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!