Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year, and I wish to those of you who are reading this today that you and your family have a loving and prosperous 2009.

Over the holiday break I began to wonder just how effective my training and diet has been. Over the past couple months since starting crossfit I have put on a couple pounds of muscle and leaned up considerably. Sounds pretty good; but could it be better.

Unfortunately in the last couple weeks I haven't noticed much of an increase in my strength and this always seems to happen 2 months into any program I start. After stumbling across a book on gymnastics I began to wonder: why is it that I am lifting heavy weights when I can't even lift my bodyweight with some exercises? Maybe I should be back a step and work from the ground up. I have purchase the latest bit of literature from a Coach S. at gymnasticsbodies.com. According to his forum community, many gymnastic holds and routines are far overlooked, yet they can unlock a tremendous amount of strength.

To summarize, this is how my muscle-gaining program is about to change:

Diet: I will maintain to eat zone/paleo foods however my carbs will be low throughout the day other than the postworkout meal, in which I will load up with roughly 150g of CHO. I will also up my protein to account for a slight drop in carbs and I will maintain the 5x fats mentality. I am hoping to keep insulin levels dormant for 85% of the day, but have them spike after my workout to help facilitate and anabolic cellular environment. In other words this diet is tweeked from that of Robb Wolf's mass gain diet, and is somewhat conceptualized from Dr. P's metabolic diet.
I have done my homework on this folks and I think this is a winning combination. Time will tell.

Training: I will stick to daily WODs consisting of BW gymnastics movements to train the upperbody, and heavy deadlifts and squats for lower body. The goal is to gain extremely strength and balance while loading up my core with a series of powerful movements. Not only will I be able to do muscle ups and handstand pushups, but I will be working on frog lifts and planches. Again I will let you know how all of this goes.


Questions, comments, and concerns are still welcomed!

Cheers,


Hildie