Bodyspace state tour - stop 3 - January 31, 2009 - Blacksuperman
First off, I should apologize to everyone for being almost 4 months late with this one. I’ve been annoyingly busy, preoccupied, and the like. However, considering the delay in writing this one, I will have to say that thanks to note taking skills and fish oil (you know, for enhancing memory) not much of a beat was missing. Another thing is, I haven’t done too many of these since this one since I hadn’t written stop number 3, it would be unfair to everyone I had ever stopped to work out with that was supposed to be featured so I also kind of held off. Not that I was free to do any of this stuff anyway.
So with the previous state tour stops in mind (reference http://blog.bodybuilding.com/miked512/2008/05/12/bodyspace-state-tour-stop-1-snlewis25/ and http://blog.bodybuilding.com/miked512/2009/01/31/bodyspace-state-tour-stop-2-january-17-2009-
glovee3834/ for more details), the third stop was to visit blacksuperman.
Blacksuperman has been a member on this site since before the bodyspace implementation of it began and it was all forums. I even remember having a few PM convos with him but eh, I’m not really a big fan of forums so you’ll probably never get to see me having too much dialogue in any of them. So of course, I go on commenting, scheduling, working things out, and we agree on a date and time. Unfortunately we scheduled on a Friday afternoon, traffic was horrible and I found out he trained at the LA Fitness in Buford, which well, although I’m a lot closer to Buford then I used to be, we had to move it to Saturday morning. That was fine but then I start to think about something. “This dude hasn’t posted any progress pics up since October 2007. I know I’m not one for putting up progress pics, but it’s like the dude just got silent and disappeared.” Of course, I let my imagination get the best of me and I’m thinking one of two things. Either he’s quieted down this little obsession of ours or he’s been training like a mad man and is keeping things secret until he does a contest and just ends up on a magazine or something out of nowhere.
Either way, I knew he was going to either look the same, be smaller/fat, or just crazy huger than the pics. So on Saturday morning, I wake up, get a bite to eat, take some preworkout supps, and head on over to Buford, GA. A few things I didn’t expect on this trip were to see cows this close to the city and for the highway to go from four lanes to two lanes. There weren’t too many interesting sites off the exit that lead me to the Buford LA Fitness. I just didn’t expect I’d have to go through a patch of the country between Fulton and Forsyth counties to get there.
I arrive, get there, get ready, and wait a bit before he gets there to meet the guy audacious enough to call himself blacksuperman. I see him and I think to myself, “Alright, something is up. He still trains but he looks like he might be about 200-210. I don’t feel like I’m going to have the floor completely wiped with me.” We introduce ourselves, talk for a bit and I find out the guy hasn’t been updating because his priorities got reshifted after his son was born. Being super huge isn’t the only thing on his mind (If that’s the only thing on someone’s mind, what a shallow life we lead) so instead of working out everyday ( 5 times a week) he’s toned it down to a few workouts per week. Has he been just child rearing though? Nope, he’s been working on a couple of rocketry projects as he really is a Rocket Scientist. Then again, all polymaths end up being called rocket scientists so who am I to argue.
So its time to start the workout. The paraphrased dialogue went something a little like this:
“I hope you weren’t expecting a really serious workout. Were you?”
“But of course. When I do these things, I usually go through the person’s workout. “
“Alright. Hhhmmm, let me think. Chest and Back?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Before I start, I would say that dealing with this guy made me think I was dealing with an anatomically efficient, more disciplined, much more grounded version of myself. My head is in the damned clouds a bit too much but I really am a dreamer. And whats up with the two chest and back workouts on these stops in a row? People trying to get me to do antagonistic training. Fine, I guess I’m game.
So of course we start with the Bench Press. We’ll do four sets of these with a number in mind. Of course, this workout was made up as we went so bear with me. This is where I picked up the handy tip of “Stop warming up with those light weights on the work up to 225. You’ll end up tiring yourself before you get up there and then never get a chance to rep the weights above it.” That’s a paraphrase by the way. In truth, he told me about how he used to do the same thing until one day he said he’d just start with the 225 and that got him up to 275 faster that way. I’ve slightly incorporated this into my own training a bit since then. Slightly …
Then we proceed on to cable crossovers. We’re conversing about training, life, jobs, and just about everything under the sun. At the cable crossovers, he tells me this is about the most serious he’s trained in a while. I’m actually honored by that statement and of course don’t know how to respond aside from the raised eyebrows, scratching my head statement of “Thanks. I’m definitely enjoying it” while thinking to myself “Why is all this weight on here?”. This goes on for four good sets and then over to the dumbbell bench press.
After the dumbbell bench press, it’s time for the back part of the workout so we do bent over rows for 4 sets. Remember that statement I made about anatomically efficient earlier? Well, this guy does his bent over rows with his back flat. There’s an arch but it’s perfectly flat. If here weren’t contracting a tennis ball would just sit there. I’m looking at him like, “Wow, why is that just so perfect? Most people have an arch and it’s not like their bodies form right angles when doing these things. That’s a right triangle there?”
In the process of doing them, I learn that while he was in school, they put so much emphasis on proper alignment of everything when lifting that he just does that because it’s the safest way to do it. This was a pretty interesting look at bent over rows and I always felt that since I learned how to do them from the great John Coffee of Coffee’s gym, there was no possible improvement on the form. That was then followed by a set of deadlifts. Then some lat pulldowns and the workout was over.
Ha ha, I’m thinking to myself I wouldn’t mind doing this again and this dude would be a great training partner. Would have been perfect in my initial starting days but alas, time is time. At the end of that we talk about his relationship with the gym staff and the craziness that goes on at that particular LA Fitness and other random craziness. It was a good one. He thanks me for a good workout that he seriously trained through, I thank him for a wonderful one and well, did the usual keep in touch things because of course I will.
Closing Notes: This workout actually made me value the reasons we do this. Some people just want to be huge. Others want to compete. Others want to be healthy and the list of reasons varies from place to place. It really is just a hobby to me but it’s become a bit more than that recently which I guess I’ll touch on in another blog. Its actually pretty amazing why people constantly train day in and out while others can get just enough training they need a few times a week. And of course ,I’m still interested in what kind of crazy rocketry this dude has up his sleeves because he is a rocket scientist and I really am just a nerd like that. Also note, that all dialog is a paraphrase.
