the situation and start figuring out what I was going to do about it.

Stop the challenge altogether.
Modify the program for the last two weeks based on my learnings.
Continue with the challenge as-is.
Continue with the challenge and re-evaluate my beliefs.

Option #1 was a knee-jerk reaction, but was certainly a choice. I didn’t want to stop, but I knew something had to change.

Option #2 was valid, but because of my goal to stick with this as-is for four weeks was my #1 goal, I wanted to continue exploring other options.

Option #3 was apparent, but what unsettled me about it was that I knew my head wouldn’t be in it if something didn’t change about it. If my head wasn’t in it, I would be wasting my time and yours, and certainly wouldn’t get the results I was looking for.

Option #4 is what I ultimately settled on. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make changes to it while preserving the integrity of the experiment, but knew that it could be done.

Changes I’ve Made to the Challenge

Now, the challenge isn’t actually changing, the way that I’m looking at it, is.

Each of the reasons that I felt unsure about moving forward boiled down to three core areas: Rock climbing, nutrition, and physical strength goals.

I didn’t want to stop climbing, and still wanted to improve it. This obviously conflicted.
The diet was keeping me away from my daily dose of Starbucks, contributing to me losing energy through the day, and became quite boring. For someone who’s so fascinated by trying new foods that they gained 10 pounds in 10 days on a trip to Europe, this is a considerable concern.
Not only was I not seeing the physical gains I wanted to see, but I also missed that interim goal I had set.

It was time to reframe and reprioritize.

At the realistic advice of a friend, I decided to significantly reduce my focus on climbing. If I feel like I can climb and it won’t interfere with the challenge, fine. However, I only see that possibly being the case on Mondays. That said, I will likely not be climbing for the next two weeks. In the meantime, I have decided that I will spend the next two weeks studying climbing videos and designing a climbing-specific workout and setting up my rock climbing wall to assist with it.

With regards to the consistency of the diet, I can stick to it for another two weeks, though I will be trying to find additional ways to vary it. On Saturdays, I’m going to go even more nuts with my diet. I don’t know exactly what that means yet, but I said it.

Finally, I decided I need to look at my workouts differently. I got arrogant with my gains the first week and a half, and began placing unrealistic expectations on the second half of it. I also lost focus of my goals and my purpose: to reduce my body fat and gain muscle mass. I’m doing that, and can be doing it better by being less anxious.

What I mean by “being less anxious” is not in relation to my end goals, but my intermediate goals and immediate results. By wanting to double my lift weight after 12 days, my focus was switched to lifting a lot of weight. My exercises got sloppy, and I began to lack confidence in my progress.

Moving forward, I’m going to drop the weight a bit and instead of aiming for 7-10 reps, I’m going to focus on 12-15 reps. I found that the sets I did with 12-15 reps felt like a LOT better workout than 7-10 reps. I’ll also be taking out the bench press exercises and replacing them with a regular bench press. In addition, I may make some other slight modifications. In the end, I’ll document the changes here for you.

Results So Far

There isn’t any major progress to update here, but I should note the following:

Weight on Monday am was 158.5. Again, with inconsistent body fat measurement, I can’t say with 100% accuracy if that’s an increase in muscle mass and by how much. Visually, I look stronger. I can tell that my chest, shoulders and arms are definitely bigger and more toned. Thus, I would imagine that despite an initial body weight of 159.5, that a significant amount (5-7 pounds?) of body fat has been lost and has been replaced with one pound less of muscle.

I ended up gaining 3/4″-1″ in my upper arm from two weeks ago to today.

I’ve gained almost three inches around my shoulders. I actually thought I might have to cut off a small shirt I put on in the middle of my Friday workout because I almost wasn’t able to get it off. It was awkward.

Insights/Advice for Others Considering this Challenge

Stick to the plan, and stick through it. Despite missing a small goal, the reality is that the “setback” I faced was mostly due letting my expectations get out of hand. Keep your expectations leveled. Despite not getting the maximum results, I can definitely say the results are tremendous thus far and far greater than anything else I’ve tried.

Focus on a weight amount that will let you get 12-15 good, solid, consistent reps. You’ll get much more of a workout than seeing how much you can lift and limiting yourself to 7-10 reps. The only thing this probably doesn’t apply to is abs. I just don’t have a solution for that yet.

If you’re going on this plan to help you with another area of physical activity (like I’m doing this to help with my rock climbing), you may have to put it on hiatus. In this case, I really do believe that after I’m done with this regimen, that I’ll be better shape to perform at a higher level, faster, with climbing. It’ll just have to wait a bit.

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