positivepower’s BodyBlog

I went indoor rock climbing for the first time today and it was awesome!  I thought I was pretty strong but even on the first climb my arms were shaking and gave out.  It didn’t help that I just did a bicep workout at the gym yesterday so my arms were already sore!  At first I kept falling off the wall after about 2 feet because my arms kept giving out and then my friends told me the trick that you’re supposed to mostly use your legs and just use your arms as a guide.  Once I knew that and got my confidence up from getting to the top on the easy wall, I started doing much better.  It feels great getting to the top but don’t look down if you’re scared of heights!  Some of those walls have the tiniest little nubs that are impossible to get a grip on and have the most extreme angles that I don’t know how anyone could possibly do them unless you have claws and an insane death grip!  After a few hours we were all totally exhaused and I wound up skipping another day at the gym but I think it was worth it and I think it would make a really great off day activity.  A few months of rock climbing and I’d probably be able to rip someone’s nipple straight off with my super death grip!

I had to cut my workout short tonight for the dumbest reason ever.  Because I STUNK!   When I packed my gym bag I saw a shirt already in there and I THOUGHT it was clean but as soon as I took it out of the bag to wear I realized my horrible horrible mistake.  It was wrinkled as hell and stunk so bad.  I decided I wasn’t going to let it keep me from getting a workout in so I threw it on and hoped noone would notice since everyone’s sweatin anyway.  Well I only got about halfway through my workout before I couldn’t take the smell of myself anymore and just felt way too embarassed every time someone walked past that I couldn’t concentrate on my lifts anymore so I had to get out of there.  From this point on, I’ll probably be the smelly guy in the minds of all the regulars that were in there.  Oh well.  I’m showered now and feeling much better.  I’ll have to make it up tomorrow!

Last night I did my first photo shoot and it turned out pretty well but it was a little bit depressing.  I had originally planned on it being a fitness type shoot to show off my new body as I’ve been working out consistently for over 3 months now but after looking at the pics I took myself (that I have posted here) and after the last two weeks of being sick, missing workouts, and eating crap, I knew I was nowhere near ready to do fitness type photos so I just did a couple fashion type photos.  I actually did do a few shirtless photos with the photographer last night and I looked totally washed out and absolutely HORRIBLE.  I couldn’t even get a two pack going let alone a six pack!  I was just all around unprepared as it was my first time getting professional pics done and it was a really busy week for me so I didn’t have much time to pick out clothes or think of poses or anything like that.  Luckily the photographer was pretty good and made it work though, and I learned a lot about the process and how to pose and whatnot so I’ll be much better prepared for next time.  It was also a nice little reward for all the hard work I’ve been putting in thus far and the photographer was telling me he thinks I could be a model and/or actor so that was a nice confidence boost, though he probably says that to just about everyone as he had a talent website to push haha.  I plan on going back in a few months and finally doing those fitness photos.  I think having the goal of taking those photos will keep me on track and motivated because I really want to have good pics to be proud of.  Plus they’re expensive so I don’t want to pay a few hundred dollars for them only to be totally disappointed in how they come out so I’m determined to get my sh*t together and get myself photo ready!

Well I’m a solid three months into it now since I got serious and I’m feeling a bit discouraged and scared that I’m going to quit.  At first I was making big gains and feeling very motivated but now I’ve completely hit a wall and am actually getting weaker on a lot of exercises and even losing weight.  I’m skipping more and more workouts and don’t have the energy to get through a full workout anymore.  I know it has to be due to overtraining as I’ve been working out hard 6-7 days a week for several months now but I recognized this a few weeks ago and took 5 full days off (which was very hard to do mentally).  I even changed up my routine a bit but I’m still stalling and feeling drained.  I have to admit that I did do 3 days of hard cardio during that 5 day break so maybe that wasn’t really a break or long enough of a break.  When people talk about “off” days do they mean not doing ANYTHING or is it still ok to do cardio??  I’m very worried I’m going to quit because 3 months seems to be my quitting point in EVERYTHING, whether it be relationships, sports, new hobbies, or whatever else.  Every time I hit the 3 month mark in something I lose interest or motivation and wind up quitting.  I don’t want to quit this time.  I know I’ll overcome this but I need a game plan and some new motivation.  Any advice?

A few months ago, several different areas of my life all shifted to create the perfect storm for me to get serious about bodybuilding.  There was one particular girl a few years ago I fell totally in love with but she kept screwing around with my head and dragging out our non-existent relationship for a very long time until she finally ripped my heart out and hurt me BAD.  She was one of the first girls I ever dated and the first girl and still the only girl I ever really fell totally in love with and it took me a really really long time to get over her, even though looking back I can’t believe I let myself care about someone so much who was so completely horrible to me and just totally self absorbed and EVIL (yes after 3.5 yrs of trying to be a part of that girl’s life I am completely convinced she is 100% pure EVIL and has a brick of ice where a normal person has a heart).

To get over the pain of losing her and in a sad attempt to make her see how awesome I was and win her back, I became a bit of a partier and started doing a lot of unhealthy risky things.  For months and months after the final break up I had horrible anxiety and chest pains and I think I was actually literally dying of a broken heart.  Every time I would start to get over her, I’d run into her somewhere (with a new guy of course) or would cave and check her out on myspace to see her with another guy and the downward spiral would start all over again.

Well it all finally caught up with me and on Oct 29, 2007 I got back blood test results that showed my cholesterol and liver numbers were way out of range.  My doctor told me if I didn’t make serious changes, I’d be heading to an early grave.  When this news came I had already been dating someone for a month or two who was actually treating me right and I knew I could trust to not cheat on me or leave me like so many other girls had done and I had finally came to peace with everything that happened with evil girl and all the other girls who did me wrong.

For the longest time I refused to accept that evil girl really was evil because I liked her so much and I always try to see the good in people.  I just kept blaming myself for everything that went wrong and kept making excuses for her but now I was finally truly accepting that it really wasn’t my fault and there’s nothing I could ever do to change what happened or to change her and I realized that I deserve so much better than her and can do so much better than her.  So all that combined with the fact I got transferred at work to a less stressful position, was the perfect storm for me to have the motivation, confidence, and time to really set my goals high and get serious about transforming my body and being as healthy as I can be, mentally and physically.

And just because it feels really good to get a lot of this out, I would just like to say that evil girl is truly the most self absorbed, heartless, immature, shallow, two-face, manipulative, slutty, horrible bitch I’ve ever met!!!!!  God that feels good!  J

Beginning in middle school and all the way through college, I had a never ending acne problem that affected me much more deeply than just the oily skin and pimples that could be seen from the outside.  Anyone who’s struggled with acne can probably relate to how extremely humiliating, frustrating, and debilitating it can be, especially someone who’s shy and self conscious to begin with.  It makes it even more cruel that it generally coincides with your teen years when you haven’t quite gained a sense of self yet and are extremely vulnerable in so many ways.  Your self identity becomes a pimple faced freak who’s unattractive to the opposite sex and who everyone thinks is gross and dirty.  For someone who wasn’t given the tools to cope with all the stares and jokes and who doesn’t have any natural born talent or skill to make them have a feeling of self worth, acne is mentally devastating.  I think the worst part of it for me was the frustration of having no control over it.  After years and years of trying every medication and remedy under the sun, I still could not get it to go away and this just added insult to injury by making me feel like a total failure that I could not beat it.  So what does this have to do with bodybuilding?

Well the acne began to affect me so bad that I often wouldn’t even come out of my room because I was too embarrassed to be seen by my own family.  If I couldn’t even come out of my room, how in the world was I going to get to the gym?!  Besides the fact that I was working out less and less by the end of college, I decided to try an extreme diet that was supposed to cure acne.  This diet was basically eating nothing but fruit, nuts, and raw fish.  I became so convinced this diet was the answer and it was basically my last option so I drug this experiment out for months and wound up losing a lot of weight, including a lot of muscle I had worked so hard for in the past.  Fortunately, not long after this, the acne finally went away but the mental and emotional side effects lasted several more years.

Because I had felt so unattractive to the opposite sex during all my teen years and was so shy and self conscious, I really didn’t have any experiences with girls at all until college and didn’t really start dating until after college.  Mainly due to my complete lack of experience and lack of self confidence but also due to a lot of really bad luck and the tendency to go after the wrong type of girl, pretty much all my “relationships” up until several months ago were horrible and/or traumatizing.  Between all the depression from horrible relationships and feelings of lack of accomplishments in life, and all the stress from school and work, getting to the gym had become a rare occurrence.  To get over the guilt of never working out anymore, I convinced myself that I really didn’t want to lift too much because I didn’t want to get too big or turn into a freak.  I latched on to the few times in my life I heard a girl say “I don’t want a guy that’s too big” or “eww he’s TOO big!” and used that as all the proof I need that girls don’t like too much muscle so if I wanted to get girls, I should just keep my body the way it was.  I was also scared that if I got big it would make me look older and I don’t think anyone over 22-23 wants to look one day older!  Of course, this whole mentality was really just another excuse and a self-limiting attitude.  Fortunately I finally met a girl that treated me right and restored my faith in the opposite sex and I got moved to a new position at work that’s much less stressful.

My class schedule sophomore year of college was much more hectic and challenging than Freshman year.  As opposed to my regiment of going every day between classes, I don’t think I went more than one or two days during the week and maybe one or two days on the weekend.  I probably would have went much less if it wasn’t for the fact that some of my college friends had gotten into lifting during this period, and they’d often motivate me into going when I otherwise wouldn’t have.  Finances also became much tighter sophomore year as I no longer had any savings or a part time job so I wasn’t buying as much food and wasn’t buying any supplements.  All these factors combined pretty much brought my gains to a standstill.  My gym time was pretty much just maintaining what I already had.
After sophomore year it got even worse as I no longer lived on campus and I would rotate every six months between school and co-ops (full time work program).  It was during this period that my gym time became as sporadic and unpredictable as a schizophrenic without their meds. I began to let the “I’m too busy”, “I don’t have time”, and “I’m too tired” excuses get the best of me, and I no longer had any gym buddies to keep me motivated.  Once all the excuses became more frequent than not, the steady decline began.

So i just got done writing a few long blog entries about how I got into bodybuilding and my past experiences with weightlifting and I’m wondering if anyone really cares about all that or if I should just use this for documenting my current progress and such because I was just reading some other people’s blogs and it seems that’s what everyone uses them for.  I had a few more entries planned describing more of my past ups and downs with weightlifting and how I got to where I’m at now but I’m thinking noone really cares and it would be a waste of time.  It’d be nice to hear from some people to let me know where I should go with this and to keep me motivated to stay on here!

We all know about the Freshman Fifteen, but fortunately for me, the 15 was mostly muscle. Between all the running back and forth to class and all the studying, I pretty much needed to go to the gym just to have the energy to get through the rough schedule as well as to break up all the brain drain. Therefore, I was making an effort to go to the gym just about every day. In high school, even though I never went too long of a period without going, I probably only made it to the gym on average 3 days a week. This was because I either had to get a ride from someone (before I had my license) or had to drive all the way to the other side of town (after I got my license). Freshman and sophomore years of college, however, the gym was between my classes and my dorm so I was probably averaging 4-5 days a week. 

The gym at my college was a big change from the new and nice Gold’s gym I went to in high school. This gym was a gritty basement gym and the very few machines they had were very old and falling apart. It was only a step or two above the makeshift gym I had started out on in my parent’s basement, but in retrospect that was probably a good thing because it forced me to only lift with free weights, which I now know is generally much better than using machines. There’s something to say about those gritty old gyms too because they’re so minimal and usually not air conditioned so #1) there’s not much there to distract you, #2) you’re gonna sweat your ass off anyway so you might as well lift as hard as you can, and #3) you get your workout done pretty quick because you just want to get the hell out of there. 

Though, I was lifting like crazy and definitely got bigger and stronger, I still didn’t know how important diet is in making big gains and, let’s face it, the college diet is far from ideal. Between the café food, the cheap junk food in my dorm room mini-fridge, and all the beer and partying, it’s a wonder I made any gains at all! As far as I knew, I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted as long as I drank my creatine and protein shake every day. I fell into the trap that most people do in thinking that these shakes were some sort of magic potion and to get big I just needed to suck them down and eat as much food as I could, no matter what it was. Fortunately, I’ve always at least tried to eat healthy so even though I didn’t really have a clue on proper bodybuilding nutrition, I didn’t have extremely unhealthy eating habits so I was still able to make some decent gains without putting on too much fat. 

After a few years of messing around with my father’s weight set down the basement, I finally joined a gym and that’s when I really started seeing results. My first experience at a gym was tagging along as a guest of a friend during the summer break after freshman year of high school. My best friend Bob had been going for a few months and asked me several times to come along but at the time, going to a gym seemed very intimidating and not much fun. As an awkward looking scrawny nerd with no athletic ability, I was already picked on enough at school and the thought of walking into a room full of muscle heads was terrifying. Once I got over the fear and finally went for the first time, it turned out to be not scary at all and everyone there was actually very friendly, welcoming, and encouraging. I quickly became hooked and really was begging my parents to take me almost every day. I’ll always remember all the days of waiting outside in the freezing cold or scorching heat wondering what in the world is taking them so long to come pick me up. I mean didn’t they realize how exhausted and hungry I was after pumping out set after set till my muscles burned so bad it’s a wonder my skin didn’t melt off!? I’ll also always remember the first time Bob and I first did a rough leg workout and two days later we were walking around everywhere like cripples because our legs were so damn sore. We laughed our asses off because we both were walking like we took a dump in our pants or had something shoved up our asses. Him and I had a lot of fun going to the gym together and being very immature. We would often grunt like idiots when we were lifting, and I can’t even count the number of times we would purposely put our crotch over each others face while spotting on the bench. I think “Dude, get your balls out of my face!” quickly became our gym mantra. 

Despite all the clowning around and fun times, we worked out hard when we were there and I quickly grew to love going to the point where I’d often go by myself. It was always funner with Bob, though, and I probably worked out harder when he was there because he would be my spot and push me to keep going. I actually did get significantly bigger and stronger during this period and by senior year I really was impressing some of my classmates with my strength, though unfortunately I still wasn’t getting much attention from girls but that’s probably a whole other blog. I was still by no means the most muscular guy in my grade but I was also far from the weakest and it felt great being able to lift almost as much as the big football players and getting respect from them in the gym. I also had grown confident enough to go shirtless at pool parties and the beach, which I would never have done a few years earlier. Yes, up to that point I was always the guy who’d wear his shirt in the pool and in the ocean because I was way too embarrased and uncomfortable to take it off. On top of being scrawny and pale, I had a bad case of gynecomastia and the one time I was forced to take off my shirt to play “skins” in gym class, I had everyone laughing and calling me “nipples” which let me tell you was greaaaaat. Ahhh, I wish I could relive the teen years…NOT.