Gun Chief’s BodyBlog

Well with one very successful competition completed, the outcome of which would’ve have been entirely different and much less of a success if it wasn’t for my partners encouraging support and steadfastness to what was needed.  I’ve decided to do two others next month.  The first one is in 3 weeks and then the next one is the week after.  They’re two different federations and require a bit of travel but I’m looking forward to them both.  Both are Natural competitions and are tested, which is good for me.  I’m too damn tall and not bulky enough to compete in the other ones yet.  Hopefully next year I will be able to do as well in the other federations as well.  With my partner by my side encouraging me and pushing me (probably harder then I do her) I’m sure alot of great things are around the corner.  

I could actually use some great (even just good) things as my personal life is a disaster and to go into detail would make it sound like fiction!  I couldn’t make up half this stuff much less believe it! The other half I barely believe and cause it sounds like I’m on a damn TV show!  Suffice it too say that I have a long road ahead of me and the only sanity I have to get me through it is my training partner (who pushes me better then anyone ever has) and my workouts.  Funny how they tie in together.  Can’t wait for her to get back, she got to go to the Olympia (wench!!) and she apparently had a blast meeting everybody (wench!!).  But she’s coming back today and we get to train tonight, and I don’t care how tired she may claim to be, it’s going to be a good workout!!  I’m changing our routine to 6 days a week to prep for the upcoming shows (and she’s going to have to follow suit till next year).  My diet hasn’t been as good as it was before my first show and I can chalk alot of that up to the stressors that I’m dealing with right now.  Thank Gawd today is a leg day cause I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with this crap!  At least on a leg day I can brutalize em, with enough energy and pain that I can work out my issues and forget about them (even if it’s temporary).  Well back to the grindstone!! 

Well I just finished my first BB show and did really well.  Taking a 2nd in the Novice heavy weight (was edged out due to a lack of a larger thigh sweep according to judges), took a 3rd in the Master’s 40+ (totally justified, the other guys were much leaner and ripped then me), and the best part a 1st place in the OPEN heavy weight class (totally dominated the other competitors according to two of the judges).   Getting to do a posedown was an awesome experience and to do it with a pro-card on the line was even that much more exciting.  The overall winner (middle wt class winner) had a much better total package but in the pictures I saw I looked like I belong there and had a shot at it.   

The elation of winning my class was incredible, it was only too bad that it wound up being a hollow feeling.  My personal life has become unmanagable and I’ve hurt someone very close to me very very badly.  It seems every time things start to go right for me I hurt someone close to me and I don’t know if it can be repaired to where it once was.  There is a lot of pain involved (caused by the situation we created and I’ve unintentionally made worse by asking the near impossible).  My first competition was suppose to be about me and celebrating my accomplishment, instead the one person whom I love and care about will barely speak to me (not out of anger but hurt), and I created that situation Saturday (despite what she says or thinks).  I have a lot of things to do this week and hopefully I can start making amends to her.   

Well my training partner is back and although she can’t lift just yet it is a huge motivator knowing she is there and holding me accountable to the goal of getting on stage.  We worked on both mando posing and the routine (graceful I ain’t).  It was a lot easier to have another set of eyes seeing the form and making corrections, then trying to do it yourself and guessing if it looked good.  Changed the music as it just wasn’t flowing with the original (it didn’t feel right and she pointed it out that the poses didn’t have enough energy).  Sounds strange to say but I really can’t wait to get on stage and do this!  I know I’m not large enough to compete with the big boys (even though I’ll be in the heavy weight class) but I hope to correct that by next spring and put on 15lbs or so.  Mostly need to fill out my shoulders and keep leaning out my lower back/waist and abs.  My upper back is thick but can be wider and my legs should be thicker.  So I figure 15lbs should cover all that.  The last thing I want to do is get bulky and then repeat the cutting diet, I would much rather try and maintain the leanness and just add the bulk 1-2lbs at a time while keeping BF in single digits.  Not sure if that’s totally possible but what the heck, I’ve already been told that on my current diet I can’t lean out and I’ve done just that.  So maybe listening to my body and focusing on what it needs and when it needs it, is a lot more important then following some generic diet plan in a book.  Won’t say I’ve got it licked but it seems to be working right now.  It’s really the last two weeks that I’m more nervous about as I don’t want to drop anymore weight or BF during that time but instead just tighten the skin as much as possible.       

YEAH!!!  My Partner is back from travel a day early!!!  I can’t wait to begin our workouts together (even though she may not be able to start right away just having her there to help push me on is an immense motivator!  Especially when she uses my physcology techinques on me (I guess turn about is fair play).  Hopefully we can nail down my posing routine and make it flow as well.  I’ve been hitting the mandos but I need to start holding each pose longer (currently about 10secs each going to bump it to 15-20).  Gawd I can’t wait for this week to begin.  I’m so pumped to lift right now it’s ridiculous!  Oh well Have to suffer through without today so I can blast it tomorrow!   Back to the Olympics!  GO USA!!

Wow!  Only 4 weeks left before I get on stage.  Feel good about where I am at (actually feel like I’ve achieved more then I thought I would) and I don’t think I’m going to embarass myself up there.  Have to work more on posing (hard without my training partner to make the corrections I don’t see) and my routine (much harder then I thought).  I’m doing my high carb day today and then tomorrow next to no carbs to see what happens so as I get closer to the final week I have a better idea of just what to do.  I’ve also cut my overall calories by 300 to keep leaning out without dropping muscle (it’s worked so far so we’ll see).  I wish I was a little more solid and less fluffy feeling around the middle (esp. the lower back/hip area) but with cutting the calories and increasing the cardio I hope that will go down a little more.  Every day I see just a little more cuts in my legs and on my torso, it doesn’t help that I’m white as a friggin ghost I’m sure that if I was darker it would even be better (I can’t get a tan without spray paint LOL!!).  Well I’m off to do shoulders, and calves then cardio (and watch some of the Olympics).  

In only 5 weeks I will be stepping up on a stage to be judged by others on how I big I am, how lean I am, how muscular I am, and how well I pose!  Not an easy concept to grasp in my mind.  I’m more of the compete where the goal is your physical (or mental) ability determines the outcome, not what someone (or rather someones) opinions determine the outcome.  Am I ready…..not yet.  But I’m close and that’s what is important, staying with the plan!  Of course not having my training partner with me these past couple weeks sucks and is very hard to keep up the intensity in the workouts (she’s on travel and hopefully due back soon!!).  It makes a difference in my workouts and my days when she is here.  It really shitty right now as I have no way to even communicate with her and I don’t know when I will again (it’ll be this week just don’t know when!).  Losing touch with someone that important to me is akin to missing a workout!  Your just not the same and you can’t go back and get a redo!  You have to take what’s done is done, not worry about it and press forward!  While I have a lot of questions about the final week leading into the contest, most of them I can figure out when (and if) I take the time to sit down and study what works and what doesn’t for me.  Catching more grief from home but it flips around so much that it makes my head spin - one minute I’m a self-conceited bastard, and the next the hottie on the block.  More the latter then the former!  Of course having people throw your hard work into your face sucks and then have them grill you off and on all day about what you eat and "how come your not hungry" "you look like your starving yourself" "how can I do that" and my favorite "it must be nice to be able to workout all day long and not have a real job!"  Now I know they’re haters and haters usually drive me to have them hate me some more.  I don’t mind the fight sometimes I downright enjoy it but hearing a nice word once in a while would be a welcome change instead of sarcasm and snide comments about "touching my measured food".  Anyone who embarks on the journey to get on stage and go through these issues I tip my proverbial hat off to ya.  Will I do it again, lets just get through the first one before we go that far but chances are yes I will.  But I will be bigger next time!   

It’s been almost a year since I started this journey!  Since then I’ve accomplished much more then I ever thought possible.  I’ve competed in 2 Powerlifting events (taking several 1st places) as well as setting new personal best in several lifts.  I’m currently training for a BB competition which will occur in 5 weeks.  I’ve come so far since doing this space and while it may not seem like I’ve been on here much in the past couple of months, I have not forgotten what got me started.  I used to be a solo/isolated kinda guy but since taking that first step on this journey, I gained a training partner, and a very close friend!  Without her assistance and her pushing me when I didn’t want to I probably wouldn’t be where I am now.  I won’t say it’s always one sided as I push and encourage her just as hard and she is enroute to even greater things (more then I could ever accomplish) in the near future and I’m extremely proud of her and incredibly grateful for her friendship (despite the grief I get over it from home).   We have a lot in common and it’s good to be able to talk to someone about stuff that most wouldn’t understand anything about.  She has been my anchor and has been there to say the right things when they needed to be said.   Between her and this site my life has been changed and I feel like I’m becoming more me then the shell of what everyone expected me to be.  The two don’t always mesh well and I was losing me.  I am forever grateful for having her enter my life, befriend me and helping me to be me.  This place was the catalyst of it all and I’m going to be coming back on here to assist others work on their journey.  Can’t say it will all be fun and at times the home life isn’t.   But having friends and someone whom you care about and cares about you definitely makes the journey worth it.  I can’t thank her enuff!!     

Finally I can start getting back on track.  It’s been a rough two weeks between fighting a chest cold, sinus infection, work and food poisoning you’ld think there wouldn’t be much left of me.  Fortunately I haven’t lost that much size (gotten a little softer from not being to work out) and I didn’t lose or gain any weight.  Hopefully this has all passed and I will be able to get back into the swing of working out and get back to making progress again.  I miss it alot and I tried to workout once last week while being sick and it just didn’t turn out so good the next day (got worse).  Soon I’ll be posting new pics and charting my progress again.  Thank you to those who continue to support me as I make this journey, Ya’ll are truly my inspiration and I wish my family was supportive as ya’ll have been.  Thank You!!

Well it’s been a little over a week and a half and I’ve managed to maintain 217, I’m hungry all day long and I’ve been eating every 1.5 - 2 hours but no weight change.  My workouts feel real strong and I just did 305 on the bench (first time in 2 1/2 years) at my lightest weight ever for that weight.  I also did 305 on the deadlift (no hip or back pain - another first) again at my lightest weight ever.  Normally these weights were either max or near max when I weighed 230 and in the 3 - 5 rep range when I weighed 245.  So to do these weights now is (to me anyway) phenominal.  I’m really happy with all the comments I’ve been getting from my friends on here and I’ve been really impressed with some of their progress as well.  I’m considering competiting but I’m not sure if getting on a stage is for me yet, while I’m starting to get bigger on top I know I’m not even close to being the size I would need to step on stage and be respectable (especially for my height).  I’m guesstamiting that I need to gain about 20-25lbs and drop at least 5% more bodyfat, really not too sure I guess I need to keep going down this road and see what the next intersection holds.  I’m considering doing maybe a strongman or powerlifting competition just to give me a definitive goal to attack instead of blindly going on.   I guess the next step is too research and see what’s coming up in my area.  And to to contact those individuals who are already successful in BB and try and see what I would need to do to be respectable on stage and not the "WTF were you thinking" guy.  LOL 

I never knew that I would be complaining about losing weight but I’ve dropped 7lbs (down to 220 from 227 on 10/26) since last friday and I feel like I’m panicking over it.  Granted it’s been a rough week and a horrible weekend stress wise but I’ve been eating, working out and sleeping the same.  Even more confounding my bodyfat has dropped also (which I really can’t complain about), so much so that one of my coworkers noticed that I seemed thinner then last week so we did my BF with the tape (12%), Caliper (11.7%) and the Bio-impedence (14.2%), this is down from the last time of an average 15% (bio was 17%).  I’m not sure what the f is going on but it’s bothering me (especially the weight loss).  On the positive side my strength is still on the upswing and I seem to look better everytime I take my progress pictures (all relaxed not flexed) but I didn’t expect it and I’m kinda at a loss to explain.  Maybe I’m just ranting because I’ve entered a realm I’ve never been in with a body I don’t recognize and a strength that in theory surpasses anything I had in the past.  Do I have ya’ll who read these blogs and have made such positive comments to me to thank for this?? Most Definitely!!  Since ya’ll are the biggest difference in my life I kinda have to give ya full credit, Thank You for all of your positive feedback, your inspirational stories of trials and success, and most of all your support.