pville_911’s BodyBlog

How is progress measured?  For some progress is measured in how much they can lift.  Others measure progress by a number on a scale.  Then there are the one’s, the few, that measure progress differently. 

The few are the one’s that measure progress by the blood and the sweat that has been poured out in the gym.  To these few the progress is measured through the long hours of training.  They know that they have a made some progress in a moment.  It is a moment when they look into their own souls and they can feel it.  They know when they have reached that moment of progress. 

It is this few that when they reach this moment, they press on.  They know that more progress is to be made.  The few know that if they stop to bask in that small moment that time will be lost.  Time that is needed to progress futher.  So these few press on harder and faster.   Each one has a goal and they know that if they slow down that goal gets further away.

I am one of these few.  I know that my goal is far away and to reach that goal I must train harder and faster.  For time waits for no one.  We must all make the most of that time and train and progress toward our goals as hard as possible.

Well I know that it has been a long while since I have put anything on my blog.  I have just been very busy.  The competition that I am in has been very hard.  Nothing is easy but this has been a hard time to do this competition.  I only have just a few more weeks before the comp. is over and we do the final talley.  I have not done near as well as I would have hopped to do during this competition.  Between family issues and health issues this has not been the best two and half months. 

I have changed up my training a bit though.  I have started taking something that is new to me.  My wife and I joined a local gym that offers muay thai and brazilian jujitsu.  They offer a lot of mma type classes.  My wife has really enjoyed it and has done very well over the past two months.  I on the other hand enjoy it when I have been able to go.  Like I said before between family issues and health problems I have not been able to go like I wanted.  But that all is changing because now I am healthy.  I know that a lot of back problems know stem from my weight that I am carrying around.  The only way to make my back to quit bothering me and to get my stamina back is to really work hard on getting this weight off.  This has always been very hard for me because I must constantly stay after it or the weight will creep back on.

That is why I have joined this class because this is something that I really enjoy doing and it gives me an unbelievable workout.  It is not that I don’t enjoy throwing iron around but I get such a better workout from doing muay thai.  Plus through this I have learned that I must learn to lift differently.  I must incorporate a lot of olympic lifting into my program.

That is another good thing about this place that I am at.  They offer a strength and conditioning course that I can take that prepares me for mma.  Plus I get the benefit of working out with pro fighters and learn some of things that  helps them.  They have been very helpful and are always willing to show me new things.  My fire inside has been burning strong since my mom got sick but it is really burning hotter than ever.  I am finally starting to come into my own. 

The best thing about this whole deal is my wife and I have both found something that we love to do and can do together.  That is the key.  Finding something that you love to do and doing it.  That is how you change your lifestyle of living.  I am truelly blessed to have found such things.  The lord has worked in amazing ways for me.  I see now that this challenge was just a tool that he used to show me what I really need to be doing to make my body stronger.  It is like I heard a pastor say one time, he said that you must grow spiritually but you also must grow stronger physically.  That is one thing that I have taken out of this challenge.  If I don’t win that is ok, I have learned that over the past few months.  Yeah the big prize is nice but the best thing is being able to start a new healthy lifestyle that you can live with and continue to grow with. 

If there is nothing else that anyone gets out of this I hope that they get this.  No matter what you do whether it be power lifting, bodybuilding, or what ever it is, as long as you really enjoy that lifestyle and love what you are doing then you will always stay with it.  It will make you stronger and  it will be something that you can do for the rest of your life and somethig that you can pass on to futer generations.

Today has really thrown me for a loop.  I was leaving work this morning and on the way home my phone started ringing.  It was my wife.  This was odd because she usually does not call me this early in the morning on the way home, so something had to be wrong.  She told me that my mother had been admitted into the hospital with severe chest pains.  I got worried.  When I got to the hospital I went to her room where she was and she told me that they have not found out anything yet.  The doctors came in sometime later and told us that she did not have a heart attack, which was a huge relief.  They said that they were going to run some more tests to make sure of some things to try to rule out her heart all together. 

The reason that this worries me so is because of our family history.  My whole family on that side has heart problems.  My grandmother died because of it and we lost me grandfather to it late last year to it.  So as you can guess my mother and I were very worried.  She sent me home to get some rest because I had worked the night before.  When I called her on my way back to the hospital she told me to go back home because of the weather and that everything was fine so far. She said that they have ruled out her heart as being the problem.  This was a big relief for me.  My mother and I are very close.

I decided on my way home that I have to work extra hard now to make sure that I get to be as healthy as possible.  I have to make sure that I don’t have the same fate as a lot of my family.  I talked with my mom and she has agreed to start doing better about her health also.  I told her that I was worried about her and that since I was trying to better my health I thought that it was time that she does the same.  She told me that she would try harder and I told her that I would help her all that I could.  God really works in amazing ways because he really knows how to get your attention about things.  I told my wife, who was leaving to go out of town, that I was going to start working harder so that I would be around a lot longer for her.  I don’t want to end up like a lot of my family and have congestive heart failure or something worse.  I want to be healthier.  I want to be stronger.  I want to be able to be around a little bit longer so that I can enjoy life.  I WILL DO THIS!!!!!!!

This has been a really hard week for me.  Last week, at the end of the week, I injured my back.  If I would have done it at the gym I would have been fine with it.  But no, I injured it at the house.  You see I was leaving for work one morning and I slipped down my steps and landed on the bottom step.  MAN THAT HURT!!!!  I laid there for a bit then I hobbled on into my truck and went to work.  It bothered me all weekend.  I thought that it would pass with a couple days of taking it easy.  I woke up Monday and damn I felt worse.  I have not been able to go to the gym this week and it is pissing me off.  I know that I need to get my back right before I hit again, but DANG!!! 

So today I took off from work because of my back and decided to stay home and try to get to feeling better.  I am feeling some what better.  I plan on going into work tomorrow though.  I have to go to work.  Thursday I plan on going into the gym and getting back after it.  I can not get too far behind.  I know that I need to let my back heal fully but I think that it will pass and I should be good as new by then. 

This is just one of many speedbumbs that I know that I will encounter on my journey but I must learn to overcome them and keep moving forward.  I can not let these things get the best of me.  One of the main things that hurts me, when it comes to back injuries, is my weight.  I know that when I get this weight off it will be easier to come back from these types of things.  I can do it though.  I just have to work a little bit harder at it. 

Well today I went to the gym and did a body evaluation and got some numbers that I knew that I was not going to like.  See I will just admit that I let myself go during the month of December.  I did go and workout during the month but I will have to say that I did not go like I should have and now I have to pay the price for that.  I have gained my weight back and I have to start all over again.  All of that hard work has gone down the darn drain.  I really feel ashamed.  I do not really feel worthy to be among some of the great people that I have met on this site.

I said before that I could not have any slip ups and that I had to stay on the path.  Well as you can all see I have slipped and slipped big.  I should have my ass kicked for letting myself do this.  I thought that I was ok, I though I was going to be ok.  I WAS WRONG!!  The old me would take this oppurtunity to bow out and leave, but not me.  There is a reason that we all fall down, it is so we can get back up and try again.  I have to get up and try again.  This time I will taken what I have learned and apply it to my future.  What does my future hold for me?  Only God knows that answer.  I just have to start living my life to the most on every day that I wake up.  We so forget some of the lessons that we learn along the way in our journey that we call life.  It is not until certain times that we are reminded of those lessons that we should have learned. 

I lived through a lesson a long time ago that should have taught me a lesson.  I really thought that I had learned that lesson and I was trying to make good on those lessons that I had learned on this go around of me trying to get it together.  I did not do so hot.  I seemed to look off of the path and loose my focus.  I did not keep my eyes on the road ahead and I have run off the road.  But I am about to get this big ass back on the road and really start motoring down that road again and this time I will do my best to stay on the straight path that I need to be on.  I have a little bit of motivation this time.  Like I needed any more than I already have but a little bit more never hurt anybody.

I must work harder now than ever.  I have a lot to prove.  Not only to myself but to a lot of other people out there.  I know that I have let a lot of people down already and that is why it is so important that I try harder this time.  We will just see how the next few weeks plays out because this time it is put up or shut up time.  Thanks for taking the time to read this.  Later.

It has been a very busy couple of weeks.  Last week was my best week of training that I think that I have had so far.  I worked extremely hard in the gym last week.  I did not have my workout partners in there with me though.  That was ok because they too were also very busy.  I totally understood with it being Thanksgiving and all.  I told myself that I still had to go to the gym everyday so that I could stay on course.  Thanksgiving day presented the same old challenges that it always does.  LOTS OF GOOD FOOD!!!! 

I just had to remind myself that I could still eat clean and enjoy myself.  That is what I did.  I was very proud of the way I handled the temptation of all of that food.  My family and friends were also very supportive in the fact that they tried very hard to make sure that I had plenty of clean food choices to pick from. 

This week has been a slow week for training for me.  Does that mean that I have not been working out?  No it does not! Even though I have not been able to make it to the gym this week I have still been working on my progress.  I have a stability ball at my house and I really used that thing this week.  I worked mainly on my abs and I worked a lot on my pushups.  I also continued my cardio.  I would either go outside and walk up and down the road or I would go to one of the local tracks and walk there.  We have had a bit of cold weather so that made it a little bit nicer when I walked.  Even though you get strange looks from folks when you walk into a store to get some water and all you are wearing is shorts, shoes and a sweatshirt and it is 11PM.  Let us not forget that it was around 32 to 40 degrees when all this has taken place.

It is funny to hear people call you crazy for going out in that type of weather and train like that but those people will never understand.  They don’t understand that I have to keep pushing forward.  I must keep going because I have a goal to reach.  The only way that I am going to reach that goal is to go through the late night or mid-day workouts and the cardio in the cold and in the heat.  Just like the friends that I have that go out in that same cold and heat and train everyday.  They too understand that if you want something bad enough that you will not let a little thing like cold weather, heat or rain stop you from training. 

If you are working hard to acheive a goal and there is a wall that gets in your way you have to knock the wall down and continue to PUSH FORWARD! 

It has been a few weeks since I last posted and I thought that I would send an update on my progress.  I am slowly losing weight.  I am starting to see a little bit of difference.  My training is going better than I expected.  I am trying very hard to eat the way that I need to but the way that my work schedule works out it has been hard. 

A friend of mine that I talk to a good bit but have not seen in a while told me the other night that he could tell that I have lost some weight.  I told him that I was trying.  That really made me feel better about my progress.  He used to be a powerlifter in school and he can lift some insane weight.  He told me to stay on track and one day I will get there.

There are times when I wonder when I am going to see any changes when I look in the mirror but when other people that know you say that they can see the difference it really makes you feel better.  I can see it a little in the way my clothes are fitting me.  I just have to remember that nothing comes easy, I should know this with all of the things that have gone on in my life up until now. 

Like I said before, it is hard to stay on my eating schedule with the work that I do and I know that there are a lot of people who are in my same position.  I just have to keep working on that part of my change.  I am trying very hard to eat right and I have to say no to a lot of the great things that I used to eat.  I have to remember that there will be a time to eat those things again but for the time being I have to remain on course.  I have a goal and to reach that goal I have do everything in my power to reach that goal.

My wife, family and friends are very supportive of my efforts and they try to accomodate me when ever possible.  They also keep me in line.  They ask me day to day if I have been to the gym and trained or if I have been eating the way I should.  This is one of the things that will help me in my journey. 

I have really started paying more attention to my diet and workout routine for the past 3 to 4 weeks.  It has really payed off for me.  I am now starting to see results.  My diet has become more strict than ever.  I have also changed my workout routine up.  I have learned a few things during the past few months.  I have startd focusing on one body part per day.  That way I can get the most out of that muscle group.  I also am starting to learn how to listen to my muscles and my body.  If I use too much weight and form is sacrificed then other muscle groups have to come into play and compensate for the weakness of the main working group of muscles.  This was causing me to not see as many results as I see now.  I have really learned that people were right when they said that this whole thing is a trial and error type of deal.  It has taken me a while to get it right but I think that I have now and will really start to see greater results in the coming weeks.  We will just have to see. 

Today is the first day of the new me.  Today I made a choice.  That choice will make me better.  I made the decision to stop making excuses why I can’t go to the gym.  I made the decision to go to the gym and to keep going everyday.  See I have been going to the gym on and off for a while.  I have been very unfaithfull to the gym and to myself, as you can tell by my stats.  Well today I made a decision to change all of that.  I made the decision some time ago that I wanted to compete in the sport of bodybuilding.  Now don’t laugh, I said that I want to compete.  The only problem before when I made that decision is, I was not willing to make sacrifices.  Well people, those days are over.  I am willing to train as hard as I need too to obtain the body that I want.  I know that it will be hard.  I know that some people will read this along with my stats and say that I am out of my mind and the dream is impossible.  I HAVE TO TRY ANYWAY!!!  You see I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I want to get myself to where I am in the best shape that I can possibly be in.  That is why today is a speacial day.  Today I made the choice to stop complaining about the way I look and feel and do something about it.

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