Stryka’s BodyBlog

How many times have you heard someone say they were going to do this but such as such happened or they used to train hard but then they got injured or they couldn’t get to the gym easily or came up with some other obstacle to progress?

Quite a bit hey!

I want you to imagine that you are the general of an army responsible for an important battle. The best laid plans are going to make this fight very easy for you….. until the enemy shoots back, until you don’t advance as quickly as anticipated and the fight starts to get hard. At this point you have some choices to make.

a) capitulate completely leaving your army to die

b) get them to run away as fast as possible and pretend nothing ever happened

c) adapt with what you have. Improvise if necessary. regroup and go back on the offensive from a different angle.

Doesn’t take much thought about which way to go does it? If you want to achieve you own objectives then you need to take on this mentality in your own life.

So you slept in and forgot your lunch. Doesn’t mean you need to go to a takeaway and order the greasiest nastiest meal there. What is stopping you from going to the salad bar instead?

So you ran out of protein? a ready to drink might have more sugars in it then wpi and water but at least it is protein. adapt and overcome.

So your training partner wimps out on leg day. The squat rack should have safety rails right. No excuses.

So you have an injury. Rest up and let it heal, regroup for another assault. But don’t let your diet suffer as a result and if you have hurt your wrist for example why would that stop you running?

Last excuse is finding the time. One thing I learnt on my promotional courses in the army, when they first give you sleep deprivation then completly overload you with tasks to achieve not because they need to be achieved but because they want to see you under pressure, was to prioritise. What absolutely needs to be done right now and what can wait untill tomorrow. My training absolutely has to be done. I plan my days and my weeks around it. If I know that i have to miss a day then that will be my scheduled rest day. Sure it might not be ideal to train legs then back the next day. But if that is what is needed then that is done.

Life happens and life will always try and get in the way of your objectives. Deal with it. Improvise, regroup for an another offensive until the battle is won. 

How many times have you heard someone say they were going to do this but such as such happened or they used to train hard but then they got injured or they couldn’t get to the gym easily or came up with some other obstacle to progress?

Quite a bit hey!

I want you to imagine that you are the general of an army responsible for an important battle. The best laid plans are going to make this fight very easy for you….. until the enemy shoots back, until you don’t advance as quickly as anticipated and the fight starts to get hard. At this point you have some choices to make.

a) capitulate completely leaving your army to die

b) get them to run away as fast as possible and pretend nothing ever happened

c) adapt with what you have. Improvise if necessary. regroup and go back on the offensive from a different angle.

Doesn’t take much thought about which way to go does it? If you want to achieve you own objectives then you need to take on this mentality in your own life.

So you slept in and forgot your lunch. Doesn’t mean you need to go to a takeaway and order the greasiest nastiest meal there. What is stopping you from going to the salad bar instead?

So you ran out of protein? a ready to drink might have more sugars in it then wpi and water but at least it is protein. adapt and overcome.

So your training partner wimps out on leg day. The squat rack should have safety rails right. No excuses.

So you have an injury. Rest up and let it heal, regroup for another assault. But don’t let your diet suffer as a result and if you have hurt your wrist for example why would that stop you running?

Last excuse is finding the time. One thing I learnt on my promotional courses in the army, when they first give you sleep deprivation then completly overload you with tasks to achieve not because they need to be achieved but because they want to see you under pressure, was to prioritise. What absolutely needs to be done right now and what can wait untill tomorrow. My training absolutely has to be done. I plan my days and my weeks around it. If I know that i have to miss a day then that will be my scheduled rest day. Sure it might not be ideal to train legs then back the next day. But if that is what is needed then that is done.

Life happens and life will always try and get in the way of your objectives. Deal with it. Improvise, regroup for an another offensive until the battle is won. 

Well it is official, despite having the swimming abilities of a large rock I have decided to do some super sprint triathlons. I went into the bike shop the other day and by coincidence the girl in the shop happens to be a triathlon coach.

She takes a swimming session twice a week and very kindly invited me along. I must say I felt like a bit of a tool when I found out afterwards that she is a professional athlete and has finished at the pointy end of numerous Ironman and Multisport events and there was me completely ignorant of anything involved in running a triathlon.

So anyways she gave me some good advice and I have since ordered a wetsuit (it apparently has inbuilt extra buoyancy which I will definitely be in need of). I got the bike out today for the first time in ages. THe first half of my 21km ride felt good and was at a speed that won’t embarress me next weekend but when I turned around I discovered I had the advantage of a good tailwind but was now riding directly into it. Needless to say my return pace wasn’t real flash.

Next week is a super sprint which involves 300m swim/10km ride/3km run. If I can get through the swim somewhere near the main group and not 1/2 hour behind then I think I could be competitive.

Looking at the last races times the average was between 40-50 minutes which is great because it means that this wont distract me from the weights or my main goal of working towards a possible competition later on in 2009

Regulars to this blog might know that one of my goals for the year was to get a 5k run under 20 minutes (previous recent best was 21:16). I can’t ever remember cracking the 20 minute mark but I knew that it must have been possible.

On Sunday morning I ran the run leg of a triathlon as part of a team. Conditions were absolutely perfect for the race at about 18 degrees celcius. There was no breaze and the course was dead flat. I pushed hard right from the start at a pace that I thought was sustainable. Out for the first lap as I approached the first turn around point I could count the people ahead of me. There was some seriously fit athletes in the group so it was good to pace myself against some quick runners.

By the end of the lap I had past the only other team racers that were ahead of us at exactly the point where our team mates were cheering from. His team weren’t pleased in the slightest (sucks to be them).

Coming back to the turnaround point I start to plan to pick up the pace, only I cant, I have nothing, not one extra inch. I dig deep and fight as hard as I could all the way to the line. I could barely breath. I was also disappointed because whilst I gave it everything I felt the time was slow, I didn’t time it but I thought it would be closer to 22 minutes than 20.

The official results came up on to the internet today. By now you should have worked out that I wouldn’t have titled this one goal already down if I had only run 22 minutes.

The time 19:33.

My only problem now is that I want to do a race on my own. Problems with that are that it won’t help me build muscle, it will cost me lots to go a get a wetsuit plus I would want to get cleats and bikes shoes (I currently only have straps) and (probably most importantly) I can’t swim very well.

Will think about it.

The only thing you can control is right here and right now. Your next set, your next rep, your next meal, your next rest. That is all that matters right now.

The past has already happened. You can’t change it. I don’t wanna hear that you used to be able to lift heavy or that you used to be able to run fast. Why on earth did you stop? I don’t have time for your excuses, nor do I care.

Same thing applies to your past mistakes, whether it be the unplanned cheat meal that you ate yesterday or a lifetime of poor diet and exercise or some other mistake completely unrelated to bodybuilder. Neither you nor I can change what happened but we can learn from it.

We can learn from and apply it to today with a steely determination like never before. Use it to train harder and live better. Focus on now, the six inches in front of your face.

For it is the next six inches, the next six minutes, hours, days that will shape the future.

Long term goals are great and everyone should have them. I certainly do, for what I am going to make my body into and what I will teach it to be able to do. I also have them in my career. The long term for the future are vital.

But without action right now, the future will also just be the future and the long term will always be a long way away.

So that leaves us with 3 types of people. The has been who lives on past glories that probably never happened. The gunner because they are always "gunner" do something next week or next month or next year and never does.

Or are you the one who takes control with both hands by taking that next step forwards right now. The one who achieves anything that they set their minds too. The ordinary person doing extraordinary things that other people just shake their heads at in amazement of what you can do.

Like it or not you are deciding right now who you are going to be either by your actions or inactions.

Who are you?

I was talking to SusanBeth the other night and she sent me some great thoughts which in turn came from Angel Stank.

One of them really got me thinking…….

Think about the things that you haven’t done over the last two years that would have meant that you would be further along than you are now.

These could be more cardio, six meals a day or whatever else applies to you.

Now think about where you will be in six weeks time. Are you going to waste more of your life by not implementing that change or are you going to get off your butt and do something that will see improvements in your life.

This really hit home to me because as I thought over my life most of the things I regret were not mistakes I made but rather things I simply didn’t do.

For example I always wanted to try out for Special Forces when I was in the Army but I never got around to it.

I moved into my new house I got built back in May last year, but still haven’t gotten around to fixing the garden.

It took me 18 months of training to work out that if did more any cardio, I would be leaner. I just think of where I could be if I had kept running and cycling the whole time. And I was begining to think that single digit bf was impossible for me.

Do you get the idea? What changes are you going to make? Post them in a comment and we will help hold you accountable!

BTW 175kg squat tonight for 2 reps tonight. Just thought I’d brag about a 10kg improvement :)  

One of my favorites movies is Any given sunday. I especially love the speach the Al Pacino gives before the big game because it is so true. It is on my profile if you want to take a look.

To succeed we need to fight for every inch because the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the sum of all those inches and I for one don’t want to be the average particulary when that average seems to get fatter every day.

This is all it takes:

1 extra rep

1 extra pound on the bar

1 extra chicken breast

1 less cheat meal

1 extra sprint on your intervals

1 extra inch on your running stride 

1 extra minute of cardio

Keep adding that extra inch and you keep moving forwards. I love the Ali quote that scouter has on her page:

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. -Muhammad Ali”

When ever you feel like quitting early focus on adding the extra inch, fight for that inch, take it, own it. The other night after my work sets of squats I dropped the weight back to 90kg to do a 20 rep set. By rep 12 it hurt, rep 15 my mind was telling me "stop, 15 is a good round number" reps 16-17 and 18 "It is allright, you already did so much with the heavier weights" Rep 20 was a battle.

Then I did one more just to prove a point.

Put your left foot in front of your right foot then repeat. no matter whether they are baby steps or leaps and bounds you will get to your destination. It is inevitable. Just a question of when.

6 clean meals a day and you will lose bodyfat. It is impossible not to.

Keep adding weight to the bar as soon as you get strong enough to lift the previous weight whether it be 1 pound or 45 plate, guess what?

You will get stronger, not exactly rocket science.

You keep refueling and giving your muscles adequate rest you will add muscle.

Sure there are different methods of training whether it be high intensity, volume or something else, there are different methods of dieting whether it be 50/30/20 or any other breakdown of the macros but who cares?

Find what works for you, focus on the simple things and your goals become inevitable.

And as one of my friends says "Keep moving forwards and Enjoy your journey".

Simple…… you push me. I am competitive and I want to beat you.

You push me when I see your profile and you have better abs than I do. You push me when I read your diet and I see that you are working harder than me. I can’t have that. I want this more.

You push me to when I see you improving, If I don’t fight harder then you will beat me and I can’t have that!

You push me when I see you in the gym lifting me than I can. I must work harder. I want this more.

You push me when you run faster than I can, I can’t have that, I must run more and train harder, I will be quicker than you.

If you are ahead of me, then you better work harder because I have you in my sights and I am working harder.

If you are behind me, then I know you are there, breathing down my neck, but I am still working harder.

Don’t get me wrong I love it when I see you achieving your goals too and I will do whatever I can to help you get there……..

But I am still going to beat you.

The best thing about this site is that there is so many inspirational people who whether intentionally or not help me on my journey. I thought I would share some of them. Maybe they will inspire you as well.

First up is someone I don’t really know to well but if ever you think you have an excuse not to train go and check out Captain Ahab and I guarantee you that you will be in the gym faster than you can say "it must be leg day". He is a man who has achieved and overcome a lot.

Goddess Athlete has helped me as well. She posted a blog post about what her diet is which got me thinking not only about how slack I can be sometimes but where I get my nutrition sources from and why. She is incredibly ripped year round and also has some cool instructional vids on her site too. 

VT dad is one of the most encouraging people here. You have probably seen his encouraging comments on many peoples blogs with his signature "enjoy the journey and keep moving forwards". Despite temperatures that would make lesser men curl up under a blanket, VT still gets out there on the road running. He is training for a marathon and I know he is going to kick ass!

Anissa3 has had a really tough year last year but is still here fighting hard. If you read through her blog you will notice that lots of people are following her lead in things like the hydroxycut challenge.

On one of Anissa’s last post she talked about how some "more attractive people" get lots of comments on their blogs but that the people who were reaching out asking for help or encouragement miss out. This got me thinking and I set out to find more people to leave comments on their blogs (their looks were irrevelant don’t think if I left a comment on your post I thought you were or weren’t good looking   )  I don’t neccessarily believe that I know enough to add a lot of value knowledge wise but sometimes just leaving a short note letting someone know that someone has read their post can mean the world. So everyones challenge is to comment on 5 peoples blogs that you don’t know already.

I was doing this yesterday and I came across a blog under a guy called Rock23. He blew me away with his attitude to life and training and I have taken this idea from him: Treat every session like you are the world champion. Everything you do, every meal you eat, every weight you lift do it with everything you have.