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Approximately five weeks ago, I started back to the gym in a big way. My progress has been pretty decent thus far. For example, my one rep max on the bench press went from ~235lbs to 275lbs. My leg press is up over 700lbs when it used to be below ~500lbs. I can now out 10 pull ups with ease whereas before, I struggled to do even three. My dumbbell curl used to be a max of 30lbs for five to seven reps and now I can rep 50′s. My tricep press-downs went from a max of 100lbs for 10 reps to 150lbs for 12 to 15 reps. My only gripe is my shoulders. They have made the least amount of progress. I don’t know why, but my right shoulder has always had issues and I can remember a time years back when I had 80lb dumbbells hovering over my head while doing a shoulder press and my right shoulder gave out which caused the dumbbell to come crashing down on the top of my head and then ended up on the floor after bouncing off my right quad. My shoulder press started off at 40lbs and is now at 60lbs which is progress at least, but not as much as I would have liked to have seen. These are just some of the stats and methods I’m using to gauge my progress and strength increases. By no means are they scientific or precise, but they’re good enough for me as of now.

As for my weight, I’ve lost about 3/4 to an inch off my waist but have put on a solid 3 pounds. What this tells me is that I’m stacking on quality muscle mass while burning fat. My method of determining my waist size isn’t very scientific, however. I use my pants as a gauge. Week by week, my jeans get looser and looser and now there to the point where they’re two sizes too big. I started off weighing in at ~215lbs and now I’m between 218lbs and 220lbs depending on the day.

Visually, I can see an increase in the width of my lats, my traps are slowly climbing up the sides of my neck, my chest is starting to take shape and my arms are getting a little more definition. Not too much has changed, visually, with my legs though. My midsection still disgusts me but I know I have to be patient and over time, it will get better. Patience is not a virtue of mine but a drastic transformation like what I’m going for ain’t gonna happen in a day, a week or a month.

Overall, I’m pleased (but not ecstatic) with my progress. I have been keeping up with my photo journal and referencing my pictures every so often and comparing current shots with the first ones taken. There is a noticeable difference and that is keeping me going and pushing me harder and harder to get where I want to be.

Stay tuned for more updates.

So, after slacking off from the gym for way too long, I decided to get hardcore again about my personal fitness. Inspired by my best friend, Dan, and his venture with his Beach Body project, I’m going to get into Beach Body as well. My primary reason for doing so is to keep me motivated to transform myself once again and, secondly, parlay my training experience into a business for myself like Dan is doing.

Today, I had my initial body shots taken and I was disgusted with what I saw. Looking at myself in the mirror is one thing, but seeing photos of myself gave me a new perspective on my body image. To sum it up, I look like a grabastic wad of cookie dough. I absolutely have to do something about the way I look. Not just for superficial reasons like you may think, but to boost my self esteem like I did in the past when I transformed myself to get into the Air Force as well as to improve my overall health and quality of life.

Over the last week, I’ve started to get re-acclimated to the gym. I had forgotten a lot of what I had taught myself and what I had learned from Dan, but it’s coming back to me slowly. My areas of focus will be my upper body with a strong focus on my arms. My arms aren’t all that small for the time I took off from the gym, but I want to go beyond having ‘twin cannons’ and stack myself with some BFG’s (for those that remember playing Doom back in the day, you will know what I mean; those that don’t, the BFG was the ‘biggest fucking gun’ in the game…) My legs are still pretty decent, but I’ve always been blessed with two tree trunks to walk on and massive calves from playing drums and working a double-bass pedal for so many years. I can see three out of four of the various muscles that make up the quads. With a little work, I should be able to get my leg press back to well over a half a ton and make all four muscles visible and striated.

Lifting won’t be enough, though. Diet and supplementing will also play a critical part in my overall transformation. Right now, my supplement stack consists of L-glutamine, L-arginine, creatine, protein and some additional BCAA’s (‘Branch Chain Amino Acids’ for those that aren’t familiar with that acronym). My protein shakes are my own concoction. Protein alone is great, but I add a little extra to it in the form of a teaspoon of Jif peanut butter and two whole eggs. I know that egg yolks have a fair amount of cholesterol in them but the extra grams of protein are worth the cholesterol, in my opinion. When I was training for the Air Force, my primary focus was to lose weight and my calorie intake on a daily basis was no more than 1200 to 1400 kcal. This time around, I’m trying to find a balance of muscle building and weight loss. Those that are into fitness know that one pound of muscle is a lot more dense than one pound of fat so adding, for example, 10 pounds of muscle won’t add nearly as much extra mass than 10 pounds of fat carries. Adding muscle is also beneficial in the fact that muscle mass can consume fat for energy, so in a round about way putting on extra weight in the form of muscle mass can reduce body fat. It’s a win-win situation.

I’m going to switch gears and talk a little about my strength training. Once upon a time, when I was younger, my bench was a solid 315 to 325 and my body weight was right around 200lbs. I want to get my bench press-to-body-weight ratio back to at least 1.5. What do I mean? I mean that I want to be able to bench press at least 1.5 times my own body weight. As of right now, I weigh between 210 and 215 depending on the scale I use and my one rep max on a bench press is only 235 as of a few days ago. This is absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable to me. Referencing what I remember I could do in the gym a few years ago compared to now shows how lazy I got and how much I slacked off. This is all going to change starting last week.

All in all and in conclusion, I’m turning myself around and am going to make myself look the way I want to. I’m sick and tired of how I look now and I’m damn determined to do something about it. Stay tuned for updates and more documentation on my progress.