I have been all stealthy over here and just getting back to grinding at 100% for the last couple of months. I have refrained from talking about what I have been doing because I wanted to get some postive progress under my EliteFTS belt, first. Now that my knee rehab is finished, I've not been this excited to train in a very long time.

GOAL

My entire focus right now is getting as lean as I can get. I know that may seem silly to come off of a 16-month rehab and not jump back into getting my legs back as huge and fast as I can, but that will come with time. I first want to get lean AF, so that I can get as insulin sensitive AF, and that will allow me to grow as big AF—especially my legs. It is a lot easier to grow after coming off of being REALLY Fing lean. And I'm talking borderline contest lean. I only have another couple months of doing this and I will then switch gears and go into my growth phase.

204 (ish) is my weight right now. That number might not mean much to you but to me it means I am closing in on being VERY lean. I used to compete at 198 but in reality, I am missing quite a bit of quad size right now, so being shredded at 198 is not going to be possible. If I were to compete (and I am not), I would right now need to be down around 190 ish. At 204, I am getting a lot of questions about competing but then I just show them my quads and they understand right away that I am not standing on a stage with these legs.

To this point, it has been a breeze. I am rarely hungry and I'm loading moderately on Sundays (Skiploading). I say "moderately" because I'm not so depleted that I'm starving when it's time to load. I eat roughly 4 meals on Sundays, get satiated and full but not miserable. I am putting down a good bit of food but it isn't the amount of food I would normally be putting down at this weight if I were almost ready for a show. Even my strength is holding quite well.

CARDIO

I have one day where I do "cardio" and it's on Mondays. I train legs on Thursdays, so I do my cardio on Mondays so that it doesn't interfere with my leg session. For cardio, I do 27 flights of stairs (I live in a highrise) and I do that 3 or 4 times. When I get to the 27th floor, I get on the elevator and go back down and start over again. I do not run the stairs, either. I take my time and do full steps that are the equivalent of mini-lunges.

Let me just tell you that doing real stairs is nothing like doing a stairmaster. Real stairs are brutal. My hips were so sore the first week that I could barely walk without pain. I have not done any cardio since I tore my glute in 2020. That means that my stabilizers are weak AF. They were not ready for that many flights of stairs. However, now that I'm in my 3rd week, my hips are adjusting quite well and there is no more soreness.

NEAT

The other 4 days of the week, I do walks for about an hour at a brisk pace—not forcing speed but not walking leisurely, either. Most people would consider this to be cardio, but I consider it NEAT because I do not focus on holding a specific heart rate or sustaining it. I simply walk for an hour to be active and social. I live downtown WPB, so I am quickly becoming that "old guy who walks every day with the tan."

There is no set goal for my weight. I am simply going to continue leaning down either until the first of September, or if I hit a condition that I think is crazy, I will stop prior to that. My goal is just to get to the point where I feel that backing out of the diet will have me in the best position to take advantage of insulin sensitivity to feed growth. Admittedly, some of this is ego in that I want to prove to myself that after not being able to train at 100% for a little over 2 years, that I can still get into insane condition.

In my next coach log, I will detail my diet and my training protocol. I have had to adjust my training volume to fit my diet (not the other way around, of course), and it is working beautifully.