Easy Muscle results and review. Hopefully you can troubleshoot my questions
@Geoff Neupert and others.
I completed my first run through of Easy Muscle with a 16kg and a 12kg as uneven doubles, alternating each side. My starting reps were 10 with the heavier KB on the left side.
This was half a year after my return from a shoulder injury while I mostly trained my legs for a while and only did comfortable arm moves, which meant I could do double cleans with my two heaviest kettlebells, the 32kg+24kg. Perhaps the recovering arm strength combined with improved leg strength explains the results.
I purchased Easy Muscle because I got the promised recomposition results from Dry Fighting Weight and figured a longer program would be better. Easy Muscle's sales page promised big results even with guys who had messed up sleep and every recovery factor against them. I didn't know it at the time but I would become one of those guys. Life put me through the wringer. Was my recovery and stress more physiologically powerful than theirs? I pushed some workout days off the M-W-F schedule because an extra 30 minutes of sleep was the more responsible thing to do on some days. By the end of twelve weeks I caught up to M-W-F after treating weekends as one day off instead of two.
I went from 10 reps to 16 military press reps with the 16/12 and my push press reps on my next heaviest kettlebell, the 24kg, went from 3 to 5. So the strength gain was there. Fat loss and muscle gain results were not. The scale and the waist measurements (along with my general appearance) did not change.
What happened to the recomposition the program promised?
Some weeks were at maintenance but others had me eating had fewer calories than usual and I always made sure to get 0.8+ grams of protein per pound of body weight. The Easy Muscle book just recommends "eat less" for dieting, and says the workouts alone can do the magic.
In training, was I beyond the task of cleaning press weights that would contribute to fat loss? I never ran into the guardrails. I believe I could have been comfortable snatch-pressing insead of using the clean and press for all of Schedule A due to training legs for a year during my injury.
Even for presses they never met the guardrails, but there were times when my shoulders were on fire and I just thought "punch it up!" as if trying to press explosively but fatigue made it the same speed as a regular press. Should that have been "a stop the set" moment? I DID run into moments when I just felt I couldn't punch it and ended the set there, but if I have to punch it up does that really mean I should stop the set to preserve fast twitch activation? Or would that have even made a difference on muscle gain?
Even without the fat loss or muscle gain I found the program enjoyable and it was my peace when life became messed up for a while. I would like to see how I can improve my next run through Easy Muscle.