Bluedam’s BodyBlog

On this site I respect anyone that leaves comments on a photo. So is it just me or do we all get nervous about putting new photos up and seeing if people will react to them. Hey people might not comment at all. Or they could be really nasty. What if I see the photo myself and I’m not impressed. Ive put the work in, the odd bit of blood, the sweat and the tears when no one is looking ( admit it you have, on those last squats).

Then you remember why you are a member of this site. It is because you work at something and want that sense of achievement. We all share in each others success’s, celebrate when one of us does well and pick each other up when we are low. It is our club where we enjoy in each others sense of achievement. You people on this site have give me a want to work out and a purpose to advance. So without sounding like an absolute crackpot this post is dedicated to fellow site members "I love you guys!!"

I got a new program from one of the most unlikeliest sources. The car park attendant in work. Most of my co-workers dont aknowledge the guy looks after our cars let alone exists. Id always shooted the breeze with him, probably annoying the hell out of him, and last week he made a comment about working out. The guy is the proverbial brick shit house and when I mentioned I was unhappy with my gains he said leave it to me I’ll write you up a program.

Ive just finished the week of it today, Sunday Bloody Sunday and all that and my body is screaming in places that I did not even know had muscles. I told him my time constraints and he got it down to an even five minutes of finishing. I was saying to the guy how great I was finding it and suggested he should become a personal trainer.

He tells me as if discussing the weather, he is happy with what his doing as it gives him time to write and he has had three commissioned novels! Credit due.

On the verge of boring you all to tears I’m going to write about Madonnas new album.The reason I bought it. The first song with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. F^%&^&K it, great song. Heard it first time and thought I should just download the song. But no I bought the album and what a treat. You listen to Madonnas fast paced album, like you are in a dance club in cyprus, greece, turkey pick one.

Every song fits in to that "want to be in love environment". Mixed in with that is a couple of phrases that while not missy elliott x-rated are not far off. So its not your rage against the machine aggression but still works.

Everything no matter how buff, tough, hard you think you are Madonna f^&king rocks and makes you want to work out harder and harder every time. Enough said!

Is there something about us guys working out and in our own way trying to stop the hands of father time. Maybe it is the opposite; we get older and wiser! We realise we have one machine to work with, lets take the best care of it as we can. 

Somehow I have never loved my body so much. Relax I’m not self loving too much. All I am withering on about is I love feeling healthy especially at a weekend. You know what I mean.

I am not just happy, I am sore in all the wrong places and yet that makes me happy. Ive worked out this week like my life has depended on it. People in the gym are saying audibly who does your man think he is. I dont give a f*&k. I have a thirst for life, and want to drink as long as possible!

I was at wedding of the decade yesterday and had an absolute blowout. I stuck to the bottles as opposed to pints of beer so not too bad a head today. That didn’t stop me giving it socks on the dance floor. So much so that my wife said she was mortified when a wedding guest asked "Who is your Husband?" and she replied the guy leading the train around the dancefloor.

Cant get the cha cha rhythm out of my head today. It was Black Tie as well and I felt like the training I had been doing lately paid off.

So I’m ready to hit the gym with renewed vigour. Ive decided I am going to stop jumping from machine to machine like Billy to Jack and focus on certain body parts. Im just looking to dice it all up after a month of doing the same stuff. Thats where I think this website is a great motivator. It is giving me accountability so thanks to all fellow members and bodybloggers! I’ll dedicate my next dust the lampshade sweep the floor dance to you!!

Swiss balls, dumbells, cables, rowing machines no problem but write with a pencil?? I had an insurance exam this week and still managed to get in three trips to the gym. It aided the study but have to say I’m absolutely shattered. I feel like I have jet lag ten times over. As usual I had left the studying until the last two weeks and had decided to cram which I have always found to be under-rated. There was one thing I had not counted on that threw my chances of passing into severe jeopardy.

I can no longer write dammit. Oh I can type sure, but exam situations still go back to the 1950’s. Im suprised I did not see a telegraph in the exam hall. A pencil, sharpener and eraser, yes the world has not moved on. I struggled with taking notes the past two weeks and would fluctuate between capitals and lower case with letters merging into each other. I looked like a beginner using chopsticks.

Seriously though when was the last time you sat down and put ink to paper. I cant see why we cant be allowed to use laptops and save it to disk. It must be a nightmare for anyone correcting the exams to decipher the diferent handwriting. I actually wrote on the exam at the start "please excuse the poor handwriting, its been a while" No shit I can imagine the examiner laughing into her coffee.

As of late I have hit a plateau in relation to adding more muscle. I think I am doing all the right things, such as eating properly and copious amount of protein foods, have cut out the cardio for a couple of weeks and focused on strenght training.

Result, nada. There are flies out there that have built more muscle than I have this month. Im thinking maybe I need to change my focus. Almost like when you have a great booze blowout of a session and you come back to the gym even more focused.

I might have hit on something there. I have a wedding to go to this week and what better place to have a few beers and use a different gym the next day. Maybe it is just me, but I love using hotel gyms and wondering what equipment they will have, how much of it and how well laid out the place is. Pretty sad i know, but to me its almost like driving a new car for the first time. Its the little things that are the new novelty. Maybe size doesn’t matter!! 

This post was inspired by a recent trip to the States and Chicago in particular. While there I took my wife to a Bulls game against the 76ers. Before going she was skeptical to say the least. Ive taken her to football (soccer) matches in the UK and Spain and got the empatising looks from other fans as she would switch off after 10 minutes and read cosmopolitian.

Now admittedly the game we saw was a cracker. Bulls lost by 108 -101 after having a 16 point lead going into the fourth. I think I have the terminology down. However it occured to me that the game differs from soccer in that the emphasis is on attack with the shot clock as oppossed to defence which is the way soccer has gone.

I was on a stags last November and we went to a premier league match and had front row seats. I was sitting there watching the game and I got a text message from a buddy watching the game at home telling me to wake up my friend who had actually nodded off beside me. No chance of that at a Basketball game!

So since I came home I made a concious decision not to watch soccer and I cant believe the amount of time I have to do other things such as workout. Last week alone there was a game on tuesday, wednesday, thursday and I didnt watch any of them. There is a game on at the moment and Im writing this blog that is boring you all to tears.

However I think my wife’s entusiasm for basketball has become an addiction. though She is currently fighting with the cable company daily on why we cant get a subscription to ESPN in Ireland. Any ideas on how I go about it would be greatly appreciated. Attached is a couple of pics of the atmosphere. 

A fellow bodybuilding member made a comment about my tagline and it got me thinking about where I had picked up the  title of this blog’s phrase. Then it came back to me. When I was a kid 8-9 or so I used to run track. There was a club in our local town and after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays we would run around a large field marked out in lanes. Now please don’s switch of I’m not doing a Kevin out of the wonder years, young Irish Jesse Owens or even a huck finn story here.

You see we had a Irish priest who trained us and was 6ft 6, just as wide and a military style haircut that Clint Eastwood would be proud off. Add to that that he never used a microphone to address his congregation at mass and still poor old deaf Betty who would be sitting at the rear of the church would be complaining of the noise and you have the picture. Oh and I must mention that he would walk his alasatian dog, named Spike, while training us. Older kids had wound filled us with fear that Spike was the reason Mad Joe walked with a limp. We did not lack motivation!!

Anyway we were a pretty strong relay team. We had it down as we say it. Each of us running each section to each different leg and specialising in it. There was a competition coming up and we were hell bent (not too christian) on beating the school next to us St Michaels that had beat us the previous year. We were all psyched up for this and were singing Europe (the final countdown song, how sad!) at St Michaels before the race start. Anyway we beat them to come in second. Delighted cue big celebrations, wolf whistling and mind numbing incessant chanting from us.

So Fr Horan walks up and stops us in our tracks with the line "what are you celebrating for?".

Reply "we came second and beat Michaels"

He responds "you didnt win silver you lost gold!"

I remember at the time I thought stuff you. Typical begrudging git cant give us any credit. More I thought about it, that night, more I thought he was right. I think its stayed with me. I lift 65kg’s consistently I then want to lift 75kgs. I work in sales, and I hate the lines "it was between you and someone else" or "come back in next year", I just want the business. The business is it. I think it has served me well.

What happens when you get gold you may ask. Show me a man who has too much gold and I’ll help lighten his load!

I finally succumbed and joined a gym. It was part of the pre-nuptuials as I recently got married. Basically my wife had tired of tripping over weights, listening to my breathing and moaning lifting weights at ungodly hours as and seeing me disappear at important conversation points to pump iron.

So of I went and got the initial tour. Well impressed with the set up the guy who showed me around, reminded me of poor old Gill out of The Simpsons, didn’t have too much convincing to do and seem shocked that his sales techniques had worked.

On the whole I am loving it but a couple of things are starting to irk. When you go out for a couple of beers and you end up with the same bladder control as another punter you invariably get on the same bathroom brakes as someone else and it ends up being a little akward. Well the same thing is happening me and is now not akward just pissing me off. The guy seems to be on the same programme and seems to want to compete. I couldnt give a f%$K which is seeming to egg him on even more. 

Then there is the chatterboxes. Christ can some people talk. I used to unfairly pin the blame on women but the lads seem to be the worse culprits. I was on the cross trainer and these two punters kept talking across me about what session they were doing, the time it would take, how you weigh yourself in kgs, yappy yappy yappy. So my ipod shuffle gets turned up another notch.

Which leads me onto my next point. The music in the gym is so terrible it would make your ears bleed. Not I admit my taste is extreme and ranges from rage against the machine, tool and Marilyn Manson to the rolling stones, U2 and a bit of the zep. I cannot however comprehend how anyone could enjoy the music that is being played. I am all for high tempo but the time warp human league and wham numbers are really beginning to grate. 

The fashions are something to behold also. Now I will freely admit that my wife has saved me from many the faux pas but I burst out laughing the other day when I seen a guy with jeans on a treadmill. Another day I seen this bloke wearing a seoul olympics t-shirt. Now you are probably thinking retro but it bore the marks and tears of an original. God knows what he was thinking. You are gaurenteed that he is one of those that doesnt wipe the machines after use.

Now I am concious that this is coming across as very negative and seeing that this is my first post I’ll have to mention a positive. The swimming pool is class even though I look a right clown in my pinkish cap (only one they had left I was told with a smirk). Also my wife seems much happier as she can now have the place to clean, I get in the way you see. Also I seem to have more time even though I’m spending more excercising. That must to be down to my short attention span which invariably means Ive left the euro in the locker again!