Cameron Thomas
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So…
On the back of that last post, I bit the bullet and ordered an Oestrogen and Free T3 kit off medichecks, as I can’t be waiting another couple of weeks before I am free on a Wednesday evening to visit the clinic.
Let’s see where those values are at now at this point of prep, the Oestrogen reading will obviously help me to gauge where to go over the next couple of weeks as I get closer to the show with AI dose & frequency…
If you haven’t read back, Oestrogen levels will show where I am at whilst running:
300mg Test E per week (since 9 weeks out)
20mg Anavar ED (since Saturday)
12.5mg Aromasin E3D (since 9 weeks out)Instagram - @cameron_thomas5
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I would start with an elimination diet, find the food source causing an issue.
Or I’d suggest addressing gut health entirely, supplementing with digestive aids is just masking an issue which you’ve yet to diagnose
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Hey bud!
Do you have any progress pictures?
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7 weeks out UPDATE.
First of all, I’ve linked to the week 4 roundup video that I forgot to post on here earlier in the week. This includes a full leg workout from week 4 and also a video physique update along with general updates to complement what’s on here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48qDxObifZk&t=581s
I can’t lie and say I’m not anxious that I’m a little behind at 7 weeks out for the first show, but I’m ‘trusting the process’ and most importantly nailing every variable I run with each week.
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Recap:
So just to recap, going into this past week the main changes that were made were the addition of the farmers walk cardio session post pull day and also the drop of 25g carbs from 7 out of 8 days of my rotation.
Bodyweight:
A lb has come off on average this week, but with that being said I am definitely feeling a slight ‘recomp’ affect going on now the increase in Test E would have reached its peak in my system. I think my upper body in particular looks visibly bigger and harder.
From an overall body comp perspective, I can’t see a huge step forward fat loss wise this week so for now it’s time to keep digging.
Macro’s ran this week:
Upper body training days
220p 300cLower body training days:
220p 350c(estimated 40-50g fats if you count indirect fats)
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Training recap:
Performance is still very good and I’m enjoying workouts more than ever, I simply love the thought of leaving absolutely nothing in the tank each and every workout because I know I can’t afford to let those opportunities to waste when I already don’t carry a lot of muscle.
Last training rotation:
Chest, side delts & biceps
3x Barbell incline 4-6 | 6-8 | 8-10
REP PROGRESSION ON ALL SETS
2x Precor upright machine press LS DS 6-8 | 8-10
(THIS is staying in! Awesome machine and finally found a secondary pressing movement to continue with)
2x Seated cable fly no attachment 6-8 | 8-10
REP PROGRESSION ON FIRST SET, MATCHED REPS ON SECOND
1x SA high cable lower pec fly no attachment 12+
(This is for a little extra volume on my less developed pec)
3x Lying cuffed cable lateral raise 6-8 | 8-10 | 12-15
(bench set at a distance where the cable creates a 90 degree angle with my wrist, when my shoulder joint is at 45 degree of abduction)
REP PROGRESSION ON ALL SETS
2x SA dumbbell preacher curl 4-6 | 8-10
(degree of the bench set to ensure my lower arm is perpendicular to the floor when the dumbbell is lowered around halfway to full elbow extension)
RESET NUMBERS AND FORM AS THESE WERE REGRESSING, LET’S SEE WHERE THEY GO FROM HERE
1x Toe press RP 12-15
(Extra volume here for calves)Back, rear delts & biceps & Farmers walks
3x SA seated plate-loaded row 4-6 | 6-8 | 12+
(LS here is a ‘pump’ or ‘metabolic’ style set where I will perform dual arm reps to failure, extended with partials)
LOAD PROGRESSED, REPS BEATEN
3x SA hammer strength p/d 4-6 | 6-8 | 12+
(LS here is a ‘pump’ or ‘metabolic’ style set where I will perform dual arm reps to failure, extended with partials)
LOAD PROGRESSED, REPS BEATEN
2x Eccentric rack pulls knee height LS into db shrugs 4-6 | 10-12
LOAD PROGRESSED, REPS BEATEN
1x DB shrugs
(Extra volume for traps)
REPS BEATEN
2x Machine rear delt fly LS DB DS 6-8 | 10-12
REPS BEATEN
2x Incline bench seated cable cross extension LS DS 4-6 | 6-8 |
REPS BEATEN
10x Laps Farmers Walk with 100kg added plates, 2 laps then 90 sec rest then repeat 5x.Quads, hamstrings, calves & HITT
3x Reverse band hack squat 4-6 | 8-10
(ideally bands set so that they are slack for the second half of the range of movement)
NUMBERS SET
2x Banded pendulum 6-8 | 10-12
(ideally bands set so that they are slack for the bottom half of the range of movement)
NUMBERS SET
2x Leg extension LS DB DS 6-8 | 10-12
REP PROGRESSION ACROSS BOTH
1x DB heel raised squat into bodyweight 10+
(Extra quad volume)
2x SL lying hamstring curl
REP PROGRESSION ACROSS BOTH
1x RP 45 degree hyper-ext hamstring focus
(Extra hamstring volume)
2x Seated calf raise (Set 1 RP ‘heavy set’, Set 2 high rep SS with B/W calf raise SS B/W donkey calf raise)
REP PROGRESSION ON TOP SET, ‘PUMP SET’ NOT LOGGED–
Changes going into next week:
20mg Anavar daily
Switching out flank steak for chicken breast on one of my rest days, legs, pull & upper body days.
Reducing carbs by 25g on the other rest day, push and arm day.
The thought process there is to see an equivalent reduction in calories but to keep carbohydrates higher on for those more demanding body parts.
Updated macros:
Upper body, legs, pull training days
220p 300c (-10g fat from protein source switch)Push, arms, rest day prior to push day
220p 275cRest day prior to upper body day
220p 300c (-10g fat from protein source switch)Blood work:
I will be planning to have bloods done ASAP either this week or next to see where the current cycle has me Oestrogen wise, there’s a clinic on my street that does full blood panels free of charge but only during a 2-hour slot each week and work keeps landing at that time :-(.
If worse comes to worst I’ll be ordering an Oestrogen kit off medichecks and I’m also toying with the idea of seeing where T3 is at.
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Hey Joseph
No exercise is ever ‘necessary’ to a certain degree… it’s always going to be whether it’s necessary for the context of your own specific goals, your structure & your ability to contract muscles when performing different movement patterns.
From what you’ve said, I would assume you have a better connection with your pecs when incline barbell pressing as opposed to flat bench pressing? In that scenario (just a guess because obviously, I don’t know your structure) you may have a small rib cage and require a slight incline to create a steeper sternum angle to align the bar path with predominantly pec fibers. In which case incline is likely to suit you better…
Don’t get caught up in the ‘must dos’, as a rule of thumb: get strong as hell whilst standardizing form across exercises that feel good and are pain-free, that’s a pretty sure fire way to make progress provided your nutrition & recovery is on point.
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Exactly as Stephen said, muscles are going to fatigue quicker in certain portions of an exercise based on the strength profile of muscles.
E.g. you may have no longer have any contractile capacity in the shortened range of a muscle but can contract a few cm’s out of the mid or lengthened range (where partials are usually performed)
In application, you can no longer fully extend your knee joint during a leg extension, but have the contractile ability to perform reps to the halfway point… then to a 1/3 of the way.. and then eventually just a few cm’s.
So it’s a way of completely exhausting the force output a muscle can produce across its entire strength profile 🙂
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That’s reassuring thanks @corinne !
I truly do want to make sure I am peeled and can present myself well on stage because let’s face it there’s going to be guys a lot bigger than me!
The weighted carries are actually a great idea which I hadn’t thought of, definitely going to use those as they sound fun too.
Would you say 10 x 15-20m carries is a good starting point to replace the increase in LISS by 15min?
I agree that it likely wouldn’t impact strength/performance for the pull day, pulling movements for me I tend to have no issues to maintain/progress.
Posing pointers definitely taken on board, gonna give that a try! This is something I really need to get nailed down because if I’m honest I’ve only ever spontaneously posed for check in shots when Jordan used to coach me, I think it’s getting to the stage where I should probably start thinking about a routine/music etc…
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8 WEEKS OUT UPDATE
Well guys, if you’ve had a read over the last couple of posts you’ll be up to date with the week I’ve had!
I’m figuring out that an ‘assisted’ prep, or diet in general, has a hell of a lot more moving parts than a natural one that’s for sure.. which amazes me even more so now when I think about all of the people out there offering ‘coaching’ for enhanced athletes who quite clearly don’t have the knowledge nor experience to warrant doing so. But that’s another topic for another day…
Essentially, this entire week my bodyweight has been stagnant and I’ve gained 0.5lbs on last weeks average. As I mentioned a few posts back and as Corinne also said, monitoring visually this week was way more important than fixating on the scales given that more hormones had now been introduced.
Recap of changes going into this past week:
300mg Testosterone Enanthate per week (Increased from 100mg)
12.5mg Aromasin E3D (increased from 6.25mg E4D)
20mcg Clenbuterol ED
10mg Yohimbine HCL ED (increased from 5mg)There we’re also some sporadic increases in carbohydrates on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday based off of the 5lb drop last week that had me a little scared that performance would drop. The height of these extra carbs tapered off as the week passed and I reverted back to my regular diet from Thursday up until yesterday (Saturday).
Changes going into next week:
No supplement changes this week.
Increase in cardio on rest days to 45 min (from 30 min).
Tapering back carbohydrates by 25g everyday excluding on my ‘deadlift day’.
These are being made off the back of assessing my check in video / pics this morning (SEE ATTACHED) and the fact that bodyweight has in fact increased this week, having considered both I do think that fat loss has slowed down a touch, and with the time frame in mind I do think I have room to ‘push’ a little bit more at this stage now hormones have increased.
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Today was my normal deadlift day, and also the day I would normally have a ‘refeed’ with my burger & fries post workout.. but with the above in mind I also decided to skip out on that and reverted to my leg day diet. I usually always drop a fair amount of weight following this day even with the refeed in place, so I’m interesting to see how I look tomorrow and what I weigh-in at.
Training
I have to say training is going pretty superb right now, no complaints there. Managing my neck / upper back to the best of my ability and getting treatment as and when I can is helping there.. but in terms of productivity of workouts I can’t ask for much more as the log-book is consistently being beaten across the board.
I’ll recap the last 3 workouts on my rest day on Tuesday as I know I’m a little behind on giving you guys some insight into how loads are progressing and exercise selection now I’m at a new gym!
Hope you guys have had a great weekend.
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@Louis – Thanks for your interest man, don’t hold back on giving your input/opinion on any of my methods!
I’m here to learn!
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‘Smart move’… I’ll take that! 😀 I plan on running bloods to take a look at oestrogen before any more changes are made in relation to PED’s or AI, so I was thinking of running these at the 6-7 week out stage which was where I foresee introducing some changes anabolics wise.
Definitely noted! I’ll run with this dose for a good couple of weeks no doubt.
That makes perfect sense, I think I’m guilty of wanting to ‘grind’ too soon and potentially verging on the side of being anxious whether or not I am giving myself enough time to be truly peeled. Those are some GREAT insights Corinne I really appreciate you going into such depth, with this being the first time I’ve ran an assisted diet those points are all going to be taken on board for future reference! Thanks!
I didn’t think about the impact the increased hormones would have on energy balance at all, so that’s a big take-away!
Input like that is exactly why I started the log 🙂
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Hey @Corinne
Very cool of you to chime in ????
That’s a good point I forgot to mention actually, I was running aromasin at 6.25mg e4d during the first 3 weeks, and with the increase in Test that’s now gone up to 12.5mg e3d. I’ve found I’m very prone to aromatise in the past even at relatively low doses of Test!In retrospect I think I was rather premature with adding in the clen given I’d dropped 5lbs last week, so I probably could have held back.
But I think in my mind after that drop in scale weight, with the extra food I was thinking along the lines of trying to protect performance as much as possible. Whilst making the most of this time where food and PED’S are potentially at their highest to ‘recomp’ as such.
Do you think that’s not possible if energy balance remains the same? It’s one I’ve seen up for debate quite a lot!
Interested to hear what you think!
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9 Weeks Out UPDATE.
(PROGRESS PICS ATTACHED & WEEK 3 ROUND-UP VIDEO LINKED BELOW)
Another training rotation in the books and I’m officially back in Sheffield which means I’m back in an awesome training facility where I know I’ll be able to string together some very productive workouts.
This last week was a busy one as I mentioned in my last update, and when I got back into the UK and weighed myself, I had dropped 5lbs over the 7 days I wasn’t able to weigh-in.
This did come as quite a surprise considering the changes made going into last week were fairly small.
So the low weigh-in was Saturday, which landed on my reefed day as it were, so my plan of attack for that day was to add an extra burger post workout & an additional 40g carbs and 10g facts across my last two meals to ‘fill back out’ a touch. Approx an extra 1200kcal.
Woke up 0.2lbs heavier!
What I did have to remember here is that on this day also (refer to supplement changes going into week 4 above), I had now started dosing 20mcg clen and also upped my dosage of Yohimbine to 10mg… So I put in another 50g carbs on the Sunday because at this stage of prep I certainly don’t want to risk sacrificing performance in the gym.
Woke up the same weight.
So that leaves me to today which is Tuesday, one day after Monday’s rest day where I put in another 25g carbs on top of my normal intake, which again had no affect on bodyweight.
What I’ve decided to do now is to take check-in pictures / videos a minimum of twice a week going forward, because it seems that as my actual competition cycle begins to kick in, along with the additional fat burners.. monitoring bodyweight in isolation & visually only once per week may not provide me the best insight into my condition.
So that will be the plan of action moving forward considering that my body just seems to be burning through whatever I throw at it!
I’ll leave the training recap out of this update, just because I think the most notable thing to update on over the past 4 days was definitely the above.
9 weeks out and I’m already second guessing whether to push a few more calories in or to see how things pan out over the next couple of days…
I would love to hear some opinions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3PZ0mF_v5U
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Day 20 UPDATE.
So.. for the last 4 days I’ve been away on a short break with the parents to Madeira and I’m writing this update in the airport waiting to come home.
The question is, did I stick to ‘prep’? Well of course! The gym I got to make use of during my time here was actually pretty awesome so no complaints there at all.
All-inclusive buffet wasn’t amazing; I brought microwaveable rice from home so lived off tins of tuna and rice for the 5 days I was here. Simply matching the macronutrients meal for meal that I would normally consume back home the best that I could.
But asides from training and nutrition, it was great to spend a good few days with the parents relaxing before I move out and head back to University!
Only downside was not being able to weigh-in, as I’m fairly on the ball with this as I’m a stickler for data, but it’s not really been on my mind a whole amount and we all know it’s the ‘look’ that really counts.
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Recap of changes implemented going into the last 4 days:
I went into this week having reduced upper body training day carbs by 20g and also non-training day carbs by 20g.
I also added 30 min LISS cardio on the bike on non-training days.
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When I weigh-in for the first time in a week tomorrow (and Saturday) I am therefore expecting a drop to reflect the changes above, and I do anticipate a fairly large drop so if this is exceeds 3.5-4lbs I will increase the calorie intake on my ‘high day’ which lands this Saturday.
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Training recap:
Monday – Chest, side delts, biceps
Tuesday – Back, rear delts, triceps
Wednesday – Quads, hamstrings & calves–
The workouts being as follows:
Chest, side delts & biceps
3x Barbell incline 4-6 | 6-8 | 8-10
REP AND LOAD PROGRESSION
2x Flat machine press 6-8 | 8-10
(temporary movement due to travelling)
2x Seated cable fly 6-8 | 8-10DID A POST ABOUT THESE ON MY INSTAGRAM!
3x Lying cuffed cable lateral raise 6-8 | 8-10 | 12-15
(bench set at a distance where the cable creates a 90 degree angle with my wrist, when my shoulder joint is at 45 degree of abduction)
2x SA dumbbell preacher curl 4-6 | 8-10
REGRESSED A REP AGAIN, CONSIDERING WHERE TO GO WITH THESEBack, rear delts & triceps
3x Hammer strength supinated row standing 4-6 | 6-8 | 12+
(LS here is a ‘pump’ or ‘metabolic’ style set where I will perform dual arm reps to failure, extended with partials)
3x SA cable pulldown 4-6 | 6-8 | 12+
(LS here is a ‘pump’ or ‘metabolic’ style set where I will perform dual arm reps to failure, extended with partials)
2x Rack pull knee height 4-6 | 10-12
REP AND LOAD PROGRESSION
2x Machine rear delt fly 6-8 | 10-12
3x SA machine tricep extension 4-6 | 6-8 |Quads, hamstrings & calves
3x Reverse band hack squat 4-6 | 8-10 | 10-12
(ideally bands set so that they are slack for the second half of the range of movement)
3x Banded pendulum 6-8 | 10-12 | 12-15
(set up so that band tension kicks in around 90-100 degrees knee extension)
ADDED AN EXTRA WORK SET HERE FOR QUADS
2x Leg extension 6-8 | 10-12
2x SL lying hamstring curl
1x RP Reverse hyperextension hamstring focus
(Knees locked out, drive heels into pads and think about initiating with knee flexion as opposed to hip extension. Raise upper body to the point where glutes take over, lower and repeat)
ADDED EXTRA WORK SET FOR HAMSTRINGS
2x Toe press on pin-loaded leg press (Set 1 RP ‘heavy set’, Set 2 high rep SS with B/W calf raise SS B/W donkey calf raise)
1x SL toe press on same machine
ADDED EXTRA WORK SET FOR CALVES–
The end of this week marks the end of my cruise… finally! I’m so glad I had the patience to wait this out even though my bloods were near perfect 3 weeks ago, because I think I’ll reap the rewards from this in the long run, having been able to maintain most of (if not all) of the tissue gained this year on a dose mimicking natural production.
With that said, as soon as I touch down this evening I will be starting my competition prep cycle as such, and also adding in an additional fat burner.
These will be the only changes going into week 4 which are listed below.
Supplement changes going into week 4:
300mg Testosterone Enanthate per week (Increased from 100mg)
20mcg Clenbuterol ED
10mg Yohimbine HCL ED (increased from 5mg)–
I’m confident this will allow me to keep my calorie intake and energy expenditure the same this week and still drop off another 2lbs as planned!
Check in shots will be taken this weekend but for now there’s a hotel bathroom selfie from yesterday because… well, we all love a selfie once in awhile right.
Hope you guys are good.
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Few days late with this one, but here is the roundup video that covered everything week 2 related!
Update to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA5yIqjbzYM&t=4s
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Thought I’d add a screenshot.
Just noticed it says they changed their assay for this test which I’m assuming may be why it’s now not as helpfulInstagram - @cameron_thomas5
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