Hey you! Join a gym!

I realise I do a rant every year and every time my views have drastically changed. I mean, look at last time, I was telling you to eat pizza and shit. Now I'm all like 'brown rice fuck yeah!' but whatever. This is better ...for now! (lol).

Anyhoo, I'm only posting this cos I have a few friends of mine on the fence about joining a gym and chasing some goals. From what I've seen, there are plenty of reasons why people won't join a gym, and here I'll stress why you should get off your arse and just do it!

A typical excuse that annoys the living fuck out of me is that they 'workout at home' or something. What the living shit what?! If it's an issue of confidence, fair enough. Get a little bigger, get a little stronger, but what you when you finally do step through those gym doors, you will be gobsmacked at how much time you wasted at home and how little you've improved until then.

Just no... Saying that, Just Dance 4 is hella fun lol

If you're lazy (like me!), doing the above and just training at home actually takes more effort than going to a gym, in the sense that you could literally get 1/2/3/4/5x the results at the gym then at home. That means you could probably get the same work done in whatever fraction of the time. Neat, huh?

And if you're one of those guys that wants to do all your research beforehand, that's fine too, but don't take the piss. What I mean is those guys that spend hours on forums looking for 'shortcuts' or 'the best protein' or 'the right amount of reps' or some other bullshit. Just do it! Doing something is better than procrastinating by researching all day doing nothing! Youtube a couple vids on technique, and/or better yet, find a friend and get them to support you (even physically!) and just get on with it!

This man is a total legend, very inspirational

Don't get sucked into supplements and the 'lifestyle' that comes with it (just yet), focus on getting a decent footing first and learn the basics. The basics meaning every major barbell compound lift and/or cardio and conditioning, depending on your goals. The basics also include where you wanna go with your weight. Remember,

If you wanna lose weight, you need to:

Eat a little less

Exercise a bit

Drink more water

If you wanna gain (healthy) weight, you need to:

Eat a little more

Exercise a bit

Drink more water

That's it.

Come on, don't be this guy

There are millions of calculators on Google that'll get your diet down perfect, but again, you'll be progressing so quickly in your first month or so the figures will be outdated straight away. Just remember that even if you don't wanna go anywhere with your weight, you'll still be eating a little more due to the increased activity. Nothing major, like 500kcal at most, or just a bigger breakfast or something. It really isn't that difficult.

Now let's make this about me (it's my blog lol shaddap). Let's make me out to be the unsung hero of fitness and dramatic change in lifestyle, which i blatantly am by the way...

Sexy me, weighing at 77kg

Me, single arm pressing 71kg (It would have been cooler if I could press my old bodyweight lol)

If I, the take-it-easy coasting lazy fucker, could look like that in the first picture and turn out like the guy in the second, how well could you turn out with a bit of hindsight training knowledge and a proper diet!?

C'mon guys, stop this 'tomorrow' attitude and start today (figuratively...no wait, literally!). 

The above author is a hypocrite and awful at handing out advice. However, he's learned from his mistakes and wishes to pass on some 'wisdom' to anyone who so wishes it bestowed upon them. Go lift, faggot.

Time off and other bits

About a year ago I was high-bar squatting in my brand new oly shoes and then like two days later, my calves went tight as shit and then two days after that, my shins felt like they were snapping on walking.

Yeah that's happened again. Getting a little over zealous with my russian routine made me neglect my form and wider stance and squat like a muppet again, keeping my feet narrow and collapsing over my knees. I thought I stopped this... Since switching to a wider stance low-bar position, I have never felt so stable and in control of my squats  but for some reason that all went to shit the other day and now I'm feeling it again, meaning I should probably give it a rest for a bit.

Quite literally running through the tight calves that started it all.

Now I know there's no real reason to stop benching (and even deads to an extent) but I'm sure this rest will be worth it. Coming away from 5 PBs in 5 days, my body could probably do with a break in my opinion. It'll only be for a couple more days, so a full weeks break in total.

I'm still a little unsure on resuming the russian squat routine too; I mean, if big rep sets are causing me to drop form with fatigue, I'd rather not risk an injury again. I'll think about this on my week off, but either way, I've definitely taken something productive away from the program. I am in love with the massive set number of doubles/triples and even if i do drop the routine, these will stay. Whether I quit or complete it, I still think squatting three times a week is detrimental to my recovery, so I might go back to squatting just twice a week too (back and front).

Just a quick outline of how I think my training has evolved now that strongman is 100% back on the cards (assuming not running RSR):

Not as much focus on squats as previously, but still a fair amount of leg work. The assistance exercises will be chopped and changed whenever they get stale but at the moment they are my favourites for now. This, plus event training every other week, will hopefully continue to keep getting me stronger.

  

Also, if you've got an extra minute, a good friend of mine who knows his shit has just started fitness blogging as well. Definitely one to follow if you're in to that sort of thing (Whatever that is, he's a bit fucking vague at the minute!). Link's under the image.

Lets do healthy stuff - By Igor Kharin 

Other than that, I've been cheating the diet a little bit as I think I'm losing weight to quickly. I weighed in at dead on 105kg this morning; That was a bit of a shock! I've literally lost 6kg in less than 4 weeks and hit PBs like no fucking tomorrow (Latest was a 115kg push press, woo!). Still eating brown rice, chicken and veg, but with a few more treats here and there like Wetherspoon's Steak Club Mixed Grill (with a cheeky pint!).

Anyway, yes I'm fully aware this blog post is mostly shit, boring and the title is very misleading/exaggerated, but I was killing time waiting for my Wii mod to finish updating. Til next time! 

Videos, Videos Everywhere

Two nights before my exam and this seems like the perfect opportunity to procrastinate and deliver some videos you oh so dearly care about.

I mentioned the other day that a bunch of lads were travelling up to Leicester to train in the new 'Monster Playground' at The Warehouse Gym. Basically, they removed the 'dungeon' downstairs and kitted it out similar to upstairs to suit a more commercial gym feel; Machines, free weights and other toys. However, the owner is an absolute legend and purchased another warehouse behind it, solely for the purpose of housing the strongman kit and the animals that it attracts. This place has got cars, logs and even a bloody Conan's circle frame. Anything strongman related, it's here.

So I got an early morning train and kindly got picked up at the station by Jay 'Ursus' Pateman as we headed over to the warehouse. A massive turnout of 15 people all arrived, and below is the madness that ensued. There's only one clip of me in the compilation vid cos the rest of these guys blew my little lifts away, but I did get a 110kg axle overhead PB and a new 71kg dumbbell PB in the videos below. One is a group vid with some seriously strong fellas (and my mentors!) and the other is a vid of my lifts. Watch em both IMO.

Epic HD footage from Will Sanderson and his tripod.

Woo vid finally works!

Overall, a cracking day with a whole bunch of banter, PBs and donuts! Hopefully doing another mass training sesh before Midlands 105 (which I may be entering...) so more footage to come in a few weeks!

In other news, you may remember I've been on that fucking horrible (but effective) Russian squat routine ...and it's getting tough. I'm just about to start the week I dread the most cos it's got two massive volume sessions (6x5 and 6x6) and I'm definitely not a fan of reps. You can see below how much I hate these son'bitches below by my manly grunts.

6x4 @ 160kg

6x2 @ 160kg, such a relief with 'only' doubles

But other than my girly bitching, things have gone well. I feel my form is hit and miss on days... like today (the 6x2) felt so tight but the other set (6x4) felt like i was good morning'ing all my last reps which isn't healthy nor the exercise I'm going for. Gotta fix consistency here.

Coming away from those tight as shit doubles, I felt the urge to shift some heavy ass weight so went to deadlift singles, hopefully building up to a PB. And I did, out of bloody nowhere! I surprised myself, normally I need to train to a peak to get one, but today I just felt fearless. This is on deadlifting once a week during the 6x2 squat day, so hopefully I can give another go in a few weeks with proper build up.

Pro camera angle, can't even see the sodding plates. definitely 242.5kg though lol.

That felt good. Does that little wiggle at the top count as a hitch? You decide, but FUCK YOU I'm claiming that. lol.

Powerlifting Gear and a PB

Evening all. Blogging seems far more interesting that revising anyway. What's new? 

Well my gorgeous girlfriend Robyn (who also blogs!) recently bought me an early birthday present. An Inzer Hardcore squat suit. Now some may say that there are better single ply suits out there and I've been recommended others, but this is literally £50-100 cheaper than anything out there at the moment and while second hand would be even cheaper, this is the best new one out there (and it's my birthday). Also, not that it's important, but it also happens to be my favourite looking in terms of design in that it's really simple and yet still stands out. I have absolutely no idea how to use it yet, but I'm sure I'll get to grips with it whenever I can find people to teach (and spot!) me in the near future. It'll definitely set me up for my go at equipped powerlifting next year. 

Hilarious vids to come of me even attempting to put this on.

Also, a friend of mine has also sold me a pair of Metal Silver knee wraps, the stiffest knee wrap of the lot and at a bargain price. I love good stiff ones. I can't get enough of stiff ones. Stiff ones sting to shit but make me squat harder, and I'm not sure if that last one made sense in the gay double entendre context i was going for...

Pictured above: Very non-sexual knee wraps.

Anyway, enough bragging about my new toys. Recently I got a 112.5kg push press PB after only resuming overhead training for a few weeks. I'm not really sure why I stopped to be fair, I think I got too excited with benching and playing with that but anyway, point is, PB ...with some new toys involved too - a new Titan Toro lever belt, Strengthshop single ply elbow sleeves and a slap round the nostrils from a new bottle of nose tork. Below you can see me failing a 92.5kg strict PB attempt, my push press PB and then narrowly failing the 115kg PB attempt too. Take a look.

You can see in the strict press attempt what appears to be me just giving up and being a pussy, but actually if you look closely it's all the right arm lol. While I ground out a few more inches on the right arm, the left arm quivered in fear and just sat there, and it wasn't going anywhere. Nevermind. Not much to say on the 112.5kg, it was comfortable and I was confident with the 115kg but probably tried too soon after and felt the fatigue creeping in. All in all, decent sesh.

One thing I'll say though is that I tried body weight dips for the first time in my life and they were hard, but fun. Living legends such as Glenn Ross and Jay 'Ursus' Pateman acknowledge them as their secret weapon for powerful triceps and massive pressing power, so they're going straight into press days for the time being. Will update on any significant gains in the future.

That's all for now, thanks for reading. Next post will be a summary of this weekend's Warehouse Gym picnic!

Russian Squat Routine

Last post I mentioned about a new routine I randomly decided to give a go with a days notice. It's called the Russian Squat Routine, probably cos it's Russian and it involves squatting. Yeah. Looks fookin' intense is all I can say.  Here's what it looks like:

Based on a 200kg 1RM... aiming for a 210 after 6 weeks.

Anyhoo, I smashed out the first day on Wednesday with relative ease (suprisingly) then went on to pull a PB deadlift triple. That wasn't too bad to be honest, but it's the lightest day of the entire program so I'm guessing it's expected.

Today was the second day involving 6 sets of triples. Now bare in mind I only hit a 165kg triple PB about 10 days ago, so I was really nervous. I tried to be clever and skimp on the warm up to stay as fresh as possible but that just hindered my first couple of sets so they're a bit ugly, but they got better. Here's a video of the sets below.

 Losing some of that gut as we speak!

In other news, I'm back in Nottingham and doing my own shopping again, which means I'm back on the diet that got me down to 108kg before Christmas. Lean mince, chicken breasts, a shit ton of frozen veg and brown carbs. Here's hoping that this can get me down to a leaner 105kg while still maintaining strength.

Bitchin' instagram photo of today's dinner

That's about it for today, gonna try and keep the blog shorter on words, bigger on videos and out once a week or something. If I've got people reading, I've got people on my back to stick to what I say for a change. Until next time!

2013 - New Year, New Goals

Evening all, welcome to another blog post. What was I talking about last time? Ah yes, Powerlifting and diet. Well let's start with the former. I'm well up for powerlifting, but after watching this years World's Strongest Man, I really can't leave strongman for good. And there's no reason to be honest, there's nothing stopping me doing both and I bloody well plan to.

But not this year. Powerlifting involves a lot of travelling and dates that just really suck for my university exam timetable, and strongman is far too heavy for my lifts at the moment. With that in mind, and with no real time limit on any of it, I really just wanna knuckle down with just a solid years training and diet. I aim to get my total up, get my technique perfect and really work my way up to what I should have been doing all of the last 6 months, cos my progress lately has been pretty shocking (literally 10-20kg off PBs set in the summer).

A very exhausted 180kg single. Basically working on my form all winter. Not perfect but getting there.

So yeah, no comps this year, but I'm still staying focused. I've set myself 3 massive targets for 2013 which while not entirely impossible, definitely stretch the limits of the 52 weeks I've set for myself. I'm after an 700kg raw total, so I'm looking at something like:

250kg squat

150kg bench

300kg deadlift

And as outrageous as that sounds already, I intend to do it all at 105kg bodyweight. How?

Well, since my last blog post, I mentioned that I had started to clean up my diet. I hit 108kg bodyweight and didn't lose any strength, which was a obviously good (Since then I've gone back up to 112kg thanks to christmas and takeaways lol). So basically, I can lose weight really effectively by just eating better (no shit). And that's what really worried me before, losing weight and strength at the same time, which I know I can now obviously avoid. Yeah it's what, 2kg over 2 months? but that's fucking incredible with no strength losses and even better, definite strength gains, all while dropping bodyfat.

Brown pasta has surprisingly grown on me, along with lean mince and other things I never imagined eating.

I based my diet on a classic bodybuilding IIFYM style diet with a 50% carb, 30% protein and 20% fat ratio. I found out my maintenance calorie intake and fit the macros to it for roughly 60g fat, 360g carbs and 210g protein per day. I'm not on a calorie deficit as I don't need to 'shred' or lose anything but excess fat, but I still want to be getting the proper nutrition for muscle building and recovery (and not be hungry). I'm not gonna lie, I blagged most of this from half arsed research by myself and a few other sources, but it worked, so what the hell.

MyFitnessPal does everything for you, even with a cool little barcode scanner. Very handy.

I know this diet nonsense completely contradicts everything I said in previous posts about fuck diet, lift shit etc, but I'm making it up as I go along, and to be honest, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Don't get me wrong, if you wanna lift big, you gotta eat big. But when I wanted to be as big as possible like my heroes Glenn Ross and Andy Bolton; They can get as much muscle as they want under that fat with no weight limit (and are naturally the strongest men on the planet because of it). However, I want to lift at 105kg bodyweight. When I'm stuck with a 105kg weight limit, I feel that extra fat is wasted kilograms I could be using for muscle (I've mentioned before in previous posts why I've imposed such a limit, for now anyway).

Goddammit I love this man

So yeah that's about it for now. I started the Russian squat routine today and it felt great, but it looks fucking scary next week. Will be posting an update sometime next week or so with more details soon. Bye bye for now!