cjh156’s BodyBlog

So I’m about a pound away from my goal weight of 225lbs, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost 2-3% BF, but need to have it checked soon to be sure.  That all being said I look at myself and still see the love handles and pooch belly, be it significantly smaller than it was in Dec.  I now think I may have to shoot for 215lbs.  I haven’t weighed 215lbs since was 19, though i did have a short stint at 205 in my mid twenties after a bad injury.  The nice part is that all the running really hasn’t eaten into my lean mass, and my strength is actually up.

Man was I uncoordinated yesterday.

Had a great day hitting legs until I somehow managed to rip a chunk out my wrist while racking the weights after my last set of squats.

Then later that night I manage trip and tumble out into the street while running.  I managed to tuck and roll to avoid any injuries, but did so in front of a bunch of cars.  At that point I just decided to take my ball and go home.

Took last week off of lifting, still got in my cardio, due to my shoulder.  It helped a ton, but hit it a little too hard today and now I’ve felt like I want to puke for the last hour.  I hate it when i do that.

I’m wondering if anyone has any idea what this may be.

I’ve recently gotten really serious about my running.  I’m doing between 3-4 miles 3 days a week( to some that might not be much, but I’ve never been a distance runner)

I managed to limit any stress fractures in my lower legs with icing, and making sure I gave them enough rest, but have found I’m getting some really bad pain in my left femur.  It almost feels like a stress fracture and tends to hurt when I put any shearing force on the middle of my thigh, like sitting with half my leg off a chair. 

Haven’t hit the gym once this week, due to my shoulder being out of whack.  The only training I’ve done is cardio, and I’ve actually picked that up quite a bit due to the need to get some training done.

 Work has been crazy with a ton of new clients, so maybe this week wasn’t the worst to have some shoulder issues.  My shoulder still hurts in certain positions, but has gotten much much better.  I’m thinking I could get back to the weight pile Mon if it continues to to get better.

I messed up my shoulder sometime over the weekend.  I’m not too sure how I did it.  I either did it moving crap around the house or snowboarding.  It’s not like it suddenly happened and I felt it, it just has slowly started to ache over the last couple of days.  This worries me, because it is the sign of degenerative injury.

I’ve seen some posts on here about people who are attending the try outs for American Gladiators, so I figured I’d post my experience wit the tryouts this past weekend in Boulder CO. 

We got there about a quarter to 7AM, at that point there were already about 40+ people in line, even though the site said not line up until 8AM, I ended up being the 53rd person during the tryouts. By 8am the line had well over 500 people in it 

At about 9AM they let us into the gym.  We kind of sat around warming up and speculating about how this whole thing was going to go.   

At about 9:30AM they came out and explained how things would go.  They said we’d come down turn in our application, get our picture taken then have a few minutes to warm up.  After that we’d be taken over to the pull ups and be asked to do as many as we could in 30 seconds, from there we’d go over right away and do as many burpies as we could in 30 seconds, then transition straight into 10 yard karaokes and back, leading to doing 10 suicides 10 yards down and back while touching a cone at each end.  Once all that was over we’d be interviewed.  They emphasized form on the pull ups, burpies and karaokes.

They started out in groups of 20 and took them downstairs.  Amazingly there were quite a few people in the first heat that were out of shape.  They struggled with the pull ups, did the burpies wrong and didn’t know what to do with the karaokes.  Then many of them ran out of steam during the suicides and a few made a beeline for the garbage can to unload their breakfast. 

Once our turn came up they took 10 of us, who just happened to be the 10 I was talking with all morning, and included one guy there trying out to be a gladiator at 5′11 and 280lbs of solid muscle. 

While we waited on the stairs one of the guys who was helping with the tryouts came by and told us the physical part really wasn’t the most important.  They really were looking more for personality than athleticism.

Finally it was our turn, got my picture taken and hit the pullups.  Did around 17-18, then off to the burpies which I took my time with to try and have good form, then the karaokes, which were easy due to years of football, and then the suicides which were a little tough due to the rapid fire way we went through each station, but not all that bad.

In the end we all were a little wore out, but our whole group did well.  We sat in line for the interview and cooled down.  They once again let us know the interview was the key.  Once I got up there they asked why I should be picked.  I went on about being a competitor and wanting to show my daughter how to compete.  I rattled through my athletic exp and they seemed to like the fact that I was 6′1 and 230lbs.  They said they’d contact me in a week or two if I got selected.

In the end it was a blast and I enjoyed competing.  The whole thing took about 5 hours from the time we lined up till I was done.  When we left there were still about 1000 people in line waiting to get in.

The snow is killing my cardio.  It seems to snow, hard, every night I try to run.  I used to go out and run anyways, but had a few issues with slipping and almost blew out my groin, not worth it.  Just when I’m starting to make some head way I get held back by the snow………………

In my early 20’s I really wanted to get into body building.  My goal was to get to 245lbs and stay lean.  I managed part of it, but at the sacrifice of being lean and feeling good.  In fact i felt like complete crap from 235lbs on.

Now I’m working to get back to my weight of my early 20’s, while maintaining most of the strength gains I earned.  In the end body building, or getting huge, isn’t really a priority any longer.  My ego still wants to maintain strength, I still find my self pushing weight for the basic reason of keeping up with the freaks of my gym, but I wouldn’t ever want to look like them.  I’m far more interested in getting a more lean and mean physique.  The funny part is that achieving that at 30+ seems to be a hell of a lot harder than all the work I put into gain size and power. 

This is truly where I struggle.  I can hit the gym without hesitation, running isn’t my favorite, but I can do so much easier than giving up my favorite foods.  The work part of the equation is relatively easy, but the eating part is tough. 

I find my self craving food all day when watching what I eat.  I try drinking a ton of water and adding fillers, like flax seed to my oatmeal, but nothing seems to help.  Luckily I’m not huge into fast food, which helps, but I do like sweets and a good home cooked meal that is a bit fatty.  I’ve lost almost 10 lbs in the last month, and can see  some changes in my gut and face, but still have a ways to go.  I only need to lose about 3lbs more, but probably 5-7% body fat.

I guess I’ll try and control that which I eat and add another mile to my run when I don’t