So during this time, thanks to the harshness of the music I found myself taking the music out of my ears between sets and exercises just because:

1)  The music is disturbing

2)  I find myself ready for another set WAY before I’m usually ready for a set.

Phenomenon 2 is what struck me as odd and my workouts started going from their usual 60 - 75 minutes down to averaging about 45.  I was enjoying myself and the connection with the weights and the barbarism was just awesome.  One training session though, in between exercises I found myself being interrupted by another gym member on my way to the water fountain.  We were talking about my workout and he’s like "What all have you done?  Its like you just got here and sweat is pouring all off of you."  So I go through the workout and he says, "Dang, you’re always like that?" and I nod in agreement and end up saying, "Its like I’m a machine, I get in, get out, and I’m done."  After I left him and finished up the workout though, I thought about what went really happened.  I hadn’t become a machine.  I was playing a piece, a symphony and everything worked out perfectly.  The exercises, the sets, rep scheme, rest time, and the like went from measure to measure in accordance with how I planned the workout to go and it was a beautiful piece to make people wonder "What the hell is he doing?  That is awesome."

Then I looked at the music pieces around me.  There were people going through doing their workouts in a nice, harmonious way.  There were also people playing around, talking for LONG periods of time in between sets and exercises about the weather, their day.  And then there were the ones who were completely confused walking around in a daze wondering what exercise to do next.  Sometimes I have no idea why people do pushups in the power rack or do power swing dumbbell hammer curls.  While paying attention to the discord I began to wonder, "Do people plan this or is this just something they come up with?  Have they been coming up with stuff all their lives and just haven’t taken the time to sit down and learn to put this stuff together or not?"

So I ask, how are your training sessions?  Was your last one a symphony or a cacaphony?  Or somewhere in between?  I mean, not everyone gets them right at first, but how long is too long and when are you going to ask for help?

Today, this really started bothering me when one, an ex-Marine, who is built perfectly for this wonderful activity of ours, cancelled the whole idea altogether.  Two weeks ago he calls me wanting to start train with me, become regimented, and get into some awesome shape.  I say sure and just tell him to join the expensive gym I’m a member of.  Of course, I bet he wouldn’t come through on it or stay with the program after 3 weeks.  Imsothemanxd and I talked about this when we worked out on monday but alas, he was supposed to start Tuesday.  Lets just say after having not joined the gym, signing up for a week pass, and touring the place he decided not to do it at all.  I was pissed but not surprised.  At that moment though, after having been bothered for two weeks about training and then not making it to the first workout or any altogether, I have a record for quitting training partners due to a lack of commitment on their part.  So I put some mudvayne on the phone, talked with One9One4  a bit and realized how the number of genetic gifts distributed to people go wasted on those who won’t use them.  This is of course after having talked about diets and how this crap really isn’t easy, but fun nonetheless.

It didn’t really hit me though until I get to the gym and there’s imsothemanxd doing his rack pulls.  We talk a bit throughout our workouts and about the troubles of growing lats, being young, how things will come to you and the like.  I think back on old training partners and how easy stuff like this was for them.  Then I think on these people like him that work for every ounce of progress they can get and feel, somewhat slighted.  A convo later after discussions about gains, bodybuilding, and other madness, I talk with infiniteblaq for a bit and then remember the videos.  The struggles this guy does and its like, "Damn, these people that don’t have these gifts don’t just sit and squander them but keep working at it."

And then it dawned on me.  I don’t know why these people quit.  Maybe they have good reasons.  Maybe they’re just quitters.  Maybe they don’t realize the possibility of their gifts and wander around aimlessly wondering "what can I do with my life" instead of taking advantage of talents they have in droves.  At this point, I don’t really think I care too much though.

You hard workers out there are my motivation.  Keep on getting whatever it is you’re after.  You’ll get there and through your efforts, others will get there sooner than they think possible.

Nope, its the fact that monday is "International Bench Press Day".  Experienced guys and newbs the world over, descend upon gyms across the globe to do the one exercise that is a small test of upper body strength.  The damned flat bench press.  You’ll never see one open.  There will be lines of lifters waiting on the mythical bench press.  I work out at a 24 hr gym and go when the crowd has gone down and you know there are still throngs and throngs of lifters waiting on the awesome, super duper bench press.

I shake my head and usually always design my training programs where legs or back come before chest.  However, sometimes I forget about that rule, go in and "BAM, the chest masters are on all of the bench presses".  Hhhhmmm, I wonder if I can start the international standing military press day.  At least then more people will be able to lift their bodyweight over their heads which frankly is a good thing.

Oh well, I’ll soon know if the bench press will be the first thing I see when I get over there tomorrow.  Later.

My tolerance is a subject for another day.  DaFunkdocta02, damann75, and DarkMuscle all know that miked512 can’t hold his resveratrol despite the fact he drinks it so enthusiastically.  At any rate, back to the inspiration.

Its almost like in the end, people are going to start removing and adding inspirational people weekly because one friend has pissed them off and they want to see some other person be in the top 6 and so on and so forth.  You get what I mean.  It might just defeat the purpose of it.  Inspire is such a strong base word (in my head) that I couldn’t just come up with 10 profiles off the drop of a hat.  I’m sorry that I use Webster definition 1b for the word inspire "to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence on."  Damn, upon reading that definition I might just have to rethink the 3 people I put up there … geez.

True there are some people here (ok, a lot) that just have these bodies that make you say "Damn, I’m about to go train right now.  Thats the motivation I needed".  Sure motivate and inspire are just about the same thing, inspire has such a strong connotation (there goes the suppressed poet in me) that I couldn’t just choose those temporary motivators because, in the deep of it all, they aren’t the ones that make me say that I have no excuse for being lazy, slacking, or being too busy to do this.  Inspire reminds me of my 7th grade math teacher who I think had the sole purpose of moving me to actually believe my dreams of the future were actually quite possible, no matter how technically far-fetched they were (and still are) at the time.  So in the end, the people on my list won’t be the motivators but more like the ones that don’t allow me to come up with excuses.  Here’s a hint.  If your crazy ass ever trains in the rain and/or attempts to run home and beat the storm before it gets there, you’ll probably inspire me.  If you bench press 500+ lbs, can front squat 315+, are genetically gifted, have been an athlete your whole life and stuff like that, you are probably just a motivator.  Unless of course, you’re cool enough to attempt to outrun the rain.  Then I’ll be inspired and jealous at the same time.  You might get listed out of SPITE!  Who knows?  I have to dumb down my feelings towards the word in order to do this in the first place.  If you get listed, you’ll know I have a reason and it’ll be listed.

That was a long paragraph.

So I’m still building my list because I need 10 people but it probably isn’t going to change much even though the ability is there.  And no, my list won’t be filled with people that have disorders and other ailments because if it were, it would be due to complete dishonesty and thats because I have issues.  In all honesty, sometimes that doesn’t really move me the way it does some other people.  Maybe its because a special olympics team trains at my old gym.  Or because having been schooled with a few "special" people (thats another story there) that its so commonplace to me that its just not all that inspirational sometimes.  I know that they don’t want to be treated like they’re special though but treated like they’re normal.  Although in some cases that is hard to do, its not really.  Yeah, I’m the ******* that never gives his friends in a wheelchair a push or holds the door open for them unless they ask.  Damn, I just realized I’m such a butt that I don’t even help them onto non-handicap accessible environments unless they ask.  Maybe because I’ve been cursed out too often.

;-)

I got off the true purpose of this, but eh, you all inspire me to get off my lazy butt and go workout, to not take shortcuts with eating, and the like.  We all inspire each other and in the process are moved to accomplish bigger and better things with our physique.  I’m still working on my next 7.  I act like this is a huge event or something.

And that is the point of this blog, to reveal what it is I’m hiding.  With this, we must delve into a bit of history for a little bit.

Along time ago, I was a very skinny guy.  This is pretty much all through high school and the beginning of college.  However, I wasn’t like most skinny guys who are at least ripped with abs.  Nope, I was skinny fat.  I possessed the traditional marathon runner build but truth to be told, I really sucked at running.  I still do and at this point I don’t care because … well, that’s a joke that won’t be told here.  I didn’t like being this skinny at all because in all honesty, who wants to look malnourished.  Ha ha, this is what lead me originally to start training in the first place.  It wasn’t because of girls because luckily I never had a problem with them.  It wasn’t because of being bullied/afraid of being beat up because your confidence grows by leaps and bounds when a would be bully ends up with a concussion or a gang of riffraff end up knocked out cold.  Intelligence is so awesome.
So although I started training, I didn’t really take it all that seriously and my nutrition was completely awful.  I grew and it was actually decent minimal fat growth until, as I wrote about on my profile, I got the autoimmune disorder Myasthenia Gravis.  I don’t know if MG has a dietary cause or not but I know I mistakenly came down with it during my college diet of Papa John’s and Mr. Pibb/Coke.  I went through all of the treatments, got it into remission, and happen to still be that way.  However, over time I’ve noticed that cleaning up my diet and training seem to have minimized the number of symptoms of the condition I deal with, leaves me better able to deal with stress and all in all, just feel great.

I guess this means the original goals were:

1) To stop being skinny
2) To get healthy thanks in part to the wreck that Myasthenia Gravis and all of its treatments caused me
3) To lose predenisone fat i.e. get it to acceptable levels

Those were the original goals and since then up until recently, I really haven’t had any and have just been playing around with it.  Oh, I had listed the lofty goal of getting to be 230 lbs and 5% bodyfat but I didn’t really take it seriously.  It was just something of if I got there I wouldn’t be upset.  If I didn’t, I won’t be upset and that’s about it.  I even made up 100 handstand pushups without the wall assist.  In my head, I just trained to train and would have liked to have been strong, huge, and ripped with the ability to move and function like an athlete.  In short, be an athlete that looked damned good.  However, I wasn’t really serious about this and just went through phases and cycles making progress here and there, losing ground here and there, and the like.
I felt fine, was healthy, and was just enjoying life, looking at new ways of training, seeing that this was cool, this wasn’t, and well, it really was just a hobby that relieved stress.  Until of course, late last year after I stopped training seriously to work on a project and gave my athlete power ring to mdrane, I began to notice a problem with myself and my then current training partner at the time.  He never wanted to do more weight, go to failure, or do anything that pushed him beyond his abilities too much.  It was stagnation and complacency despite the fact we both lied to ourselves and I decided, “Enough is enough.”  However, what did I want?  Was I really after 230 at 5% bodyfat now?  Am I really going to cut, pursue strength, or more muscle.  Then of course, on t-nation I read an article about an interview with the great Paul Chek and began thinking, “Why don’t we make this training thing a spiritual pursuit?  You can’t just compartmentalize it.  It’s something that is a part of you?  You’re smart and have a spiritual/religious component  about yourself?  Why do you treat your body as just an afterthought?”  This led me to being to take my body and training through the same thing the “soul” goes through.  

I ended up researching Buddhism a bit and found the six realms of samsara.  These are the phases a soul goes through in order to reach enlightenment.  This was going to be what my training went through in order for me to enlighten my training, make it a part of me and in the end come to either enlightenment or to reach an epiphany and give me something else to struggle with.  This caused me to start at the bottom.  To take my training and body through the worst type of training I could come up with and thus began the twice a day training and the brutal punishment I’ve been putting myself through recently.  I’ve loved it thus far and more details of the actual workout and the like will be posted later.  Just know that in the process, at my midway point, I have somewhat come to a goal with an endpoint, and intermediary steps.

Let’s just say that the being superstrong superathlete is the ultimate goal and will be worked on, but first I have to see what I look like at 230 lbs at an extremely low bodyfat percentage.    Which one am I working on now?  You’ll have to ask me but in the end the true reason that I train is the same reason that shaolin monks do kung-fu.

That probably doesn’t answer your question, but I’m about to go train now because its late, I wrote this all night, and its about that time.

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.

Decisions, decisions.

2)  Sometimes people ask me what to eat, how to eat, and other diet related questions.

Before we start, I will say I have no credentials whatsoever that states I’m qualified by some organized group of people that makes it ok for you to listen to me.  Digest this information and lets hope that you will do what you consider sensible and well, we can agree to disagree even though I might just agree with you.

Oh, and no this is not a joke, but Happy April Fool’s day.
At any rate, this post will center on the concept of quality food.  Ever since I started on this ‘bodybuilding’ journey, there has been one constantly changing thing that is ever so subtle that most of the time its not recognizable.  My diet has gone through several phases.  Some of the most notable are:

1.  College Student - My diet consisted mostly of papa john’s pepperoni pizza and Mr. Pibb.  Other pieces for variety were chicken wings, lasagna, spaghetti, chicken parmigiana (the tour of milan at city cafe for all you GT students is the best AND worst bulking meal).  The occasional mcdonalds or burger king was cool too.  Of course there was coke, an occasional powerade, and hard liquor.  Sorry guys, I didn’t start drinking beer until AFTER college.

2.  Sick Bastard - Well, this is the time I was on prednisone.  I also happened to be lifting then so there were a few gross protein shakes here and there (twinlab vege fuel and GNC brand whey) but my diet consisted mainly of pizza, fruit drinks, and kentucky fried chicken.  However, with prednisone, you’re always hungry so you have to adjust the portion sizes.  Yes, at one sitting I could eat a whole pizza or a whole bucket of fried chicken with the family sized sides.  You might think this is good for bulking but when you’re ingesting something that is notorious for stripping away muscle, imagine what your bulk will be. 

Being 240 sounds cool, doesn’t it?
3.  Normal City Life eating - Fast food is a normal part of life at this time.  Of course, there’s chinese food. Cooking?  Yeah, zapped microwave meals.  This lean cuisine crap looks pretty damned healthy.  Microwaveable meals are awesome.  Pop-tarts and cereal for breakfast.  Unless of course you’re going to IHop or Waffle House.  Restaurant eating is at an all time high as well. This is about the same time I discovered chanko, a wonderful bulking food combination.  Tuna, corn, and rice.  Its not all that bad for putting on some good size either.  Now that I look back at it, a flicker of hope for the healthy eating of quality food.

Of course, there’s more but I’m about to go workout so enjoy.

At any rate, this post is about one of the most annoying side effects of being in shape, lifting weights, and being bigger than a lot of people.  Its not having people move around you, treat you like they’re intimidated/afraid of you, the soreness, or having to squeeze a lot to get through tight spaces.  Its being asked to help people move.  I now have a rule where if no one asks me directly, I’m not going to volunteer.  I’m going to let you know I don’t want to do it but I’ll do it because I’m "your friend".  I won’t even ask others to help me move.  Why?  Its annoying first of all.  Second of all, using people as props because they’re not strong enough to move their piece of the furniture but they can hold a piece of furniture that just happens to be too big (but not too heavy) for you to wield by yourself.  So you’re moving them around like a rag doll.  Not only is this annoying, but its also humiliating to your human prop and thats just sad.

Is that the only real function of all this muscle we train so hard to get?

No, its also useful for pushing vehicles out of the road on your way home from work.  I’ve always considered pushing/pulling vehicles for distance an effective form of GPP or high intensity cardio for those of us too lazy to do real cardio.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), today on my way home I see a truck in front of a line of motorists waiting or swerving past this truck with the one human attempting to push a truck out of the road.  I decide to pull over, and help this poor human move his truck out of the road before he gets killed or worse, the dumb atlanta motorists all pile up in a line and start honking their horns.  I see him, the truck moves back and then starts to roll back toward him.  I completely surprise him by making my debut and pushing the truck on to the side of the road.

First thought in my head "Wow, I need to start doing this for GPP again.  And get bigger vehicles too.  Damn, I’m a sick psycho."

LOL, so we have us a long, lengthy discussion about marriage, selfish motorists, and how he forgot to get gas and managed to run out, and the like as we drove around to a gas station to fix his truck and the like.  It was an interesting 10 minutes of my life, he thanked me, and well, went on our merry ways.  Oh well, as I was typing this I realized, I’m really glad I DON’T have to use this muscle everyday for life or death situations other than training.  Geez, and I thank the men and women of past and present for making this type of life possible.  You know who you are?  Too numerous to name.

Ha ha, so why don’t you all tell me about your "function" stories?