PCT
Day 16
Yesterday was an off day and the day prior was my last day of high volume week, being back.
I kept with my trend of slightly lowering weight to really bang out slow contractions like I've never done before and this one didn't disappoint. I led off with solo lat pulldowns on the Free Motion machine (started these at the recommendation of a trainer a couple years back to help with the imbalance in my shoulders/lats stemming from the hip imbalance). These allow me to pull down wide and also not cheat with one side (pulling from a ring/handle attachment at the width of a lat pull down, but just one side at a time). I did 8 sets of 25 and then a dropset of about 6 sets raning from 20-25 reps each. The fullness/hardness I experienced only 4 or 5 sets in was insane. My lats felt incredibly dense and wide already.
From there, I jumped over to another Free Motion machine that I use for cable flys and set it up at arm level and actually stood parallel to do what at least I term lat pull-ins. I’ve always found a few of these do a nice job of just really putting the emphasis on the inner part of the lats one at a time.
Then I went with solo seated rows (on a dual pulley machine just for them), but this time I went diagonally with them and lowered the weight to the point that it was all back and not arm or delt doing the pulling. I still didn’t feel fatigued, so I hit one of the row machines and did a pretty long series of sets/reps on that til I couldn’t do any more and then wrapped up with just some long, slow lower back extensions on the machine.
It was a great workout and I was incredibly impressed with how I felt and looked coming out of there. It was as good as an on cycle workout, particularly from how I looked afterward.
Today will be the start of another Max-OT week and tonight will be arms. So embracing my newly found focus on contraction over everything will be a bit of a battle tonight. Typically, this is a workout where my full goal is moving mass. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not flailing stuff around without working the group, but in AST’s writeup of the program, they specifically mentioned that it’s acceptable to allow a little bit of rocking/easing up on form so that it’s not 100% strict and thus allowing you to move more total weight as the goal here is more strength based. However, as a bodybuilder who shares that goal but has a far more important goal of mass and aesthetics, I’ll be facing an internal struggle over just how much leniency is too much. I’ve always dealt with that, but I fear it’ll be even worse tonight. We’ll see.
So things have been going pretty well. I’m absolutely ravenous and can’t get enough food, which has never been an issue for me, so this is weird and can be a bit difficult to deal with at times. Oddly enough, at one point when I ran DNP at even moderate doses at first (and especially at high doses), it just killed my appetite (along with my will to do anything aside from sit in front of a fan in the AC with nothing but a pair of shorts on).
And on that note, I’ve been on a continuous low dose of DNP for quite some time now. For those that don’t know my full background, the cliffs version is that I went from a cut-up 205 to 300 lbs over the course of about 3 years regardless of everything I tried/continued to do via nutrition and training. During that time, I even entertained the hCG diet and protocol for a few weeks and managed to start gaining a pound a day (no exaggeration) the last few days I stayed on it while only eating the 500 kcal/day and even continuing to lift (and PR’ing on deads 2 weeks in). I used a BodyMedia Fit armband to calculate that my body said it was burning 3,000 calories on rest days, around 3,800-4,000 on lifting days and nearly 5,000 on days I played flag football – while obviously eating nowhere near that amount. I went to double digit doctors, including specialists, and tested/attempted to fix the obvious culprits (thyroid, testosterone, cortisol, glucose/insulin, etc.) and even the obscure (HGH deficiency, pituitary adenoma, CT scans to check for adrenal tumors, etc.). The bottom line was that nothing worked. I felt helpless and I also felt like an idiot because my body was seemingly defying science and despite all my efforts in the gym, the kitchen, and even in the library (beginning to pursue medical literature on a nightly basis and starting to work toward a Master’s in Nutrition in order to understand everything as much as I could).
So, after looking at all those fixes, all that wasted time, and those nearly 100 extra pounds, I finally caved and decided to try DNP. I’d heard about it and researched it at the onset of all of that, but I told myself I wanted to solve the problem and find the root cause before just throwing things at it. I wanted to KNOW. Plus, I understood the potential dangers of it and wanted to avoid any unnecessary risks. But I finally had ran out of energy; ran out of trying to fight to know. Did I still want to? Sure. But I also was getting married and wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror again; to not be ashamed to go out in public; to want to do anything other than not leave the house. It not only changed the size of my waist and my clothes, but my entire personality. I was no longer who I used to be.
Thus began my journey with DNP at 300 pounds in June (terrible timing, I know) of 2013. I had the bulk powder and I weighed it and capped it on my own. I started at only 50mg. I slowly worked up to 100mg. Then slowly up to 200mg, where I stuck with it for the bulk of the time. After several months, I worked up to around 400-450mg every other day and I never bothered with going higher than that. Could/can I? I’m 99% sure of it. But why risk that? So from June to October, I managed to drop 60 pounds. I still wasn’t anywhere near what I used to be, but I sure wasn’t 300 pounds anymore. I got to wear a tux that wasn’t custom fitted for my wedding the next month (down to a size 48 from a 58; though it was all in my shoulders, back and chest even then and not at the stomach).
So I don’t have the answer as to what the problem was. All I know is that after I got to a comfortable weight (not where I wanted to be, but a weight I wasn’t depressed at), I stopped the DNP. I wanted to see if I could make more progress without it; or at the very least, not gain any more weight. I couldn’t. I slowly added another 18 or so pounds over a couple months’ time. So back on the (low dose of) DNP once again. All I can assume is mitochondrial/genetic issues that have to do with energy imbalance or perhaps an abundance of ATP. That’s a very big speculation, but it would make sense based on HOW the DNP works and the fact that I PR’ed on deadlifts eating only 500kcal/day nearly 2 weeks in and my body somehow was managing to gain weight, in addition to the fact that I’ve always had relative ease with gaining strength without any supplements whatsoever (albeit not the same gains in musculature).
And believe it or not, that’s the cliffs version. The full version would take a novel to tell; and that’s no exaggeration.
The reason I bring this up is because I want it to be known that I’m on DNP, but I’ve also been on it (almost indefinitely) for 11 months. I know how my body responds to it and I know what it does. One thing it definitely doesn’t do is increase strength. That’s a large reason I ran the cycles I did (last summer and just recently) – to maintain the muscle mass I have while trying to lose the fat that had accumulated over such a long period of time and to not feel so weak that I couldn’t maintain any of my strength in the gym. DNP makes you feel flat. Obviously anavar was going to remedy that, but it seems that now MyoSynergy is doing the exact same thing. This is very hard to describe and it honestly makes me so intrigued to wonder “what-if” back to last Summer’s cycle.
DNP also makes you feel hot (shocker, right?). Well, I run it at such a low dose that I may be a bit warmer 24/7 (I naturally feel warmer than most anyway), but it’s not the level of “OMG NIGHT SWEATS!” – I know, because I’ve dosed to that level before. It was effective, but words couldn’t describe the level of miserable. So over this past week, I’ve noticed something new. It could be completely unrelated, but I feel it’s worth mentioning. I’ve experienced what I can only seem to describe as hot flashes. It’s insane. It’s not time-dependent to dosing anything; it has happened at all hours of the day. It’s most noticeable in the office because I’m wearing more clothes than I am at home lol. But a few times, I’ve been sitting there completely comfortable and all of a sudden – BOOM – sweat on my forehead, feeling hot all over and noticing sweat along/under my chest, too. The first time it happened it kind of freaked me out. It doesn’t shock me that much anymore, but I still notice it. It happened a lot last night as I was sitting in the recliner watching TV. It was 60 degrees and beautiful here yesterday, so I came home from work (hooray for my off day), changed into athletic shorts and a t-shirt hoody, opened all the windows and settled into my recliner to catch up on TV shows and under a blanket. At least 10 times throughout the evening I felt myself go from hot to cooler – ditching the blanket, putting it back on, ditching it again and turning the fan on me lightly, blanket back on, then over to ditch the hoody, etc. I’ll have to keep an eye on this because I do in fact have Hashimoto’s and even though supplementing with thyroid hormones has never had any impact on me in the past 4 years, I’ll certainly look at it as the potential reason if it persists.
But I’ve heard some others mention feeling a warmth accompany the MyoSynergy (particularly with overnight dosing). So I’ll continue to monitor this.
That’s all I can think of for now. Gonna eat my preworkout meal in a bit and then hit a good heavy arm session this afternoon. And heavy legs tomorrow! Yeah, buddy!