I know it has been awhile since I have posted here but new baby plus new job equal a very busy me.  Along with neglecting my blog I have also been slacking in the exercise department.  Partly due to a lack of time and mostly due to a lack of motivation.  For the past 3 years I have been religiously exercising in some way shape or form.  I have gone from 12 hours a week to 2 hours or less and I am still burned out.  For the last 5 months I have gone to pretty much zero.  Luckily my excellent diet has kept me from gaining any weight. 

So where does this put me in the less is more?  In the same vein when I was looking for a new way to eat 3 years ago I went looking for a new way to work out.  I looked and researched and scoured the internet for every different method I could find.  I was really wanting to start lifting as I have dropped an enourmous amount of fat but have never worked to increase muscle.  I pondered free weights but that takes a commitment of 3 times per week and it really helps to have people to lift with.  I hmm'd and haw'd over Starting Strength and read copious amounts of info over at T-nation.  It was all stuff I had done before in high school and college and I knew I didn't want to pay to join a gym just to lift.

Finally to answer the question of where I ended up.  I did join a gym but it is Planet Fitness and it costs me $10/ month.  There really is no way to beat that rate even though I abhor their slogan "Judgement Free Zone".  Evidently that translates to "Lets put everyone on hamster wheels" as the place is domionated by cardio equipment as far as the eye can see.  What they do have is weight machines that get very little use.  Five weeks ago I started the Body By Science program which promises a Mr. Universe body in 12 minutes a week.  That is what you might think they are proposing by reading meathead commentary around the web.

What Doug McGuff and John Little are proposing in Body By Science is an optimized workout.  It is functionally super slow movement high intensity training.  By engaging and exhausting all your muscle fibers in series you get a more complete workout.  Essentially you do 5 core exercises.  Two pulling, two pushing, and leg press.  All should be done as slow as possible and reps don't matter but time under load does.  All exercises should take from 60-90 seconds optimally and going over is ok but no more then 2.5 minutes on any exercise.  In that time you should go to failure.  It is tough and it sucks mentally sometimes but the results are great.

Being only 5 weeks in all I can say is that it works extremely well.  I can see way more muscle definition and size and I have gained 7lbs with no change how my clothes fit.  I plan on following this protocol for at least 12 weeks and possibly out to 15 weeks.  

Being the extreme overdriven person I am I keep going back to the gains I could possibly get if I just worked out one or two times more per week.    I have realized that I have no desire to excel at my exercise.  I am simply wanting to get stronger and gain a little definition.  Just watch the Crossfit games and get bored to tears watching people compete with each other in exercises.  You might as well have a stadium of people watch the treadmill olympics.  I want to get better at Soccer and drop my 5k time.  So in my free time I can now practice soccer and do a few sprints to get better at those things. 

This is just another experiment in my endless n=1 life study.  So far the experiment is going vry well.  In fact so well my wife has bought into it and is going to the gym with me.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when she asked to go with me as I don't think she has ever seen the inside of a gym.  I am very interested to see her results in the upcoming weeks as she is a completely untrained individual and I think she will flourish on the Body By Science program.