SgtTuff13’s Blog

Great, just when things were looking good, karma came up and smacked the shit out of me again. Yesterday was a dedicated cardio and abs and things were going great. I did some work on the bike and raod for about 45 minutes, including cooldown period, then went over and did saome ab work. Rope crunches really kicked my ass, but it was all good. When I was completed with abs, I decided to play one of my troops in a pickup game of basketball. Things were good, I won the first, he won the second and then it happened in the third and final game….exteme pain in my inner left thigh……SON OF A BITCH!!!!

Let me tell you in hurt like nothing I had experienced before. I could not run, pivot or drive at all. My goose was cooked. Now here is were my foolish pride kicks in. Not to let him win by forfiet, and no to call the game for injury, I continued to play. I sucked it up and pushed on, hell I only needed 4 more points to secure the victory, why not. I ended the game on a sweet ass fade from behind the arch, called "thats game brother" in mid flight and hobbled my ass off the court.

Now that I had some sleep and went to chow, let me tell you that I am a complete idiot. It hurts like hell to walk, sit, almost anything. I should have just walked away and got checked out at our EMEDS clinic. But no, I had to be a toufgh guy and play injured as I always do….now I am paying for it. Training is going to take a hit for sure. I cant do legs, so there that goes. I cant run, and I am not sure how the other cardio machines(bike, elliptical) will feel so cardio is out maybe. Plus I have to still go to EMEDS and see what the hell is exactly wrong, which could mean light duty and no weights period.

So the moral to this story is simple, dont try to be a tough guy, or girl. If you feel the pain walk away and get checked out. We all have put to much time and dedication into this to be stubborn. So off we go to get checked out, wish me luck. As always Keep Pushing and Stay Tuff (you know what I mean) haha

So today was my chest day and the start of yet another week of pain and steel. I decided to rotate week to week from barbells to dumbells to keep my shoulders in check. my workout looks like this….

Incline DB, 75×8, 85×6, 95×6, 95×6

Flat DB, 95×8, 95×8 100×7, 100×6

Decline Db, 80×8, 85×8, 85×7, 90×5

Flat flyes, 35×12, 35,12, 35×12

Crossover 21’s, 55×7(standing, bent over, leaning foward)

Rope Pressdown 8 drop sets with 30 sec rest between starting at 135

It was a good and sweaty workout. My chest was barking and ready for some grub. Very pleased with the start of the new week. Myself and my partner are going to max out agin and retake measurements for the new month later this week….wish me luck..LOL

Anyways I will keep you posted on my progress…keep pushing and stay TUFF

So here we are about two months out until I return to the U.S., when my lifting partner and myself were conversing on what we are going to do when we get home. As always reakl food was a top priority as well as some good ole American loving, with my fiance of course. As we continued to bullshit during our rest between sets he stated that I should think about competeing. My reply was "Are you kidding, look at me I am not that big and have no idea what to do." Lifting weights and breaking my own goals are one thing, but to step on a stage in fronty of God and everyone seems alittle intimidating to me. So we pressed on finished our workout and ate some much needed chow, well at least they said it was chow.  Later on that night after I arrived to shift and was posted out I started top think about what we were talking about.  Maybe he’s right, maybe I could compete. And that was all she wrote, I decided right then and there that I was going to try and compete…one day. So here I am lost and curious on the competition thing, need advice. Hell do I need a trainer, change my workouts….I am lost.

Thats I guess were you all come in. I know reading through this site that alot of you all have competed. Any advice on how to start or even where to start would be awesome. I am seriuos as a heart attack, I want to compete and I want to win. I am at the mercy of the community here for help.

So anyways, stay tuned for more details and prep. I have already started to cut and clean up my habits even more. Ia want to be a total package, for myself, my kids, and of course the love of my life Tiffany. Thanks for everything and we will see what the future holds….as always keep pushing and stay Tuff

So as the title says, another one bites the dust…meaning one less month I have to spend away from my family. I have not been very good at keeping up on this whole blog thing, so I apologize. I have been in a kinda rut here recently. My workouts are going great, its just that my BabyGirl got transferred to days and now we can only talk once, maybe twice a week if were lucky. She helps keep me grounded and motivated. I will survive though, hell, five months aways from her has help put a lot of things into focus. For instant, I cant wait to get married to her. I keep asking if she set a date, pushy I know, but damn, I am straight crazy in love with her. Second, when it comes to the gym, I want to compete one day. Dont know when, where, how to do it, but I will one day complete. Lastly, I want to be as good as a father as I am a soldier. My kids are my world, sometimes I have taken that for granted. But they are and I want them to know how much they mean to me. Leaving them after the seperation and divorce has killed me. But they are who I live and fight for. If not for them, I would surely be dead right now. Having kids literally saved my life. I will never let a day pass where they dont know how I feel.

I know that this is not fitness/bodybuilding related, but to me it is. You see, what I do now is a direct reflection of those in my life. The healthy that I am the longer I can be with them. We are all very active in my family, between my kids and myself playing baseball, to my daughter dancing and wanting to cheer, and my fiance chasing us around the park, fitness is a key component in it all. Its changed my life, made me wnat to push harder, drive farther and be stronger tha nI thought I could have been. Like I said before, I want to compete, never in my life would anyone have heard that from me before. But the training and desire has instilled that want in my life. I might not win, but I know that when I do go out there that I am giving it my all, win, lose, or draw, I will still be a success.

Sorry for the rambling, just needed to get this out of me and off my chest….More to come…stay tuned

I just want to echo what MrPresident and CardioGirl had to say. All you haters and posers and little punks talking trash to the females on this sight need to go the **** away. People are here because they want change and want to help others. What kind of person comes on here and says shit like what youngblaze does. Report this ******* and get him out of here. Some people that look at this sight want and need our help. Its our duty and responsibility to help those that want our help. We all at one point or another needed help. We all have short falls that we strive to ovewrcome. How would it make you fell to have some one laugh or ridicule you? My guess it would either hurt or piss you off. Bodybuilding is educating, both ourselves and others. We are all ambassadors to the sport. I was once that guy that was afraid to even enter the gym, let alone ask for help. As it turns out if it was not for a gym rat named Chris, I would still be sitting outside looking in. He helped teach me a little something about training, nutrition, and even life. Let all of us be like Chris, lets embrace and teach what we know and help others out.

As for the rest of the a-holes, I know its a part of life, but it does not have to be a part of ours. Let people know about these people, get the word out and we wioll get rid of them.After all this is our site not theirs. To those of you who were affected by these low lifes I offer my apology, you deserve better. Things will change, and it well be better.

Keep Pushing and Stay Tuff

Okay here we go again, time for a change. I want to get more out of my chest workout and felt that the routine I have been doing was getting some what stale. So I decided to try something a little different and change it up. Most of the exercises are the same with a little bit of variance to them. Whether it is doin it later in my routine or adding a little twist to it, the change felt pretty good. I decided to take a top to bottom approach (incline,flat,decline) still doing barbell and dumbells for all exercises. I also added a bent bar for doing my pullovers. All in all, the workout was really good, felt like I hit the chest with more intensity and more desire. Put up pretty good numbers, flat I finished with 255 on barbell and 100;s for dumbells. Incline (my weakest) I ended up with 205 for bb’s and 80’s with db’s. Decline was 225 for bb’s and 80’s for db’s.

I aslo went from doing incline flyes to flat flyes, really focusing on the stretch more than anything. I used 35 db’s for a slow controlled stretch and really squeezed at the top of the movement. Finally I ended my workout with bent-bar pullovers. These I really like, more so than db pullovers. I can get more of a stretch and have a greater range of motion than befrore. Really hits it good.

After that I stretched and decided to go ahead and do my cardio. Right now I am doing cardio every other day for 30 minutes after my workout. I have been using this eliptical trainer that kicks some serious ass. Its a total body trainer, or at least thats what it says on it, and it gets me sweating good. Now if I could only get a good ab routine.

Thats where I need help, ABS. I need some advice on what to do to slim down and get trimmed. I dont have to be super cut or ripped, but would really like some definition. If anyone has any ideas, advice or routines that would work I would really appreciate it. Abs have always been my short fall, and I would like to change that. So please help….I have a little over two months until I get home from this deployment, and I would like to go home to my BabyGirl as a total package.

Well there it is my plea for help. I am putting it out there for your consideration. Let me know and we will see what happens. Until next time, keep pushing and stay Tuff

It has been awhile since my last post so I figured we would recap the happenings first. New Years was as good as expected in a deployed location, pretty boring. Got to call home ansd talk to my girl and my kids, which is always awesome. Been still hitting the gym, little harder than usual though. This week I have been doing my normal workout and adding a burnout to it. For instance Monday (chest), my partner and myself did what we call the crazy eights, flat bench at 135 for 13 stes of 8, only resting while the other was on the bench. Killer pump and exteme burn. Tuesday (bicep), I did ran through my norm adding a quadruple drop-set on my dumbell preachers, same affect as Monday. Wednsday (tricep) quadruple drop-set of v-bar pushdowns. Thursday (LEGS), my favorite day, leg press drop set, ran twelve plates for eight down to only six plates…..almost fell over when I stood up, but its all good. Yesterday was shoulders and traps. My partner and I changed things up a bit. We superset front and side raises on the cable tower. From there we did four sets of dumbell presses, going over to the smith rack we did four sets of behind the neck presses. Then we did some bent over cable laterals for the rear delt, ending shoulders with rope pulls???? I dont know what they are called ecactly, saw them in a magazine. Now for the real fun…traps. We decided to go fro the trifecta…front rear and side shrugs. Front we started at 135, increasing every set, ending at 405. Rear shrugs we stayed at 225, going for slow movement and a tight squeeze at the top. After that we finished with dumbell side shrugs. Started with 100’s for two sets, going to 110 for the next and then 120 for the last. As soon as we completed the last rep we drop the weight in half and repped out until we could go no longer.

Let me tell you right now my traps are barking, God I love the feeling. It has been awhile since I have done any burn outs and let me tell you it has been a pleasure. Just what I needed to get the year and new growth to start. My goals are in sight and I am focused and ready to kick some ass. All I know is that in order to grow and move forward we sometimes have to think outside the box. Pain is unavoidable and even a neccesary evil. I say "bring the pain", its the only way we can truly overcome our barriers and plateus. My buddy always tells me that pain is fear leaving the body, which if you think about it, he’s right. Too many times we hold ourselves back because we dont want to hurt or feel the pain. This is true in and out of the gym. I know that it was true for me…..until I learned to embrace it and kick it ass into submission.

Pain and hurt will always be a part of our lives, how we choose to deal with it is up to us. We can play it safe and steer away from it. Or, we could battle it head on and be better for it. The choice is yours….but remember this, without pain there is no pleasure. To become what we strive to be we have to take the good with the bad, the pleasure with the pain. That is the only way we can look back and say " I gave it my all and I am happy with the results"

Think about it….Keep pushing and stay Tuff