I've been meaning to make this post for over a week. Just kept getting busy and puttingit off. I’m currently in a cruise/health phase. During this time, I am focusing on maintaining my current muscle while hopefully adding a little bit and getting my blood markers in range. As you can see from the pic, a couple things are out of range but not by much. I’ve had better blood work and I’ve had worse blood work. My coach doesn’t find anything concerning and neither do I. However just me being me I want to try to improve it some so I’m locking in on the nutrition aspect and being more consistent with some of my health supplements. I’m going to do this for 4 weeks then get things retested. I'm also actively cutting calories, I have a beach trip in a couple months and I want to be leaner. So this all goes hand in hand, get blood markers better then continue till I'm beach ready.

Why are you cruising?

Quick update, not much new. I'm still in a health phase while I also cut down on some body fat in preparation for a family beach vacation. Then once I return we'll begin a blast cycle and push for some muscle gain. Pretty much everything is staying the same except I've upped my Citrus bergamot supplementation from 500 mg twice a day to 1000 mg three times a day. I also switched to test E. On my last week before a deload and nutrition has been on point recently.

Mobster wrote: ↑Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:37 am Why are you cruising?

Cruising is what most of my year is. I don't make any money from this so I have to keep an eye on my health.

The last few weeks have been just about sticking to the plan even when life is kicking your butt. We've dealt with lots of unplanned car repairs and little fires to put out here and there. Sometimes life stress makes bodybuilding harder to focus on and at other times it makes it important to get away from those stresses. Just take the frustration out by lifting heavy things and hitting PR’s. Sometimes seeing more ab definition gives you some satisfaction while the outside world is tough. However, that’s what bodybuilding does, it gives you the ability to endure pain and sacrifice. I know in most situations my willpower is my strongest asset and I will prevail.

I’m currently in a cutting phase to lose some body fat for a vacation and so that when I get back, I can hopefully jump into a bulking cycle. I’ve been diligently doing my cardio and being on point with nutrition more than I have. I started the cut 3 weeks ago at 236 and last Saturday I was at 228. That was my original goal and now that I’ve achieved it, I reassessed it and now my goal is 225. Honestly the weight number is not the true goal, once I get to the right leanness, I’ll know it. Vacation is only 3 weeks away so I’m just going to keep my nose down. Now I have to reach out to the great people at PSL and see if they are willing to keep this log going. I have greatly enjoyed my time representing them and their awesome products, I hope to keep doing it. Great vendor with quality stuff, maybe if I have better genetics, I’d already be a pro.

I have more bloodwork for your viewing today. I’ve been doing a cut to get ready for a beach vacation and I upped my citrus bergamot to see if I could get my lipid panel a little better before my next blast cycle. I’m happy to say everything came back in the good range except for HDL. I do think if I would have focused a little bit more intently on bringing it up I could, but I just wanted to see what it would look like with consistent citrus bergamot use and a leaner physique.


I am also currently speaking with PSL about products for my next blast cycle. I’m currently ironing that out then as soon as I get confirmation, I’ll discuss that. Right now, I’m just looking forward to relaxing and taking a break. I already discussed with my coach that I’m stopping all supplements for a week, I’ll get some cardio and lifting but bodybuilding will be in the backseat for a week. I am planning on counting this as a deload then coming back getting in the groove then adding in the gear for a push into the holidays and pack on some size.

Been a little absent the last few weeks. I had a weeklong vacation followed by mold removal in my house and having to replace a furnace. Needless to say, the last few weeks have been stressful. I’ve still managed to get to the gym at least 3 times, some weeks I don’t get the 4th. Nutrition is where I need to get back to usual. Not that I have been eating like crap, there have been a few more off plan meals. However, the biggest issue has probably been not eating enough. So, I have work to do there. Training wise I’m still progressing, and the weights are going up.
 
Also, over this time I got a touchdown from the best vendor ever, PSL. Next week I am starting a new blast cycle after 20+ weeks of cruising. Originally there was a mistake, and I didn’t get all of the gear I originally needed for the next cycle. As expected PSL got it fixed rather quickly and now I have a little gear porn below. The cycle plan is to use Test, EQ, DHB & Masteron. The test will be a little heavier than normal and this blast is higher in total dosage than the last. Total mg per week is close to the top of what I have done before but I’m excited to see what happens. Currently sitting at 235 in the leanest condition I’ve ever been at this weight. Ideally, I would like to get to 245 with the same conditioning, then I would start to feel like I might be ready to step on stage again. Most people, myself included, overestimate how much fat they actually have to lose so I’d rather overshoot the top of the heavy weights. Then, if necessary, I do Supers or cut more water to make weight. Being truly peeled is still one thing I am trying to achieve. Each show I get better but having more muscle will help me get there. Excited to show you the next phase in my journey and hopefully have some eye-popping update pics in the weeks to come.

I am currently in the 3rd week of my current blast. It's still very early on but there have been some small changes. The first 2 weeks my nutrition was off, so the weight jumped up from 230 to 236, however I am hoping to have a smaller change or stay around the same this week. Visually things look the same so it's probably just water and glycogen.

I did notice increased strength during the middle of the 2nd week. The way the timing fell was that my first week of the blast was on my 5th week of my training cycle. Week 5 & 6 of the training cycle is my highest volume weeks, that means there are 3 work sets at 100% intensity for every exercise. These are the weeks I judge whether or not I can move up in weight for the next training cycle. Week 5 (week 1 of blast) everything continued as normal with grinding on certain weights with some being at the point, I can increase them. Week 6 of training (week 2 of blast) every exercise was at a point where I can increase weight. This is rare for me because by week 6 I’m pretty beat up and ready for a deload when on trt. That to me was an indicator of things kicking in.

Throughout my history of using gear I have never had large swings of strength when on or off. Which I believe to be good because it would be mentally challenging to lose strength when off on trt. I’ve noticed whatever strength or weights I increase during my blast usually sticks around well on trt. I view it as solidifying my gains when levels are in a normal range.
The last couple months have been rough from life throwing us curveballs, but we have seemingly gotten through those so looking forward to having lots of progress as life hopefully calms down and I can really focus on BB. Huge shout out to PSL, a great vendor. As usual I will get bloods done at some point to show where my test levels are. Currently the plan is 4 days of morning cardio 30 mins each, 4 days of training and gear is 1,000 mg Test (weekly), 400 mg DHB (weekly), 400 mg Masteron (weekly) & 500 mg NPP (weekly). Now we are doing something different with this cycle. I just had some NPP left over so we are starting out using it but once it runs out I will be adding in EQ instead of NPP. Should be interesting to see if there is a noticeable change. 

My apologies for the lack of logging the last few weeks. Life has been very busy around the holidays and work. It is an excuse, so I just need to be better about logging.
 
The last few weeks my weight has been pretty stable in the 233 to 235 range. This has been due to the busyness I referenced, some weeks I do good getting my meals in and some weeks I get busy/stressed and I am unable to get all the calories in. Just today I took my meal plan and condensed it down to remove 1 meal while spreading out the calories. My hope is that I can still get in my consistent 5-6 meals a day and with the meals being a bit larger I can get the calories in to get the weight up. I am the leanest I have ever been at this weight which is a goal by itself. Now though I would like to get up to 245 with this same leanness.

Currently I am using 250 test e x 4, 100 DHB x 4, 100 masteron x 4 & 125 EQ x 4. I mentioned before I only had a small amount of NPP, so once that ran out I switched to EQ. This has been nice because the volume of oil I'm using has gone done. Now I just need 1 syringe per shot instead of 2 injections, 4 times a week. Liking this cycle so far and plan on getting blood work in the next 4-6 weeks which I'll share.

Training has been consistently following the strategy of my coach. Now I have switched out exercises that either plateaued or I felt weren’t hitting the areas I needed. Strength has definitely gone up on cycle. Normally my strength stays pretty linear but this cycle its different. I could speculate its the DHB or it could be a synergistic effect of the whole cycle. Either it's been enjoyable, pumps have been good even painful on some muscle groups and my look during a workout is obvious as well. Honestly I'm surprised to be having these results at 37 while Bodybuilding is still a hobby. I know of I can get a few other things outside the gym optimized I'll get even better.

This last week was not a good one. My daughter came down with the flu which means the whole family experienced it. Monday night I felt the symptoms start, by Tuesday I was on the couch or the bed with a fever or chills. So I missed multiple workouts, eat very little and missed some injections.

I got back in the gym to start my deload week on Sunday. In the mirror I look great, vascular and lean but I'm afraid to step on the scale. I'm sure I lost a decent amount of weight. This is going to be a long blast cycle so I should be able to get back to where I was and add weight but missed time can't be given back. The goal is adherence for the next 4 weeks then do some blood tests. I'll also need to contact PSL because I'll need more DHB. As I've said before I don't know how much to attribute to this product but this cycle seems to be working well for strength and after deload a large majority of my exercises will be going up in load.