Will I ever see my abs again

[EHILL]

Do you guys think I can lower my body fat % by just doing gymnastics 4 days a week or do I need to add a day or two of intereval training to my weekly routine? I have a little layer of stubborn body fat that I would like to burn off.

My Specs:

38 years out of the womb

Height 6' 2"

Weight 195

Workout Routine Killroy70:

I began with a very basic program, working out 4 days/week and working four static positions every day, which included:

1) planche variations

2) BL variations

3) FL variations

4) Handstand work

After I finish my static work for a given workout, which generally consisted of 7-10 sets of each movement, the remainder of my workout looked like this:

Day 1 - horizontal plane pushing and pulling FBE

Day 2 - curling (inverted pullup) and dipping variations (RTO dips, etc..) FBE

Day 3 - pullup and HeSPU variation FBE

Day 4 - multiplane pulling variaions + varied pressing work

My Diet is on point I follow a strict Paloe diet. I've read in the past the 80% of the way you look is thru your diet and the other 20% is from your workout.

Exam[/

[EHILL]

Example of diet:

Breakfast: 4 whole egg spinach omelet whole grapefruit

Snack: baby carrots and a hard boiled egg

Lunch: Mixed green salad topped with salom or chicken or tuna

snack: Celery, tuna, and wallnuts

Dinner: Chicken, broccoli, and a grapefruit

Bedtime snack: 4 fiber cracker with organic peanut butter to hold me over thru the night.

As far as interal training I was looking at 50 yard sprints, 30 on 30 off cycling, and 30 on 30 off incline thread mill spints.

30 on 30 off thread mill workout:

Start out at a 2% incline I set my speed at 7 mph. 30 seconds on means 30 seconds full out sprinting 30 seconds off means to rest with your feet off to the side of the thread mill. Every time the 30 seconds on comes aroun you raise the incline up 1 degree intill you reach 15% incline.

Sorry for the long post.....

Thx

[Neal Winkler]

Yes, you can get rid of that little stubborn fat with just gymnastics, but my suggestion to you is that you focus on one goal at a time. If you want to get rid of that fat, then you need to be content with not gaining any strength or size for the time being.

Basically, use the gymnastics to signal to your body that its needs to keep the muscle, and then eat a small caloric deficit. Eating at a caloric deficit is not the time to try and improve your gymnastics skills.

Some coaches such as Martin Berkhan have had success using intermittent fasting to lose fat and gain strength and muscle at the same time, so you can check that out of you want.

http://www.leangains.com/

[Jason Stein]

EHILL,

Looking over your proposed daily food intake, I notice you're eating very little fat, which is generally a fast ticket to failure. Results in constant hunger, low energy, failure to mobilize adipose tissue, etc, etc. You might consider upping your fat intake quite a bit.

best of luck,

jason

[EHILL]

Awesome thanks for the link...

Jason I cook my eggs in olive oil and add 1/2 of a small avacodo & olive oil to my salad each day. Do you think this will be sufficient good fats? I don't have any highs and lows my energy is solid all day.

Thanks!!

[Neal Winkler]

IMO, 20-40% of total calorie intake is good for fat. Of course, some people go higher, and this is fine, but I am just making a general recommendation. The lower end is reserved for people that do a lot of activity that requires glycogen for fuel. Otherwise, 30% is a nice middle of the road metric. Most people 30-40%.

So, if we assume that you are going to eat at a small deficit to lose the fat, that puts you at 2535 cals/d by multiplying your bodyweight by 13. Setting your calories at this level will result in a slow fat loss and give you a better chance of not having performance detriment. If the fat loss is too slow, then I would recommend that you go to bodyweight x 11-12 and scale back your training. You can maintain strength and muscle mass on 1/3 the volume that you currently do. Just keep intensity high.

If your total calories are 2535 that leaves you with 84.5g of fat/day.

[Jason Stein]

I cook my eggs in olive oil and add 1/2 of a small avacodo & olive oil to my salad each day.

Ehill,

This would have been very important to have included on your list above. Is this diet and exercise plan still hypothetical? You're still below Trianglechoke's suggested fat intake, for example. Some rough approximate numbers to keep in mind if your goal is ~85 grams of F per day:

One TBS olive oil = 15g of F.

One whole medium-sized avocado = 30g of F.

Just rig your fat intake to match your protein and carb intake, everything else looked good (ugh, except the grapefruit, but that's just a personal preference).

I myself am trying out a lower carb intake for the next couple weeks, so my fat intake's up to 65%, between 130-150 grams/day. I've also bumped up my protein intake. We'll see how it goes; I have been following a Zoned Paleo approach for the last 18 months, which leaned me out, but I suspect was not providing sufficient protein for adequate recovery and for subsequent strength gains.

Best of luck,

jason