Monday 23rd Sept - Lunch

Monday Lunch

Lean Steak, Carrots, Peas, Peppers, Sweet Corn, Broccoli & Cashew Nuts

MY SIX PACK HAS ARRIVED!!!

So after waiting 8 day on what was meant to be a 24 hour dispatch from www.bodybuilding-supplements.co.uk  my ‘Six Pack Meal Management System’ has finally arrived and I have to say that what I have seen/touched/felt of it at the moment (admittedly is not a lot) its brilliant! I'm looking forward to loading up my lunch and taking it in with me to the office tomorrow.

Here she is…

As you can see I have already loaded some stuff in there ready for the morning and I have the meal trays in my kitchen ready to load up with turkey. The only down point that I have to say is that one of the meal trays are cracked… L I think this might have been from transit as this was the tray that was on the bottom of the system. I have emailed www.bodybuilding-supplements.co.uk and I’m just waiting for those guys to come back to me and let me know what the situation is. Normally I wouldn't have said anything but it did cost a fair bit and im not being funny but if I’m going to pay that for it I want it to be perfect! – That’s not too much to ask is it?!

Succeeding to Fail!?

Ok so today we tried something a little different down the gym. After chatting through with my good friend JW (ex semi professional body builder) about my work out I wanted a way of getting a bit more out of it as I felt that my muscles were getting used to the work and not reaping the full benefits – so I decided to cut my sets from 6 to 4 (with a initial set of 20 reps as a warm up) and then ‘go to failure’ before pyramiding the weight up for the next set - I’d heard of the concept before but never really given it much thought.

So anyway… me and Gaz (my gym buddy) got ourselves down the gym with the aim of succeeding to fail! As with all our workouts we started with 15 minutes interval training on the treadmill and then 15 minutes interval training on the rower – get the blood pumping and the heart nice and warm. Then onto the main work out that consisted of:

Chest, Biceps and Triceps

• ·         Hammer curls
• ·         Zootman curls
• ·         Triceps cable/rope pull downs
• ·         Flat bench
• ·         Inclined bench
• ·         Decline bench
• ·         Cable crucifix
• ·         Triceps extension with a dumbbell

After that moved onto the mat and finished off with 15 minutes of core work (crunches, Russian twists, sit ups, obliques crunches, abdominal roll outs with a ball, leg raises and plank)

Going to failure is definitely the way forward. I felt like I got so much more out of the work out although after the work out my energy (and blood sugar) was very low and I had to reach for the JB (jelly babies!)

Time to continue to fail!?

Sack-off the Sickness!

Ok so I just wanted to do a very quick post about sickness at the gym. Sounds very odd I know as if your feeling sick at the gym what the hell are you doing right!? …but anyway, a few times down the gym me and/or my training buddy have started to feel sick. From reading around I think the science behind it is that if your doing a lot of activity (interval training, weights, weights, more interval training, more weights) then after time your blood sugar decreases as your body cant metabolize fats or food fast enough. A few times I have come out of the gym after pushing it a bit to hard and had to have a quiet sit down before I was violently sick!

HAVE NO FEAR! – I HAVE FOUND A CURE TO THIS POST WORK OUT SICKNESS…

Jelly babies! – pop a couple of these suckers in your mouth and you will be feeling as right as rain in 3 mins. Sounds odd but I find that It really sorts me out! Im sure there are 10000 of other quirky post gym ‘pick me ups’ but I found that Jellies worked for me – I always keep a tub of them in my gym bag for sickness emergencies. This does not mean that you can have a mouthful of them but a couple will help with the sickness.

That’s how I sack-off the sickness… how do you do it?

Super Easy to Make High Protein Cookies!!

OK! So… I found a recipes for some high protein cookies and they looks really tasty (and a welcome change to the chicken and salad and broccoli) so I thought I would give it a go. I have visions of hours in the kitchen measuring out hundreds of ingredients to make one of these little bugger but truth is it was so easy I found myself making more and more!

So ingredients are:

1. 1x 3/4 cups Oatmeal
2. 2 tsp Splenda
3. 6 egg whites – I still kept the yokes and made up some scrambled eggs for dinner
4. 1/2 cup raisins
5. 1 tsp vanilla extract
6. 1/2 cup un-sweetened apple sauce
7. 4 scoops whey powder (I used vanilla but im going to try some more with chocolate - im sure you can use any flavour really)
8. 1 tsp virgin olive oil

Once you have everything together, mix them all up in a big bowl. (there really is no order just stick it all in and mix until dough like). Make some disk like shapes on a baking tray and stick them in the oven (on 300) for about 20 mins

Its as easy as that….. DE-LISH!

Another Day Another Dime!

OK so bit of a quick post today as im running a bit behind and I need to get to bed as i'm shattered!

So had to take a clients out for lunch today but still went for a healthy option. A mixed leaf salad with grilled chicken and boiled eggs. Admittedly there was some dressing on there and a small handful of croutons but got to be better that full blow fish and chips right...

sorry the image is a little crappy I took a quick snap on my phone but by the looks of things I didn't give it enough time to focus in... DAM!

So anyway... following a semi healthy lunch and the rest of my working day I got myself down the gym. I was running a little late from work so had to cut it a little short but I got almost everything I wanted to do in. Today is back and shoulders day - work out was as follows:

All sets starting on a moderate weight with 12 reps then adding 5kg and reducing to 10 reps then adding 5kg and reducing to 8 reps and so on until you get to 2 reps. Warm up with 15 mins of interval training on the treadmill and then another 15 minutes interval training on the rower (100 meter sprints and then 1 min rest) 

Seated Shoulder Press

Alternative Deltoid Raises

Bent Over Dumbbell Raises

Bent Over Rows

Seated Rows

Dumbbell Raises

Cable Delt Flys

Shrugs with a bar

Wide arm pull ups

Finished off with some core work on the mat and the called it a day... 

In other new I have ordered a meal management system (6 Pack Meal Bag) i'm super excited for it to arrive. it was a little expensive for what it was but i thought that it would help with the meals as I am finding it tough eating right in the office. I mean I take my meals in at the min but its just a right hassle taking arm fulls of bags and plastic tubs in with me when this takes car of it all for me. Sure its a bit of a luxury but we gotta treat ourselves sometimes right?

As soon as its here ill post some pics and give some feed back!! 

Bit of a Fast Forward...

OK so my first post was drafted and ready to post 6 weeks ago but as I have been super busy recently I have only just got this up on here so I now have to fill you in on 6 weeks work to get you up to date so here we go...

DIET

Ok so have cut all the crap from my diet (crisps, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc) and moved on to a healthier eating structure with a high amount of the food I am eating being proteins. I am now having around 5 meals a day normally consisting of:

Breakfast – 2x wholemeal bread with peanut butter + protein shake

Morning snack 11:00am – banana + 2x rice crackers

Lunch – lean chicken breast or fish with salad (celery, Chinese leaf, peppers etc)

Pre work out meal – lean chicken breast or fish, wholemeal pasta) small amount) some salad (celery, Chinese leaf, peppers etc)

Dinner – steak, fish or chicken, vegetables (peas, sweet corn, small amount of carrots etc)

GYM/WORK OUT

I joined up to the gym and now have a training schedule (consisting of 4 days a week) and focuses on the main muscle groups – Chest, Legs, Shoulders and Back, biceps and triceps – 1 per day and cardio and core thrown in on every day for good measure.

For the 1^st 2 weeks I went at this alone. It was hard… really tough ff going. Then I found myself a training partner. More by accident than actually looking for him. One of my close friends had noticed that I was going down the gym and we got talking about it and he said that he would like to get involved and start to get in shape. This was perfect as we are both a very similar size and have a very similar goal in mind.

I have found that it really helps to have someone there to keep you motivated (when you need it) and to spur you on when your struggling as well as the safety aspect to spot you when your lifting etc.

SUPPLEMENTS

After the 4^th week of my training I had a very long chat with a friend that used to be involved in the bodybuilding world on a semi professional basis and asked for some advice on supplements. I had already done some research online but it seemed like the Internet was filled with advice and info and I didn’t really know what was right and what was wrong. I thought it would be best to speak to someone who has been there and done it and got results and find out what worked for him before them going on and fine tuning that to make it work for me. He recommended that to start on I should make sure I’m getting my vitamins on board as well as get a protein (an all in one if possible) as this would help with growing and repairing muscles. I started by rocking down to Holland and Barrett and scooping up some vitamins off the shelf. I went with ‘super one a day’s’ as they seemed like the best choice and I would only have to take one a day. After a couple of week and discussing this with some other, what I would call serious gym users I opted to go for animal pac’s.

They are quite expensive for what they are but after reading up on them they contained every vitamin, mineral, acid, enzyme etc my body would ever need all packaged in a handy little baggy with 11 tablets inside.

For my protein I decided to go for Cyclone Maximuscle. I went for this as I had done some reading online and it had some great reviews and was readily available from almost all health food shops including Tesco and I had heard of the brand before and I felt like I already knew what they were about.  

And that about brings you up to date… now I can start with some fun posts and not the 2 essays I have just added. I feel much better in myself and I feel like I’m making good progress. I have learnt a lot already but to be honest I feel like I have only scratched the surface….

Tomorrows a Gym Day!!

How Did We Get Here!?

Ok so how did we get here? - Well after coming back from a summer holiday to mexico with my girlfriend in late (OCT I think it was) 2012 I looked back through some of the holiday snaps and I wasn't really happy with that I saw... I mean I looked overweight... lumpy... not a very pretty sight. I mean I cant say I was surprised at what I saw I mean after all I have had 25 years of pizza, beer, McDonnalds, roast dinners on plates the size of a car tyre and any other crap that I could find around the house to shovel down my neck.

This was me on holiday...

...so I decided that I shouldn't just mope about and get down about it. I decided that I should do something proactive... something positive and make some changes so I would be happy with what I saw in the mirror.

and with a lot of hard training, careful diet, a bunch of will power and a little bit of luck this will be me before I go away next year (Oct 2013)

and so this blog was *born* - iv decided to nickname it my "Big Bloater to Body Builder Blog" (or 5xB for short) I will be mainly using it to keep track of my progress on my body journey, share my thoughts, share knowledge and tips that I pick up along the way and hopefully give some good advice of my own.

I am going to try and keep this updated as much as possible but I do have a full time job so between training, making good meals and working I dont have a huge amount of down time but im sure ill be able to get at least 1 post a week...