| Featured Body Transformation Daniel Mak  BASIC STATS Name: Daniel Mak Age: 19 Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Height: 6'2" Weight Before/After: 237lbs. Before / 187lbs. After / Bulked to 210lbs. Body Fat % Before/After: 30%+ Before / 9% After Years Involved In Fitness: 4 Favorite Bodyparts: Triceps, Lower Back Favorite Exercises: Deadlifts, Bench Press, Speed Skater, Cable Curls Favorite Supplements: Muscle Milk Cytogainer, Syntha 6, Premium Nutrition Titan Bar INTERVIEW 1) Can you tell The M.F.I.C members a little bit about yourself? I am a 19 year old student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I am currently in my 3rd year of studying communications and business administration. I hope to one day work in media relations for a major sports franchise. I volunteer for my school's emergency response team. I am a martial arts instructor and personal trainer at my gym. I love all sports especially football and hockey. I have always been active but struggled with my weight early on at university. 2) What were your initial motivations for transforming your body? My motivations for transforming my body were strictly personal. I was tired of looking at my fat stomach in the mirror. I didn't like the number I saw on the scale. I felt weak, slow and angry all the time. People started taking small jabs at my fitness level and appearance and I just got sick of feeling bad about myself. 3) How long have you been on your program for and what kind of success have you experienced so far? To lose my weight I began a program called P90X which lasted 90 days and helped me lose almost 50lbs. My current program I have been on for about 4 and half months and have seen my weight jump from 187lbs to a lean 210lbs. I have added over 14 inches on my body, my max lifts have all skyrocketed including a jump of 75lbs on the bench, 50lbs on the bent over row and over 145lbs on the deadlift. 4) How has this success changed your day-to-day life for the better? This success has changed my day-to-day life tremendously. I am much more confident with my appearance, people are noticing me, asking me about my body. I have gained a lot of respect for showing such dedication and determination in attaining my goals. People now look up to me and look to me for fitness advice. I am more energetic, in a better mood most of the time and am just having a great time just being me for the first time in a long time. 5) Did you experience any setbacks along the way? If so, what were they and how did you get past them? Everyone, including myself experienced setbacks along the way. There were days where I would just feel too beat up to workout, or too tired, or there were events going on that I didn't want to miss. Also, time after time I had to find ways to get past plateaus. In the end it just took a lot of mental preparation and determination to decide what was more important to me. It's all about setting goals. If you really want something, you will find a way to attain it. 6) What type of training plan has worked best for you? The training plan that has worked best for me involved pyramiding my exercises. A pyramid set would look like so: 5 sets, 15, 10, 5, 10 and 15 reps with the weight going up each set until the 5 reps, then down for the final two. So my bench would look like this: 15x175, 10x195, 5x215, 10x195, 15x175. I did something like this for almost every single exercise. Also I would do about 20-30 minutes of low intensity cardio before my resistance training. 7) What type of nutrition plan has worked best for you? A high calorie diet has allowed me to meet my goals. I usually took in about 4000-5000 calories a day on my bulking phase which amounted to about 60% carbs, 30% protein, 10% fats.
The top 3 tips I would give to others interested in beginning a program would be:
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