Feeling Shitty

Eating is still an issue...

I went from pushing 5 meals a day down, to one if I'm lucky. I'm still going into the gym, and I'm still trying to push as heavy as I can, but with limited sleep, and nourishment the odds are against me. It's better for this shit to all be happening now, rather than closer to the show. Perhaps the depression will shift gears into the eating like crazy kind...

1000 Crunches

Well tonight I finally told my father about the competition. He was excited and supportive, as I knew he would be. He thinks I'll have to diet down to about 205 - 200lbs. at the most. He said he was going to talk to his friend, Dr. Michael J. Dusa about writing out my 12 week diet for me. Dr. Dusa is an old friend of my father's who has coached him through his previous competitions, and who I hung out with during the day at my father's competitions. He had written my father's diets for him when he competed, and he was always shredded. It's hard, but it goes with the territory. Dr. Dusa is a bodybuilding promoter himself in Conneticut, and had also been encouraging me to compete.

I also talked to my father about trimming down my mid-section. He said that 1000 crunches a day is an absolute sure fire way to get serious abs going. It sounds insane, but starting tomorrow I'll find out just how insane it is.

Picking Myself Up By My Bootstraps...

Well today I went into the gym and tried my damndest to train arms. I currently am filled with a lot of hurt and frustration so I tried to let it out in there and I taught those weights a thing or two. I'm trying to eat more, and trying to readjust to the world a little bit. I'm lifting much heavier these days, and I'm noticing big gains in the weight I'm throwing around now, so that's encouraging.

I'd like to say thanks to the people who have been particuarly supportive of me this last week. Things have been rough. I'd like to send a special thank you out to my good friend Lisa, you've been a big help to me.

The Worst News

Yesterday I recieved hands down the worst news I've ever heard in my entire life. This is not the place to get into details, but it's relevant nonetheless. I have suffered from chronic insomnia for the past 5 years. It has been hard enough for me to get the proper amount of rest I need to get through each day. After what I heard yesterday, it has sent it into a whole other realm. I can't sleep at all. I've eaten a bowl of cereal in the past 24hrs. This is not good. I can't have this shit happen to me now. I need to be eating a lot, and getting a lot of rest. Neither of which seem remotely possible. It all adds up to the equivilant of finding out your best friend died. I didn't think things could get worse... somehow they did.

Pressing On

Well I went to the chiropracter yesterday. Today I felt a lot better, looser. I took it easy and just trained legs. Tomorrow I have another appointment, and I'll probably try training chest afterwards. So we'll see how it goes. I don't want to miss too much time from lifting, but I also need to give it time to heal. I'm very impatient though with not getting to work out.

Setbacks

Man, this shit with my back sucks. It's still hard to turn my head. It's like The Big Show is squeezing the back of my neck, and something is jabbing into my rhomboid.

I trained legs today, just to try and get something done. It was rough, but I got through it.

I ran into a buddy of mine from the gym named Peter. Our schedules vary, so I may see him for a month straight, and then not see him for 2 months after. Today was the first I had seen him since before I had gone to Boston. I told him about the competition, and he was very excited. He's one of the people who has been a big source of encouragement for me. So he said he can't wait.

Also, I saw Mash Angolkar last night. He had just gotten back from India, on a business trip. But I told him, I decided to this competition. He seemed excited about it, and said he was proud of me, and glad to hear I'm finally going to do it. So that meant a lot to me.

At this point, I'm going to be stuck doing legs until this thing with my back can work itself out. I'm going to try and get it looked at this week sometime. It fucking hurts.

Injured!

Fuck Me!!!

Well just when I was getting worried about the reprocussions of my bad shoulder... boom... it fucks me. I was training shoulders today, doing some front arm raises, and my shoulder gave way and when the weight fell, it jerked my arm and pulled a muscle in my upper back. So now it's very stiff, and I have a hard time turning my head. So now I'll be down for a few days. It's very frustrating to want to go work out so bad, and know that I can't. I hate this. But it could be worse. This will pass in a few days. For now, I'm just icing it, and taking ibuprofen to ease the pain.

My Bad Shoulder... And A Compliment

I’ve had problems with my shoulder for a few years now. It got it fucked up when my wasted ass decided to wrestle one of my friends, who actually was a wrestler at one time. In less than a second he had driven my shoulder square into the ground. Everyone in the room could hear it pop, or crack or whatever sound it made. I had this rush of adrenaline or something rush through my body, and I started going numb, everything was going black, and it felt like someone had stuffed cotton in my ears. My body was shaking, I had gotten the chills…

You wouldn’t think all of this could happen from getting your shoulder fucked, but apparently it can.

Long story short, I came around finally, and just kept it in a sling for a week or so. It hurt too much to move it, or put any weight on it. I didn’t have any medical insurance so there wasn’t anything I could do about getting it checked out. So to this day it has gone unchecked, and I’ve trained with it ever since. It’s always hurt, more so on chest, and shoulders days. It burns with unimaginable pain. It’s always held me back to a degree, but now it’s doing so more than ever. This is a time when I need to really start lifting heavier, and while I can do so to a point, this shoulder is holding me back from my full potential.

When I’m doing any kind of benching, my shoulder is burning so bad that it’s giving out long before my chest would. So therefore my chest isn’t being pushed to it’s maximum. The same applies to my back workouts. This has always been frustrating, but never as much as it is now. This really sucks.

So all I can do right now, is just keep pushing it as far as I can, hopefully without tearing my shoulder out. Because that’s what it feels like with these heavier, more intense workouts.

On a lighter note…

Today when I was training, I had this guy Randy come up to me, (of whom I consider to be one of the three biggest guys at the gym), and he stopped to tell me how he can’t get over how much size I’ve put on as of late. That he thought I really look great. He said that I must be eating a lot these days, and you know what? He’s fucking right. I’ve been eating my ass of as of late. I’m eating 5 square meals a day. This training is just making me ravenous. But it meant a lot to me to have someone with whom I don’t really ever talk to, and being as massive as he is, (Randy is pushing 250lbs, lean), to tell me that I’m looking good… That’s the kind of encouragement I need these days. For as much as I do love working out, and training… I still have plenty of days where I ask myself why the hell I get up and do this everyday… But feeling like I’m accomplishing something, is one of the reasons I do. That, and I'm driven by an unending pain that I carry around inside.

The "Before" Photos

Well I had Holly take some "before" photos...

They were somewhat discouraging... Part of it is because I'm not nearly as cut as I'd like to be and I don't like to see myself otherwise... but at the same time I'm also in the process of packing weight on too, so what did I expect? I also realized how much I'll need to practice my posing as well. Because currently it sucks. I also seemed to be making a stupid face in every picture which didn't help things at all. So I just put a collage of the more bearable shots together. They're kind of hard to see... but for the sake of the general public... it may be for the best.

Areas I noticed that need special attention are my legs for one. Which was no surprise. Which is why I'm training legs twice a week currently. My tris could use some more definition as well as some size. They're a little narrow. The abs obviously need to tighten up some more, but that'll be addressed more in the final stages of the process, in the dieting phase. Otherwise I need to just keep doing what I'm doing, and keep getting bigger. I hope the "after" pictures will a lot more exciting.

Current weight: 223 lbs.

A Good Start

So far everything has been going well...

I got myself a stopwatch about a few weeks ago, to keep track of my time in between sets. I found that sometimes I'd wait too long, or sometimes not long enough. Either giving myself too much time to cool down, or not enough time to recoup. So since doing this, and pacing myself, I've notice bigger gains in my weights week to week, and in my energy levels as well. It did cut my weight that I was lifting down a little in the beginning, but I'm quickly getting back up to the weight I was lifting before. This is also in part, due to my having just returned from no upper body workouts for a little over a month.

I'm currently working a body part a day, with one full day off a week. I am trying to build my legs up a little more right now, so they get two days a week.

The current schedule is as follows:

DAY 1: Cardio - Abs - Back
DAY2: Cardio - Abs - Chest
Day 3: Cardio - Obliques/Lower Back - Legs
Day 4: Cardio - Abs - Shoulders
Day 5: Cardio - Abs - Bis/Tris
Day 6: Cardio - Obliques/Lower Back - Legs
Day 7: REST!!!

The upper body gets about 3 out of the 7 days to rest. 2 of which are consecutive. Legs get 1 day on, 2 days off, 1 day on, 3 days off.

I used to combine arms with their appropriate counterparts such as: Back/Bis, and Chest/Tris. But this routine is currently working for me. It allows more time to spend my energy focusing on one specific body part, and attacking it from all angles.
I may even go so far as to split Bis, and Tris apart, which I used to do, but we'll see. Right now I think I need to have that rest day. So that the muscles all have SOME time to attempt to regenerate and grow. This is one of the rare instances in life, where I feel that there just aren't enough days in the week.

Current weight: 220 lbs.
Body Fat: 20%

The Early Stages...

Well, I told my mother of my intentions... She didn't seem all that excited or interested in it. But she did tell me about some shows coming up. One is in November, unfortunately it's a week after my father's Iron Man Triathalon. At which I'll be down in Florida, and there's no way I could go away for a week down to Florida, a week out from a competition. I'd have to bring all my own food, I'd be an irritable bastard from all the dieting... there's no way, and I made the commitment to go down there almost a year ago, so that's that. The other one she mentioned was in April. Which is a ways off... 9 months. But that might be the best. I just need to make sure she's not judging the show. Not that I think she'd show any favoritism, in fact I'm sure it'd be quite the opposite. But either way the other competitors may not see it that way, so I'd like to avoid that situation all together.

I still haven't told my Father about it yet. I want to see if he knows of any good natural shows to compete in. But if nothing else I'll aim for the April show.

I also haven't told any of my friends yet. I won't unleash this blog on my website until I have a show date nailed down.

I've already been trying to find a song to work my routine to. The sooner I have one picked the sooner I can begin practicing. I have a couple in mind. But I won't tell anyone what it is, whatever I decide. They'll have to come to the show to see. I'm hoping that a lot of people will come out for it, as it may be the only one I ever do. But I'm not too worried about it. I'm also going to try and get my hands on some of the tapes of my parents' previous shows they competed in, to get ideas for routines, and poses.

I'm also going to have Holly take some pictures of me in the next week or so, (she's the only one who knows right now besides my mother... she also didn't seem very excited about it), so that I can see where I was in the beginning, and we'll take pictures along the way to help me identify what I need to work on as I get closer to the show. If they're not too embarrassing, I'll post a few here.

And So It Begins...

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen...

For about a year or so now, people have all been asking me if/when I was going to compete in a bodybuilding show...

I never felt like I was in THAT kind of shape that I could compete. I still don't know that I am. But when I was a kid and I watched all the shows that my parents either took me to, or had competed in themselves, I knew I wanted to do that someday. Having been to so many, and my mother being a judge now herself, I knew of the politics involved in a bodybuilding competition. That no matter how good you may look, or how hard you train, you may very well get screwed over because someone else in your class was buddies with one of the judges or the promoter. So all of this discouraged me from ever wanting to compete. Ultimately my desire to train everyday comes from being in competition with myself. Just trying to top that which I have already achieved. People ask me, how big do you want to get? My answer to that is, as big as my body will naturally allow. Which I don't think will be much bigger than I am now. But as of late I have lost a little of the fire that has fueled me in the gym the last few years. Partially due to a back injury that kept me from training for about a month and a half.

I have had everyone from close friends, to ex-competitors, current competitors, judges, and promoters all tell me to do a show.

So today, I have decided that I will.

I will compete in an all natural show. Which for those who don't know, is a show where it is illegal to compete if you have used steroids, growth hormones etc. They usually either drug test or do a lie detector to determine this.

One of my biggest reservations about doing this, was the fear of failure. To not place well in the show...

So I have decided that I am not going into this to win my class. I WILL do this with everything that I have, and I will aim for #1. But ultimately my goal is to just do it. To have just gone through the process, and to have competed. It's like starting a band, and just getting through that first show. It won't matter if I place last. If I know that I did everything in my power, to be in the best condition that I could for the show, then that will be good enough for me. The rest of it doesn't matter.

I have decided to compete for the following reasons...

1. To re-ignite my fire in the gym. To give me something new to strive for, a reason to train harder, and unlock my full physical potential.

2. To have fulfilled a desire I once had in my youth, and to prove to myself that I can do it

3. For the sake of a new experience.

4. (It won't hurt the personal training resume'.)

I still have to talk to my parents regarding this. To pick a show, and set the timetable. I would like to have anywhere between 6 to 9 months to prepare for it. To have time to bulk up more, and beef up my legs some.

I have decided to finally make use of this blog I created almost a year ago, but have yet to use... To chronicle this experience. Here I will post my progress, training routines, current weight, diet etc.

A bodybuilding competition is sheer vanity... It is ultimately a beauty pageant. But the work, and time that goes into it is great.

So... here we go.