Well, it has been a long time since I last posted. My last post had nothing to do with fitness. It was about leaving my family to travel 10000 miles away. I am fortunate actually…I have a lot of opportunity to stay in contact with my family. Okay, enough about that, on to fitness.
I am actually excited, I now have what I have not had…training partner. Really, I have like 3 or 4 of them. They are all bigger and stronger (not to mention almost half my age) than I. It is perfect. They push me and do not let me say no to one more set or one more rep. I think deep down that they are trying to kill me, I mean don’t they know that I am freaking 40! Like the other day we were doing our first part of chest. We started out with like 135 and I was doing great. Did 21 reps. Set 2 was 185 for 18. At this point I was struggling a bit. And we kept adding 50 pounds and dropping reps by three. I have to be honest here, this is the point that I started doing as many as I could and like 5 more with a spotter. We did this until 295. Let me tell you about 295…I actually thought that the weight was going to drop onto my chest and kill me on the spot. Since I could not do any reps, my buddy was like, "just hold it up for 10 seconds". I think he made me hold it up for an hour, but I actually did it. I was so impressed with myself. This is when they added another 50…I gracefully bowed out. Then we went back down in weight and up in reps until we were back at 135. I think I jumped back in around 245. I got done and felt great. That night I went back in and did my cardio. The next day was chest again, but only focused on dumbell exercises. My buddy, Mo, is a freaking animal. He doesn’t allow me to quite, but he does allow me to set my limits…kind of.
I have started to look forward to my daily beatings. Because I know that they will produce the results that I am looking to achieve. What are those results? I really don’t know specifically, I know that not only do I want to "look big", but I want to be as strong as I look. Getting a handle on my diet in country is rather difficult…they don’t serve diet friendly food. No, not diet friendly…I am not dieting, I am changing my lifestyle. I am also trying to strengthen my legs with the hope of getting off my P2 profile. I can’t run because I jacked up my knee. Hopefully by the time I get home, I will be able to run again. Though honestly, I really do not like running at all. But it will allow me to max my APFT and that is promotion points. I feel I am getting stronger, I don’t know if I am getting bigger or not. I thought about taping myself, and decided against it. I will know if I am getting bigger by the fit of my t-shirts. Usually at night when I go back the gym (it really is the only thing to do), I will work out the other part of my split. If we do chest at lunch, I do triceps at night. I follow that by some HITT cardio on the eliptical machine. I need to work my abs on my own, everyday. I do not though…pure laziness.
Okay back off fitness for a minute. As many of you know, being deployed is not a lot of fun. I see and hear a lot of stuff that disturbs me to the core. Some soldiers are…well, let’s just say don’t do the right things. Considering the stuff my wife and I went through just before I left, sometimes really shakes me. Trust is such a hard thing to give back to someone after having them repeatedly break it. I do all the right things, I take to her about how I am feeling, I talk to my chaplain about forgiveness. Sorry, I digress. Back to fitness.
I have been thinking about setting fitness goals. What do I want to accomplish by the time I come home? See, if I set a goal, I must live up to that and frankly it is scary. Why does setting fitness goals scare me? Could it be that I was a fat guy for so long that I am afraid of not being fat? Do you realize that it has been probably 15 years since I would take my shirt off in public. Matter of fact, I have live most of my adult life in big baggy clothes. How sad is that, I don’t go to the beach because of that reason. Well, I need to close this as I have a busy day tomorrow.
Take a moment today and tell the people who you are close to just how much they mean…life is often cut short and you may never get the chance. God Bless each and every one of you. Until next time…Jay
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