Stryka’s BodyBlog

Does anyone else get jittery whilst waiting to go to the gym? I have another 45 mins before I train (currently 6:15pm here) because until about 7 my gym is full of after work people but after 7 there is only a handful of people.

My day seems to revolve around the weights. Does that mean I am addicted?

I have a bit of a conundrum in that I am torn as to which way to take my training over the next month or so as I am currently training for a half marathon to the top of a mountain. My problem though is that I am always to tired to do much running for example I had planned to do some running this morning but I woke up to stiff and sore from deadlifting last night so I didn’t.

This brings me to the next part of my challenge, I had planned on cutting back on the weights next week but last night I failed to get the pb on the deadlift that I had been trying to get for about 5-6 weeks now and last night was my last chance before I cut back. Now that I didn’t get it I don’t know that I want to wait until december to try again.

At the moment I think I am about on track to run the race in about 2:30-40ish. So one option is to just keep doing one long distance run a week and then hope to drag my ass through the run on the day. Another option is to change the way I train (currently a bodypart a day with one day a week complete rest) so that I am just trying to maintain my strength and muscle and increase my running.

Another piece to the puzzle is that I have worked to hard over the last year and a half to sacrifice the muscle gains I have made and have to start again ( I started at 74kg on jan 1 last year and last night weighed 77.6kg) granted there is a lot more muscle than when I started I am starting to feel that I am losing too much muscle and not just fat. I struggle to find a happy medium where I am just maintaining where I am at, I find that I either gain or lose but I don’t want to gain too much for the time being because that is just more weight that I have to carry up the mountain and I had hoped to be at a lower bf% before I started bulking again anyway. And if I focus to much on lowering the bf then I don’t have enough energy to train or run. I feel like I am going around in circles.

 I would really appreciate some opinions here? Am i just being a big girls blouse and should try to train both weights and run? Do I need to cut weights all together until after the race? Should I increase my calorie intake to try and compensate and forget and the fat percentage?

 Here is the mountain I am running up. 

I start off yesterday with a bit of a vent so I thought I would point out some of the positive things today.

1. People who talk to you. I am not talking about overly chatty people who want a full on conversation. I don’t have time for that but I do like it when you acknowledge that we are trying to achieve the same thing and give me a smile are a simple "how are you going". If you are at the gym as regularly as I am then you begin to see the same people over and over and whilst I am not there to socialise it makes everything easier if people are friendly.

2. People who put away their weights. How much nicer is it to walk up to a rack and have the empty bar there ready to go rather than have to spend half your time moving someone elses weights. People who honestly do this are a rarity so if you are one of them (be honest because everyone claims to do it but my gym is always a mess) you have my respect.

3. The old people that come in from the retirement home. A couple of times a week a group of elderly people come in from the local retirement home. Whilst they break just about every rule in "my things that bug me" (haven’t seen them with mobile phones yet) and they make me chuckle when I see their love of using the lat pulldown without any weight at all and bring the bar all the way to their waist whilst looking around to see what everyone else is doing or the ones that wonder around aimlessly before deciding which exercise to do next I do think it is cool that someone in their eighties continues to exercise.

4. The staff at my gym. The staff at my gym seem to just have a way of helping you to be consistant with everything without even trying. For example they have "conned" me into doing a half marathon up a mountain (maybe I need to learn to say no more?, It was one of my goals to eventually do though so it didn’t take much). I am really slack with my cardio so having a training goal really helps and making a commitment to someone to be somewhere means that I will actually get out of bed on a sunday morning to go for a run.

I know I shouldn’t start this blog on a negative note but sometimes I just have to vent - maybe next time I will write about people who make my gym better.
1. Dudes who work out in jeans. why bother? My gym seems to have gotten a bit of an influx of these guys lately probably because it is summer comming up and they have decided to work their mirror muscles a little bit. You certainly don’t see them squating or deadlifting? Their routine always seems to be the same - Bench, Bicep Curl, Tricep Pushdown, crunches. I just think it is a real lack of commitment to training if you cant even be bothered getting changed to work out.

2. People who bring their mobiles to the gym. Doesn’t bugs me more than when I am trying to move plates over to where I am working than some tool who is aimlessly wandering around texting on their mobile and getting in my way or when you see them out of the corner of your eye almost bumping into the end of the bar when you are under a bench press. The other day I was deadlifting and this texting tool stopped about two metres in front of me placing his ass right where I was looking.

3. People who don’t train heavy enough. This is all relative of course because what is heavy to me is light to the next person and we all start somewhere but I put it to you that if you can look around or carry on a conversation during a set then you are probably wasting your time.

4. People who accept mediocrity. People who try tell you that your goals are impossible because they don’t have the guts to attempt them themselves. They are happy going through the motions and never challenge themselves and make sure that they frequently tell you that it is impossible to get to single digit body fat because of genetics or that you can’t put on serious muscle unless you are on steriods. I had someone tell me the other day that they couldn’t deadlift because they have a long back and they thought it would put too much stress on it. Not that they had a bad back or anything just that it was long? I don’t want to hear your excuses, please don’t put your lameness on me and don’t ever tell me I can have cake because I can "afford to put some fat on". I haven’t reached my goals yet so don’t get in my way because you are happy with belly pudge.

5. People who are exceptionally genetically gifted. This one is just me being jealous because I know how hard I have to work. In all seriousness though good luck to you. We all have to work with what we have got. No excuses.