I have gone through my bulking phase and gained as much muscle mass as I could while still trying to keep the body fat down.  It is so hard to maintain the ideal body composition (mine being 10%) while bulking.  I am around 13% right now and weighing in at 212-215 at 5′11".  I am about 10 pounds heavier this year before I started cutting so I have gained about 8-10 pounds of lean muscle tissue over the coarse of a year, perfect. I can’t wait till the fat starts melting off. 

I have begun using my spin bike at home in my living room while watching television or movies.  I do that instead of being lazy on the couch.  It seems like the time just flies. I am not the kind of person that can camp out at the gym on the treadmill.  I am a very active person so I take part in seasonal sports to stay in shape for.  Right now I am training to stay in shape for snowboarding season.  It’s not fun to get fatigued in the middle of bombing a huge downhill.  If you get rubber legs then you get sloppy and that is how people get hurt.  Wrecking while going 40 miles per hour on a snowboard is like jumping out of a moving car with a board strapped to your feet. 

It also feels a lot different jumping big jumps and trying to do tricks with an extra 10-15 pounds on.  You might as well be wearing a back pack.

I recently had the opportunity to go snowboarding at Tamarack in Donnely, Idaho with some friends and it was a blast.  Kris Gethin, Marika Johannsen & Crystal Matthews are all active bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts who share a lot of the same interests that I do.  It is nice to be around people that eat, live, and party healthy. 

They were all just learning and it was fun to see how fast they picked up the sport and quickly gained snow boarding skills.  I have taught many people how to snowboard and it literally takes an out of shape person twice as long to pick it up because they get fatigued and burned out so early in the day.  These guys on the other hand kept up the energy and enthusiasm until the last run when we shut the mountain down.  I actually thought they were going to hike back up and hit it again.

Can’t wait till next time because I’m getting a little more fit week by week and the jumps are getting bigger and bigger week by week.  Time for some big air!

Ironically I just got a call from my friend Brian Mitchell, also known as “bow wow”.  He owns the local Fitness Together personal training center and stays in shape for snowboarding as well.  He just talked me in to joining the snowboard race team at Bogus Basin where I will be racing every Wednesday night.  Yipeeeeee!