Becoming more introspective.

I think everyone that gets into weight lifting eventually wants to “lift heavy” or be the “strongest” one among their friends or let alone the gym.  However, one thing always ends up happening, either the person lifts heavy with good form or lifts heavy with the worst form ever. You also have the person who is smart enough to take their time with progressing their lifts in order to get their form in check.

Fettucini pasta with hot italian sausage tomato sauce

Hey there, Dana here….

Instead of a lengthy post this evening I figured I would share with you all one of my recipes that I posted up on Instagram about two weeks ago. I’ve been on a pasta kick lately which is why you might be seeing a lot of that on my Instagram!!!

This is a great go-to dish if you usually cook for yourself you can however double, triple it or make however much you need!!!

Onto the recipe now…

Higher Frequency Designs

Several ways to approach setting up a higher frequency training routine. I decided to go with 3x a week, due to the ability of the ideas present having easy carry over to higher/lower frequencies.

Starting off with the basics would be a standard 5x5/madcow disease routine, alongside the often touted GOMAD diet.

For those wanting to keep a 3x week training frequency. I’ll post several tweaks and variations below. I feel this post may be long if I rambled so I’ll try to keep it to the minimum.

First example for legs I’ll just use squats with rep variations.

What is flexibility really ? How am i balancing life right now ?

 Hello Dana here ,


Some of you may follow me on social media and already know that I recently made a switch of majors from retail management to culinary school and so far, I have been enjoying every bit of it.  Life for the past few weeks since starting up has basically been a go go go type of thing and to be honest I love the feeling of it. Anyways, you might be reading and wondering how does this correlate to fitness and nutrition? I’m sure some may be wondering how does she manage to be in an industry that is basically based on food yet still be into nutrition and achieve her goals? Honestly, a year or so ago I probably would have struggled. In a sense that I either would have worried about how I’m going to be around so much food because you know I have to track to the X or that a person will no be able to achieve goals being in this industry. 

Calf Training

Okay so calf training
I'll give props to Chester​ for this last year. Lower limb development did a complete 180

You typically see a person bobbing up and down on the balls of their feet all the while not even putting stress on their calves.
Or
They use a light weight and shoot for 100+ reps
(This can be used but isn't necessarily the best method for all of your calf work)

Bread and Butter HF routine

My philosophy on strength training has changed over the last several months. In the past 5s and 3s were the essentials in my toolkit... However, now 2-5 reps have become obsolete.
This is due to IMO the risk/reward you receive while working in this rep range.
Don't get me wrong 5x5 definitely works, but i would rather put more focus on my goals rather than tip toe across the line...
Sings along with the broad range of 6-30 reps are whats now prominent.

One may ask whats the difference between 5 and 6 reps? Honestly not much really at first glance, thing is I'm shooting for 10 reps and may fail on 6 for my last set... That is the difference.
For now I'll talk about my original bread and butter routine. Took it from some high frequency posts on a forum, and later on saw it in Wendler's pdf... so likely was a copy pasta

Advantages of two day refeeds

This has fortunately been in the spotlight recently, and something a previous coach and myself has had great results from.
Truth is its been around for ages, look at the CKD with the weekend carb ups which tend to become binge fests lol, or any of the numerous diets that evil monkey lyle has produced.... even RFL has a 2+ day refeed period towards the end :)
Typically refeeds are done when an individual feels like it (more "advanced" method) or when a person has "high days" during their weekly carb cycle ie. low, low, med, low, med, low, HIGH...
If structured correctly the individual will end out the day with higher energy, a full belly, and a deep restful sleep for the night due to the serotonin high.