tegid’s BodyBlog

It’s time to look back at the year and see what progress has been made.

First of all, dimensions 2006 vs 2007
Weight:  216lb - 208lb (down 8lb)
Chest: 45” - 45” (no change)
Arms: 15” - 15” (no change)
Hips: 40.5 - 40.25” (down 0.25”)
Waist: 36” - 35.25” (down 0.75”)
Thigh: 25” - 25” (no change)
Calf: 16.75” - 16” (down 0.75”)
Shoulders: 51.5” -53” (down 2”)

I ought to point out that by July I had actually lost 1.5” from my arms and I’ve spent the last 5 months trying to get the size back. I also lost  2.5” off my waist (and 13.5lb of weight) in September.

In terms of lifting stats (predicted 1RM weights)
(shown as Dec 06 - Aug 07 - Dec 07)
Bench Pres: 281lb - 215lb -255lb (down 26lb)
Squat: 467lb -383lb- 410lb (down 57lb)
Deadlift: 424lb - 348lb - 436lb (up 12lb)
Biceps Curl: 0 - 103lb - 128lb (tendonitis recovery)
Barbell Row: 0 - 0 - 256lb (tendonitis recovery)
Shoulder Press: 199lb - 137lb - 174lb (down 26lb)

What this shows is that my strength levels plummeted during the first part of the year, when I was prescribed epilepsy meds at very high doses.  The side-effects on me included destroying appetite and accelerating fatigue. Interestingly, changing the prescription meds did nothing to halt the decrease in strength.

From October onwards, I have followed the Max-OT program, at Jody Lamp’s recommendation and it has proved to be a good recommendation. My strength levels are beginning to return.   So thank you, Jody and good luck in the Vancouver Natural Competition in March 2008.

The thing that beggars belief is that my size just doesn’t change. I am eating incredibly controlled meals and rest very carefully (the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome forces this!) So there are a lot of questions that I would like answers to - namely, why doesn’t my size change significantly?

Is it down to the effect that the epilepsy pills had on my pituitary gland (i.e. reducing the levels of hormones secreted) and liver (release of SHBG and the P450 enzymes that tear apart testosterone?) The medics here in the UK do not see that it is an issue worthy of concern. I beg to differ….

I appreciate that there are other people that use the forum that get seizures and that there are people that are very close to forum users that also get seizures. With regards to my own experiences with seizures, I haven’t ever intended to write anything that has been insensitive. I need to point out that there are over 40 types of epilepsy and they are all very different. So what I experience may be very, very different from the next person that gets seizures. The treatments will be equally varied.

At this current point I have much more information than the medical profession can handle. I see it very much as an information breakdown on their behalf because they can only see me for 45 minutes every 6 months - you can imagine how much research I can do on myself in that time (sorry - bad habits learned at Cambridge). They have consistently discredited the data and interpretations that I have offered and insisted that the medication taken and management followed are done to their precise recommendations

Well I’m afraid this time their arguments are being destroyed: I have now removed all medication and I am witnessing no side-effects. Those of you that read my training logs will be able to draw your own conclusions about my well-being. What can the Institute of Neurology, University College London possibly give as a counter-argument? We’ll find out in June 2008, when I tell them.

To understand more about seizures, I think it is history that needs to be called upon. If I remember rightly, during the late renaissance a deal was struck where the Vatican allowed the medical institutes to start operating on the organs (including the heart) as it was led to believe that the soul (and property of God) was held in the brain. Prior to this people believed that the heart held all emotions and hence was the property of God. Hence medicine was not allowed to operate on the brain. And this belief was held for a long time. This is why neurology is still in its infancy as a medical field, compared with other departments.

Even today, there are institutes that investigate the operation of the left temporal lobe, using MRI and EEG scans, as it is thought that this part of the brain has direct involvement in spiritual activity. The focus for my seizures is (yes - you guessed it) is in my left temporal lobe. Do you know, in 2005 I had somebody try to exorcise me (uninvited) as they assumed that I was possessed, while I was in a seizure. In London.

In the early part of the 20th century people with epilepsy were condemned to institutions, as the medical world diagnosed them as being unfit to mix with normal people. The hospitals around the outskirts of London (particularly around where I live -Epsom, Coulsdon and Earlswood) had many ‘epileptics’ incarcerated there for life. I feel that modern medicine’s approach is very much tainted with this historic philosophy (stick pills in them and get them out of everyone’s sight as quickly as possible). I can compare my life ‘before’ and ‘after’ developing seizures at the age of 34 and there are gigantic social differences. So maybe that’s where the effort needs to be made, in terms of improvements: in society’s attitudes.

I’ll get off the soap box now…

Where do I start? By thanking the people who have been so incredibly kind to me this weekend. They lit up my life for three days and I wanted it to carry on - for good.  I’m beginning to believe that Shane -who I met on this website - may well have been my brother from a former life. It is just uncanny how much we have in common.  Half the time we don’t need to talk because we know what each other’s reply is going to be.  Shane came all the way to London a fortnight ago, to meet up. It takes a lot of courage - and faith in other people to do that.  So on Friday it was my turn to do the same - and head north. Shane (and Manda) kindly agreed to put me up/put up with me for a weekend.

The moment I walked out of the station doors it just felt like I had come home to family: Shane and Manda were waiting there with open arms. It was very, very moving.

I was rapidly taken to meet Hercules (John) at his home. I made a rather blunt comment about the man’s shoulders and arms as he just hugged me on arrival. They are just massive - jumbo jets look small compared with that!  It just felt like I’d known them forever - I didn’t have to worry about saying and doing the correct thing because they knew me - like they have known me forever.  Sort of very old friends with the same sense of humor from years back. So it started out with this incredible honesty and the banter and jokes just flew spontaneously.

Then bang on time (mid afternoon, post rail travel trauma) I keeled over.  Epilepsy hit me smack between the eyes. What is fascinating is that as I come ’round from these, I have amnesia and usually don’t recognize the people around me. So there I am, just come ’round, in a place I’ve never been before and likely to scream the place down.  Well I didn’t.  I came ’round peacefully with no negative response.  That’s never happened before. These must be extraordinary people to get this instinctive reaction from me when in seizure.

Anyhow, after that, John cooked up a meal before we went off to the gym (again - a first: usually I just sleep and feel like cr@p for hours after a full seizure). We picked up Shane’s cousin, Kyle (biggest 15 year old I’ve ever seen) and went to the gym. Obviously I was somewhat aware that I had the smallest arms there (15" compared with John’s 19", Shane’s 16.5" and Kyle’s 15.5"). John trained alongside me and it was like having a Lamborghini as a training partner.  I wanted to just attempt 100kg tricep dips (like Shane!) but only managed to get to 75kg. There’s always next time…

John also lent me his airbed to sleep on- it went down slowly during the night. I got up at 3.30AM to re-inflate it to discover that Shane was awake too and cooking bacon sandwiches in the kitchen. The spooky thing is that we seem to sleep and wake at identical times… Although I hope this connection doesn’t carry on as he works night shifts and this could give me some fairly insomnic experiences..

The next morning we headed for Skegness beach. I used to walk up and down the ‘prom’ when I lived in Aberystwyth in West Wales and I love the sea; hence I adored this - for anyone else it may have been a walk up and down a freezing beech on a cloudy morning.

Shane and I then went to train chest. Shane tends to train with higher reps per set than I do currently but I found the change quite good - he blew me away on bench press (no surprise there). He finally got me doing incline dumb bell press - which I haven’t done for months and months thanks to the elbow tendonitis. So that was an huge achievement. All it needed was good spotting. One thing that I have to point out is what a buzz it is to have a training partner there with you, shouting for you at exactly the time you need it.

This is something else that the current trend in gyms is removing - the growling and shouting of people actually working. It’s like it has to be removed at all costs so that the treadmill generation aren’t distracted from their iPod or plasma screen episode of Oprah Winfrey. Well I like to know that I’m not the only one in the place that puts some effort into things and the occasional yell is one way of showing that.

That evening John offered to cook his legendary chile con carne. Talking of cooking, John’s mother/Shane’s grandmother arrived and lent over to shake my hand.  As she did so, my hand got very hot as though I was holding onto a fresh mug of coffee. She let go of me fast! How strange was that?  Anyhow, the other members of the family where there and showed me the best of northern hospitality – I’m glad to say that their sense of humor is just as dry as mine!  After eating (and the X-Factor final) the Nintendo Wii came out and some fairly hilarious attempts at the Olympic games were made.  Shane and Kyle led the events: Manda and I joined in as well. For anyone not realizing that it is a video game, it must look like a cross between someone having a tantrum and being incredibly drunk, owing to the way that you move around with the controls! Shane managed to work his biceps to the point where he had a pump on, thanks to moving the controls around so much.

John took some photos of this – I then recognized a rather serious digital SLR camera in his hands and had a look at some of the photos he’d taken with it. Talk about hidden talents – John’s photography is excellent. There is a brilliant picture of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night that he took that is just brilliant He has also taken some impressive portraits, too.

On the Sunday, Shane, Kyle and I trained back. Shane is clearly the strength leader, getting through chins, T-bars, rack deads, straight-arm pulldowns and rear delt flies. I managed to keep up with him on rack deads!! I got a record 10 x 220kg (485lb) mostly through Kyle and Shane cheering me on.  The buzz I got through training with them was just divine.

Another big surprise for me was the cost of eating out – around here it costs an arm and a leg to eat out – I rarely ever do it.  In Grimsby, we managed to get 3 decent sized meals at a carvery for the cost of a starter down in London – so I was dead impressed! I ate a LOT of roast turkey while there. One area of training that I really need to work on is my speed of eating – everyone else seems to finish much faster than I do… The classic line “it’s not that I’m scared of you, or anything” was rapidly said to Shane by the chef - who literally gave him the remaining quarter turkey as Shane walked up.

On my way to the station, Shane and Manda dropped in on Kyle, so I could say goodbye. John had journeyed out on Sunday and unfortunately I didn’t get to see him before I left. What I really liked was everyone’s honesty. They say it like it is. I want to thank them all for welcoming me into their homes, letting me meet their families and for letting me train with them. They were just brilliant about the seizure I had – let’s face it: it’s not everyday a guy from the internet appears on your doorstep, comes in, sits down and then keels over! That would freak most people out. Well they didn’t: they just looked after me. I’ve learned a lot from them and the way that they care for each other. So I’d like to say a huge, huge thank you to them.  I count myself as the luckiest guy alive to have met up with Shane and to have been invited to meet his folks.

This week has shown me that the ‘fitness world’ in the UK exists in two worlds.
———————
The first is the one that is envisaged by the company that trains gym instructors for the ‘fitness industry’. These guys refused to let me on a training course for teaching fitness to people with disabilities, because I have epilepsy. In this country, epilepsy is classed as a disability. They were concerned that the course could make my condition worse and then I’d take them to court and sue them.

I got a doctor at the top neurology hospital in the country to write a note explaining that it was OK for me to go on the course. I then went to the course and handed this to the tutor - who also asked to see my previous (28) certificates of teaching fitness. Great welcome (not!). Doesn’t give the impression that they like me, does it?

The course involved me teaching people how to go from standing to lying on the floor using a chair for support.

1) how was that going to cause me harm???
2) what the heck has that got to do with assisting the many people with conditions that are perfectly capable of using a gym, using their own ingenuity?

————–OK - that’s the first world.—————-

Here’s the second:

I talk to other people that use gyms and that bodybuild (note the people in the first world mentioned above start to panic at the mention of the ‘bb’ world) using the internet. We get ideas from each other, post pictures up, get positive feedback and encourage each other along. It’s like we’re a team of individuals all making out way up a hill. It’s a long climb and it’s good to have company nearby.

This weekend I met up with Shane - the guy that has been there for me (along with Carla and many others) during some pretty difficult times recently. He actually came to see me. Chose to do that - the journey and the cost of it, just to come and see me and to train with me. Why did he do it? Why didn’t he just stay at home and email me?

Because we share a common goal. We share the experiences of hard work, set back, disappointment and achievement. More importantly we share a dream. A hope.. We want to see each other improve and reach out for goals that may be out of grasp today - but maybe… just maybe one day (with the encouragement from the others) those goals will fall into reach. And we want to be there to celebrate on that day. It’s a solidarity - a brotherhood (and sisterhood) thing. It’s what makes us human - it’s what friends do.

—————————-
So which ‘fitness world’ is the one that I want to live in?

Put it this way: if you’re lonely in your quest to improve and you fear that reaching out in your current gym might drag you down… find another.