miked512’s BodyBlog

The third exercise I’m listing in the travesty section is the Zero-G Barbell Curl.  I first encountered this, hell some of everywhere.  I’ve been seeing it for years, even on youtube.  At any rate, the description is as follows.

Zero-G Barbell Curl

Exercise Data
Main Muscle Worked: Biceps
Other Muscles Worked: None
Equipment: Barbell
Mechanics Type: Isolation

Execution: With your hands shoulder-width apart, grip a barbell with an underhand grip. Stand straight up with your shoulders squared and with your feet shoulder-width apart. Let the bar hang down at arm’s length in front of you, with your arms, shoulders and hands in a straight line. Leaning back as far as you can and with all the momentum you can muster, swing the weight and curl the bar up toward your chest in an arc. If you mustered up enough momentum, the barbell should be weightless as you curl the bar towards your body.  Move your elbows as much as necessary and bring the weight up as high as you can and squeeze the biceps at the top. If you hit yourself in the face with the bar, good job.  Lower the weight quickly, with no resistance on the way down until your arms are nearly straight.

Today, I almost had a very brief but interesting dialogue with mdrane about the importance of nutrition and nutrient timing.  I’m not going to get into that discussion, but I’ll just say that today wasn’t necessarily the best day in the world.  I think I’ve been "off" ever since I ate that tomato and mozarella panini yesterday.  Yup, I ate a panini with no meat and I know I’ve got a sensitivity to grains when there’s no protein.  I’m still off and it may not necessarily be that but my support nutrition has been off for the past few days.

I’m so off I didn’t even feel like training today or yesterday.

Saturday I had a bs workout thanks to someone whose name I won’t mention and I had crappy support nutrition as well.   This week’s food intake has been vastly different from usual with the addition of more chicken into it.  This of course, moved my beef intake to later within the week.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that nutrition and diet is my only problem but I will say this.

Nutrition is important.

Nutrition is important.

Nutrition is important.

To combat this, I’m drinking my chamomile so I can go to bed and wake up in the morning for a wonderful workout.  And to find gas.  I’ve eaten about 4 power foods ( flax seed, spinach, tomatoes, and wild salmon) and I’m headed to bed.  I may or may not make my shake for the night.  I probably will but won’t drink the whole thing.

Remember:

Nutrition is important.

Nutrition is important.

Nutrition is important.

Its been determined that training with diet is about 12-36 times more effective than training alone.

It really is because if your diet causes you to drag your ass for days, you won’t even put your all into training.  You’ll just go through the motions.  This is but one example and I’m sure there are many more.  Ha ha, so eat your fruits, veggies, and organic meats.

For you low-no carbers, eat those organic meats and veggies.

Your body and your workout will thank you.

HOLY FRACKIN’ CRAP!!!!!!

DEXTER BEAT JAY!!!!  WOO HOO!!!!!!

I TOLD YOU LOSERS JAY CUTLER WOULD LOSE!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!!!

oh, and Flex Wheeler is still a tragic hero.  Later you Jay lubbers.

As stated on my profile, I was a whopping 125 pounds and through the years I’ve gone from skinny to fat to whatever the heck you want to call me now.  Some call me fat, some call me skinny, and sometimes I’m called muscly.  At any rate, this past weekend after a night of fun festivities I was on my way to getting in the bed and an old college buddy I hadn’t seen in years gives me a call and lets me know he’s in town and … well, I went out to socialize.  Wow, to the bacardi and rock star combo I drank.

The last time I saw him two years ago, he was still his college size of 6′3, 165 lbs.  Or is he 6′4.  Anyway, of course us skinny people socialize with other skinnies.  Ha ha, he had been bragging on for a while about how much weight he had gained and well, when I met him the first things out of my mouth are, "Damn, you’re fat!!"

He’s up to 230 lbs now.  And its all man-boobs and gut!!!

Mr. Rib Counter himself has man-boobs.

Wow, Charles Poliquin is right, beer really IS estrogenic and it does slow down the metabolism.  So does alcohol and sitting at a desk job for the majority of one’s life.  So to all the skinny people out there trying to gain weight, and not make any progress I say this to you, "keep training and eating right" because if you don’t, in time the weight will come.  It will come and it will just sit there.

So I went today and just got home about an hour ago.

I enjoyed myself. 

Its just what I needed.  Life is grand now.

So, this week I’ve been busy being a nerd.  Busy being a nerd and getting all upset with people but I’m not going to get into the latter part.

Ha ha, projects, projects, projects galore.  Is there an end in sight?

I haven’t been to the gym since Saturday.  Eh, I’m going tomorrow and may go tonight but still, it just seems like a fleeting memory.  Better yet, my diet has been cruddy all week too.  No, I didn’t eat bad stuff, I just didn’t eat enough good stuff.  Tsk tsk tsk …

oh well, better luck next time.  This is hilarious.  Back on the grind I go.

Alright, so I’ve been a member of bodybuilding.com for 6 years, I think.  I’ve been into this bodybuilding thing for a while.  So why is this year, the year I first venture to a bodybuilding contest.  Craziness I say but who knows?

At any rate, since I’ve gotten a new project (who is also on bodyspace), in a method of further pushing the madness I had us go to the SNBF southern open which was held on July 19, 2008.  It was a great contest, well, put on, and everything.  I enjoyed myself there. Last night, August 17, 2008 I went to the NPC Coastal USA.  I enjoyed myself there as well and it was a great contest, barring the technology issues, bad handwriting (I’m assuming it was a handwriting issue because they said 50 when it could have been either 58 or 60, but I digress), unorganization, and the like.  Which brings me to the point of this post.

Which do we like more?  Natural or "Unnatural".  Of course, I put "unnatural" in quotes because of … talk to me later on that one.

So when I went to the SNBF show, which is a completely natural show, I wrote a big, long assed set of notes.  Very detailed about the classes and everything.  I was amazed at how much I wrote in my journal.  Judging classes and the winner was pretty much easy save for a few exceptions.  I even got to find out about all of the competitors, where they train at, and some other useful trivia.  I even realized houze one of my bodyspace friends was up there.  I wish I had known this the time of the contest.  I’d have invited him to iHop.
The coastal show, there were 107 competitors.  There was NO WAY I was going to write notes on all of them and all of their classes.  Man, I got so friggin’ annoyed with my seat and everything 2-3 hours into the thing I got up to walk around and stretch my hamstrings.  I made a comment like "the planners must think the audience is on too.  Keeping this thing going on long and making me miss a meal.  Next time, I’ll smuggle my protein shake in."  I did write notes though and this is the thing that bothers me.  The winners weren’t necessarily all that clear cut sometimes.  Save for the one guy who looked like he could move some serious weight but probably should have started precontest dieting a lot earlier.  Props to him for getting up there though despite that fact.  Takes a lot of courage.  At any rate, maybe this is why in pro-contests, you have judges making some boo-boo decisions.  Hell, they make them in amateur divisions but its all subjective anyway.  And another thing with this contest.  I know next to nothing about the competitors when they come out on stage.
So what is it about the NPC that makes 107 competitors sign up to kill themsevles so they can get up on stage as opposed to the 40 or so competitors at the SNBF competition that kill themselves to get up on stage.  What kind of drug usage is there in figure?  I have no idea why there were that many figure competitors at an untested versus a tested show.

However, the NPC bodybuilding show had a caliber of athletes that clearly would have dominated the SNBF show.  The genetically elite freak at the SNBF show that people thought was juicing (but trains at Dino’s, so I know he’s not.  Stop by that gym if you ever get a chance the next time you’re in Warner Robins) there would have done well at the NPC contest BUT it wouldn’t have been as much domination as clearly a bunch of the genetically elite with ’sorcery’ were there.  It would have been hard.

So, this presents the question.  Do we all like "unnatural" bodybuilding because EVERYONE looks the same for the most part.  Not too many varying levels of size, but varying levels of conditioning on the NPC side versus a variety of sizes and conditioning levels on the SNBF side??  Do we like seeing a whole bunch of freaks as opposed to a few or so in a line with a bunch of hardworking and training people that probably look normal in plain clothes?

:-/

He he, then again, all of these guys are really hard workers, whether they manipulate their environment with hormones or with food, SO congrats to them all.

And I better not see any posts about when I’m getting up on stage.  I won’t be hapy.

Well, you know.  I had written a post, one that in hindsight, I realize can be misconstrued as a bunch of negative speak when it really is just a bit of comedy.  I apologize for any of those that took that the wrong way and well, realize I was in too much amazement about my purchase to realize the imperfections of my statements.
I will add I did say something about bodybuilding.com having a bunch of precogs reading my mind for the wheycheap specials.  To that effect, I’m not sorry.  They’re just that cool.

Have fun guys.  Order up!!!!

So, why does the pump in your legs not feel as awesome, wonderful, and as exhilirating as it does throughout the rest of the body?

Is it because the muscles are too damned big?  Am I not training them enough?

I even avoid taking no-xplode and other preworkout supps like that on leg day just because, I don’t ever really feel it in the legs department.  Maybe I’m missing something.

Anybody else feel like this?