**This project was videotaped daily. I will be doing this again starting November 15th 2009. If you are interested in following the geek to freak program with me, just email me at m [at] thecompleteself.com**
If you know Tim Ferriss and his “Geek to Freak” Experiment, you will read that he was able to loose 3 lbs of fat and gain (back +) 34 Lbs of muscle by working out a total of 8 x 30 minute lifting sessions over the course of 30 days.
I have commented back to Tim on his blog and instead of going into all of it here, I will copy my post on his blog here:
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Link to Tim Ferriss’ post that I commented on.
Hey Tim,
First off, let me say that I always hated going to the gym. I never considered myself an athlete. I was never muscular and didn’t go out for sports in school. Pretty much stayed away from athletics my whole life.
I followed this plan as best as I could read from the initial blog post and your updates for exactly 30 days. There were some questions I had about amounts of each supplement, but it seemed to work the way I did it.
Since I had not worked out for years or even jogged for 15 years, I didn’t ramp up enough to get the most out of my first two or three workouts.
Here are my stats:
Before After
Weight: 182.8Lbs 181.7 Lbs
Caliper Fat Pinch:
Chest: 22mm 20.5mm
Abdomen: 34.5mm 25mm
Thigh: 24mm 22mm
Waist: 34in 32.5in
Abdomen: 36.25in 34.75
Thigh: Right (32 inches up)
Unflexed 21.5in 21.25in
Arm: Right
Unflexed 12in 12.25in
Flexed 13.5in 14in
Shoulders: 46.75in 47.25in
Chest:
Flexed 41.5in 40.50in
Unflexed 40.5in 39.75in
Body Fat: 24% 17.9%
43.9 Lbs of Fat 32 Lbs of Fat
139 Lbs Lean 149 Lbs of Lean
Just wanted to note that my 30 days (From G2F experiment) ended on Wednesday. Overall, I am very happy with the visible results and the increased energy. I am actually continuing with the program in a modified way starting on the 15th of November 2009. About ¾ of the way through I found a couple exercises that accelerated the results and unfortunately, I experienced food fatigue and didn’t get the calorie intake that I should have during the second half – e.g. I could have had even better results.
30 day totals:
Total time at gym: 6Hours 5Minutes
Weights in motion: 2 Hours 6 Minutes
Number of lifting sessions/days: 8
Cardio: walk 23 min, jog 7 min 6 days a week
Every snack, meal, protein shake, supplement was recorded
Every lift duration, weight and reps were recorded
I am making plans to modify the program and do a second run at it starting November 15th.
Just a personal thanks to you Tim for making this public. My chiropractor (a 3x Ironman, U.S. National Greco Roman Wrestling Team, Wisconsin Golden Gloves runner-up, National Rugby Team and marathon runner) and a famous personal trainer friend who humored me and took my before and after measurements accurately, were truly amazed at these results.
It is one thing to drop weight for a weigh in, but to drop that much fat and gain that much lean muscle mass in 2 hours and 15 minutes of lifting and walking every morning for 30 minutes is another.
Tim, you really have something here and I am telling everyone about what you have. It is hard to see my friends struggle so much and face so much discouragement by overworking to lose weight and gain muscle mass.
If you need any assistance with other methods or want any records, just let me know!
P.S. The turkey-bean chili with tuna and mac is fantastic. Highly recommended.
Tim ferriss
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Much more to come…
Hi Matt,
I’m someone who looks up to Tim as he is a pragmatic guy who knows what he is talking about. I used his fat loss diet, and after three months my Mum couldn’t recognize me (seriously) nor could 80% of the people I know.
Anyway, I have also been following this experiement and I was wondering how many sets and reps did you do. Tim says you should do every set to failure, but always? I mean, If I was doing three sets per a workout for a body part, should I do each one of them until I experience muscle failure? Or am I missing something here.
Thanks,
Adam
That is awesome Adam – great to hear that you made such significant gains. Even though the workouts aren’t that difficult, I found eating a consistent diet to be somewhat difficult (I’m talking quantity).
I do one set of each exercise/muscle group to failure for each workout – usually 8-12 reps in 60-120 sec. I almost always go up on weight from session to session.
Yesterday was my 16th workout session. Meaning I haven’t worked out more than that in years. I took a month off between trial one and two. the month off I didn’t do any more than go for a walk in the morning for exercise. Then I started the program over on Nov 15th.
Some improvements:
- Bent Rows w/dumbbells – 35Lbs (each arm) to 105Lbs
- Leg Press 90Lbs to 295Lbs
I see where this could lead if I kept this up for months. I didn’t have much muscle to build off of – so in most areas I was starting from scratch – there was no “withering” going on before that – just no muscle ever developed to speak of.
Keep in touch. Did you take before and after pics? I’ll be posting mine in a few weeks.
Hit Matt,
thank you for your fast response – I truly appreciate that!
I am totally curious to try out that program. I’m just not quite sure about a couple of things – could you please help me clarify?
1. What I still don’t understand is: eating such large amounts of food (Tim refers to eating between 5000-8000 calories a day!!) why don’t you just go fat? Especially if you only work out 2 times a week for 30min.???
2. In which order do you do your workout?
On the bodybuilding.com site Tim refers to this:
Favorite Exercises:
* Conventional-stance deadlift
* Pullover
* thick-bar reverse curls
* standing overhead press
* incline dumbbell bench press
Do you recommend this exercises in this particular order?
3. Is it still possible to get this kind of results without taking all of those supplements? I’d like to stick with Protein (Whey & Time Released)?
Thanks a lot Matt!
Dennis
P.S.: How is your own workout going? Could you retain that muscle gain? Are you still working out 2 times a week?
[...] working through my last 30-day weight gain experiment, I found that I got what I call “food fatigue.” I was eating so much – more than twice what I [...]
In regards to the question, how did the second trial go, I would have to say that Tim Ferriss’ way is better. I added a ton more calories and added workouts, but it didn’t give me positive results. Stick with Tim’s.
Where did I get all of the info to do it successfully? Here is how.
1. go to his blog: http://bit.ly/geek2frk
2. copy and paste ALL of his directions then do the same for all of his answers/posts to questions.
3. Next go to http://bit.ly/TimFBodyBldg and print that out. with all of this information, you will be aptly equipped to do it right.
Any more questions?