My 3 Months Body Transformation

Four years ago, I actually did this for around 3 months. My motto in our fraternity lifting group was “every day is pull-up day”, and every lifter in the fraternity knew me as the pull-up guy. I would do 5 sets to failure of full range dead-hang no-kip pull-ups every night and sometimes both morning and night. At that point I wasn’t lifting anything else. Weighed 130 pounds, could barely bench my body weight, couldn’t squat even 100 pounds and never tried deadlifting before.

So here’s what happened:

1. My max pull-ups per set increased from 4 to 19 in 3 months. My recovery time between sets dropped drastically as well, and I could do 81 full range of motion reps in 5 sets with 5 minutes rest between each set.
2. With a huge swing and big kip, I did my first muscle up after 3 months.
3. My shoulders started developing some instability that sometimes hurts a bit if I do too many pull-ups, or drop from a muscle-up too hard. I stopped doing them every day after this became a problem. This largely became a problem because I would ignore any pain outside soreness. and do my pull-ups every day no matter what.
4. My lats got pretty big, while every other part of me was still small and skinny. I had tiny legs, chest, and arms. Even the upper part of my back and shoulders, trapezius and deltoids, were small in comparison to my lats. This made me look really out of proportion.
5. My shirts stopped fitting well around my back, but my arms weren’t big enough to fill out any shirt sleeves. Again, I developed really strange proportions.
6. I went to the gym and picked up some dumbbells for the first time in months, and to my surprise realized my curling rep weight almost doubled.
7. Witnessing the significant gains from dedication to pull-ups, I learned that the body is very responsive to any hard work you put into it. I applied similar dedication to other exercises (push-ups, deadlifting), and managed to even out my physique a bit more.
8. Stopped having issues with opening bottles with screw-on caps, and wasn’t particularly hindered when the wheels on my luggage broke.
9. I don’t have a before picture, but here’s a picture taken two summers after all the pull-ups and also after my bro drew a “palm tree penis” (yes I knew he was doing it, and no I didn’t care) on my back with sunscreen at the beach. I am standing naturally and weighed 145 pounds at the time:

I found another picture taken during my pull-up obsession days. It was around this time that I could do close to 30 full range-of-motion reps in one set:

In conclusion, I wouldn’t really recommend doing pull-ups every day, but if you do you’ll see results fast. If you use good form and fight for those last reps, your lats will grow quickly. In my experience, doing pull-ups when you are really sore is no problem at all. Your body will just grow even more and you will see gains faster. HOWEVER, if you experience joint pain in your shoulders and elbows, do not ignore it. Take a break, and listen to your body please. Even to this day my shoulders still feel a bit funky sometimes when I do pull-ups. Do not make the same mistake I did. Good luck!

EDIT: The image here is in no way edited. I really did have that tanned into my back and it took over half a year for it to fade. I only posted it because it is the only picture I have that shows my back musculature

4 Proven Ways to Build Muscle

Just so you know I am not a dinggleberry blowing smoke up your bunghole via the internet, here is my own transformation (no this photo is not photoshopped and no I’ve never used any illegal substances)…

My Internal Shift:

1. Define Your “Why”

Here is the kicker though, in order for your “why” to power your vehicle it must have enough horsepower.

For example, 4 a cylinder 100 horsepower “Why” = “I want to get in shape to look sexy”

Pretty generic why….

Our job is to take another step further and unearth your deepest desire and motivation for wanting to get fit.

On the flipside a supercharged V12 “Why” = “I want to get in shape so I can show up in my life authentically. I want to build a body which awakens my inner confidence and allows my greatness to shine through to the world. I am tired of hiding and feel uncomfortable in my body, I am ready to level up and become the best me”

See the difference?

Here is the deal, even with a successful training/nutrition plan and a clearly defined “why”

Sh*t is still going to be hard along your path.

You’ll have ups.

And you’ll most definitely have downs.

The key is to have a “why” so powerful and inspiring that it will propel you through the natural undulations.

2. Have a plan

Cliche I know, but this is ground zero along your fitness journey.

After coaching over 112 clients in the last 12 months, I have learned that nearly every single one of my clients struggled immensely before joining Thrive Coaching for one reason...

They were lost in the gym.

They felt as though their workouts weren’t bringing them closer to their goals.

And on top of all that, they felt blindfolded in the kitchen.

In the majority of cases, they knew exactly the results they desired for themselves

but they simply didn’t know how to obtain them.

They would dabble with some random workout they found from scrolling through instagram...only to leave the gym feeling hopeless and confused.

Feeling as though their efforts did little to bring them closer to their dream body.

Same was true in the kitchen.

The all to common pattern was to jump from one fad diet to the next, in hopes that one of these silver bullet diets would give them the results they were looking for.

Keto one week followed by Whole30 a month later.

They were on the figurative fitness hamster wheel.

Trying hard, but getting nowhere.

Sound familiar to you?

The central issue here is that their efforts were hodge podged and lacked any clear direction.

Pretty difficult to have consistency and motivation when you don’t have a clear plan of attack, huh?

3) Honest Assessment

Once you have clarified your “why” and have a plan which will drive you towards your vision, you need to take an honest inventory of yourself and your efforts.

Are you training with proper form/executing your exercises conciously or letting your ego get in the way?

Good form and execution is grossly underrated IMO.

Are you listening to your body or aggressively training through injuries?

Nothing will put the brakes on your progress faster than a long term neglected injury.

Are you truly bringing your A game to your workouts or half heartedly putting in effort?

Effort…most don’t go it. Do you?

Are you stay consistent and trusting the process or constantly getting sucked into new fads and trends like an caffeine infused ADD chimpanzee?

In an age of social media influencers spreading information which is equivalent to a steaming pilling of horse dung, you must be careful who you listen to and how often you change things up.

Side note: most times, changing things simply for the sake of “changing things” is a horrible idea. Please avoid this rookie mistake of program hopping frequently.

My Practical Shifts:

1. Train Progressively

Without a shadow of doubt, mechanical tension based training should occupy 40–60% of your time in the gym.

The reality is, your body wants to stay in homeostasis.

It does not want to change.

For a natural lifter, simply getting a “sick pump” in the gym with your bros is not enough to kick your body out of this state of wanting to be unchanged.

You must apply a stimulus which is truly challenging.

There are many ways to implement progressive overload, but far and away the most “scalable” long gains producing strategy is to consistently get stronger on your compound lifts overtime.

Our bodies have mechanosensors which sensitive to the magnitude and temporal aspect of load (weight on the bar).

These magical internal little gains producing gremlins spark anabolic and anti-catabolic signaling pathways through mechanotransduction.

In layman terms….

Lift heavy things.

Eventually lift heavier things.

Do this with enough volume, and you will get bigger.

2. Periodize your training

Your training program should not be binary.

It must be dynamic.

It must account for changes in volume, intensity, and rest overtime.

Training is stressful…like really stressful.

In order for your body to adapt your must periodize your training.

This can be done via deloading, or simply having periods of high volume training followed by lower volume training.

3. Focus on your shadow

Let’s be honest….

Most peoples only metric for success in the gym is simply how “good” you look.

If you fall into this category (myself included at times), you want to maximize your shadow.

What the heck do I mean by this?

This means prioritizing development in the illusory muscle groups.

This includes your: deltoids, lats, calves, and the like.

These are the muscles which when trained properly can give you the illusion of having a supernatural physique.

4. Protein is actually important

This is perhaps the only point which the “bro scientists” have gotten right.

No, you do not need to be slamming protein shakes immediately post workout or eating 300g of it daily…

but you must be conscious of your macronutrient balance (carbs, fats, and protein).

For my first two years of training, my post workout meal was peanut butter and a bowl of cereal.

Yikes…

(FYI In a perfect world this post workout meal would have been 20–40g of easily absorbed protein , 40g o f starchy carbs, and little fat. )

As a blanket statement, I recommend .6–1g of protein per pound of bodyweight daily.

While it is hard to quantify the exact benefits I saw after I began tracking my macros two years into my fitness journey, what I do is that my results began to skyrocket around the exact same time.

Food for thought (literally).

Hope that helped:)