Renaissance Periodization : RP

So, in my last 2 posts I talked about my journey out of and then back into fitness and shared some initial before and after photos.

While I said my wife and I used RP  I wanted to share a few more specifics on why we chose RP, what it is, and what we used of theirs, specifically, as well as what we're doing now.

What is RP?

They're a company who is made up of a large board of PhDs, RDs, and current college professors, which is cool.  What's more cool is that they largely agree on everything (which is shocking) and the things they don't all agree on (alcohol consumption, for example) they're open about.  What's even cooler than that is that they are all Olympic lifters, power lifters, endurance athletes, and/or CrossFitters so they understand the needs of athletes and they are not here for your starvation diets (yay carbs!).

Who uses RP?

I mean, other than the super famous me and my wife.... you can go look through the "RP Transformations" group on instagram.  Oh, and they have a few no-name clients too, like Annie Thorisdottir and Rich Froning jr.

What do they offer?

They have nutrition templates as well as workout templates.
They have mass and cut programs, including plans for athletes, non athletes, vegan, gender specific, hypertrophy, etc. 
For nutrition they have a Standard Template, for serious athletes, which is macro counting
A new app that is macro calculating
Then they have what my wife and I used:  The Simplified Template

The simplified template is macro based, but RP has done all the macro counting for you and all you see is a list of foods from each category (protein, fruits and grains, veggies, and fats) and how many ounces (or tbsp) you are to each of each for each meal.  All the meals are the same so you don't have to think about which day it is, which type of meal, or calculate workout times or intensity.  It's.... simple.

For us, the Simple plan worked well for our cut, which is what we were using it for!  I lost 30 pounds in ~90 days and my wife (who weighed much, _much_ less than I did) lost 12 pounds.

It got us back down to fighting weight, got us exposed to thinking about how macros look, disciplined our food choices, and let us practice meal prep.

We are now nearly 7 weeks past completion of our RP simplified template cut and here we are
(the photo was taken on August 3rd, ~4 1/2 weeks post RP):

In the next blog I'll share what macros we are focusing on now, how you can incorporate that into your life, whether you are wanting to cut, mass, or maintain and whether you are a distance runner or a CrossFitter!

Stay tuned!

Transformation Tuesday: Coach Dodd edition, 2019

*Before and after photos at the bottom*

So, in my last blog I introduced my journey over the last few years....

The tale of the tape:
I come in at a towering 5' 6"
I didn't break 100 pounds until I was a freshman in high school.  I graduated high school at somewhere between 120 pounds and 130 pounds.  Yes.. yes... I know... a monster.  "Mammoth of a man" I think is the name you're looking for *flex* #bodybysoccer

Throughout my 20's I stayed between 140 and 165.
31-33 I stayed right at 180.
34 I hit 200 pounds for the first time.
At 36 I was a sloppy 205.

A few things to hear me out on:
1.  Weight alone is a terrible indicator
2.  I despise BMI.  It's stupid.  No, I do get it.  Yes, I still think it's 90% useless at best, detrimental more often.

I could be 205 if I was a powerlifter, CrossFit games athlete, body builder, etc.  But I wasn't... I was just an out of shape 205.  You can be cut up at what BMI says is "morbidly obese".  You can also be obese at that same weight.  The scale is not a good primary indicator of health.  It can be a tool, but just one small tool in a very large tool chest... full of tools... other tools.... better tools.

My wife:  over the last 25 years my wife has been a 4 1/2 foot tall 160 pound overweight adolescent, a competitive gymnast, an anorexic madly in love with "Ed" at 87 pounds (zero muscle mass, hair falling out in clumps, digestive issues, hiatal hernias, faint, etc), and she has birthed 2 children that included gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and emergency c-section.  She has tried every crash diet, fad diet, pill diet, starvation diet, and pay-for-pounds diet you have ever heard of.  All the bad ones, that is.  She has believed what most girls are taught:  All food is bad, carbs are bad, fat is bad, calories are bad, it's all bad, and the only way to lose weight is to starve your body to the point of misery. 

We both were fed up.  We both got "done" at the same time.  So, we tried what some good friends suggested.  A crazy program that we had never heard of:  Renaissance Periodization.  Crazy name, but we liked what we saw.  I'll do another post specifically about RP in the next few days (what it is, what it isn't, who it's for, why we chose it, what we thought, how we did it, tips and tricks, etc.), so look for that.  Also, I'll detail what we're doing now and how things are going!

In the meantime, here were our before and after photos (before photos taken the first day of our cut and the after photos taken on the last day of our cut, which was 7 weeks ago):

30 pounds down

12 pounds down

My weight loss numbers each week (notice the up and down)

"What's the Point?": 3 Deadly Words and A New Lease on Life

5 years.

That's how long it's been since I was actively taking care of myself, on a daily basis.

2 years.

That's how long I completely let myself go and allowed myself to fall into full on "screw it all" mode with my fitness.

If you've been a blog reader here and or have read my book  then you know I've had a _lot_ of knee surgeries over the years.  2 years ago I was hired to lead a conditioning and skills camp for a high school boy's soccer team.  Most of the time I'm hired to operate a "hell week" to run people off.... which I love ;)  During this week, while I was out of shape and had already let myself get too far out of bounds, I still had to play.  I. Can't. Help. It.  Much to my wife's chagrin.... but that's for another blog, lol

Anyway, there rolled a 50/50 ball and my foot met the ball at the exact same instant as one of the kid's foot met the ball.  Standard fare.  Only my knee cap slid out to the side of my leg and hung... it got stuck.  So, there I was, on the field, with my knee cap locked to the outside of my leg, decisively where it was _not_ supposed to be.  I grit my teeth, grabbed it with both hands, rolled hard one way while I pulled with hands the other, all while trying to relax the muscles (ha!), and I was able to pop it back into place (about 15 minutes later).  The physical damage sucked, it scrambles everything around when this happens and then "freezes" your quad as well.  The psychological damage is what I let take over, though.  I was done.  I told myself that was it.  I was washed up, I was old (I wasn't), and what I let ring in my ears over and over again was the death nail of "what's the point?"

What's the point?  What's the point of rehab if you're just going to do it again?  What's the point in getting your mileage back up if you're only going to get hurt again and have to start all over?  What's the point in pushing in the gym when you're going to inevitably have another surgery that will cause you to lose all your gains and go back to square one, again?  What's the point?  Those three words froze me in time.  It wasn't pretty.

I lost my engine, lost my gains, lost my drive, lost my fire, lost my desire to run, lost my push to workout, lost my ability to write this blog, and I gained about 30 pounds of pure body fat.  All from 3 little words.  My words, in my own head, my three deadly words: "What's the point?"

In my next blog I'm looking forward to detailing a bit of how I came out of that 3 word hole and where I am now (pics included...)

Don't give up.  It's worth it.  You will get hurt.  You will get injured.  You will have setbacks.  You will start over.  And, most importantly, you will have Life.