Many of us struggle with hitting that dreaded strength plateau! If you're not familiar with what I am talking about, a body building or strength plateau is when it seems we are training just as hard as we always have been but are not seeing any more results? We are not getting stronger or we are not increasing the size of our muscles, usually strength and size go hand in hand.
This plateau effect does not generally happen to people who are new to weight lifting or body building since their muscles are in the early stages of their growth and strength gains and they have not gotten any where near to their genetic potential maximum. As a person weight lifts or body builds over time, and gets closer and closer to their genetic potential maximum strength and or size, their strength and size gains will progress slower and slower, eventually hitting a plateau. We will all experience the occasional short term plateau which is normal, what I am talking about here is that long term plateau that no matter what we seem to do, we just can not break through it.
In this YouTube Video I go over some of the most common mistake us long term and more experienced lifters may not be aware of. It's not how many days per week we workout that matters, or how many hours we are in the gym each day. Or even how much weight we are currently lifting. It all comes down to giving our bodies a reason to adapt and grow stronger and gain muscle. Doing the same thing over and over again after a while is simply not enough any more, you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and push a little harder, try some new exercises and even change your entire program around if need be. Watch my YouTube video for more info on this subject.
This ones a short Update for October, I wanted to quickly test out my DJI OSMO Mobile in selfie tracking mode to see how well it tracked me while making this video. The DJI OSMO Mobile worked great but I accidentally had my iPhone 7's front facing camera set to 720p so the video quality is not as good as it could have been. Video quality aside the DJI OSMO Mobile did a fantastic job of keeping me in frame while I moved freely around the room, almost like having my own personal camera man at a fraction of the cost :)
I will be making a review video for the DJI OSMO Mobile at some point once I have played around with it for a while, keep in mind it will not be a full feature review but more so focused on what I find useful for my requirements.
Other topics I talk about in this October Update Video are my new workout program where I am hitting every muscle group every workout day. I have been doing this most weeks 5 days per week taking the weekend off. I can say I do not feel like I have lost any gains even though I did take some time off to go to Las Vegas and the fact that I usually train 6 days per week, there may even be some areas where I have progressed a little but it is still early on to know for sure.
I have even decided to trim my workouts down to 4 days per wee, so Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday with the weekend off still. I will still be hitting every muscle group every workout day so that means I hit everything 4 times per week. Keep in mind I do train at least 1.5 hours per workout so this is still about 6 hours per week of training and when I train it is very intensive with the focus on always progressive overloading.
I am hoping that at 4 days per week of training my life balance will be a bit better while still staying in relativelythe same shape, when I approach my next contest I will of course ramp up my workouts which should allow me to make some more gains prior to contest day.
Last week I went to Las Vegas with a group of friends to have some no kids fun with my wife Nicole and of course the rest of the gang. We stayed in the WorldMark Hotel on Boulevard Street just off the strip but with easy shuttle access to the strip.
We had a great time and spent most days at the WorldMark Resort enjoying the pool and lazy river with friends and a medley of assorted drinks... In the evenings we would then take the shuttle to the strip for food, shopping and fun! My Wife and I have a few favorite eats and we also like to drop by a Fat Tuesdays for our 32 ounce 190 Octane slushy with two shots of Everclear. I guarantee this combo will get any party started in no time!
I have to say the highlight of our trip was bumping into Dana White (The president of the UFC) on Fremont Street of all places. I had had my share of drinks which I think gave me some liquid courage, at least enough to go up and start a conversation with Dana. As it turned out Dana is super humble and cool and actually stuck around to talk with us for a while, Dana even came back after getting a slushy drink for some more conversation with the group. Thank you so much Dana for sharing your time with us crazy somewhat inebriated Canadians!
I have been training every body part 5 days per week now for almost a month, well actually 3.5 weeks and I figured it was a good time to talk about how it is going so far. I plan to train this way for a good 2 months before I come to any solid conclusions but since I am near the midway point I can at least comment on how everything is going so far.
One of my big concern was overload on my body? Mainly in my joints an ligaments. I am not so worried about muscle soreness since I kind of like being a little soar anyway :) So far my joints are about the same as when I do traditional splits, most likely because at the end of the day I am breaking up about the same workload but with my train every day approach the workload is just spread out more evenly.
I do notice that after my 5th day of training I am pretty much beat and really need my 2 days off to recover. My workouts have been a little bit longer now that I am training every body part each day workouts but when I was doing split workouts I was also training 6 days per week so the workouts would be a little shorter.
In terms of strength and muscle gain which is one of the main goals in trying this approach out, it is a bit soon to really tell but I am making small incremental improvements but this may be simply a result of me getting to the new style of workload and order in which I am doing my exercises.
I will follow up again once I have 2 month under my belt and let you all know how this method of training works or doesn't work...
Last week I finally got my new Apple iPhone 7 Plus in 256GB. I was originally waiting on a Matt Black iPhone via a reservation I had with my Cellular Provider but things where not moving all that fast! So I went with plan B and reserved the same iPhone but in Silver with my local Apple Store, no more waiting, I had my iPhone 7 Plus 256 in Hand :)
So now that I have had my iPhone 7 Plus for a week or so, what do I think, was it worth upgrading from my iPhone 6 Plus 128GB? For me the upgrade was mostly about the improved cameras but I am enjoying the other improvements. Let's get into my impressions of the new iPhone 7 Plus.
The new iPhone 7 is touted as being the fastest smart phone on the market with its super fast A10 64-bit Quad Core CPU. Compared to my old iPhone 6, it really hauls, I notice it with pretty much everything I do from simply navigating through Apps, working with video or exporting a file, I'm not a big gamer so I can't really comment on the gaming side of things.
Usually with more speed comes faster battery usage, not in the case of the iPhone 7. Apple found some extra room for a little more battery output which helps, they also designed the new A10 quad core chip to utilize two of its chips to run super efficiently when less intensive computing is required. My iPhone 6 Plus would be pretty much dead by the end of the day where as my iPhone 7 Plus usually has at least 25-35% left when I plug in at end of day.
The new iPhone 7 is water proof or should I say water resistant. This is not a big deal for me since I don't plan on swimming or showering with my iPhone but it's good to know my iPhone 7 can take a bath and still come out working. After all $1200 would be a pretty devastating loss if my iPhone where to get water damaged.
My iPhone 6 did not have Force Touch ability so the addition of Force Touch with the new Apple Tactic Engine and the new iPhone solid state home button was all rather new to me. After a few days of getting use to it all I have to say I love it. When I press the home button to unlock my iPhone, the reading of my thumb print and the launching of the home screen is virtually instantaneous. The subtle tactic vibration along with Force Touch has really opened up a ton of new ways to make my iPhone experience easier and more efficient.
For some reason people where complaining that Apple did not increase the screen resolution up from 1080p on their new iPhone 7 Plus? Instead Apple chose to improve the brightness and color depth which is something I can actually see an improvement in. Let's get real, 1080p on a 5.5 inch screen is more than high enough resolution, my eyes would never be able to pick out smaller pixels or higher pixel density on a screen this size with so many pixels already jammed into it. The new iPhone 7 Plus screen looks amazing in my books!
Apple added another speaker or should I say they improved the "ear" speaker so it can now be used as a secondary audio speaker to give the new Apple iPhone 7 not only a louder overall volume but also true stereo sound. Don't expect any thumping bass but the new configuration is for sure louder and clearer than before.
A big advantage to picking the larger of the two iPhone 7's and going with the Plus model is the extra rear facing camera, you now get a 1x and 2x lens setup which does help a lot to get closer into the action when you can't physically do it yourself. The 1x lens is also super fast with a f/1.8 aperture and both rear facing cameras are 12 megapixel. Too many of the camera features have been improved to even go into detail so take a look at Apple's website for more info on this. I did want to mention that the front facing camera also takes advantage of many of the new hardware and software improvements and also sports 8 megapixel quality with 1080p video recording. Great for Vlogging!
I plan ot use my iPhone 7 Plus for much of my Vlogging and perhaps even to shoot some of my main video since I can shoot in 4k and have a 1080p front facing camera now, this means I will need more storage space which is why I bought the 256GB model, That's double the space I was able to get before with my iPhone 6 or even a 6s.
Something not many people talk about is the Bluetooth quality on the new iPhone 7 and I am not even sure if Apple change anything about it in their latest model but I can say I do notice the Bluetooth seems to be more solid for me with less cutting out and loss of connections to devices.
It's a good thing the Bluetooth is so good since the new iPhone 7 does not have a dedicated headphone jack. To be honest I can't remember the last time I used a headphone jack with my iPhone so again this is not really a deal breaker for me. All the audio devices I use connect to BT and my high end Sure Microphone already uses the Apple Lightning port.
The proof is in the pudding and the main reason I upgraded from my iPhone 6 Plus to the new iPhone 7 Plus was for the improved video and photo abilities of the iPhone 7 Plus. To see how the iPhone 7 Plus does in real life I recommend you watch my below YouTube video where I have included some sample photos and videos shot on the iPhone 7 Plus.
Friday, November 4, 2016 at 6:59PM ;)
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