RTP – Transformation System … Day 1

Hi, well…. since yesterday I didn’t go to sleep without visualizing this day. I went shopping because I had no almonds, bought some extra chicken breast fajitas (smaller than chicken breast halves), some mushrooms (that I usually add to egg whites or as fibrous carbs). I have whey protein in stock and had the fridge full of eggs… oatmeal was there too… green salad … so I had everything under control.

   I woke up at 5:45 am so I could hit the gym very early today. Usually on Mondays I have to stay late at work, from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm, and at 8:30 I go with the band to rehearse a little. So, I took the 5 meals, well, two of them were protein shakes, the rest, chicken breasts, egg whites and tuna salad.

  What can I say of my Day 1…. I started with barbell bench press, hitted 25 reps, then just 13, then just 8… and suddenly on the 4th set, I guess it was the 3rd repetition.. I felt the bar coming down directly to my chest, my arms were completely ruined by what I suppose was lactic acid… my god! I felt the lack of strength and lowered the bar carefully, I guess the last two sets were from 6 reps. Next, bent over barbell rows… same thing… the first set were 22 reps, and then, besides my heart beating really and forcing me to gasp for air.. my arms couldn’t pull or row any more… I tried to stick to the form, and there’s where I chose to stop, when I was loosing form.

   Triceps pull downs were not an exception on feeling my arms loosing control of the weight, and man, that last set was forced… same thing with calves… burning feeling!.

   I finished with RTP abdominal training level 1, my gym has no ab machines, so I stuck to declined bench crunches, hip raises and obliques with dumbells… completing the repetitions, and as I was trying to squeeze, everytime I was lowering my body, I felt the abs tired, I guess tomorrow’s gonna be a day full of DOMS.

  I’m gonna post my picture from day zero, and will start working on the accountability chart…  but today was a great day…

    So, as an RTP transforming shredder I can say, shred hard!!…

RTP Transformation System

Jan. 24. Checking weights…

Well, I was so desesperated to go to the gym today, that I decided to check some of the weights I plan to start with on Monday, my first day on the RTP Transformation System… I’m not sure about the diet, perhaps, I will try to start a little bit low on the carbohidrates… that really worked for me on my previous program, but I guess I have to check if it works right now with Adam’s program.

  I arrived to the gym feeling a little bit hungry, but as soon as I put a foot over the threadmill for some warm up jogging, hunger disappeared, I was feeling great already… I took the first to pages of the RTP TS, with the compound exercises.. and decided to try the 20 reps on some weights and then a second set after 20 seconds just to see if I felt it the way it was supposed to be…. well… it was just a trial and it was TOUGH!! My heart was beating hard, I tried 30 kilograms for bench press and I got some very easy 25 reps… I rested 20 seconds and man, the next 13 reps were tough, my chest was burning already… I know for sure that I need to try 32.5 kgs to force the 20 reps… I then tried the bent over barbell rows… well, enough said it happened the same thing with the same weight but my heart was really really coming out of my chest… I WASN’T READY ON 20 SECONDS.. but tried the second set… anyway, I need to do 6 sets on Monday!! (don’t know how I’m going to make them)

 I checked the weight for the triceps and calves… and then… leg press.. I know that I have to be careful with this exercise… I admit that I’m stronger than what my legs can handle right know, so, even if I can deal with more weight, I have to start on a moderate one that will prevent an injury… anyway, I need to make a smooth and continuous movement to get the actic lacid on the muscles, that’s what all this is all about.. so, I will try to open my eyes on this exercise to make the most wise decision…

   Finally, while checking the stiff legged deadlift, I was seriously dizzy… OMG! I haven’t feel that in a long time… have you ever felt that? the want-to-vomit feeling you get when your breath is faster that you can’t handle… either I’m so out of physical endurance? or this compound-killer-series are really gonna kill me…. I GUESS BOTH… so.. I wrote everything on paper, and more or less know the weights I’m going to use on Monday…

   Enough said… I’m gonna take my zero day picture and I hope I have the physical and mental strength to follow this program… so, I will post soon my starting stats…

Jan.22. Getting motivated…

Hi, thanks a lot for your warm welcome… I really appreciate it…

Today, I’ve been reading RTP Transformation System, and I’m trying to put together everything so that I can start it on Monday, if everything goes right…

And then I say: what the…. …. what do you mean IF EVERYTHING’S ALRIGHT? It MUST be alright!, I MUST be able to do it if I decide so… because I remember myself abstaining from carbs, from protein, and from fats on Metabolic Surge, always denying carbs while on low carb, nothing but an apple or maybe a peach when I was in all fruit days… doing HIIT while feeling slow from the lack of carbs, maybe on the 6th day of a 30-carb-gms-a-day diet… and why wouldn’t I be able to complete this program… of course that everytime I see the workout sheets I get nervous because I know for sure it will be intense… I can’t imagine the post workout feeling of doing 20 or more squats until failure because of lactic acid, rest 20 seconds and repeat the dose, with the GOAL of beating your previous score… do you know what is that? that is guaranteed PAIN and INTENSITY… I know it for sure! I can already feel the heart beating hardly as if getting out of the chest…

  That’s what I’m expecting of RTP TS… and maybe that’s what is keeping me thinking that there might be something that would keep me from starting …  BUT NO WAY… I want to succesfully start RTP Transformation System on Monday and that would make me hit my 27th birthday almost finishing the program.. so I want to put things together… maybe tomorrow and on saturday I will do some hard work on the gym so that I can feel the blood running through my veins and my heart beating hard… I hope that will get me more motivated..

  Congratulations Suzette, Mark, Lynda, Shari, Mr. Mike , Debbie, Brian (I hope I’m not forgetting anyone) because you started the program and I really hope you get the results you are working for! Keep going guys. I really want to join you on your transformations… See you tomorrow.

Jan.21. Back from vacations, getting new camera…

Hi, well.. I’m back from my trip to Cuba. And there’s not much to say.. pretty quiet vacation with my parents… beautiful, gorgeous beaches, difficulties being a communist country… well, good and bad days.

While on my trip, I had a terrible headache that lasted 3 days.. there’s nothing such as a Drugstore in there, so I had to survive with some of the pills we were taking. I went to La Laguna de la Leche (one of the biggest on earth – has to be something like Milk’s Lake).. there was a good restaurant in there and a lot of Cat Fish that devour whatever you throw them… and also La Laguna de la Redonda (I really don’t know how to translate that, but it’s a beautiful lake with red water!!).. I will post some pics later..

While on La laguna de la leche, we had an attack of mosquitoes, and also, my mother and I had to take antihistaminics … uff… mosquitoes bit me more, but my mother’s got infected… well… enough said… nutrition was really really bad if you consider that on the entire Cuba, you can hardly find a Chicken Breast or Meat… there’s pork everywhere.. but fried… EVERYTHING’S FRIED!! so you can imagine… 

Fruits were very hard to find also, no apples, no oranges, no nothing… just, potatoes: yams, malanga, yuca.. rarely white potatoes… so… rice and pork were very easy to find but fried.. you could find pizza everywhere (seems like Cubans really love pizza). And of course RUM… people drink on the streets at every hour of the day… I had a lot of trouble finding DIET COKE… and when I found one, somebody asked me if I was diabetic… no dietetic culture in cuba… seriously!!… 

Well today was my first day at work.. I’m reading Adam’s RTP transformation system, and can’t wait to turn this pretty damaged mindset to my previous one… I’m one of this tough cases when you need to really focus on the kind of transformation you want. I think I will start Adam’s system on Monday, because I need the discipline back… tomorrow I will take what I know is going to be an OPENING EYE PICTURE for me…. because I gained some of the weight I previously lost.. hopefully, some of the work I did is still on me… I’m not feeling good right now, specially when I was doing so well… I need to feel like before, psychologically, and have to follow the plan exactly…

   So, oh! I was almost forgetting, while on Cuba, one of my mother friend’s daughter wanted a digital camera, and just for you to have an idea, one of  the cameras that you could easily find in the US at us$150.00, in Cuba cost $500 euros! you can imagine the problems that people have to get electrical devices or stuff like cameras, dvds, televisions, etc., she wanted my camera, and so I gave it to her… so one of the first things I did when I got home, was finding a new digital camera for my pictures..

  Well, enough said, thanks a lot for your comments and your support while I was away…

Day 40. Big… Huge apologize…

Hi, first of all, I’m very sorry that haven’t been able to post recently… I had problems with the internet connection (at work, and at home) and due to work issues, I wasn’t able to stop by on a computer somewhere else… sorry for that…

  Those were three days almost, and after that, I had to travel to the city where I was born to spend Christmas Eve with my family… unfortunatelly one day before leaving, one of my best friend’s brother in law (her sister is a great person and also my friend) died… he was so young and an excellent person, he must be next to God right now… so, while in Cd. Victoria, the same friend’s father died too! man, what a difficult situation… sometimes, we don’t understand why things like that happen, but, I guess she’s gonna be strong as well as her family…

  I tried to shred while being absent but nutrition hasn’t been great either… so I guess I will have to wait until next year to eat the way I was eating before Christmas….

    There’s something I haven’t talk about.. but, right now, my stepfather is at Cuba, with his family and I’m going to travel on January 1st to Cuba, I guess I’m not gonna have internet there, so I’m not sure about posting… the thing here is that, one of my stepsisters (the younger) has a health problem… when she was 14, she began having a weird knee pain… she was in the Cuban Junior National Team (basketball) at only 14 her height was 1.87 mts.. really really tall… so… after several check ups, they diagnosed her with cancer… don’t know the name in english but it’s osteosarcoma (one of the most agressive types of cancer) .. so, after chimiotherapy they amputated her leg…

  The story isn’t finished there… after two years of regular checkups, her other leg began to hurt… same procedure… right now, against all odds (they say that type of cancer goes up in the body, doesn’t jump from one leg to another). I guess.. it’s another type of cancer but chimio has already started, I guess.. her other leg is going to suffer the same procedure… I really have to talk this in the most cold way… but it’s been something really hard for her, such a young girl, so talented, to make a long story short… her height right now is 1.92… she continued growing after they amputated her leg….

    I’m going to Cuba on January 1st, and I’m going to come back on January 11th… So, I guess that just returning from my trip, I’m going to start the RTP transformation system.. that’s the reason I’m not starting it right now… so, enough for today… I want to apologize because I wasn’t able to post… my stomach is not very well yet, I guess that infection was pretty agressive with my stomach… I want to apologize with Suzette, ’cause I was shredding really hard with her until Christmas, and wasn’t able to post my final results… and a huge apoligize to all of you who have been supporting me while on this journey…. Ron, Mike, Suzette, Adam, Jason and Mark, here I am, and when I’m able, I check up on you guys, but wasn’t able to post…. thank you, a lot for asking if I was ok…. I’m here but wasn’t able to post…  I’m still with you guys!!! Oh, and Merry Christmas! (a little bit late)…

Day 31. Planned cardio and soccer finale

Hi, well, today was a good day, everything went out as planned. Still on no carb nutrition (last day before low carb), and after two consecutive circuit days, I planned to do cardio, and I did, but counted the soccer game as my cardio session… guess what? we won!

Well, nutrition was like follows:

Meal 1: Chicken breast + 6 nut halves

Meal 2: Whey protein shake + 3 nut halves

Meal 3: Fish + broccoli + 6 nut halves

Meal 4: Baked salmon + 8 almonds

Meal 5: Post workout protein shake

Very low carb nutrtion done as planned. Today is a quickie as I have to get some sleep now… thank you for your comments.

Getting lean

Day 30. Back on track…

Hi, well, I’m so thankful!… really, all those nice comments everywhere: on my blog, on Adam’s blog… well… I feel great today! clean food is the real thing, really… sometimes we don’t want to believe it but it is…

I’m so glad because this are the first 30 days blogging in english, also, my name and blog adress appear in Adam’s site!! and, I had two new visitors, that I really don’t know who they are but really appreciate their comments… so, I feel very good today…

I woke up at 6:00 but since I slept late at night, I decided to go to the gym in the afternoon, and that’s what I did. Yesterday I said I was going to do another “circuit training” and some cardio, and I did… still on no carb nutrition… so, everything goes as planned.

My circuit goes like this:

Combo 1: Push ups (body weight)+ cable sitted rows + side crunches

Combo 2: Lying hip extension + lateral leg raises + hip raises (lower abs)

Combo 3: Front wide grip pull downs + DB shoulder press (20 lbs dbs) + obliques

Combo 4: DB step up (15 lbs dbs) + Bulgarian split squat (15 lbs dbs) + back extensions

Combo 5: Bicep DB curls (15 lbs) + Tricep rope pulldowns + plank

I repeated each combo 3 times resting aprox. 40 seconds between sets… (sometimes less).. The fourth combo really made my heart beat fast and legs were on fire…

I came back to my house, and drank a whey protein shake,  put some chicken breasts in the oven and some fish on foil paper. Then 40 minutes later, went to a spinning class which can be considered as a moderate interval cardio training and lasted nearly 40 minutes.. so I was sweating a lot..

Right now, I’m ready to eat my fifth meal, which is going to be fish with broccoli and some nuts. So I guess, it was a pretty good day.

Tomorrow is my last no carb day, I’m going to do cardio, and get ready for low carb diet and some really good lifting… so, thanks a lot again, let’s shred hard.

Getting lean

Only 10 days to go on Suzette’s Christmas Sprint!!

Shredding with Suzette

And… coming back…

Hi, first of all, thank you very much for your great support, and your good wishes, I really appreciate it. Thanks to Adam Waters  for putting a link on his blog saying I was feeling sick… I really was… but… I’m feeling better today, thanks to you guys… why? I was planning a slow coming back, you know, running a little bit, sweating the t-shirt a little, and doing a somewhat “clean diet” but hell no! When I saw my name on Adam’s post, I realized I had to come back as soon as I could, and being absent from training for 4 days, I decided to start a plan with the principles I learned from this past two months… and decided to push hard in the gym (if I could), and I think I did..

First of all, I thought about Mr. Michael’s post also and decided I needed a plan to follow, otherwise, we start changing things to feel comfortable, while we need to push beyond what we think are our limits. So I chose the things that really worked for me and my weak parts from the metabolic surge program.

I realized that low carb deffenetly works on me, and even though I feel slow sometimes, it’s easy for me to abstain from carbs while on a 100% compliance approach, that means that I’m conscious that if I eat a candy, then all the low carb thing goes to waste, it’s kind of a DON’T-SPOIL-IT mind! But then, I also found out that, on both metabolic surge’s rounds I did, on day 21, I had de lowest bodyweight and the least water retention, more deffinition, etc. of any other previous day, and it was back on the high carb diet while doing Muscle Rounds… I don’t know if it’s because of the muscle rounds training (which is really tough,  short and intense) or because of the refeeding effect, you know, when the body realizes it’s not starving and continues burning fat… well, I don’t know and I will sure listen to your opinion..

So I’m really believing on carb cycling, compound lifts, lactic acid and cardio to burn fat, but while giving my body a little boost, I could lose a lot of weight and water from my mid section (and that’s what I’m looking for) so, I will make a plan that I know will be hard enough for me, but a plan I MUST stick to… so that, as Michael said, will prevent me from changing suddenly.

I will do some NO CARB DAYS, some LOW CARB and some HIGH CARB.. I will do some circuit training (for the first low carb days), I will do some compound lifts combined with supersets or tripple drop sets to look for lactic acid, and finally a strength training (perhaps following muscle rounds principles) to look for a metabolic boost… I’m planning you know… until Adam Waters releases the RTP Transformation System …

I started today with a circuit training divided in combos. 5 combos of 3 exercises done 3 times:

Combo 1: DB BENCH PRESS (30 lbs dbs) + DB BENT OVER ROWS (30 lbs dbs) + crunches

Combo 2: SINGLE STIFF LEGGED DEADLIFT (15 lbs DBs) + LEG CURL + leg raises

Combo 3: “V” PULLDOWNS + DB SHOULDER PRESS (15 lbs DBs) + woodchoppers (those were really hard)

Combo 4: ONE LEG BOX STEP UPS (40 lbs bar) + DB LUNGES (15 lbs dbs) + Prone knee tucks on stability ball

Combo 5: BICEP CURL (15 lbs dbs) + LYING TRICEP EXTENSIONS (15 lbs dbs) + crunches

I did each combo 3 times resting 40 seconds between combos. I think I could push harder, but I guess I had a good come back to the gym, my heart was beating really hard on the 4th combo. And I can feel already the DOMS on my arms.. so, tomorrow, I will do another circuit and will try to include a cardio session.. still on a no carb diet.

Well, I think I will put everything together so that I can have a plan to follow…

Thank you very much for your great support, really, without that possitive pressure, I would be still thinking on coming back… here I am and I will push really hard so that I can continue shredding with Suzette for Christmas!

Getting lean

 

I will really push hard to finish with a good result on Suzette Christmas sprint…

Still shredding with Suzette

I’m still here… sick…

Hi, I just want to say that, my stomach is worse. I went to the doctor and he gave me some pills… he asked if I ate outside my house or something that might have caused the infection, and I told him I was eating extremely clean!  the reward meal coincided with all the Christmas party foods around and suddenly, one of those really upset my stomach…

I told him the feeling was that I had an air balloon inside my stomach that was about to explode… that I couldn’t  feel anything but my stomach stretching…. so badly… not digesting … I don’t know… I told him that I didn’t know how I could eat like that before everyday without feeling that miserable…

I’ve spent two nights in the bathroom (sorry for that!), feeling miserable, with my stomach swollen, believe me, I don’t want to take a picture, because it will look like my before ones… I’m sorry that I haven’t post but I just wanted to say that clean food is the real thing… the “other-kind-of-food” just makes us feel miserable, and sick!… I’m still trying to deal with this bad feeling, just bought some jello and will try to eat normal, not low carb, not high carb, just normal, soft and normal… I need to feel normal again… not extremely “clean” not “extremely miserably sick”… I need balance… uff.. I will stick to oatmeal, protein shakes, chicken breast, some fruit here and there… no condiments, not fats but olive oils or almonds… I need to eat clean food… well I’m still with you guys, supporting you! I had to stop this program for a while.. but the results were there and I was so happy with them… I will come back perhaps tomorrow… but will come! and stronger… thanks a lot for your comments… Celina

Hi, almost back…

Hi everybody, after the end of Round 2 of the metabolic surge program I was doing, my computer had to go to the “doctor” –  hard drive was broken! And I had to, also…. I got a severe-moderate stomach infection so, I’ve been trying to visit your blogs everyday and I leave a message or to, but haven’t been able to post on my blog….

   I haven’t trained this past two days, due to the stomach sickness… but maybe late today or maybe tomorrow, I can start again… I’m sorry for this… I wasn’t expecting it! Well… I’ll come back tomorrow, maybe with better news… an apologize for you all.