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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Body Experiments II



What happens when some goofballs decide to put "proven" workout techniques/programs to the test? Apparently, they get pretty good results. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about body experiments a group of us conducted and now some initial results are in.

Scorpion (alias - see previous post for details) decided to test a method in Tim Ferriss' book "Four-Hour Body" with which Tim Ferriss was able to put on 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days. It was a pretty strong claim especially considering the workouts were only 30 minutes long and you only do 2 workouts a week. That equates to a measly 1 hour per week or a grand total of 4 hours to gain this mass in 28 days. Scorpion did not follow the exact same set of exercises but followed the technique and pace in which the exercises should be executed. He also modified the meal plan slightly.


Amazingly despite not sticking 100% to the program outlined in "Four-Hour Body", Scorpion made some pretty strong gains. Overall he gained about 20 lbs in the 4 weeks going from an initial weight of 176 lbs to 196 lbs. 196 lbs is the highest weight Scorpion has ever been despite past attempts to get to 200 lbs via other methods including taking weight gainers. Adding a couple percent of fat loss to the total muscle gain for scorpion was around 25-27 lbs. So it seems the claim of gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days is in fact legitimate. Now having completed his program Scorpion will either push to gain the last few pounds to hit the 200 lbs or perhaps start a new experiment testing a claim to go from 5K runs to 50K runs in a 12 week period. First, he needs to get initial 5K under his belt as Scorpion's cardio leaves a bit to be desired.

Noob also hit a milestone having completed 30 days of Insanity. His results have been great. He is following the workout programs as described and is actually eating healthy (unlike the 90% of Americans who "think" they eat healthy despite our 30% + obesity rate). Noob began at 191 lbs and is currently at 183 lbs. Doesn't seem like a lot of weight for 30 days but the scale is a poor judge of progress as it doesn't take into account muscle mass gained in contrast to fat lost. It's a good thing we took measurements. In the past 30 days Noob lost a total of 8.5 inches and about 7% body fat (about 15 lbs of fat!).
  • arms - .5 inches
  • legs - 4 inches
  • chest - 1.5 inches
  • waist - 3.5 inches


 











Next time I'll go over my final 60 day results (cold shower technique to burn fat!), Subzero's 30 day milestone (P90X), perhaps the return of Ermac after his shoulder injury (P90X), and maybe the start of our first female member to attempt a body transformation!

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