Half a year!

So i've been gymming about half a year so far. Then end of my first year at uni is very close and so far all I seemed to have learnt came from university of bodybuilding.com :-\ My first lads holiday was only a few months away in August so I got on my own case hard!

While everyone left my town to go get fattened up by their parents, I already lived with mine. So i'd cook almost all of my own meals. Thanks to student loans I didn't really need a job during the summer which made it easy for me to settle into my old routine; upper body, upper body and more upper body!

I would wake up, have breakfast, get to the gym, have lunch. LUNCH brings me to my next subject.

Food for beginners!

You can probably go online and search almost anywhere which will give you a whole different range of diets and nutritional information and although I now can do the same, back to basics I feel is what starters need as I once did. What I did helped develop me in such a way that people couldn't believe how quick it was all working.

Three words, which seems to be a thing at the moment; Tuna, Pasta and chicken. If you've ever thought black people like chicken, you haven't seen a body builder bulking. But i'm not too sure whether it's a 'like' as much as it is a necessity.

I would eat piles of tuna and pasta, and after a stint in Rome playing American Football (which doesn't come for another year yet!) I had perfected a delightful recipe. Can't really put up measurements really but it's kind of trial and error more than anything, and what's perfect to me might be a disaster for you (not that anyone has complained yet).

I would start off by boiling some pasta, whatever type you prefer is the best as its perfect for you. But spirals and shells are probably the best choice as they seem to cling onto the most tuna so you don't end up having to just scrape it off the bottom of your bowl at the end, by which point you may be too full to even eat it and it is the most important part of the meal really.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and put one or two cloves or very finely chopped garlic in until slightly browned. If you like spicy food as much as I do, you need to get hold of some pepperoncino, which is dried hot chilli peppers usually very small. You can take the stems off and simply rub the pepper between your fingers rub until its all powdered in. I would only use 2-3 myself as they are quite potent.

Grab some passata sauce preferably with mixed herbs, it just tastes nicer, and mix it in with the oil, chilli and garlic. Let the spices infuse for a couple minutes. Grab a can of tuna and mix it into your sauce using a fork so that you can flake it up instead of just some massive chunks in your pot as trying to break up the clumps that way can result in ruining your non stick pots, or so that's what mum used to moan at me for doing all the time.

Draining your cooked pasta, simply serve in a bowl with the tuna and sauce on top, just like bolognese. If it still isn't spicy enough for your tastebuds, add some tobasco sauce to the pot just before the tuna.

This, for me, was the meal of champions. Since my days of being 70kgs I go up and down as and when I like between 80-90 although usually levelling out at about the midway point. The amount of food that I would eat was my regular portion until I felt full...and then I would force myself to eat some more. I wasn't exaggerating when you look at this on your plate it will look like a mini plate mountain and it may even get cold by the time you've mustered up the courage to eat it, but if you're in the right frame of mind like I was and are looking to put on those pound then this is the way to go.

I won't leave it so late next time, it's the month of fasting at the moment but it's over in a week so I will return with some more of my story.

Peace!

Only a quick one....(Lats or Wings)

So just a quick one before I get to the gym.

The lats (lattissimus dorsi) are what gives people the 'V' shape that people so often talk about and look to achieve, large wings down to a small waist. My method for creating this has worked a treat, for a guy who never really focused in on training my lats in particular, I pretty much look like I can fly when I flex them out hah

As I said in my first post it was a regular routine of mine to work out my upper body about 5 times a week. So training my back was pretty regular and by the end of my first year or building my back in general was pretty defined and quite large. With a combination of lat pull downs and lat rows it pretty much sent them well on their way to the size they have become, but I believe the key to my success was due to the fact that every single training session, no matter what I was training. I would do a series of sets of pull ups.

Depending on your size and initial strength you may not even be able to do a single rep, if you are at this level you should start by getting a step up so that you are high enough to do a negative rep. So you start at the 'pulled up' position and try to stay in this position once you have stopped supporting yourself with your feet. Start off with as many as up to 5 per set and three sets per day. Slowly building yourself up and soon you will be able to do full pull ups, you can move on to eventually doing up to three sets of seven reps.  Now once your are at this position you can then start to add weights to your workouts, keeping your reps low and increasing the weight will stop the increase in muscle pain.

Don't get me wrong you will still feel the pain, lets be honest the phrase 'no pain no gain' couldn't be a truer statement for lifting and building. BUT by not over exhausting your muscle you can reduce DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) so that you won't feel as much pain as you would if say you could do 3 sets of 20 reps.You must remember I did this every single training session so I still had to go and lift my entire training sessions' worth of weights. Most of the pain will originate from the coming down phase of each reps. Eccentric muscle contractions such as the lowering of the bar when your are bench pressing or simply walking down the stairs, your muscles are forced to contract when they are lengthening.

You may hear a lot of things about how over training the same muscle group is detrimental to your progress but not only have I experienced it first hand and found it to be more than just a success, but I've also seen it in others that I've trained with over the past 6 years.

So remember, this exercise must be done every day and as always have the determination to continue. Hanging from the bar will also be a good way to warm up to it, something that I will explain in later posts.

Peace!

Secrets behind my achievements (Biceps)

So I've decided to give a few specific tips as to what my secret behind a few areas that a lot of people struggle with. Determination and will aside,  without doing the right thing won't make the slightest bit of difference, I watched many many times when someone would do everything they possibly could, lift big and do cardio and eat right as much as they could and yet they still would end up looking like a blob or just mass, not the physique that people strive for.

I will be big headed as to say a lot of people would strive to have a physique such as mine, although of course not the same size legs but up top, pretty much all round in good shape. Some body parts improved better than others and reacted differently to how I would go about training each part.

Now the secret behind my arms, apart from of course the extreme pumps I was getting from No Xplode I took on an exercise I found from Bodybuilding.com which was pretty intense. A lot of people dislike this because it also takes it's toll on the outside part of your shoulder. So the reps go like this

First part of set 1 (weight you can do just about 10 reps with)

• 8-10 Full reps of winged biceps hammers
• 8-10 6-8inch pulsing reps up to about a 90 degree angle (so that arms are constantly tensed)
• Half distance rep hold for as long as possible

Second part of set 1 (weight roughly 4-6 kgs lower than the first)

• 4-8 Full reps

 Third part of set 1 (Another 4-6kgs lower)

• 8-10 Full rep followed by half reps
•  10-12 pulses
• Hold for as long as possible

This exercise doesn't concentrate on the main part of your biceps, which you might find odd. In fact it trains a muscle which most people don't even know exists. The brachii is the anatomical name of the main part of the bicep we all love to train and get pumped with, but the muscle being trained here is the brachialis. This is the muscle that sits underneath your brachii and by training this muscle, you will send your arm size skyward. Within a matter of two weeks of using this exercise my biceps grew considerably, enough for a lot of people to start noticing my size.

Also an advantage of this exercise is that it trains the outside part of your shoulder. Now the benefit of this is that it gives the illusion your biceps are even bigger as the part in between your shoulder and biceps seem deeper and more cut the bigger both of them get.

This doesn't mean this is the only exercise you should perform. This is just one part of training your biceps, as all muscles need a kick up the butt every once in a while or a shock to the system to do something different than normal. Muscles do get used to doing the same exercise day in day out, therefore doing bicep curls every day you may feel like a monster because they recover so quick, but they only recover so quickly because they are prepared to do what you put in front of them. Driving in a straight line is also easy, you have to put a few bends in the road to make it a challenge!

I'll try and get some pics up to go with the exercise as soon as I get a chance.

Peace!

So I got big!

So I've gained a total of 20kgs/44lbs of muscle since I started training and yes it was mainly up top. But how is another question. As I said it started of with just blindly following what my two friends were doing and being pushed to failure on everything I did, to be fair, if you aren't pushing yourself to failure then there is no way you are going to get any bigger, lifting the same weight every day does not make you stronger unless you lift to failure, so the key to getting bigger is lifting heavier! Think big, lift big!


Now it wasn't just the lifting that gained me a fair bit of muscle in the first few months, I purchased a muscle and weight gainer from Holland and Barrett from ebay for £5, cheapest 5kgs/11Lbs I ever gained. Then came the winter break at uni and everyone left except me, so I continued my regime along with more studying of online resources from Bodybuilding.com This meant I would have to learn how to train by myself and taught me that in order to succeed in achieving my goals, only I could want and drive to attain them and not just my friends. Drinking that shake was the first step to learning how to deal with certain aspects of drive and determination because I had never tasted a thing as awful as that and anything with a consistency as thick as say hot fudge going a bit cold.

Overcoming certain mental aspects is always a difficult part of any training. I still struggle with the cardio side of things, just last night at the gym I failed to train properly and ended up feeling so sick I was contemplating chucking the contents of my shaker just to puke somewhere without too much mess.

After everyone returned from the 3 week break even my friends who trained with me every day noticed that I was still gaining size at a considerable rate. I had been reading up a lot by this time about different exercises and watching videos of how exactly to do certain things as I had only seen what my friends had taught me. Also as well as being a hub of endless information with forums for users of the site, it is also in fact a super site for supplements, my discovery of BSNs NoXplode is probably the best to date.

Not in any shops in England yet for another year and half or so I decided to order this stuff as it sounded crazy, expecting it to half be a placebo type thing which even my friends said "you try it and we'll see how you do" filled me to the brim with confidence. It's funny because within 2 weeks of taking this stuff my arms looked insane.

The workings behind this product is quite simple really it's Nitrous oxide and different formulations of creatine mixed together. What the N.O does is widen your blood vessels, allowing greater transportation of blood and oxygen throughout your muscles which by itself is a great thing, within 45 minutes of taking this pre-workout supplement you feel like you've done an entire workout when you've only just finished your first set as your arms mainly feel like they are about to burst, but this doesn't stop you from continuing and finishing your training session, far from it, in fact it helps you power through to failure a lot better.

Creatine is of course a well known supplement within the sporting community, popular among athletes and body builders alike, it is a naturally occurring substance which is found in high protein diet. It gives your muscles a fairly larger look as it also stores water in the muscles which is why you have to drink lots and lots of water, this is yet again another supplement that does not taste very nice, you just have to close your eyes and down it. As well as extra "fuel" for the muscles it also aids faster recovery times.

So this is pretty much my second half of university over and I'm going to leave you with this information for today, time to get up and have a protein shake :) (which I have a lot more experience with now so look out for it in later posts)

Peace!

First off..

So first of all, I should start at the beginning. Never having actually been in a gym at 18 years old I made some friends in the only 2 cool kids on a geek computing course. Both were older, one who was 24 and one 21, one an ex-con and the younger an Israeli army brat and of course the whole point being both considerably bigger than me. Weighing in at about 70kgs/155lbs all I ever had on my side was lots of speed. After finally joining the gym with these two guys I started to undergo the most drastic change in my life. After day one I couldn't physically lift my arms above my head and driving was a b***h with no power steering.

My second day didn't get any better, with the most amount of muscle pain I had ever encountered I had to pluck up the courage to yet again do exactly what I did the day before. Having never had even touched a piece of gym equipment I was pretty strong for a first timer, could bench my own body weight and as the first few weeks passed muscle pain in my chest, arms and back all didn't really last for two long. My routine was literally monday - friday, chest  and triceps, back and biceps and after three months I had already gained a considerable amount of noticeable size and strength. People started instantly questioning what on earth I did.

Yeah what I did was pretty impressive given the time frame, but all totally detrimental to my health and without knowing what this constant routine was doing for my lower body I continued this way of training for almost an entire year.

Come a few weeks after the christmas break I had been reading on Bodybuilding.com for quite some time about all different types of exercises. Every once in a while we would throw in some ab work and once in a blue moon some leg work, which is the only thing i would have changed if I could go back in time.

Ive learnt that abs come easily with the right mindset, diet and attitude towards your goals you can achieve anything. Laziness is an athletes biggest downfall. As I write this post I can feel that I haven't trained in 3 days or so and that I need to do something. But not putting in leg workouts in my weekly schedule and routine would ultimately lead me to where I am now. I have many complications with my legs as I now weight about 90kgs/200lbs which is a massive increase in mass and also a massive load for my legs to bare on top. The part of me that has suffered the most are my hips and groins along with extreme tightness in my calves when sprinting for long periods.

Now I'll come back to that later but to conclude the first thing I want to pass on to anyone who wants to start body building/toning or any other training regime, is to train your body equally. Although up top I had the perfect balance of chest to back, biceps to triceps, my legs have suffered because of it. So listen when people tell you, you have chicken legs. Yeah people don't take much notice of them when your in shorts or on the beach etc but still, your body knows exactly what you're doing to it and it will repay you tenfold for what you do :) Peace!