Adelfo Cerame: How to Manage Training & Nutrition Around a Busy Life. Plus: Science Round Up Sneak Preview

If there is a one body part, where Adelfo has really made awesome progress in the last months, it's his back - by the wa that's a different "back" than in "training back-to-back" of which you'll read in this installment of his now biweekly posts ;-)

It probably sounds strange, but last week I have really been missing Adelfo's update. Not because it's more work for me to write yet another blogpost... ah, whatever. There's another one today and there will be the next one in two weeks time from now :-)

Before we are getting to more details on how Adelfo's contest prep and the rest of his increasingly busy (as you will see in a very positive kind of way) life, let's get to the sneak peak on today's SuppVersity Science Round Up. I felt the show last week was awesome and must pad my own shoulder for having the ingenious idea to simply pack those news that did not fit in, as well as "bonus material", into a written follow up on Friday - a new segment if you will, the SuppVersity Science Round-Up Seconds.

SuppVersity Science Round Up: Sneak Preview

Long story short, if you are interested in any of the following and Carl and I don't discuss them today on The SuppVersity Science Round Up live on Super Human Radio at 1PM EST (for Europeans that's 19:00 GMT+1), don't worry, they will be in the "Seconds" tomorrows... so, let's see what's the most likely to make it exclusively to the live show and the podcast that's published ~1-2h later and will automatically appear in the side-bar under "Physical Culture for Your Ears":

• The rewarding effects of exercise and how they will calm your greed
• Omega-3, telomere length, endocannabinoids and how enzymes link them all
• Premature ejaculation and how only two hormones seem to make a difference
• Personalized prostate cancer vaccine and Harvard scientists build it from scratch
• Supps vs. medications and how healthy supps and necessary drugs form deadly duos

Ther is more, but  you know an hour is short and I am not a friend of rushing through a topic, so I'll stick to those, because even if we don't get off on a tangent (which is usually an interesting one), this is going to be a tight schedule. That said, I have taken up already way too much room of this, Adelfo's blogpost. So let's get him back on the grind!

Adelfo Cerame: Back to the grind and busier than ever

These past months I have been blessed with great opportunities to further my ambitions in chasing a career in the fitness and health industry and being able to do what I love and have a passion for. As of late, life for me has been very busy; and productivity in achieving my future goals has increased 10-fold. With my final three months of school approaching before graduation, and working two part-time jobs, I still have to find a way to juggle in my training and nutrition regimen while still being efficient.

How I  manage my training around the mandatories of life

If your are among the newbies here at the SuppVersity you may want to go back on read up on Adelfo's history, and how "A Terrible Accident Paved His Way to Competitive Bodybuilding"

With my current hypertrophy/strength training split + the incorporation of using an RPE scale, and given that my daily workouts are basically full body workouts but with a dominant day of either pulls or push movements. I would have to say that my workouts during my training days are pretty dense. I rest in-between workout days. This gives me four workouts/week, which makes it easy for me to adjust my schedule around my training hours or vice versa.

Life sometimes demands for last minute tweaks, and it requires sure instincts to make that work for you, can't work out in the morning as planned? Fine go in the evening hours, but don't forget to tweak your feeding window appropriately...

With my work schedule being all over the place, I have to plan my workouts on the fly nowadays. I still have a predetermined plan of attack but I also have to be able to adjust on the fly while at the same time not hindering my productivity. So there are times when I train in the morning, at night, and sometimes I even have to split my workouts because I don’t have enough time to finish my workout so I would have to finish the other half later. There are also times when I’m training back-to-back days training the same body parts because that’s the only time I can squeeze it in.

At first I feared that it would be counter productive to train back-to-back days training the same body parts, but coach Alberto said it would be fine in the beginning stages of my prep but once I started getting leaner and dipping into the lower body fat percentile, I would take the rest as needed whether it be one or two days.

And I’m not doing it all the time, just when my work and school schedules are off alignment with my predetermined plan of attack. Also with the whole issue of training back-to-back days; I’ve read and heard that Olympic power lifters basically train the same movements and muscles on a day-to-day basis to practice their craft, and it doesn’t seem like it hinders their progress? Allegedly, I’m not an Olympic power lifter and training at a different cadence and volume, but I am not training like that everyday... anyway, just sayin… I don’t think there would be a big issue training the same body parts back-to-back days once in a while. And if it is, you will be the first to know, after all you will see me stagnate (assuming you keep following this series)

How I manage my nutritional regimen around the mandatories of life 

Actually, one of the beauties of intermittent fasting is that there is not much to manage. Granted, my schedule has become busier, but overall this had very little effect on my nutritional regimen or routine. I’m still able to maintain my IF – 16/8 protocol, and to be honest it actually works very well with my schedule since I’m always on the go.

My tricks to nourish myself appropriately while I am on the go:

• I make sure to stock the bare essentials in my car that I need to hit my macros – These foods don’t require cooking, and have a prep time of less than 3-5 minutes; to me the simplest and most convenient on the go food sources for (A) Protein = Whey protein, and beef jerky (B) Carbohydrates = Bananas, rice cakes, RAW honey and (C) Fats = Nut butters
• I have a space in my trunk where I have a cooler and a box to put my foods in.
• I also keep extra supplements in my car (Whey, creatine, BCAA’s..)
• I always keep a gym bag or a spare gym bag with all my equipment and workout clothes – I always want to have that ready at all times.
• I keep a digital food scale in my car so I can weigh out my foods – It’s a bit weird but you gotta do what you gotta do son!
• And last, I have a myfitnesspal.com-app on my smart phone, so I can log my foods and keep track of my macros wherever I’m at.

Basically the only adjustments that I have to make once in a while is training fasted when I train in the morning (well I have bcaa’s + Creatine… so maybe semi fasted), but I have not noticed any issues with it so far. 

The one thing I have noticed too though is that I haven’t been consistently hitting my fiber goals and eating my fruits and veggies. There are days where I’m just drinking my foods from protein shakes and just get 1 whole food meal… I still get in my minimum of 1 serving/ day of fruits and veggies, but not enough for my liking,. So I remembered one of Adel's favorite sentences:

"Supplements are called 'supplements', because you take them to supplement your diet with all the stuff you would otherwise be lacking." 

 I have taken that to heart and stopped taking all multivitamins and other supplements, when I have more time to prepare my meals. And so I am now that I am missing out on some of the vites and lack fiber in my diet and have begun to take a basic multivitamins and fiber supplements from time to time. Bananas, rice cakes, and nut butters, like almond or peanut butter have also become pretty good companions of mine when I need some on-the-go carbs and fats to go with my protein shake. They’re easy to just store in the back of your trunk and always accessible to me.

My regimen ain't yours, but still...

... despite the fact that we are all different and no single optimal diet and training regimen exists, I hope there may be one or another thing in my regimen you think could be useful... even if it's just that you give up the unwarranted fear of the negative consequences of training back-to-back once in a while ;-)

Have a nice week and feel free to leave me comments, those of you who made use of this opportunity in the past already will know that I am answering all of them -- and did I mention that I actually enjoy the feedback?