J3 Blog

Offseason week 9: Recovery going to shit
Welcome back to the blog or should I be welcoming myself back. I have skipped a few weeks posting, so I want to be more consistent for everyone now and hope to post every Monday for my offseason updates.
I am concluding week 9 of my offseason today and a few things have changed since the last update. The main one being at week 6 I cut back my “supplementation” to baseline levels. So, this comes with some implications to how I proceed with training and diet. This whole offseason I really wanted to keep conditioning in a good spot for when I enter into my next prep, so reducing supplements called for a preemptive reduction in calories. I pulled out about 100g of carbs and added in 20g of fat. The idea was to get calories back closer to a maintenance level to hold weight steady and limit fat gain. I still want enough calories to make strength improvements. This all went well until I hit week 8.
Week 8 started off a little rough. I was feeling lethargic, pumps were dimishing and I was feeling pretty beat up. After a few training sessions strength was dropping off as well. I just simply was not recovering as well with out the supplemental advantage. So, when this happens a training volume reduction needs to happen, so I can continue to keep up with intensity. I moved my 3 days on 1 day off split to 2 days on 1 day off. This spreads out the training session more and I can keep the same volume within each workout, however volume for the week would decrease. I am on my fourth day doing this and already feel so much better. I had a nasty hamstring workout yesterday and pump/strength all felt great.
Current weight is at 243.8lbs. So, I haven’t dropped weight at all, there is a little bit softer look, but overall I am still very lean.
I still have some vague glute lines. Quads and abs still at a good point. If I can hold this look leading into my next blast phase it should be very productive for me. I think this past rebound phase gave some great progress on my delta, I don’t usually keep that much roundness to them. Still want my lats to hang down to my hips, but all in time.
Renee and I had one crazy week on week 7. We moved out of our apartment to a house! Hence my new background, still trying to find the best spot for pics but this looked pretty good and lighting is very repeatable. I am about 20 minutes from the gym, so I picked up some spin bikes for us to knock out AM cardio at home. Still hitting 5 session of 25 minutes per week.
Thats all for this week guys, let me know if you got questions, below is my current training day diet:
TRAINING DAY DIET:
Meal 1:
40g protein via Whey Isolate
80g oats
100g blueberries
15g almond butter
Meal 2
6oz Flank Steak or Sockeye Salmon, cooked wt
280g white jasmine rice cooked wt
100g spinach
Meal 3 (pre workout meal):
6oz chicken
300g white jasmine rice
100g banana
20g honey
15g cashew butter
Pre Shake
20-30 minutes prior to workout
900mg alpha-GPC
8g Citrulline
5g Hydromax glycerol
10g EAA
3g Creatine monohydrate
2g Pink Salt
20+ ounces of water
Intra
15g EAA
POST WORKOUT
40g protein via whey isolate
2 Bagels
40g Jam
Meal 4:
6oz chicken
140g rice
15g Mac Nut Oil
75g Green beans cooked
Meal 5
6oz chicken, cooked wt
70g white jasmine rice
50g avocado
20g almond butter
100g spinach
Meal 6
3 whole eggs
3oz chicken cooked wt
1 Thomas English muffin
15g almond butter
100g spinach
290g protein, 480g carb, 85g fat 3845kcal
2 comments on “Offseason week 9: Recovery going to shit”
John, do you not recommend carbs intra? Or do you feel with the total amount of carbs they aren’t necessary?
For me my preworkout meal is so high in carbs it carries well into the workout. Also, I tend to not drink as much fluid if I have to much mixed in my intra.