SkweRLy’s BodyBlog

Ive posted new pics. progress, main, etc. enjoy.

in other news i did something at the gym today ive been wanting to do for a while now. I threw a 45, 35, 25, 10, 5, 2.5, o each side of the bar (roughly 290) and benched it. I just thought it would lok cool having the "pyramid" on each side like that. i dont know why but originally i thought it was 295? ehh either way, im 180-185, pushin almost 300 isnt bad at all. my buddy just put up 295 a couple of days ago and we are about neck and neck so i gotta go a step above him.

so ive been protien loading a lot. well 4 scoops a day on gym days, 2 scoops on non. and in the past 2 weekes or so ive put on roughly 10 pounds. Its crazy. its not it my gut, so i have no clue, i guess its going to the muscles where its supposed to. lets hope at least.

also, ive been slackin on the gym some what, i just dont seem to hit it as hard as i used to. and im not too worried if i miss a day. i gotta get that crap outta my head and start killin myself again. only a couple more months left here and i still gotta look a lot more solid. well i think i do.

Apparently there is a such thing as over training. I have fallen into loving running so much, and the random looks i get from being completely drenched in sweat after 30 minutes on the treadmill that i was burning more muscle than i was putting on. I have been on XNickEdgeX’s ab routine for almost 2 weeks now, which calls for less running, and i have built muscle in my lower abs that i havent been able to get for the past 2 months of my routine. Its awesome. I’m still loving the day to day transformations i see in the mirror. Just the look I am going to get from my girlfriend when i get back home from iraq is a huge motivator.

 also on top of the lower run time, i increased my lifting routine. I was doing the standard 10 reps X 3 sets. Now i am doing a little lighter weight but 15 reps X 4 sets. By that 14-15th rep, holy crap am i feeling the burn. When i leave i can just feel my arms, chest, whatever ready to explode. I highly reccommend it. Not only that I have started a better eating habit. The granola bar rigt when I wake up really boosts my metabolism, and then i try to keep it at small meals the rest of the day. Lost f juice, but mainly water, and I cheat with a coupl sodas here and there.

 But all in all, im feeling better than i ever have, even tho ive ben in good shape most of the time, im just really hitting the tops. I can definately tell my stamina has shot through the roof since my running habits have increased. just a hair over 2 months left to really get my abs ripped before i go home.

I felt like such a pig the other day. My shop’s Warrant Officer and SNCOs bought us pizza for dinner. Well it’s been a while since I had anything that nasty and rather than practice some sefl control I decided to devour a whole pizza. Not only that, but 2 days went by before I decided to get off of my fat slab and hit the gym. Man I felt horrible. That’s cool tho I got it out of my system in the gym today, and I havent gained 30 pounds or anything.

My new shoes still aren’t here and am in dire need of new PT shoes. Mine are falling apart. They have quie a few miles on them here in Iraq alone. I’ve probably put on a couple hundred miles on them just since being here. But hey it happens.

Personal note, shit has just beein hitting the fan lately. All of the small stuff at once and its just snowballing. I would like to go to the gym and work it off, but that just reminds me about my shoes not being here. My computer shot crap so I have to wait till I get to work to use this one. The hard drive is in middle of a sector regenerator, and it has been 4 days now and there still 15 gigs to fix. Its running at about a gig a day. At lease the first 140 gigs were good.

So I’m trying to control my eating and work on portion control and such, but I get so hungry all day after hitting the gym first thing in the morning. I’ll get there. I currently have the least body fat in my shop. The caliper says I’m sitting about about 9% but the tape and online calculator say 10.9%. I feel like im a little over both of those, but then again I don’t know. I am mainly judging that off of how much my abs show, but ome people just don’t have the genetics to completely show abs like others. Speaking of, thanks a lot to XNickEdgeX for a kick ass ab routine. Check out his second blog for eating guidelines and ab routine. It seriously kicks my ass but I love it. We’ll see where I am in a couple months of doing that. I can feel it already.

That should be about it for now. Sorry there won’t be any progress pics updated for a while until I get my computer back up and running. Which may be a week or 2 depending on if the regenerator works or if I need a new hard drive. I’m going back to Xp, screw Vista.

Train or Pain.
-SkweRLy

Wow, I did something today I never thought would happen. I got one hell of a high PFT (Physical Fittness Test) score. Out of a possible 300 I got 290. Basically the only thing i lost out on was the run time. I got the max points for 20 pullups, max points for 100 crunches in less than 2 minutes, and a score of 90/100 for a run time of 19:40. A perfect run time is 18:00, you subtract one point for ever 10 seconds over that. Until now, my highest PFT score ever was a 276, and I got that back in boot camp 4 years ago. I guess all of the work I am doing is paying off. I was pretty excited. I jsut can’t wait for my new shoes to get here. I ordered them over a month ago, and the shoes I am running in now I am suprised the soles are still attached to. If I run just right, I can feel the heel slap the bottom of the shoe. It pretty much sucks. But it was about 40 degress this morning when we started our run and my throat was burning from breathing the cold.

On another note, tomorrow is my day off. I am going to spend forever in the gym. I just like the atmosphere there and I feel like I am accomplishing something. Plus I have found a new love for running so I will be spending a while on the treadmill. Well, in 30 minute intervals at least. Damn those rules. So what if someone else wants to use it, they should have gotten there as early as I did right? I’m still trying to focus on my lower abs and get some excess skin outta there so that my lower abs will show more. The 4 higher ones are lookin nice.

 Well since I made my goal of 175 Lbs, its time to set something new I guess. So I think I am looking at 170 Lbs and under 10% BF. That’s still healthy right? Good. I was watching some UFC and I saw the guys the same height as me, but weighed 10 lbs less. Hell if they can do it why can’t I? After the gym, I am going to do a weigh in, some progress pics, and then just relax. Iraq takes a lot out of ya. There are a couple of movies calling my name. Word.

I think I did pretty well for myself seeing as I just started my self improvment mid September. I was about 205 lbs with a 34.5 in. waist. On final weigh and tape I was 179 with a 31.5 in waist. So I dropped pretty well. Not to mention some of my abs are starting to show. According to the handy little B/F calculator I found online I finished off the year at 11.53% B/F. I would have liked it to be a little lower, but hey, it’s a huge improvment from were I was. I’m not sure wat this new year will bring for me, but we will see. I am starting with the lifting slowly until my shoulder gets better, but today I hit the gym, ran 3 miles and worked legs. I hate running on the treadmill, have i reiterated that lately? But you gotta do what you gotta do. Oh and I got a new workout partner. The new 80gig Zune. I love it. I recommend it. Thats about all I’ve got for now.

I’m still on the painful end of this rotator cuff injury, and it’s really bringing me down emotionally. I hate that I can’t go just throw weights around the gym for a while at the end of the day. Not to mention my running is being subsided to very windy conditions. I can’t run outside much now without putting on a parka basically and I hate the damn treadmill. I don’t find it very accurate. I know my pace and stride, but the machince doesn’t. So basically I gave in today and did some leg exercises. Did I mention I hate working lower body, but sometimes you just have to give in right? Leg presses, calf raises, squats, a bit of treadmill time. It wasn’t all that bad, but I would have rather lifted. Yesterday was an abs day and I love every painful minute of it. They are gettin tight and huge, but i gotta get rid of this excess fat. It’s just so hard with the constantly shitty food and diet I complain about in every other blog. I’m tryin and I think I am makin do with what I am given. I can’t wait to get back to the states where I can stock a fridge, make my own meals, and have some freedom about my diet. Yea, then hopefully I will still be able to stick to mytraining regemin and really get the look I am aiming for. Any advice I can get on losing that littlebit of left over flab right at the lower stomach area would be great. A guy I know keeps saying, "It’s dairy fat, use soy milk in your cereal that will get rid of it." I find it hard to believe milk sits just right there. But hey, that’s all the advice I have as of now. Running my ass off has helpped a lot, but not enough. I’m still sitting at 12% BF and I want under 10. So still a little ways off. I’ll be there.

On a side note, my work hours are changing from midnight to noon, to noon to midnight. So I’m going to try to plan a run in the mornings, work, then gym afterward. I don’t know if that’s a better Idea than gym before work and running afterward, but after work it will be midnight - 0100, so I wouldnt be able to run outside.

So yea I think that I am about done ranting now. I need a shower, and sleep.

Well, i tore some ligiments, or strained, or pulled, whatever in my left shoulder putting up the 285 on the bench the other day. I went to medical, talked to Doc, and am on some meds. I have to take it easy on the shoulder, just do light rotator cuff exercises for a while. fun fun huh? well im going to take it easy, so no updates to come for about a week or so. it sucks, but with work and the holidays im going to need the break to talk to family and get things in line. thats about it.

yesterday i took a day off from the gym, running, and everything. i got off work, hit the shower, and went to bed. it was amazing. other than waking up an hour and a half later thinking it was time to wake up because my body thought it was fully rested. which lead to having to walk to the bathrooms outside through the cold. For anyone who does not know i am in iraq and the bathrooms are a good 100 yard walk from my room. when you are nice and cozy in bed all bundled up, walking just to pee sucks. anyway i finally got back to sleep for what felt ike 5 minutes, but it was 6 hours later and time to get up. fun fun.

 the day before that i got off work and skipped my run. so i feel like a slob today. its been 2 days since i ran. but i wanted to hit the gym and work on my "beat the gunner" stats. we have a little competition in our shop where we face off against the gunner in 5 competitions; pullups (max set), dips (max set), crunches (2 minutes), pushups (2 minutes), and max bench. So far my stats are 25 pullups, 35 dips (i did 42 one day, but i didnt get a wittness), 114 pushups, and 280 max bench. I’m leading the max bench and pushups so far. The only thing that sucks with the max bench is that we take the benched weight and divide that by the persons weight. mine would be 280 / 177 = 1.582 roughly. So we use this number since not everyone weighs the same. Gunner weighs in the low 160, so he doesn’t have to bench as much. But we have a few months left till the final show down and I believe I am only going up.

 I don’t know if my goals on winning the "Beat the Gunner" contest will diminish my overall goal of under 10% BF with a 6 pak or not. We will see. I am still working on it. I know it is a challenge trying to weigh out maintaing or increasing muscle, while still losing fat but not muscle with too much running.

Side note…. I got my flu shot a couple of days ago and since then I have been way too hungry and eating for no reason. Its nothing bad, a handful of peanuts here, some crackers there, the occasional banana, but still I am not used to jsut giving into being hungry for no reason. Anyone else have this problem? And can you go overboard on peanuts? I don’t eat a shit load or anything, but I eat a good amount. Also I drink about a gallon and a half of water a day. I jsut get thirsty. Maybe its because of the peanuts? lol.

I need some advice on lower ab workouts, my upper and mids are showing and getting tight as hell, but my lower isnt too good. i have the "V" but no lower ab show? normal? am i doing something wrong? advice please. thanks.

I couldn’t help myself today. I was at work, and even after a good meal I was still starving. I ended up just eating out of boredom. It was alright at first, I had some peas and carrots and a nice piece of pork. After that tho I just ate whatever was handy, chips, cookies, peache cups. I just didnt feel full or satisfied. So I finally got put on something to do and I stopped eating. But then for breakfast, rather than my normal smart start cereal and couple pieces of ham or what not, I had total raisin bran, coco puffs, a banana nut muffin, english mussin with ham, just random ass stuff. To top it all off I was drinking water like I had been treking through the desert for days. Well I thought that when I got to the gym I was going to weigh in to account for it, but to my suprise I was only 177. Which isn’t bad at all. I have gradually been losing and its awesome. I have 2 more pounds to lose by the 31st to reach my goal. I think it may be safe to say that I’ll make it. I may possibly set my goal to 170 and use that as a moderate weight level. Who knows.

 As for today’s training, I ran 4 miles. The first half mile or so I had a slow jog, just going through the motion mentality going on. I was just going to do 3 miles to warm up before the gym, but it’s always about this point in my run that my breathing regulates and my stride evens out. Then I just push it. I got to that mile and a half turn around point and decided to just keep on going, I had a great sweat going, and I didn’t want to stop. I ran to the 2 mile mark and turned around. This was about 15 minutes. So I did what anyone would do, I raced myself back. I crossed the finish at 28′ 35". so basically I smoke checked myself by 1′ 25". Not too bad for it being the second leg of the 4 miler. However I do have to account for the sand bagging that I did for that first half mile. I don’t really think it was but 30 seconds worth, but it’s accountable.

After that I went to the gym for my normal ab routine, which involved as much, if not more, sweating as the run. I was hurtin. I love getting to that point in a workout where you can just see the pain in the persons face. And boy was I there a few times. I’m definately feeling tighter abs tho. Any recommendations for really making the abs "pop" tho. That’s definately what I want. It’s only been about 7-8 weeks of really training, and maybe 5-6 of doing my focusing on my abs, I know it takes time. I just like to know what works for other people.

It’s definately bed time tho. The alarm sounds in about 6 hours for work. ouch.

Went to the gym today, but what else is new. Maxed out on the bench at 275. Still tryin for my 295 goal. my body fat and weight are droppin slowly but surely, and im lovin it. I didnt run today, i just wasnt feelin it, but i think a day off from it wont hurt at all. tomorrow im goin for another 5 miler and abs. my waist is down to 31.75in from 34.5 about 2 months ago, and my weight is down to 178 from 200ish. my muscles are getting defined, ive lost some size on random muscles (arms, chest) but it is all fat size anyway. id rather be cut than large and chubby.

 but to the point of the blog. my shift at work is getting changed. rather than the midnight to noon shift, im going to be noon to midnight. this throws my workout schedule for a little curve. however it will be easier to get out and run before work, then gym it up afterward. which will be a good change and probably help out rather than squeeze it all in at once.  so it has its ups and downs. i guess i just have to take it as it comes.

well lets see if i can hit my 175 and 10% BF by the 31st.