The Muscle Couple received another update from Michael Finn recently and we wanted to share it with everyone.

Here it is in his own words and our comments below.

From: Michael Finn
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:58:41 -0700
To: Musclecouple@gmail.com
Subject: Update

Hey bud,
I just wanted to drop you a line on my progress-

So far so good still.  After hitting it so hard for 3 months, I’ve slowed down a bit for the last month to recover my body.  By slowed down, I mean maintaining.  My weight has been hanging at around 198-205lb consistent without me doing a lot of work to keep it there and I’ve been keeping the diet at 2500-3k calories a day still.   I’m doing your current workout routine now 4 days a week and am now putting together my goals and plan of attack for my next step.

Being a classic Ectomorph, I’m amazed with how I was able to get my body were it is by training and eating a high calorie diet.  I think my progression has gotten much better because I’m really starting to learn my body much better and am concentrating more on the destruction of my muscle fibers compared to how much weight I can lift.  My routine has been moderate weights but high intensity.

My goals for the next 3 months are:

• Breaking through my current lifting plateau
  
• Focus on getting functionally stronger
• Tightening up my diet so I am leaner and more defined
  

My goal now is to get to a comfortable 205-210 with minimal body fat. I need help in figuring out the correct macro nutrient percentages and kcal intake.  Putting on that much weight in such a short amount of time has made it a little difficult to keep up with the abs.

Any ideas on the Diet??

Mike

Great job Michael.

These are tremendous accomplishments in such a short amount of time.  Gaining all of that muscle with some resulting body fat is to be expected.  Thankfully as a beginner, your body was able to gain much more skeletal muscle mass and maintain minimal fat deposition.  Now it’s time to refine your program in all facets.

Here are our recommendations.  Stay with your current routine but strive to add weight to your lifts even if in very small increments from workout to workout.  This is going to involve you recording every set and rep but it’s worth it in the long run.  And this is what Gym Technik is perfect for.

You need a massive overhaul of your diet.  It’s time to focus on quality proteins, EFA’s and complex carbs at every meal.  The days of “eating everything and anything” are over.  If you want a quality physique, you now have to give it only quality kcals.  Eliminate most fast and processed foods from your diet.  Also stop eating Breads and other refined carbohydrates.  You don’t have to be militant in avoiding carbs but try and be specific with their timing  by consuming around your training sessions and early in the day.

Here is what a good sample diet would look like:

• Meal 1-Muscle Milk with Casein Protein Powder and Udo’s Oil
• Meal 2 Protein Bar and Apple
• Meal 3 Lunch of Lean Protein-Greens/Salad and Brown Rice(1/2 cup)
• Meal 4 RTD Shake with 2 Tablespoons Natural Peanut Butter
• Training Day(Muscle Couple Mix for before-during and after Training-75 Gms Protein-50Gms Complex Carbs-Glutamine & Creatine)
• Meal 5 Lean Protein and Greens (if Complex Carbs-Brown Rice-Quinoa or Yams)
• Meal 6-Cassein Protein Shake with Udo’s or Peanut Butter before bed

You should be striving for about 13 kcals per pound of bodyweight daily:

• 250 gms Protein
• 150 gms Carbs
• 125gms of EFA’s

Don’t obsess over meeting these requirements every day.  Just try and be conscious of the food you eat.  Avoid putting empty or worthless kcals into your body.  Plan your meals ahead of time and pack them with you when you go to work.  It’s easy once you train yourself to live in this fashion.

We will be tweaking the TMC Current workout soon and hopefully this will give you some ideas you can add to your own routine.

Please keep us abreast of your efforts.  Keep it up brother!

MIHWCS