My Strength-Gaining Mission (Final Results)

I started this mission as a 30 day challenge. Through day 20, I followed the protocol. Then, things got very busy for me at work, and I did not have the time to even get in the gym for 30 minutes twice a week. I did my last real weight workout 20 days into the mission, and did another (abbreviated) workout 24 days in.

That said, I did continue to monitor my bodyweight and body-fat, and made a conscious effort to eat more high quality food even when I wasn’t working out. In a way, the last 10 days of this experiment were really about just letting my body recover completely and seeing how that would impact my stats.

In my last post, I did a recap of the strength gains I saw after 20 days on the program:

“So in 20 days, I’ve managed to INCREASE my Squat by +26%, Chest Press +10% with +3 added reps, Chest Fly +11%, Pullover +30% (with 1 less rep) and Leg Press +12% with 1 fewer rep.”

Throughout the month of May, I’ve seen my bodyweight and body-fat fluctuate a bit. I didn’t see much change during the middle of the month, but saw quite a lot of progress during the end of the month. What change did I make during the end of the month?

Quite simply, during the end of the month, I ate more <high quality food> and trained less <in fact, I didn’t do any significant weight training during the last 10 days>. While from a psychological standpoint I felt like I was getting slightly weaker, the stats showed that I was indeed getting stronger.

The net results showed that I had lost 3 pounds of body-fat and gained >5 pounds of muscle in a single month. <see chart above>

This is a big insight for me, that my body needs time and lots of rest to gain muscle mass.

I am going to keep up the High-Intensity training protocol for another month, but cut back my training to once a week and see what happens.