The Armed’s New Workout Plan

Aaron Jones

The Armed’s New Workout Plan

Aaron Jones

Adam Vallely and Clark Huge of the obscurant Detroit hardcore collective explain how they got their bodies as muscular as their music

The Armed have occasionally frustrated but mostly fascinated the press with constant misdirection about their intentions and identity — the confounding post-hardcore collective’s exploits are well-documented and worth reading in full, but the sum total portrays them as something like a Tony Hawk-funded ad agency staffed by dozens of people (possibly including Andrew W.K.). Or, possibly the brainchild of Dan Greene, who is actually Kurt Ballou. It was shocking enough that they broke character simply by showing up as themselves in the video for ULTRAPOP lead single “All Futures,” a preview of an album that basically imagines American Gladiators starting Broken Social Scene. More startling is that they looked like that too. “These guys seem like Crossfitters,” one of Stereogum’s commenters mused. Pitchfork asked, “What if Andy Warhol was really into Converge and CrossFit?” Insofar as the Armed are willing to confirm any element of their artistic process, they need to set the record straight on one crucial matter: “Fuck CrossFit. We find this an insult, please stop saying it to us.”

It’s an immensely convincing request coming from a guy named Clark Huge. “It’s all momentum,” Huge scoffs, preemptively mocking Marjorie Taylor Greene’s psychedelically misguided workout regimen before any of us got a chance. “Let’s be real, it’s momentum lifting everything,” he continues, dismissively drawing a distinction between CrossFit-style workouts and the kind of reps that allow someone to call themselves Clark Huge. “It’s exercise.” And even if the Armed’s resident bodybuilding and synth expert admits that CrossFit amounts to a particularly hardcore form of exercise, the Armed aspired to actual physical transformation in preparation for ULTRAPOP — a collective agreement to follow an Olympian meal plan and workout regimen set forth by Dominic Kuza, a Troy, Michigan-based bodybuilding coach who has been guiding Huge in competitions over the past several years.

In explicitly detailing the band’s lineup for the first time, the Armed revealed some intriguing party-crashers: Mark Lanegan, Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens Of The Stone Age, METZ’s Chris Slorach. But thus far, Clark Huge has been the breakout star in the ULTRAPOP album rollout — if you’ve seen any of their videos, I don’t have to tell you who Clark Huge is. “It’s pretty fucking wild to be honest with you, to be staying in the shadows for so long and finally showing my face,” Huge explains. “I’ve been doing this forever and this is the most recognition I’ve ever got for it.”

Huge’s passion for bodybuilding began in an atypical freshman year of college, where his physical self-confidence was boosted by a combination of poverty (“I could barely afford food”) and a zealous dedication to the gym. “I was the fat kid growing up,” he reveals. He still struggles with asthma and a sluggish metabolism that he seems to find vaguely embarrassing compared to that of frontman Adam Vallely. But contrary to the suspicion that Huge’s presence is yet another example of visual subterfuge, Vallely bluntly states, “Clark’s one of the OGs,” noting that the two originally bonded over Middle Eastern food and keyboards while living in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. Huge played on the Armed’s self-released 2009 debut These Are Lights before shifting his focus to bodybuilding and, more recently, “cannabis craftsmanship.” A T-shirt bearing the name of his day gig — Bud Brothers Cannabis Co. — strains against Huge’s vast torso as he pulls from a blunt more or less constantly during our Zoom conversation.

The two reconnected as the Armed began to strategize the visual concept for ULTRAPOP. “That Clark is a bodybuilder is the clear genesis of this,” Vallely says while polishing off his fourth meal of the day — about five ounces of steak with cheddar cheese and vegetables in a large tortilla, a gym rat’s version of Taco Bell’s dubious “4th Meal.” Both he and Huge chug from gallon-sized water jugs throughout. “We have a certain aura of obfuscation about identity, so the idea of doing that physically was really cool, and we wanted to present ULTRAPOP as big and bombastically superheroic as possible.”

As a fan of heavy, abrasive, and melodic hardcore — “tears on the bench press” music, if you will — it’s easy to get swept up in the Armed’s multimedia pretensions for ULTRAPOP, one of 2021’s most thrilling listens. As a dietitian, I have to take pause and ask whether its message is necessarily a positive one, particularly at a time when countless pop stars from Demi Lovato to Ke$ha to Olly Alexander to Elton John have exposed the disturbing prevalence of disordered eating in the music industry. In fact, the one legitimate instance of Beyoncé backlash in the past decade occurred when her Homecoming documentary expressed that her post-partum, pre-Coachella weight was “every woman’s nightmare” and that she was restored to peak physical performance with what essentially amounted to a crash diet: “In order for me to meet my goal, I’m limiting myself to no bread, no carbs, no sugar, no dairy, no meat, no fish, no alcohol…and I’m hungry.” While she swore she would never again go to such extremes, the underlying issue wasn’t the Carters-endorsed, all-vegan 22 Days Nutritional Meal Planner upon which her diet was based. It was following it for 44 days.

But let’s be real here: The Armed are a cultishly beloved hardcore band whose biggest song on Spotify has yet to clear 500k plays; its relative popularity is almost certainly attributable to its appearance on a Cyberpunk 2077 radio station. While Vallely claims that his shift in eating and exercise habits have a profound effect on his well-being, including his lifelong struggle with colitis, he sees himself similar to an actor getting jacked for a Marvel movie before plotting their next move. “If you ever doubted the effect of nutrition and health on your appearance,” he begins before making an important qualification: “find someone who’s a lot smarter than you to help you out with it. Otherwise, you fall for the whole ‘carbs are bad.'” The Armed’s PR rep asked if I’d be interested in doing a kind of dietary method acting by following the meal plans that Vallely and Huge have been so kind to provide; my bowels clench after a quick mental accounting of 4,000-5,000 daily calories. “Take everything the Armed say with a grain of salt” has a much different meaning this time around.

And yet, this seems to be the one subject matter upon which the Armed are willing to be completely candid — and almost certainly explains why they’ve done far more person-to-person press for ULTRAPOP than their previous albums combined. “It’s almost douchey to talk about lifting, so when people ask if I work out, I always say no,” Huge shrugs; in the Armed’s rich history of public deceit, this is their least believable lie by an insurmountable margin. “So now that people are interested in how serious I am into it, it’s like fucking finally, I’ve been bottling this stuff inside me forever. Now I’m not the oddball out. Now everybody can destroy.”

Trevor Naud

Everyone in the Armed can destroy now, but Clark was the only one that went shirtless in the “All Futures” video.

ADAM VALLELY: [laughs]

CLARK HUGE: That was Adam’s idea, that’s why he’s laughing so hard. That was a cool aspect of it, then in the one we had the tattoos covered [“Average Death”], that was gnarly for me because I haven’t seen my body without tattoos in fucking years. I might have to do that for a show.

VALLELY: Clark, have you seen that people think you might be two different people? I love that. There’s a big weight disparity and the tattoos, they’re just like… “No that’s another guy!” And it’s awesome, that’s the whole plan, so this is great.

The first comment in the Stereogum article about “Average Death” actually questions whether it’s a different guy or Clark in “show shape.”

HUGE: It’s just makeup. It took hours to do because I have a lot [of tattoos]. They did a really great job.

VALLELY: You can see it rub off in certain parts of the video. It was really gnarly in there, really sticky and gross and you’re trying to keep a pump on.

HUGE: Well I was naked the whole fucking time. I was naked in that Speedo.

VALLELY: With one ball out for 20 minutes.

HUGE: That’s how I met the makeup artist. Like, “Your friend came to hang out.” I’m like, what? “Your friend came to hang out.” Who came to hang out? “Like, your balls are out, dude.” Shit, my bad… well, it was nice meeting you! I guess that’s the icebreaker.

When everything began to shut down in March last year, people either veered towards wanting to get into the sickest shape possible or, in the alternative, completely let themselves go. How did you manage to keep motivated?

VALLELY: Obviously for Clark, it’s been ongoing for the past decade. But for the rest of us, I was the guinea pig for the first three weeks, and then Johnni Randall got on it and Cara [Drolshagen] got on it right away. We had this album done and we were gonna be on tour with it in the summer. This was like February [2020], and we were gonna go on these 12-16 week plans to get nice and tight for tour, you know? The idea was to get cut so we looked kinda like… fucking rad, I wanted to look like Iggy Pop or something. And then four weeks into that, the whole world basically exploded and then, as a result, we just kept going. Because we were too far in, why change now? We looked at it as an opportunity to go that much bigger and really change things. So we decided to keep going.

Was there anyone in the band that needed more convincing to go along with the plan?

HUGE: Me, because during COVID, I was over it. I’ve been doing this for so long, for the first month when they closed gyms down, I thought, “I don’t know how I’m gonna do this, guys.” I was so used to going to a gym every day. But a homey of mine built a gym in his garage and I lucked out. I was the one who was like, sloppy the first couple of months for it.

VALLELY: We were getting very MacGyver-esque about trying to put together our capabilities. I built a garage gym, so did Randall. It was so hard because there was such a run on this stuff. Coincidentally, this is where my starting first came in handy, because I already bought a shitload of dumbbells. The other guys had to pay like two or three times the amount of money for it.

I spent way too much time trying to scour eBay and Amazon for workout equipment. Everything was either ridiculously expensive or backordered for the next year. I ended up getting those resistance bands.

HUGE: Whoever made those made a killing during this time.

I gave up on them in like a month. They only provide so much weight resistance, they smell weird, and they’re surprisingly hard to store.

HUGE: They’re so annoying. It’s either that or pushups or pullups. I got a pullup bar instantly — just a doorway one, nothing special, and I would literally try to do as many as I could while watching a movie or something.

VALLELY: I probably did the most damage and caused the most internal strife with my family. I bought a Smith machine, I bought a lat pulldown, I bought a leg extension/leg curl [machine], a hex bar for deadlifts, I got about 400 pounds of plates, and then I got like up to 60s with dumbbells.

HUGE: He’s got a whole gym now.

VALLELY: It was under Clark’s [workout plan]. If this is enough to do just about everything, this is what I’m gonna get. You become sorta addicted, and for me it was seeing the constant gains in terms of what I was able to put up, so I didn’t want to slow that down. That’s why I went that far — because there was such a run on gear and you had to piecemeal it together. If I could buy it all at once, I would’ve said, “This is really dumb and too much to spend.” But because it was a new thing every three weeks, it was, “Yeah, just a couple more.”

So how much did you end up spending on workout equipment?

VALLELY: Eight grand. More than I’ve ever spent on music gear.

I’ve realized how lucky I am to live in a place like San Diego where the weather is always amenable to outdoor physical activity and the gyms have been able to maintain outdoor workout spaces even while we’re in the purple tier. How difficult was it to keep things going in Detroit?

VALLELY: It was brutal in Detroit, it’s literally zero degrees and unheated and gross in this garage. I’m happy it’s getting warmer now. But this drumset behind me, it’s a $2,000 drum set, it’s the most expensive thing I own music-wise. And I spent way more on workout equipment, so that shows you what ULTRAPOP is all about.

Is the album similar to the music you guys actually work out to?

HUGE: I’m anywhere, honestly. I like anything that induces goosebumps. It could be a breakdown from a heavy song, a lyric from a rap song. For a top set, though… nothing beats a nice, heavy breakdown. I’m not focused on feeling it on some sets, “Let’s just get this weight up,” putting 400 [pounds] on your back for a squat, I’m not waiting for a cute lyric that gets me going. I want to hear some crazy breakdown.

Who’s got the best breakdowns?

VALLELY: The Armed.

HUGE: I love the Untitled album because I wasn’t on it. It was new to me!

VALLELY: I found my power by listening to the song from the Rogue One soundtrack where Darth Vader appears at the end, and literally that’s what I was using for my top bench set. When Darth Vader comes out of nowhere and kills all those people, I was like, “Hell yeah, this gets me going.” And literally Rammstein, just objectively gym music. That’s what you need.

Adam, what were your eating patterns like before you got involved with Clark and Dominic?

VALLELY: Before I started this, I had one specific habit. I ate six chocolate chip cookies with a giant glass of milk before bed and, I’m not joking, I did this literally for the last 20 years of my life, since I was a child. It’s on our tour rider, it’s the first thing I do in any city: I look up the best chocolate chip cookies and I eat six of them. So at home, my cheat cookie was chunky Chips Ahoy! and I would arrange them in two rows of three, dunk them in the milk, I had a whole routine with it. Beyond that, I ate a lot — I’m a smaller, skinnier guy and I just eat a giant lunch. No breakfast, an enormous dinner and then six cookies before bed. I did work out quite a lot, but I did P90X and Insanity and all those things and I’ve had the exact same skinny-fat, boyish body from 17 to 32. No change, no matter what I was doing.

After talking to Clark quite a few times about the coach that we both use, it was just one last thing to try. It became… “I’m gonna do this thing, and if it works, great.” If not, it wasn’t particularly expensive. I tried it and the results were immediate. Within eight weeks I looked very, very different. For the first time ever. At the beginning, it’s an adjustment to eating that many times a day, five times a day. And also, an adjustment when you’re eating super clean is the volume difference. Anyone can crush 5,000 calories in a day, that’s not very hard. If you’re eating cookies and milk and a bunch of Lebanese food, that’s one thing. But when you’re just eating potatoes in an air fryer with no oil and chicken or steaks, you realize that the volume is a lot more. So that was a massive adjustment. But within four weeks, you’re used to it and [Dominic] starts cutting you down and then you’re like, “Fuck, I’m starving.” But I haven’t been starving in several months. I am in a ridiculous surplus. Now I don’t think I can live without it. I have colitis and I had one flare up in an entire year. And it’s when I broke diet for Thanksgiving. I don’t know what about it works, but I feel much, much better on this plan, so I’m all in now.

Explain what it means to be “in a surplus” to the weightlifting layperson.

VALLELY: What I didn’t understand, and this is all rudimentary and boring to Clark…

HUGE: No, I love this shit.

VALLELY: What I’ve learned is that wellness and fitness is such a disgusting community.

HUGE: [laughs]

VALLELY: There’s so many bad things going on, what they try to tell the majority of people is that… I thought I was gonna look like this skinny-fat dude, then I was gonna work out and get more and more jacked and more cut and have more abs and that happens forever in a straight line. Between muscle confusion and these industry nonsense terms, you just get more and more jacked, and more and more veiny. But I cut down real quick, and then I found out that if you want to develop muscle, you’re going to need to be in a surplus so your muscle has something to build with. You move from being in a 500 or so calorie deficit and feeling all sleek and lean to now, your metabolism and hormones get absolutely stoked. Now I’m 4,500 calories a day and still going. That surplus, in addition to watching my abs go away and slowly crying about that, makes my arms 1/4 of an inch bigger the next time I cut down in time for tour.

I’m also trying to calculate the monetary layout for all of that steak and protein powder, do you guys order in bulk from Costco or Sam’s Club?

VALLELY: This is how I justify it – in addition to eating six cookies, I also ate lunch out, with zero exaggeration, every single day of my life. That was my lifestyle, it’s a thing I did in the middle of the day. My justification is that if you cut out $20 a day from that, all of a sudden it evens out real quick. That’s another thing I learned about how bad the wellness community is, there’s this idea that you need the $14 juice in order to be healthy, and that’s not right at all. I understand that I’m privileged to be able to eat the way that I do, I’m fully acknowledging that. That said, you don’t have to get whole foods from the store Whole Foods, I go to Costco or Kroger and I love my food now.

Trevor Naud

Do you scour the message boards or subreddits to get an extra edge or supplement your knowledge base?

VALLELY: I did at the beginning, and then I just listened to what Clark said. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know, and that totally reconfigured my headspace. The more I learned about it, the more I realized that nutrition is this infinitely nuanced, incredibly deep thing that I have no right to be talking about, and I should just listen to my dude and go with that. I stopped looking at the message boards and YouTubes and subreddits and ever since, it’s been far more successful.

In my line of work, we talk about how patients “consult Dr. Google,” but there are just as many actual doctors on Twitter and TV still talking about how Krispy Kreme might kill people by offering donuts to vaccinated customers. So what was the Armed’s vetting process for finding a nutritionist?

VALLELY: Ask Clark [laughs].

HUGE: When I competed in my first show, I did it all by myself. I immersed myself as much as I could to learn as much as I could. I hate saying this because it sounds pretty egotistical, but I’ve been studying this and doing this for so long, my coach was the only person I’ve talked to that made me feel stupid. I did that Carnivore Diet and it was the best I ever felt in my entire life, so I continued with that for another year and a half before I met my coach and I stuck with red meat over chicken. I ate a lot of it. I told my coach this, and I told him how I prepped for my show. I purposefully sat down with him because he wouldn’t believe me if I wrote this on a computer. If he had to read what I did, he’d think, “Certainly he made a mistake. There’s no way he did this.” And sure as shit, he was like, “You did what?” And funny enough, he prepped somebody in that show that I competed against. So I know he knew his shit and he was the only coach that didn’t want to reinvent me. Every other coach that I told that I eat beef all day, they were like, “We gotta get you on chicken.” I know I don’t have to via calorie count and I don’t want to. He was fascinated by it, and he wanted to try it with me. He wanted to see where we could take it, and we took it all the way to 5,100 calories. It was crazy and a lot of fun. That was my surplus that I just kinda got out of.

VALLELY: Did you dip back down?

HUGE: Yeah, he cut a steak out, go figure. I was pissed. He might be trying to reinvent me, now that I’m thinking about it. But yeah, he took 600 calories out, so I’m at 4,500 now. But my workload is coming down, so I’ll still be remaining at a surplus.

So what’s the total amount of steak you eat in one day?

HUGE: I was doing 40 ounces a day.

I imagine it wasn’t those Flintstones-style tomahawk steaks you see at Ruth’s Chris or whatever.

HUGE: I was having four a day, 10 ounces each meal. Breakfast was steak and oats, lunch was steak and bagels. My post-workout was a steak with two bagels, the meal after that was a steak with 400 grams of sweet potatoes, and then my last meal was another steak.

Has it been difficult to eat around people in your life who aren’t in the Armed?

HUGE: All the fucking time. Everybody I work with, they don’t eat like that at all. There’s pizza every day, there’s cookies every day, and I’m sitting there putting bagels on a scale weighing 10 fucking grams of honey and they’re all looking at me like, “This kid is crazy. What is he doing?”

VALLELY: My plan is pretty easy, I have the metabolism of a literal 7-year old, so I get off days prescribed by my coach. Not an off day, a “cheat day” is a misnomer, but I get a cheat meal every single week right now in this surplus, so it’s like… [Clark looks distraught, Adam begins laughing]

HUGE: I don’t. I’ve been with my coach for over a year and I’ve had two prescribed [cheat meals]. That’s just how different our metabolisms are.

VALLELY: It sounds insane when you start, but if I have one cheat meal a week, I feel like I could literally do this forever. It’s the meal that I can have as a date night with my wife and everything else is just the way it’s all planned. And like Clark was saying, with our coach Kuza, he listens to what you want. I told him that I have this awful cookie habit and this sweet tooth is gonna be hard to break. So he put dark chocolate in my diet, I put dark chocolate on my bagel and instead of honey, I put strawberry jam. I mean, my first meal of the day is a giant bagel sandwich with chocolate, peanut butter, strawberry jam and bananas. If you would’ve told me that this is what I’d have to eat in order to get abs, I would’ve never believed you in a million years. But now I do and I’m never turning back. I love it!

HUGE: That’s why whenever someone asks me [about this plan] “Is it healthy?” I’m like… what does “healthy” even mean anymore?

So Clark, what’s your cheat meal?

HUGE: I’ve had two prescribed ever, I got that slower metabolism. I have difficulty, if you will, uptaking more carbs. So whenever I have carbohydrate-dense meals, I gain weight for that night, which makes sense with water storing onto the glycogen. It comes with the territory, but also, I feel way different. I get foggy, there’s probably a two-to-three day window where I’m not really feeling myself. We gotta go to work and workout and check the boxes and by Thursday or Friday, I’ll be good again. But if I had to choose a cheat meal, it’s funny, I would still have my steak, but I would put it over a pizza. That’s how I cheat. By having whatever meal I was gonna have and then some.

When the Armed is finally back on tour, how will all of this be sustained?

VALLELY: It won’t be.

HUGE: [laughs]

VALLELY: It’s not realistic to think that it could. Working with the same coach means that we can align some of the same things, a lot of the individual foods are sorta similar. So there will be an effort to align our proteins, ask for simple things on our rider and just ship unfathomable amounts of Redcon 1 MRE Lite to Europe ahead of us for the tour and just see what happens. But everyone’s gonna be in a cut going into it, because we want to be really silly looking, we’ll just work on a more flexible plan. Training on the road is super hard too, it’s nearly impossible.

Have you ever been able to work out on the road?

VALLELY: Not successfully. The best thing we ever had was a pair of 50-pound dumbbells and everyone takes turns and shit. At this point, there’s a lot of people doing the same stuff, but we’ll have those shitty bands, we’ll have one of those pull up bars that you can put on anything. You just try your best, the Armed never goes out for longer than two or three weeks, so you just do what you can to not destroy your body.

Has any of this stuff sparked a competition between members of the band?

VALLELY: Johnni Randall is crazy competitive, he looks completely different. He’s an enormous person. He’s 6’6″ and he’s lost, I dunno, 70 pounds. But his shoulders are so huge. He doesn’t look… he never looked giant and fat, he just looked terrifying, and now he lost half of my size and now he looks somehow even more bigger and terrifying. And Chris Slorach from METZ, who’s also in our band, he is obsessed with this and he is just the leanest of all of us. He’s the ab king right now.

Has this newfound commitment to fitness influenced the music you’ve written since ULTRAPOP?

VALLELY: We never stop writing, songs from ULTRAPOP were also written during Only Love. So once the album is done with the studio mixes, we already have demos going. I don’t think it’s been affected that much.

HUGE: This is my cruise control, so no.

VALLELY: We’ll see when the next album comes out and everyone hates it because we’re spending too much time working out.

Aaron Jones

ADAM VALLELY’S DIET AND WORKOUT PLAN

TRAINING

ROUTINE: Pull, Push, Pull, Push, Legs, Rest – REPEAT – 6 day cycle
Pull:
– Pullups [2 sets]
– Bent over Row (DB warmup, hex bar work sets) [4 sets]
– Wide Grip Lat Pull Down [4 sets]
– Seated Cable Row, Use Pulldown Bar [3 sets]
– DB Lat Pullovers + DB Reverse Fly SUPERSET [3 sets]
– DB Curls [4 sets]
– Hammer Curls [4 sets]

Push:
– Bench Press (DB warmup, smith machine work sets) [4 sets]
– Laying DB Flies [3 sets]
– Standing DB Shoulder Press + DB Front Raise SUPERSET [3 sets]
– Pushups + DB Lat Raise SUPERSET [3 sets]
– Close Grip Pushups + V Bar Tricep Pushdowns + Chest Dips TRI-SET [3 sets]
– DB Tricep Kickbacks + Bench Dips SUPERSET [3 sets]

Legs:
– Squats (smith machine) [4 sets]
– Stationary DB Lunges + Body Weight Squats SUPERSET [4 sets]
– DB Good Mornings [4 sets] + Seated Leg Curl [4 sets]
– Deadlift (hex bar) [4 sets]
– Banded Glute Bridge [100 reps]
– Leg Extensions + Jumping Alternating Lunges + Squat Jumps SUPERSET [4 sets]

DIET

Meal 1 – PRE WORK OUT
● 1.5 Scoops of MRE Lite
● 1 Cinnamon Raisin Thomas Brand Bagel + 40g Smuckers Strawberry Jam + 15 g Nut Butter + 12 g 87% Dark
Chocolate
● 75g Banana

Meal 2 – POST WORK OUT
● 1.5 Scoops of MRE Lite + 37g Oats + 40g Smuckers Strawberry Jam – blended and frozen
● 115g Pineapple

Meal 3 – TACOS
● 133g Chicken Breast
● 2 Mission Flour Tortilla (soft taco)
● 30g Sharp Cheddar Cheese
● 70g Veggies (red pepper + grape tomatoes)

Meal 4: – TACOS…AGAIN
● 140g Sirloin Steak
● 2 Mission Flour Tortilla (soft taco)
● 30g Sharp Cheddar Cheese
● 70g Veggies (red pepper + grape tomatoes

Meal 5 – BED TIME SNACK
● 1.5 Scoops of MRE Lite + 50g Nut Butter + 37g Oats – blended and frozen
● 1 Thomas English Muffin
● 125g Oranges
● 100g Apples

Aaron Jones

CLARK HUGE’S DIET AND WORKOUT PLAN

TRAINING

Push 1:
⁃ Flat barbell bench press
⁃ Incline dumbbell press
⁃ Straight bar Tricep pushdown
⁃ Supinated grip lat pulldown
⁃ Chest supported lateral raises

Legs:
⁃ Leg press (single leg)
⁃ Barbell hip thrusts
⁃ Bulgarian dumbbell split squats
⁃ Seated hamstring curls
⁃ Calf raises

Pull 1:
⁃ Wide grip lat pulldown
⁃ Single arm cable high to low row
⁃ Wide grip seated cable row
⁃ Cable pullover
⁃ Hammer strength pin loaded incline press
⁃ EZ bar cable curl

Day off

Push 2:
⁃ Flat barbell bench press
⁃ Incline dumbbell press
⁃ Seated cable flys
⁃ Supinated grip lat pulldowns
⁃ Incline bench straight arm rear deltoid raises

Shoulders/Triceps:
⁃ Single arm standing over head dumbbell press
⁃ Chest supported incline dumbbell shrugs
⁃ Straight bar Tricep pushdown
⁃ Single arm rope Tricep pushdown
⁃ Heavy partial lateral raise
⁃ Standing lateral raise

Pull 2:
⁃ Wide grip lat pulldown
⁃ Deficit barbell row
⁃ Wide grip seated cable row
⁃ Single arm dumbbell row
⁃ Assisted pull-ups
⁃ EZ bar cable curls

Day off

Repeat

DIET

LOW DAYS: MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY

Meal 1
● 5oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap off)
● 40g Oats
● 20g Honey
PWO DRINK:
● 8oz OJ
● 50g Dextrose
● 1g Salt
● 5g Creatine

Meal 2
● 10oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 1 Bagel + 30g Honey

Meal 3
● 10oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 200g Sweet Potatoes

Meal 4
● 10oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 200g Sweet Potatoes OR (60g Oats OR 37g Oats + 20g Honey)

Meal 5
● 300g 2% Fat Greek Yogurt
● 1 Bagel or 63g Cream of Rice or 74g Oats
● CHOOSE ONE: 200g Strawberries or 80g Banana or 100g Blueberries or 110g Pineapple or 115g Apple or 100g Mango or 175g Watermelon or 200g Cantaloupe or 125g Orange
● 20g Honey

HIGH DAYS: SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

Meal 1
● 80g Oats
● 40g Honey
● 8oz OJ or Cranberry Juice
PWO DRINK:
● 8oz OJ
● 50g Dextrose
● 1g Salt
● 5g Creatine

Meal 2
● 5oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 2 Bagel + 30g Honey

Meal 3
● 10oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 400g Sweet Potatoes

Meal 4
● 10oz Raw NY Strip (Fat cap Off)
● 300g Sweet Potatoes OR (85g Oats OR 37g Oats + 40g Honey)

Meal 5
● 200g 2% Fat Greek Yogurt
● 2 Bagel or 140g Cream of Rice or 150g Oats
● CHOOSE ONE: 200g Strawberries or 80g Banana or 100g Blueberries or 110g Pineapple or 115g Apple or 100g Mango or 175g Watermelon or 200g Cantaloupe or 125g Orange
● 20g Honey

Nate Sturley

ULTRAPOP is out 4/16 on Sargent House. Pre-order it here.

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