Transformation: Jasen Ono Ditches the Dirty Bulk

2008 to September 2013  |  @nubreedfreak

Jasen was the husky kid who gained roughly ten pounds a year from fourth grade onward. A guest speaker in his physiology class changed the direction of his life, though not in the way you would expect.

Where he started

Jasen was always the chubby kid, or husky as he puts it, and from fourth grade through his junior year of high school he watched himself put on a steady ten pounds a year that was not muscle. He loved basketball but never touched a weight. He was too heavy to play Pop Warner football as a kid and never picked it up later.

He is candid about the rest of it. He had low self esteem around girls, never went on dates, and was always the friend.

The turning point

A guest speaker in his Human Physiology class, a natural bodybuilding champion named Mike Monis, talking about staying drug free. Jasen got in touch with him afterwards for guidance, and one idea stuck: focus on longevity by taking care of your health.

It landed because of something specific. Jasen never really knew his grandfather on his father's side. What he remembers, as a three or four-year-old, is that his grandfather was always too sick to play with him and his sister. His grandfather had diabetes and died before Jasen had many other memories of him. Jasen decided he wanted to still be active when he was older, and started training seriously.

He dropped 40 pounds over the following months and tried out for the basketball team in his senior year. A fractured wrist ended that.

What he changed

His thinking on training has moved a long way. He used to believe high volume with lighter weight was how you burned fat. He no longer does. He keeps heavy work in the programme, listens to his body, and deloads earlier than he used to, because otherwise he ends up injured. If his body wants a higher volume pump session, he takes it, on the basis that steady progress beats one step forward and five back.

On cardio he is emphatic about going slowly. Three days a week at thirty minutes at a moderate pace is doable for almost anyone. He prefers to prep over a long window so he never has to rush, because he has been in the position of playing catch-up for a show and doing two hours of cardio a day on top of lifting. It worked, and he does not recommend it. Once weight plateaus, add minutes or days, slowly.

He has tried steady macro reductions, keto, skip loading and a fruit-based approach. Carb cycling is his preference and what he says got him in the best shape of his life. He eats four to six meals a day, carbs and protein earlier, protein and vegetables later.

The hardest part

Breakups, oddly enough. After one competition he went through one and put 30 pounds back on in two months. He says he should have known better, and that the useful part is choosing to learn from it.

Starting cardio from nothing also felt like hell, until it did not. And plenty of people did not believe he would ever step on stage, including his own family, which he says drove him harder.

His three mistakes: working the Olympia expo the day before a competition during peak week, when he should have been resting, and going to bed at 1am drained; dirty bulking repeatedly, which he calls not worth the months of dieting afterwards and not healthy to begin with; and mistiming his peak week protocol before a show so badly that it undid his conditioning on the day his family finally came to watch.

Where he is now

Three second-place finishes in INBA/ABA competition and a sponsorship with a supplement company, which had been a goal since he moved to Las Vegas.

Three lessons, and the first is the one most people need. Use cardio as a tool for fat loss rather than the whole strategy; too many people pour attention into cardio while their training and nutrition go unexamined. Lift consistently and intelligently if you want to keep muscle while dieting, and add cardio in slowly.

Second, there is more than one route to the same result, so learn your own body. His example: two weeks of brown rice and his fat loss stalled; he switched to white rice and it started moving again.

Third, do not train on anger. He knows people who use rage as fuel in the gym, and for him it only made life outside the gym worse, eventually landing on someone who did not deserve it. Redirecting that attention improved both his life and his training.

There are no quick fixes. You just need lots and lots of consistency. Jasen Ono

His advice if you are starting today

Balance. If you are single with no obligations, go as hard as you like. If you have a partner or children, factor them in. He has watched people wreck close relationships by being single-minded about this, and it is not healthy.

And stop program hopping. Changing your training or nutrition before you have given it time to work sets you back further than staying the course through a slow patch.

Results vary. This customer's results are not typical and depend on individual effort, training, nutrition and consistency. Statements on this page describe one customer's personal experience and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. No product mentioned is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.