Andymoe’s BodyBlog

Been training alot in the last couple of weeks for my black belt exam in taekwondo. The exam was pretty hard and I had to have 100% consentration for about 3 hours. Good thing I had done my cardio lately so I didn’t loose my head. The Black belt is now mine.

I have not been to the gym the last couple of weeks. Of course I havn’t laid on the couch, I have been training like crazy but just not IN the GYM. Now I’m back in the gym again, I just cant stand loosing my pump. =)

More competitions in taekwondo is coming up so I have to train alot tkd and extra cardio right now but still the swedish elite series is over and I have my black belt, so I will have more time to bodybuild right now.

Give me a week or two and I will be back on track. =)

The New Year is coming and a lot of people makes promises for the year to come, both to friends and family and to themselves. A lot of these promises will be about nutrition and workout. And, sorry to say, but alot will be broken just days later.

For us already living a healty lifestile it can seem strange that so is the case. We are already in a lifestile where we constantly makes promises to ourselves, setting up goales that should be reached and when it is, we aim for another goal, we make a new promise to ourselves.
But for those not in that spiral this can be hard. They might have to change a lot in their ordinary day of life to be able to live a new and healty lifestyle.
Just try to sell the idea to a couch potato. Explain that he or she really should workout a couple of times per week instead of just laying on the couch. Throw away the junkfood and candy and eat healty food at certain times during the day. Throw away their lifestyle and then explain that they will probably not see big results right away, explain that the results will come but it takes time. Will they buy that idea?

Say you are a great salesman, you look fit and speaks really well about the benefits of a healty lifestile, so the couch potato buys the idea. He or she makes a promise to him/herselves that they will change their lifestyle. Maybe you have been a couch potato yourself and know how hard it can be to actually adapt to the new lifestyle.

With this said. If you have a friend or a family member trying to cross over to "our side" this year make it your New Year’s Promise to help them out as much as you can.

Happy New Year everybody!!!

 /Andy  

The competitive season is now over. Next competition is in february so I have almost 2 months to come in even better shape. I have to improve my cardio even more so I can stay in 100% focus all rounds. I guess that’s why I lost the semifinal in the Swedish Championship, december 8. Well at least I got to the semi, and even though I lost I still got the bronze.

I have trained TKD this week but the gym had to manage without me. The reason is that I have had a headache all week, probably caused by a stiff neck. When we drove home from the competition we had an accident with the minibus and the bus vaulted of the road into a ditch. The bus turned in to metal junk so we are really lucky to be alive.

Take care.. /Andy

The 3d Cup in the Swedish Taekwondo League is this weekend. As I said before I will skip this Cup and try to come in better shape to the Swedish Championship wich is only 3 and a half weeks away from now.

The main thing to improve is my cardio, and even if I do feel my cardio improving the thing that is going best right know is my bodybuilding. I believed I would have lost a bit more weight at this point but right now the weight stands still. Well, as long as it’s not dead weight, who really cares. 

Sweden is getting much colder right now so some cardio sessions has just not happend because of the weather outside. Let’s face it, running on a treadmill in the gym just ain’t fun. I will have to come up with some special workouts that I could do on my own so that I can get some more cardio done. Offcourse there is allways the heavy bags to kick on for countless hours. =)

 I will keep you posted!

The 3rd Cup in the Swedish Taekwondo series is only 3 weeks away. Sadly I injured my leg two weeks ago during a workout. I was stretching and was in a side split when I got my bodyweight in a bad position so I lost control and one of my quads got stretched badly. I still have problem stretching it, and of course I don’t "stretch" it on purpose yet, but I have problems doing high kicks so my training is suffering right know.

My Instructor thought it would be best that I skip the next Cup, so that I have time to heal and come in better shape to the next competition, wich is the Swedish Taekwondo Championship. After all this is the "Big One" for me and I don’t want to miss it so I have decided to skip the 3rd Cup.
It’s been a while since I got of my Cut Diet now, and since then I have put on some weight. Hopefully mostly muscle weight.  Right now I will focus on getting my cardio in top notch for the next competition in Taekwondo so I will probably loose weight again, but I wont diet to hard so I think this can be really good for my physique. I guess we know soon.
Until next time… be cool.

/Andy

The second Cup in the Swedish Taekwondo League is over. I didn’t place so I didn’t receive any ranking points this time. The last cup i got 1 ranking point for my bronze. The next cup is 6 weeks away so I guess I just have to workout harder untill then.

My bodybuilding is going fine right now. My goal right know is to add a few pounds and I am  seeing results both in the mirror and on the scale. So even when I am still dissapointed about my last competition in TKD I guess I can still feel like a winner. At least in my book.

OK, so now it’s time to add a few pounds to my frame again. I lost 17 kg during this spring. Feels good. But know I would like to regain some of the power I’ve lost and to volume up a bit again.

Since I droped my cut diet a few weeks back I have been eating more. I have gained 2 kg but I really don’t eat that much over my daily need so I hope most of the weight is water and not fat. I don’t think I’ve gained any mass during this short time. I guess the body needs time to get used to the new diet and training. During the past weeks I really felt the body regain more and more power. When I was on diet I got a bit weaker, that’s part of the process, and now that I am filling up the system with energi again my body adapts and I sure can lift more and more each workout.

Looking forward to what this autumns training sessions and diet can do for my physique. I think It’s going to turn out really well. Or at least I hope. Well, It’s time to eat!

C YA….

The Swedish Cup (part 1) in taekwondo is now behind us. As I said earlier this was the first time electronic protective vests should be used in competiotion (at least in the swedish elite series). There is a lot of different opinions about the benefits of these vests.

The use of a electronic vest eliminate some fault judgments from the referees. Earlier one player could be favoured by the referees and score points where they shouldn’t and the other player wouldn’t score easy at all. Because of this the vests is obviously very good for the sport. The better player should obviously be the winner.

The vests don’t score points by any type of hit. There must be power, otherwise the point would come when the players just move around on the floor or by a gentle jabb. The force needed to score a point increases with weight class.

When I was watching others I could easely see that scoring on the vest was no walk in the park. A lot of rounds ended 0-0 even though the players hit eachother a lot of times with kicks that should have scored points in an ordinary fight. With this new high tech equipment you really have to kick like a horse to win. Taekwondo have always been a sport with fast kicks. Kicks that follow eachother in a rapid manner and shocks the opponent. Doing these type of kicks now is just waste of time. Offcourse you could still use them to shock the opponent to get him off guard but to score you must hit him with power or offcourse a kick in the head where no electronics are used to score a point.

On this first competition you could still see players doing all the rapid kicks over and over even though no points was collected. I guess it’s old habit but once players understand that it’s no use I think that there will be much less rapid kick and more slugger kicks, at least agains the torso. This is really bad for the sport since it takes away something that makes taekwondo what it is. Kicks agains torso will be more kickboxing style instead.

Kicks agains the head is still counted like in the old times. No electronics is used. Kicks agains the head is even rewarded with 2 points per hit which really tempts one to kick the opponent it the head instaed. Not only is it easier to get a point, you will score one extra point per hit. So these new vests temp to kick in the head instead, not the best for the safety in the sport. There will be much more knockouts now I guess.

So now to my perfomance. My first match went really good. I scored one point on the west and 2 In the head (one hit). After the 3 round match, the score was 3-1 on my behalf.

My second match was semi-final. After 3 rounds the score was 0-0. Then we had to fight a fourth round were the player who gets the first point wins (golden point). However 2 minutes past in the fourth round without anyone scoring and at that point it was up to the referees to decide which one of us who was the better player. I lost. Well at least I didn’t loose big and I still got a bronze medal.

To sum up my first competition in the swedish elite series. Bronze medal in the heavy weight class (+84 kg). So far #3 in Sweden in my wheight class.

September 3rd is the day for the first part of the Swedish Cup in TaeKwonDo. The Cup is divided in 3 competitions and is spread over the whole country. This will be my first competiotion for a long time. I was supposed to have fought in 3 competiotions this spring but a broken fibula in february made that impossible. Now I’m healed and ready to fight.

This competition is actually a start for a new era in the history of TaeKwonDo. The intruduction of electronic protective vests that keep track of hits against the torso. Earlier all points was registered elctronically by 3 judges on the corners. At least 2 of them had to press the score button in their hand within a second for someone to score a point. Now the vest is supposed to do that job. Judges is still needed because hits agains the head will probably be scored just like before.

The competition is just one week away so I don’t have much time improving my cardio and technique right know but I will train some more and then only rest alot the days just before. I can probably begin to load energy during the week as well. Many can’t because the have the weight-in to consentrate on. I don’t have to. The weight-in is on friday and no matter what I do I’m still +84, heavyweight.

Hello e-body!

Well it’s about time to write something in this blog. Since I have trained longer than I’ve been a member here, lets say somethings about the past first.

I started weight lifting when I was about 20. At that time I really wasn’t that familier to BB and the gains at the beginning was really not that big. But I kept on going. The last 5 years or so I have been suplementing and training more like a BB but. I’ve gained alot in these years but sadly not all muscle.

Last autumn I began to train taekwondo agin after a "short break" for 13 years. I really love how the tkd-training complements my strength training. My body weight sure can bring power into the kicks but since tkd is a fast sport the weight also hinders me. Thats one of the reasons that I desided that this year was time for my first attemt of getting ripped.

In 5 months I’ve lost over 10 kg fat. I really feel good about my self and my tkd training goes better than before. In 3 weeks it’s time for the nationals (tkd).

Be Cool! /Andy