Featured Body Transformation: Gino Aquino

For the entire month of July I will brining you a new incredible transformation at least once a week, sometimes more often. These motivational stories will show you everything you will ever need to know on how to finally create the body of your dreams.

Feeling unmotivated? Well, look no further. Your fellow bodybuilding and fitness enthusiasts are here to give you all the drive you’ll need!

Note: Each person featured here are Vince Del Monte customers of either No Nonsense Muscle Building, Maximize Your Muscle or Your Six Pack Quest.

Meet 1st Runner Up of the Maximize Your Muscle Body Transformation Contest: Gino Aquino

“I managed to lose 7.77 lbs of fat and gain 7.33 lbs of lean body mass. My main focus was to lose fat during this time so I could be ripped on my 30th birthday during my vacation. So I ate at a deficit for most of the time with a surplus/cheat day every 4th day.

As any experienced trainer knows, it is very difficult to achieve both loss of fat and muscle gain at the same period. I was extremely suprised that using MYM I not only got ripped, I gained almost just as much muscle! I would be amazed to think what would have happened in terms of muscle gain if I focused on bulking up and ate at a surplus all the time. Thanks Coach Vinny! ”

GINO AQUINO
TRINITY BEACH, QLD, AUSTRALIA

Vince: So you’re from Australia? What’s the bodybuilding culture like down under?

Gino: I guess that would depend on what you mean by bodybuilding? If you’re referring to people who go to the gym to exercise and “put on a little muscle and lose a little fat”, then I’d say it’s very popular amongst the general population.

If you go by what is seen on television and products sold in magazines etc… then fitness and health seems to be up there with most people’s priorities. I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of younger people going to the gym nowadays, like high school kids to people in there twenties, much more than there were when I used to casually visit at that age.

If you’re referring to competitive bodybuilding, it is very much growing. I recently went to watch a state competition held in Sydney, and there were almost 200 competitors, with over 1500 in the audience, even during the pre-judging. That may not sound like much but that was maximum capacity and they had to turn people away. Apparently it was a record for that show.

Vince: How old are you and what inspired you to get into bodybuilding?

Gino: I have just recently turned 30 years old. I guess my inspiration was wanting to be more than the skinny guy. I saw guys with strong athletic bodies as those who gained respect from their peers, had much more self confidence, surrounded by lots of friends and had the attention of girls, basically everything I wasn’t. I grew up being
very shy and quiet, lacking confidence and social skills… the perfect recipe to be a typical geek through school; I kept to myself and excelled with my studies. In fact I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t have my first girlfriend until I was almost 20!

Vince: You lost fat and gained muscle at the same time? Share your numbers and how long did it take?

Gino: I started my transformation focused on losing fat and getting ripped. I was not expecting to recompose my body the way I did and put on muscle at the same time. I took my measurements over a period of 16 weeks.

At the start, I was 176 lbs @ 10.1% bodyfat. By week 10, I had dropped to 171.2 lbs @ 5.1% bodyfat. I had burned about 9 lbs of fat and gained 4.2 lbs of lean body mass.

BEFORE PICTURE: Gino

AFTER PICTURE: Gino

Unfortunately this rate did not continue for me as I had an accident and stupidly fell down the stairs and had as my GP and physiotherapist described as the “sprained ankle from hell”. I was in a cast and crutches for over a week and could not
walk nor obviously train my lower body for some time.

I refused to let it get the better of me and continued with upper body workouts. At the
end of 16 weeks I was 175.6 lbs @ 5.7% bodyfat. This was 7.77 lbs less fat and 7.37 lbs more lean mass than when I started. So although my weight barely changed, I feel the transformation was quite dramatic.

Vince: Share your eating strategy to accomplish this “impossible” goal.

Gino: To aim for fat loss a caloric deficit is a given. I aimed for 20% less than maintenance for 3 consecutive days. To prevent my body entering the starvation mode and have my hormones fight against me, I had a re-feed every 4th day where I increased my carbs substantially so that I reached a 20% surplus over maintenance, then I repeated this 3 low 1 high carb cycle.

I calculated how many grams of protein and fats my body would need every day and just manipulated my carb intake to reach my target calories for that particular day. I designed a eating menu guide that I could follow and substituted on the fly when needed. For protein I chose mostly lean beef, chicken, eggs, canned tuna and protein shakes.

For fats I ate mostly avocado and almonds, olive oil, tuna and salmon (plus EFA supplements). For carbs it was mostly vegetables, oatmeal, wholemeal pasta, gatorade and banana’s.

I made sure to eat every 3 hours, having starchy carbs earlier in the day and then tapering the carbs to fibrous vegetables later in the day. I also targeted most of my carb intake for the morning, pre and post workout.

I wasn’t this strict for the entire period, I gave myself a 90% compliance rule. The other 10% of the time I ate whatever I wanted, but made sure to be aware that I wasn’t overdoing it. It would be silly to restrict your calories for 3 days by say 500 calories for a net 1500 calorie deficit, only to eat almost 5000 calories in pizza’s the next day (which I have done in the past).

Vince: How much of a difference did number crunching make in your transformation? Would you advise everyone crunch their calorie intake and macronutrient breakdowns?

Gino: I believe it made all the difference. To accomplish both fat loss and muscle gain at the same time is as you described, “impossible”, so you really need to have everything optimally calculated to get the most ”impossible” results. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if I did not do this, my end result would have been nowhere near as impressive. I would say that only the serious trainer needs to take it to this level. If you want to get maximum results, you really have to dial in your nutrition plan and do the numbers.

I’d say for most others, you don’t need to number crunch constantly and weigh your food at every meal. It would be a good idea to try crunching numbers when you first get started (how else would you know how much nutrition your body needs?), spend a few days getting used to the amounts you are supposed to be eating and develop an awareness of the calories. After that, you can be a little more casual about  things. If you stop getting the results you want, start number crunching again and weighing your food to make sure you get familiar with the amounts again.

I think the importance of nutrition is really understated amongst casual trainers. You can spend all the time in the gym working as hard as you like, but if you don’t provide your body with the nutrition it needs to support your hard work, you’re going to be wasting your time.  Your body changes outside of the gym, during rest and recovery.

Vince: What are your favorite abs sculpting exercises? What’s the secret to getting ripped abs?

Gino: Right now my favourite ab exercise is hanging leg raises, bringing your feet above your head. I wouldn’t know the secret to ripped abs, as I feel I’m only half way there. Obviously your body fat has to be very low to show the abdominal muscles under your skin, and to do this you need to be on top of your nutrition and cardio. But you would definitely want to include a range of ab and core exercises to really
make them pop.

Vince: What is your stance on supplements? Do you use them? How much and which ones?

Gino: I personally feel supplements only take you 5% of the way. If you aren’t maximising all other areas to 95%, then I wouldn’t waste my money on them. I have used a big range of supplements in the past, particularly when I first started training and before I knew better. I never got anywhere near my current results back then when I was taking almost 10 different products compared to now when I just focus on my nutrition and water intake (gotta stay hydrated!).

Protein supplements are highly recommended and I think should be the first supplement anyone tries. Unless you can eat a massive amount of protein from whole foods, protein shakes are just so convenient. Normally I aim for about 250g of protein per day, and I’d say about 100g of that comes from protein shakes and BCAA’s.

Occasionally I’ll try creatine or glutamine as there is solid research and studies to support their use.

I take multivitamins, Vit C, Vit E, Zinc, Magnesium, and Essential Fatty Acids.

I’ll also have 100-200mg caffeine when I’m not mentally focused for a workout or especially before a cardio session to put me in the zone.

Vince: What was your cardio protocols for gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time?

Gino:To be perfectly honest I didn’t do very much specific cardio training. I did some insane full body resistance workouts weeks 4-8 which burned about 800 calories per session though. I started with slow steady state just walking the dogs a couple of times a week. I had planned to include plyometrics and HIIT towards the end when my bodyfat started to get low but as I mentioned, I ended up in crutches.

Vince: What did your cheat days look like every 4th day?

Gino: I increased my carb intake up to around 600g. It wasn’t a free for all day, I still aimed to keep to 4000 calories (my 20% surplus), but if there was a particular food I had been craving I’d eat it, especially chocolate, ice cream, pizza, pasta and lasagna.

Vince: What is the number one mistake skinny guys are making to build quality muscle mass?

Gino: It’s all about adequate nutrition. Skinny guys simply aren’t used to eating the amount of food they should be consuming to support growth. They severely over-estimate just how much they are eating. They might be eating a large meal and feel they ate a lot, but they aren’t doing that throughout the day over multiple meals every day of the week. They also have it tougher, as ectomorphs tend to have super fast
metabolisms.

I’m an ectomorph and have been skinny most of my life. Now that I know just how much food I need to eat I laugh at myself when I think back to those times I complained that I wasn’t putting on weight even though I felt I was eating plenty.

Vince: Did you discover any nutrition, training or lifestyle tips along the way?

Gino: Not really so much in regards to nutrition and lifestyle since I had done my own research into these areas before to come up with my plan for the 16 weeks. I did learn about myself though, about the importance of setting goals and believing in yourself and seeing what I was prepared to put my mind and body through to accomplish those
goals.

I discovered the inner strength and positive mentality I needed to push myself to uncharted territory, to keep pushing despite being in crutches. One thing I did along the way was a lot of personal development, so one tip would be to read a lot of books in this area.

Audio books are perfect for when you’re travelling in the car or perhaps carry along with you on your ipod and listen while on the treadmill. The power of the mind is where it really begins and the belief in yourself that you can achieve anything. Another tip would be to surround yourself with positive people who have similar goals or who are already where you want to be.

As far as training, I started your MYM program, and am really impressed with what totally changing a workout program every 4 weeks does to shocking your body and not allowing it to adapt. One last tip would be to bring music with you, it can really set the mood and intensity level for your workouts, and it also keeps you focused and others tend to leave you alone in the gym so you can get down to business.

Vince: What are you future bodybuilding goals? You planning on competing? Why?

Gino: I would like to compete in my first amateur bodybuilding show in October this year. My goal is to gain 5 more lbs of muscle and get down to a shredded 4% bodyfat. I feel that it’s the next logical step in my journey to take my body to the next level. What better motivation than to know that you will be posing in front of a crowd of
fitness enthusiasts? Wish me luck!

END OF INTERVIEW

Now it’s your turn to congratulate Gino and ask him your number one burning question about his transformation.  Post your question below and I’ll get Gino to help you out.

Vince

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