So what is my plan?  Well, I got an Excel spreadsheet and tracked what I eat every day.  While I don’t eat any junk, or sugar, I am eating way too many calories every day.  I don’t think that I eat a lot, but when I added it all up, it was quite a surprise.  So I changed my diet so that I eat only 2000 calories per day, instead of my usual 4000. LOL  I also made sure that I am getting at least 1 gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight to prevent any muscle-loss while dieting.  Finally, I bought a digital food scale with codes for all foods for like $25 on ebay.

The good thing about dieting is you save a lot of money on grocery bills, and on 2000 calories a day I don’t feel hungry at all.  So slowly but surely I should be able to bring my bodyfat percentages down now that I know what the numbers really are.

Like they say, “What gets measured gets managed!”  For example, I realized I was drinking 1000 calories worth of natural protein shakes per day!  So I went out and bought some Isopure unflavored powder which will give me the same amount of protein with half the calories.

The post Time to diet! appeared first on Tongkat Prophet Blog.

Bodybuilding has always had a lot of politics going on, but it seems that it is worse than ever.  Bodybuilding also is in a lot of trouble financially.  Working out and being obsessed with one’s body may be more popular than ever, yet the sport of bodybuilding seems to never have been worse off, and shows are now packed with “physique competitors” and “bikini models” to keep attendance up.

The first thing one will notice when one attends an NPC show, is the overall poor quality of contestants.  Some of these guys don’t even diet.  One dude in the heavyweight class must have been 30% bodyfat.  They literally will allow anyone on the stage.  No muscles whatsoever?  No problem!  Just pay your registration fee and come on stage and waste the audience’s time while making a mockery of the sport.  There needs to be some sort of height-weight ratio in place (along with a maximum bodyfat percentage) for everyone so that the audience’s time isn’t wasted as you sit there for 4 fucking hours while a bunch of people who have no business being on a stage stumble about to poorly-selected music… deluding themselves into thinking that they have descended from Mt. Olympus to show us all “how it’s done.”

The next thing you will notice is that most contestants are short.  Some of them are borderline dwarves, for that matter.  It’s only natural that many guys who are short will attempt to compensate by getting jacked, but when pretty much every fucking guy on stage is short, it makes the sport look bad.  Like it’s a sport for insecure guys or something…

What’s fucked up about the whole thing is that the short guys have not only taken over the stage, but apparently the judge’s stands as well because when you look at IFBB pros, every champion pretty much looks exactly the same, and that is short and boxy.  No aesthetics whatsoever!

It really comes down to making money: people have to believe that they too can be winners and if you give the trophy to a genetic prodigy who is 6’2″, 270 lbs. with a 29 inch waistline, the audience who attends your shows and buys your supplements will be angry because no amount of training or supplements can give them those stats.  But… if you give the trophy to a guy who is 5’7″ and 290lbs. with a 35 inch waist… well, anybody can achieve that if they just inject enough insulin!

The post What’s wrong with bodybuilding today… appeared first on Tongkat Prophet Blog.

The problem is that Manhattan has gotten really soft.  If you yell when doing leg presses, they want to revoke your membership. The vibe is just crap.  But the thing that really pisses me off the most is the lack of serious bodybuilding equipment.

Today’s gym equipment, generally speaking, is designed by people who aren’t bodybuilders.  Even simple things like pull-up bars are designed with the stupidest angles and a gap between the bars so you don’t bang your head.

The most important thing is to be able to really feel the muscles contract and develop that mind-muscle connection so that you can totally nuke the fibers.  When it comes to machines, they really have to be built right – in order to create this connection, and well -built machines died out probably around the time Flex equipment went under.  I know that there are companies out there that still build awesome shit, but you’ll only find their products in the weight-rooms of college football teams and not in any gym in Manhattan!

But in Queens and in Brooklyn there are still gyms like Coliseum and Dolphin by the 25th Avenue subway stop on the D train.  This Dolphin in particular has a ton of equipment circa 1980-2000.

For example, I find it hard to develop my chest using just the standard bench press and stuff you find in a normal gym.  It has to do with my physical structure.  Even the pec-decs in normal gyms are shit since they also double as a rear-delt machine in most cases and involve too much bicep and put a lot of stress on the elbow joints.  They are total shit.

But at Dolphin, they have several old-school pec-decs that totally isolate the chest.  They even have pec-decs that specifically isolate the upper chest!  So you can pre-exhaust like never before, and then move on to the Flex plate-loaded leverage machines for the chest, which force you into a pressing style which is like passing a basketball and totally fries the chest.

At that point, one can move on to dumbell presses with a slight incline and one is done.

So why waste your time using tools what won’t get the job done?  Better to travel a bit and get real results.

The post The importance of the right sort of gym… appeared first on Tongkat Prophet Blog.

The classic, well-known formula for the liver is this:

This product is now being sold under this label:

This formula is known by every juice-head who takes it to protect their livers while doing toxic oral cycles.  They all use it because it works, and has a myriad of studies to back it up.  The directions say to take 1 capsule 2x/day, but my preference is to take 2 capsules 2x/day.

In addition, I like to use the strongest milk thistle I can get my hands on.  The Vitamin Shoppe sells a really strong one cheap:

Today I found another cool liver detox product that I just ordered and will try out:

It’s nano-particulate milk thistle!  If I like it, I will drop using the Vitamin Shoppe milk thistle extract.

In addition, 2 other products that are incredible for liver detox are sodium ascorbate (3 grams/day) and organic MSM (2-3 tablespoons/day).  Here they are:

So get out there and start cleaning your livers!

The post Liver detox products… appeared first on Tongkat Prophet Blog.

So my friend pointed out to me that everyone is benching (as well as doing shoulder barbell presses) with a grip that is too wide.  “But wait,” you will say… “Doesn’t a close grip work just your triceps?”

Yes, if your grip is narrower than your shoulders.  But all these years I’ve been pressing under a false assumption – that the wider your grip is the more it hits the chest.  In fact, taking a very wide grip is working your shoulders and stressing your rotator cuffs.  When you bench the way 99% of the population does, it’s like you are throwing a haymaker punch with both hands at the same time.

In reality, what you want to do is simulate the motion of shoving someone away from you. This can only be done when you bench with a shoulder-width grip.  But how often do you see such a grip when someone is benching.  How often do you see it when someone is shoulder-pressing?

Using this sort of grip hits the chest the hardest, and enables you to hit the inside and the upper much easier.  It takes some getting used to, and you will find you are not as strong in this manner at first, but it enables you to really develop those muscles without incurring injuries.

These are the types of things you learn training with professionals.

The post The importance of technique. appeared first on Tongkat Prophet Blog.