The Circumstance + Challenge
At one point in 2015 while i had no access to a gym I came up with an experiment, a challenge. An idea to recomp hit.
I was bored one night and brainstorming. On my mind was body compostion and how much of a recomp would be possible in a short period, a very short, concentrated period. How much could be done with no gym access, little equipment, and absolutely nothing resembling an ideal diet? I was left to the brute force method of attack. Not precision, but spread shot style. Overcome by pure volume.
I decided for 10 days that I’d up the PT requirements. I’d do 500 bodyweight squats, 500 pushups, and 500 abs daily. 10 days for an experiment and test of willpower. I decided to start day 1 right then and there. Literally started the reps within 5 minutes of coming up with this, plus had to hustle them in and do the 1500 reps with a bit less than 2 hours until midnight.
Overtraining?
Did I meet the overtraining monster?
Nope, definitely did not.
I did get a bit leaner around the midsection though.
Forced myself to finish the reps, didn’t pussy out, and forced a bit of mental toughness. Even if I didn’t want to do the reps, I still did it. I even added a bit more activities if the mood hit, but for those 10 days I did ALL of the 1500 reps.
Abs were a mix of flutter kicks, bicycles, and crunches.
I mixed regular bodyweight squats and hindu squats. I even did some staggered stance.
Pushups were done standard, but I didn’t pay much attention to the range of motion.
I basically did 10 x 50 of each. Sometimes they were superset, sometimes I did one exercise at a time, and sometimes just spread the reps throughout the day.
I did a set of 50 and put a tally mark on a paper. PT was over when there were ten tallies next to each exercise for that day.
My Diet and The Recomp
My diet was SHIT, with a capital S.H.I.T. too. The food sources I used were top ramen and tuna. My weight was in the vicinity of 215lbs for this. I don’t think scale weight moved, the only thing i noticed was I became close to seeing abs, the top row became barely visible around day 6 and more so after a set of ab work. This state was held for maybe 10 days after the fact. I’d assume I was eating around 6 packs of ramen and 6 cans of tuna daily for this. So:
- $4.02 day, 50¢/ can tuna x 6, $1.02 for 6 ramen packs
- ~180 grams protein
- ~90 grams fat
- 300 grams carb
- Calories ~3000
I basically split this into two meals, and I may have drank a small amount of milk,gatorade, or juice on the side. Not exactly clean eating, healthy or particularly low calorie. Basically a normal maintenance or maybe slight caloric deficient. The best part too, this is the type of shit that can be done anywhere. A college dorm, a prison cell. The food prep took all of 5 minutes a day, and the cost was pretty damn cheap. Not ideal, but doable. Hell with less taste buds, and cash it could be done even cheaper.
Imagine
Imagine the results doing a concentrated recomp running something like this but under better circumstances?
Having a well equipped gym.
Eating naught but steak and eggs. Real keto, not high carb.
Or maybe try something psycho and go 10 days tuna and water. Old school bodybuilders did.
Bruce Randall’s bulking and cutting, crazy shit from the 1950s.
Not short term in the 10-14 day sense but pretty crazy.
I’d read a blog once that discussed doing sprints throughout the day, and doing the golden age tuna and water diet together for a short period just to see.
How I’d Do It
This is all food for thought. Come up with an experiment you like, and see what happens.
I’m inclined to eat steak for 2 meals and drink one shake of eggs, oats, peanut butter, and milk, with maybe a banana. The calories? Who cares. The protein? Roughly 200 grams a day, carbs maybe 70 grams. Cost maybe $10 a day, i’d say less though.Especially if you go with a cheaper meat,like ground beef. I think its worth a try.
I’d probably just lift as usual, but throw in a bunch of ab work on top. It’s only 10 days. I just discussed with a buddy how high a BMI could i be and see abs, we laughed about getting abs at well past the “obese” number. I think its possible to be pretty damn big as long as you condition some, and bulk the core up. I’m naturally pretty thick about the waist, my abs are huge, there isn’t much of a fat layer padding it. I’d assume a 10 -30 pound loss would have me there, so ballpark at 6′ 220. So..
How would you go about this?
I love stuff like this, enjoy the theories behind it, the brainstorming, and actually seeing what happens.
Care to try it?
Right now I’m running the lite version of this, some conditioning, some ab work, but not heeding the dietary aspect. Soon though, soon.
Explore, Experiment, Fuck Being Inside The Box
-J