The Life and Adventures of Jon Phan: Workout Notes and 3D stuff updates

Hello again to all my friends... together we can play some rock and roll. haha anyway so I've decided that I will share whoever this blog might concern my journey of self improvement which consists of: mind, body, and soul. I guess I'll start with body since it seems like something interesting and easy to understand. To improve this I spent countless hours during the summer researching while implementing the ideals that include improvement to the physical body. Now that I am living away from home I've been shopping and cooking for myself so I've really been embracing my inner chief about 2-3 times a day. I've managed to cook cheap, healthy, and easy to make dishes since I have kind of been a nutritional Nazi lately but the benefits of doing this have shown great results. As for exercise I go to the gym about 3 times a week ranging between 45-90 mins a session doing the same full body workout each time. All the research I did really paid off because my results have been phenomenal and here is the workout if you are interested:

Bench Press 5x5
barbell complex: deadlift/hang clean/ squat/ military press/ bentover row 10 reps each, 4 rounds
body weight circuit: weighted chin-ups/ weighted dips/ weighted knee raises 8 reps each, 3 sets

I calculated how much I should do my bench press with by maxing out at 260lbs and found my 7 rep max to be around 205lbs so that was the weight I used for my 5x5; this was pure strength development so I have been going up about 10lbs each week and now its week 7 and I am repping my maximum from week 1 on Friday which is over a 50lb increase. For the barbell complex it is more of a High Intensity Interval training since after completion you feel like you have sprinted a mile; I also do it because I tore my ACL during a football practice during high school and I would rather lift lighter with my legs. I am up to about 115lbs on the barbell with this workout. For my last thing I wear about 50lbs hanging on a belt while I do these movements, who needs to curl anything when you weigh 185 +50lbs and do chin ups; thats the secret to huge bicepts by the way. When you can spend less than 2 and half hours a week in the gym and get results like me, you know your doing something right.

Some advice is that an intense amount of focus is required and the diet is what I consider over 70% of the results. I am currently head of brotherhood events in my fraternity and I have actually gotten about 12 of my brothers to come to the gym with me while I would train them. I even started a facebook page where my friends and I share routine/nutrition/schedules information. For me a lot of my motivation to go is the motivation I give to others. I might post some of the things I share with my workout group page here but just contact me if you want a link and you can read all the things I know and have to say.

As for projects, my sculpting has been really improving and I think the products are coming out really great. I've learned to abuse the pinch and flatten tool which I learned on youtube for hard edges and surfaces; I found that to get better and surpass your class mates you really have to go out and do extra things on top of what you do in class. I started modeling my new time traveling alien robot in maya using a premade body as a proportion reference and then I brought it into mudbox to sculpt which is when I added those other tools to my arsenal. Hopefully using scripts to rig this guy won't be too difficult. Using those new skills the head sculpture of Ms. Johanson has gotten a lot better since you really need those tools for things like the eyes, lips, and ears. I also fixed the proportions a lot and I believe that she is almost recognizable; right now I am using another program that I just learned called 3D coat which lets you retopologize your model since you can get really funky geometry using a sculpting program. Oh yeah and I also made a japanese theme setting for my teapot in about 3 hours for my history of computer graphics class; I might not be the best with lighting, rendering or materials and I don't really like building scenes, but I think this came out alright and its crazy how much you can improve in a year and how fast you can do things.

so far so good