BrandonM.B’s BodyBlog

  Well, my friend strolled into the gym earlier today, ready to torch her quads and hams; and ready with her camera to take some pictures! 

  Since Gold’s has a no camera policy, we had to go the front of the gym.  So after taking a few pics, the sight of people strolling by while I flex and pose was a bit silly, so we decide to head to the side of the gym.  Being a conscientious citizen, she had me ask the police officer if it would be OK if we took the pictures. Seriously, she asked me to strip down(don’t get the wrong idea!) and she thought that a man in little boxer briefs and a beautiful woman with a camera running off to the back of a building might merit the wrong impression!  Needless to say, he had no problem with it. 

 But the funniest part was when I was doing poses at the side of the building, stripped down to my skivvies, when a truck of good ole boys peel around from the back.  They were laughing and cheering, giving thumbs up signs as they sped off. We both just started cracking up……the imagination some people have sometimes! 

She gave me some good, honest criticism.  My calves need work, they look good, but need more definition. Oww, but not really. She’s my friend and wants me to succeed. Double back bi looks awesome, I have " a beautiful tummy" , legs are lean but with plenty of muscle. All in all, I’m doing well;)  Hopefully, I can get these developed soon and see what she was looking at.

photo measurements -143.6lbs 9.5%BF  chest40.5  calves14  thighs22  shoulders47  arms14.6  forearms11.3  waist 27.5

  Well, I’ve decided to change it up a little week to week. But what else is new?!  I have an idea about what I want to try in the next few weeks……

Next week I want to throw this into my workouts..

Chest,Shoulders&Triceps)  B.B bench press  125×12  150X10  165X8  175X6  185X6  200X4   B.B overhead press   80X12  100X10  110X8  120X6  130X6  140X4  Machine tricep pressdown  110X12  130X10  150X8  170X6  190X6  210X4

Quads)  Smith squats 195X12  230X10  250X8  270X6  290X6  310X4  Leg press  465X12  555X10  600X8  645X6  690X6  735X4  Leg extensions 70X12  90X10  110X8  130X6  150X6 170X4

Calves&Core) B.B calf raise 295X12  315X10  355X6 375X6 395X4  Machine crunches 90X12 110X10  130X8  150X6  170X6  190X4  Machine lower back extensions  70X12  90X10  110X8  130X6  150X6  170X4

Back,Biceps&Core) B.B bentover rows  60X12  70X10  80X8  90X6  100X6  110X4  Cable lat pulldowns  70X12  80X10  90X8  100X6  110X6  120X4  Machine shrugs  210X12  250X10  270X8  290X6  310X6  330X4  B.B bicep curls  55X12  65X10  70X8  75X6  80X6  85X4

Hamstrings,Glutes&Calves)  B.B deadlifts  135X12  160X10  175X8  185X6  200X6  225X4  Leg curls 30X12  50X10  70X8  90X6  110X6  130X4  Glute machine  100X12  110X10  120X8  130X6  140X6  150X4

The following week, this challenge thrown in….

Squat  280X12  Deadlift  185X12  Bench  175X12  Bicep curl  80X12  Bent-over rows  120X12  Overhead press  135X12

Won’t be easy, but that’s why it’s fun!!!!

  Well, today I visit Diana Chaloux’s page and find on her new blog a link to the FAME site, which includes dates, times and locations for the camps. Also included are info about the muscle model and bodybuilding categories, which is great!  So there I was, taking notes, resolving to learn as much as I can so as to be prepared(hey, it’s never too early!)

  As excited as I am about going to the camp and doing my first competition, I am a bit overwhelmed by all the details. Figuring out how to pay the gym fees, plus supplements and registration fees; all on top of normal living expenses!  That, and working on my posing and coming up with a routine, plus finding transportation…..you get the idea. 

So I was laying in bed, just wanting to crash early so I can get to the gym EARLY tomorrow. I’m just over excited I guess. That and the new jump in protein intake has my hormones going crazy!  Does that happen to anyone else? My uber fit, sexy friend at the gym didn’t help.  She hadn’t seen me in awhile, on Monday she gave me the warmest hug and  was going on in her irresistable Spanish accent about how "strong" & "muscular"  I ‘m becoming.  She lifted my shirt, and slid her hand along my abs in a way that put some less than innocent thoughts in my head. I feel a bit guilty, because she is married, and maybe I should have been a mature adult and not let her have done that. Except that I really enjoyed that kind of attention from such a hot woman, honestly. I do kind of flirt, and she knows how she looks to me, inside and out. But we’ve discussed this before, we are both mature adults, and we both know we cannot act like horny school children.  I think I’m in shock, I find myself so RESPONSIVE to her, that she was so bold; we probably should only see each other at the gym in public just to be safe!  Dear Lord Jesus, please send me an AVAILABLE woman as attractive to me as she is!!!

 Well, I think writing has actually helped. Maybe I just needed to let out these thoughts and feelings, rather than let them burn out of control in me.

  I just pawned some excess musical equipment and thank Jesus I got a good price! So now I am able to finance for the next two months of training. With that in mind I changed up what I was doing, and am trying to design a program for the next eight weeks of training.

 My split is going to be the same, but with two leg days. One will be quad dominant and the other hamstring dominant. The other change will be less volume, but incorporating heavy sets at a weight where I’m limited to 4-6 reps, shaving down until the last set is at a weight where I can do 10-12. I also want to try exercises I’ve never done or rarely do.

I want to break it down into bodyparts when trying to decide what exercises to do.

Back&biceps,core day.1)traps2)middle back3)lats4)lats 5)biceps 6)biceps 7)upper&lower abs8)obliques9)lowerback 4sets each exercise

Legs, quad dom. day 3 squat exercises, 1leg press exercise 1 quad isolation exercise  4sets each exercise

Calves&core day 4 calf excercises 4core exercises1)upper&lower abs 2)upper&lower abs 3)obliques 4)lower back 4sets each exercise

Chest&shoulders,triceps,day 1)middle pecs 2)lower pecs 3)upper pecs 4)front delts 5) middle delts 6)rear delts 7)triceps triceps  4sets each exercise

Legs, hamstring dom. day 3 deadlift exercises 1hamstring isolation exercise 1lunge exercise 4 sets each exercise 12 sets of calves

This the approach i want to take, I will make adjustments week to week

   I think I have a good idea on how to do measurements, but I’m still not sure if I’m doing them correctly. I assume that you measure around the thickest area, in which case my thighs are an even 22′, calves are an even 14′, and chest is 40.2′. But the arms, I;m not sure if they are to be measured flexed or unflexed. Unflexed=13.4′ flexed 14.4′. And shoulders, are they just around the front and rear delts in a single shoulder(18′) or around both shoulders(47′)?  I would really like to know, so that I can be as accurate as possible here. As far as body fat, I know the electronic devices aren’t totally accurate, I’ve had readings as low as 6.5% and as high as 10.1%!  So I am sort of stabbing in the dark as to what it really is.

   After slipping up late Saturday night, it occurred to me that all the painful memories and past failures had become too much to deal with on my own. All the therapy in the world was not going to repair the damage, I had become spiritually very NEAR DEATH!  So I did something difficult.

I got out of bed early Sunday and went to a little church three blocks from my home. I hadn’t been to church in almost a year, apostate religion had turned me off so badly.  I already beleived in Jesus as the son of God, but being alone with an intellectual beleif hadn’t done any good, I was and possibly already had lost my mind.  So I risked it; I needed other people so bad, I was desperate.

This little church was everything I could hope for!  There is an atmosphere of joy, a sense of freedom; no signs of apostasy at all. The people are warm and supportive. They use the divine names(Jehova,Yeshua)  in prayer, and they engage in charitable efforts around the world(amazing, since this place is tiny without a lot of funding, it’s basically a double wide mobile home with a altar and a baptismal font.)  After four years of searching for a congregation, I found one. I got baptized, letting the old creature die so that new could begin life again, unfettered by the otherwise irrevocable damage of the past.  

I am grateful to God for doing this for me. These are great people to be friends with, positive, supportive and fun. (and fit and healthy to boot!)  I also have a chance to contribute something as well. While I am so apppreciative of the support of the people on bodyspace, i did need some people in my own backyard to connect with, and I got what i needed.

Well, I learned my lesson today. I simply CANNOT go to my mom for any emotional support. I just get reminded about how I’ve failed and ruined my life. I already know that! I live with that knowledge every second of the day. I KNOW that everything wrong in my life is my own fault. I KNOW that my suffering is well deserved. I do not need to be reminded. I already beat the s**t out of myself.

I wouldn’t go to her, except I still live in my parents house with her. My father has been gone for years, he left us with this house and all its expenses.  The reason I stayed is because she could not afford it on her own, my brother and I helped her pay the bills. I want nothing more than to leave, but I’m broke. I don’t even have a job right now, I’m looking and looking, but without much luck.  She has always been a bit negative, so in effect I don’t really have anybody to go to whose any good for me right now.(All my friends are drinkers, don’t need alcohol now, thanks.)

I desperately need counseling if I’m going to overcome. But 60$ per session! Whose going to pay for it?  The only thing I can really do is just to leave everything behind. To just slap on my shoes and walk away. I would basically be a vagabond. I can stay here, have a roof over my head, and be reminded by this house and my mom of everything bad in my life. Or I can just leave and be homeless.  The sad part is I’m undecided. I’m sure I can find work, but that doesn’t solve my most urgent problem.

I prayed on it. Then I started to leave. Then something happened. My handsome siamese kitty ran up to me, DRAGGED ME DOWN with his claws, and started nuzzling the crap out of me, all the while purring like a race car. OK, the cats doesn’t want me to leave. I’m staying because of my STUPID CATS!  But they’re so cute and sweet.

I’m hanging on by a thread. I feel so alone, and it just seems hopeless. If not for the kind words of people far on this site, I wouldn’t have even gone this long sober.

  This will not be easy to write. But I have to be truthful about my feelings.  Sobriety has made some issues I have clearer to me, since drugs are no longer numbing them.

   I remember that I hated being a child. Part of me wanted to be a kid and have fun, but for the most part I couldn’t wait to grow up so I wouldn’t be small, weak and dependent anymore. One main reason is my dad.

I remember being thrown around like a rag doll sometimes when my father would lose his temper. There were times when I would be scared that he would lose control and kill me by accident. He cheated on my mother, berated her, and on top of that was a cigarette smoker; I would be in the car and my brother and I would be inudated by an acrid cloud of smoke from both parents cigarettes.  When I told my father one day about how smoking is harmful(I was about 9), he simply scoffed, laughed at my "childish naivette". My mother’s pendulum swinging between fierce temper and mousy compliance didn’t endear to me much either. In short, I didn’t like my parents very much. Is that normal for a young child?

 I saw all this, how my father had his own fluctuating code of morality, and knowing he was wrong, could do nothing.  His word was law because he had the physical prowess to enforce it, pure and simple. I hated this so much, I felt trapped in a Hell scenario, knowing what was right in my heart but being compliant to corruption and wickedness. And all because I was a small, weak little child. I learned about Darwinism in 3rd grade, and being raised agnostic, I accepted this point of view. I began to hate life and secretly desired to kill myself and be free of this chaotic world. But the part of me that wanted to live to adulthood knew that I would have to become stronger,smarter than him. So I buried my head in books, I excercised, I plotted my escape.

My dislike of my parents extended to dislike of people in general. I was teased for wearing glasses, for being brainy, for being poor and unable to afford the latest trends.  Even my teachers looked down on me.  I was in fights all the time by sixth grade, I actually had to go to anger counseling. As I got older I realized the WHOLE WORLD was my household. It ran by the same rules and principles. Except for my friends, I disliked just about everyone, their petty cruelty and sheepish devotion to the way of things disgusted me, and I wished the world would be destroyed. When most boys were starting to hook up with girls, I saw them as adversarial tormentors, a foe to be conquered along with my father and the world. Yes, I had issues! But not completely unfounded.

One way I chose to outlet my anger was sports. I went out for football in seventh grade, although everyone doubted I would make it since physically I was pathetic, I gradually earned the respect of my teammates. By ninth grade I was a starter on the freshman team!  This is when I began to pick up and fall in love with weight lifting. This seemed to be the key to solving all my problems. Self improvement and physical strength.

I think all these issues might haved stemmed from an utter lack of self esteem. I felt I was the weakest, most pathetic, ugliest losery creature ever conceived. Women didn’t help. I remember when my aunt, who was 19 and a cheerleader at the time, flexed her guns. I actually CRIED! She was only 110 lbs, but at 8yrs old her arms looked as big as my head. Her showing off was just being playful, but I saw it as a threatening. Not only was I powerless before the men, but the "weaker sex" as well! Everything in the universe seemed bent on annihilating my fledgling sense of masculinaty. Even to this day I feel that way sometimes.

That brings me to another thing. The "muscle babes". The truth is I have ambivalent feelings about women with muscles.  On one hand, I find babes lifting heavy weights to be really amazing. At first I found them repulsive, but by adolescence I developed a strong sexual attraction to athletic girls, whether they were volleyball players, futbolistas(soccer players, en Ingles) gymnasts, you name it. On the other hand, because of my lack of self esteem and being manhandled, I hate it because it just feels so de-masculating knowing there are girls, some 35lbs smaller than me, lifting more weight, and no matter how much I improve, it feels like they are breathing down my neck, threatening to usurp my fragile sense of masculinaty once again. Rather than hate them out of envy, I tried making friends with them over the years, dating them, being supportive of them being strong and confident. To some degree it has helped. It’s hard though, being 5′7 140ish, I feel like I am closer to a females size than a males. So over the years, despite my efforts to improve myself and accept and love these women for who they are, what once were objects of desire have become in my mind competition. It has gotten so bad as to make me sexual non’functional. So obviously, this is something I have to make peace with.

Now, about my drug use.

I think I developed a habit after the last time I fought with my dad. I was 20 years old, in shape, my dad was 42, 5′6 200lbs, with a bad back and seriously overweight. And he beat me. This was the thing that really killed my self esteem. I was too weak and pathetic to win, so at the point I gave up trying, I was a pathetic mistake of bad breeding and that was fate. I gave up. So I got high, a lot. Day in, day out, for years. A girlfriend helped me find Jesus during that time, and having a whole new outlook helped greatly.  i started exercising again.  But I was an addict, and I would cycle in and out of heavy use.  I was just trying to run from my issues. No matter how much my physique improved or how people would come out to watch my band play, I felt inadequate. It could always be better, I thought. Everything started to come down around my head. And that brings us to today.

So now I’m sober, and I realize that although I’m secure in God’s truth, I still want to reagin a sense of strength and masculinaty, and to maintain it indefinately. I want to let go of my ambivalence toward strong, athletic females, because I love them dearly and want them to push the envelope. They have made positive differences in my life time and time again. As far as me never beating up my father, well, I guess it’s not important since his poor choices are kicking his ass in life as i speak. I want to stop having nightmares about women laughing at me for being too small and skinny, I want to sleep well without having to be drugged out of my skull to do so. I want to have absolute control over my emotions. It might not happen over-night, but I know that staying sober, and talking openly about how I feel are major steps.

 God Bless

   Here goes….

Ever since I was eighteen I’ve had a little drug problem. For the most part I’ve managed to keep it under control, but I realize that what once was a part of life is now starting to CONTROL IT! This is really hard to write. Regular people don’t even know, cause I look in really great shape. But the reality is I’m an addict. I workout sober, I work sober; but after a certain hour of the night, goodbye sober.

I’ve managed to stop smoking cigarettes this year, but this problem is way more more urgent. It WILL ruin my life if I do not do something about it. That is what my heart is telling me. I see amazing progress on the surface, but my body is telling me my performance IS starting to suffer, and it won’t be too long before I hit a major wall. They say the first step is admitting when you have a problem. I think I was waiting for the right time to do it, but I can’t keep putting it off. I have to listen to body and my heart, that I have to take that first step now.

OK, I’ve been asked about this a few times, so I will clear the air. I have a pic but it is not on my computer. However, if you want to see what I look like I do have a profile pic on www.myspace.com/brandonmkl. This was taken in 2006 when I was singing in a hard rock/metal band.

At the time, I was working out at home with bodyweight exercises, my only equipment was 2 25lb dumbells and a tree in the backyard for pullups! I wasn’t using supplements at the time either. The main areas where I have progressed are in my lats and delts, they are thicker and much better defined. That, and my thighs. They were 20 and now are 21.5 inches. My old weight was 135 at 15%bf, now it is 145 at 8-10% bf, with fluctuations. I think I got bigger because I started using protein supplements in Dec 2007, plus just an overall improvement in diet and lifestyle.