Since my last update, I’ve still been training more or less the same – biceps and triceps, and have made gains of around an inch on my arms since August. Despite taking it much more steady diet wise than previously, and taking in far more protein, I’ve still managed to expand my midriff by some amount and put fat on elsewhere. I’m now of the opinion that I can’t gain substantial muscle without gaining in fat, and that’s the end of it. Besides, I’m not the sort of person to calculate daily the perfect nutrition and fuss over my diet to the degree necessary to make it possible (if it’s possible at all without juicing your arse off) to gain lots of muscle without fat.
Back to my world; the real world. Like I say, biceps and triceps still. I’ve gained much more strength than I ever had before in both biceps and triceps, and recently began bench pressing, too. My bench press which was once mightily pathetic by my own lofty standards of myself, has now climbed – and continues to climb – higher and higher as I employ more and more Westside Barbell practices such as speed benching and I’m currently looking into more advanced methods such as bands and chains.
All in all, I’m more concerned about having strength than size, and I know the two only go hand in hand to an extent. I don’t want to be fat but I know now beyond any doubt that for me personally, it’s something I’ve got to stick out temporarily and get even fatter in order to add even more muscle. Arm size wise I’m nowhere near the point I want to be where I can say to myself enough is enough, and start losing the fat and trying to preserve the muscle.
Maybe part of my mistake last time was to start cutting too soon. Granted I put on a lot of fat – probably a fair bit more than now – and my arms were ¼ of an inch bigger than now, but, maybe that just wasn’t enough, which is why when I did cut I wasn’t really left with results that satisfied me (though I’ve copped to it already that I didn’t exactly follow the eat-and-train-properly-while-cutting blueprint, which I can’t escape).
Either way, I’m still around ¾ to a stone lighter than before, and I certainly didn’t have 14lb more muscle last time than now, not even close, so it can only be a lot of fat weight I’ve still not put on, which is encouraging.
No way am I turning back until I’ve reached my targets this time and gone a good way beyond what I reached last time arm size wise or it’s all for nothing. I’d like to reach 16-16.5” arms before I consider cutting. It’ll probably take most of next year as I’m still eating far less than before in order to stave off unnecessary fat gains, but I think since I have a lifetime of benefit to gain from reaching my goals, a year of being on the increasingly-rotund side (even to the point of slight self-disgustJ) will be a year well spent. Stopping anything short of a good way beyond what I was before is mugging myself off completely, and I never do that – at least, not intentionally!
Hasta la vista