Easter 2011

This week's been pretty good, gym-wise. Heavy things have been lifted and food has been consumed, and I'm starting to see some veins popping out on my shoulders! I also picked up Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. It's a 750 page beast, but easily readable due to massive fonts and lots of pictures. I'll probably write a review once I've read it (I've got far too many books to read right now, including an autographed copy of Norway's greatest prime minister's new book!). My favourite chapter so far is the one dedicated to "the Pump." If you haven't seen him talk about the Pump, click this (it's a Youtube link from Arnold's Pumping Iron documentary). 

Anyway, I'm not yet sure how to list what I've done in the gym. I'm currently toying with the idea of just putting down my main exercises and maybe filling in with some others once in a while. I thought writing "Jack knives - x20, x20, x20, x20, x20, x20" may eventually get tedious. Anyway, I thought I'd write a little about diet and nutrition, so here goes!

I've started calorie counting, which may seem weird, but as I need a lot of calories to function properly in the gym and gain muscle it's become essential to eat at least 3000kcal a day.  I've also switched all rice and pasta for brown rice and wholemeal pasta, in addition to having special K or porridge for breakfast (I need to fit into those flares). A typical day for me looks something like this;

Breakfast - Bowl of porridge, banana, smoothie, whey protein shake + creatine, multivitamin, omega-3.

Lunch - Footlong sub/leftovers

Second lunch - Sandwich/bowl of porridge/smoked salmon/quarter kilo of nuts

Post-work out whey protein shake

Dinner - 300-500 grams of meat, equal amount of vegetables and carbohydrates (pasta, rice, noodles...)

Supper - Casein shake before bed.

I also snack on fruit and vegetables throughout the day to keep my body in an anabolic state. This provides me with quite a lot of calories, and mostly healthy. I keep trying to keep my insulin levels low, thus lowering the amount of carbohydrates my body will store as fat. 

White cane sugar - Did you know we've only found a single tooth with a cavity from stone age people? These people didn't have tooth brushes, but they certainly didn't have access to refined white sugar. White cane sugar, in addition to being bad for your teeth, is not ideal for athletes. Sure, a 2 litre tub of ice cream won't kill you once in a while, but once it becomes a regular thing it's going to mess with you. White cane sugar contains ridiculous amounts of fast carbohydrates which cause your blood sugar levels to sky-rocket, making you highly energetic (Remember the wee kid at school that ran around in circles?). However, these blood sugar levels also cause mass release of insulin, which will promote storage of the carbohydrates as fat and may cause diabetes type-2. Low blood sugar levels will also cause you to feel hungry and thus eat again, and the yo-yoing of blood sugar levels will also cause lethargy, tiredness and a lack of concentration.

I've restricted myself to a single high-white cane sugar meal a week, which for me has been pretty good. I sleep better, I'm better able to concentrate, I'm calmer and I feel more focused in the gym, in addition to usually not going hungry during my work outs. However, I feel I've got to admit I'm away from the gym for the week and I've been eating loads of cake.

Alcohol-wise, I've really cut down after seeing how much of an effect the stuff has. I feel (no scientific evidence) getting drunk cuts my work-out gains by at least 30%, in addition to being unable to lift much the next day. Personally, I feel I can justify having 3 bottles (330ml) of beer, at a stretch, if I've eaten well. Alcohol lowers testosterone levels for days, impairs your liver's ability to synthesise new protein, and lowers your blood sugar massively (which is why coca-cola is such a brilliant short-term hangover cure; caffeine and sugar!). Essentially, if you're even semi-serious about exercising, you can't get drunk more than once every few weeks.

Last week's work outs went pretty well, I got my bench press up to a record 95kg x5, x7, x8, 97.5kg x6, x6, x5. The reason I only did 5 for my first set was that I didn't have a spot and I didn't want to risk it. Otherwise, I've had a bit of sore lower back, so I think I need to watch my lower back while lifting and ensure my technique's good, and maybe do a few good mornings. I've also tried concentrating on training my rear deltoid, both to shape it and because I injured it a few weeks ago. I'm quite pleased with how my calves and lateral deltoids are shaping up as well!

Also, a few people have requested pictures, and they shall be up with my next update or so!

First update!

Heya readers!

After several discussions in the gym and seeing how blogging has become "big," I've decided to jump on the band wagon following a discussion with Swedish, a close friend of mine who happens to be a PT. First, a little bit about me. I'm a PhD student in Glasgow, though I'm both Scottish and Norwegian, and my field is Biochemistry and Microbiology. I play guitar and I like cooking. I don't like doing the dishes. Since I learnt how to ski (Norwegians learn how to ski before we learn how to walk), I've been an avid sports enthusiast. I started off with cross-country skiing, football and bandy, and if you don't know what bandy is you're missing out, and gradually started snowboarding (after a brief stint with slalom), wind surfing, rowing, and through rowing I got acquainted with the world of weightlifting, which is my forte these days. When I started off benching at the tender age of 16, I was quite weak. I was reasonably strong for my bodyweight (which was around 60kg at the time) and I could do a lot of calisthenics exercises such as press ups and chin ups reasonably well due to the core strength I'd built up playing other sports. Over the years I've gradually accumulated a lot of knowledge about general fitness, though I'm constantly learning new things, e.g. earlier today, and I'll try to blog a little about the different things I do.This blog will mainly contain stuff about the gym and the odd political blog, and I'll try to update it weekly or bi-weekly on my gym progress. 

These days I work out 6-8 times a week, with one rest day. I learnt a lot about weightlifting from a Greek flatmate, who also happened to be built like Hercules, and he's the man who inspired me to do something about my skinny, frail physique (I still consider myself pretty skinny and relatively small compared to what I want to be). Other sources of inspiration are the lads in the gym, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Terry Crews. 

I'll start off with how I've currently split my week. I have six to eight work-outs a week and six different work-outs, where I train chest and calfs, back and trapezius, legs, shoulders and trapezius, arms (biceps and triceps) and calfs, and I do a press ups program twice weekly, which can be found here. I also do 6 sets of abdominal exercises at the end of each session. I currently do 6 sets per exercise and generally 6-8 repetitions (I vary it every few month, more on that in later blogs) which I divide between exercises like this (exercises in bold I do every work out);

Chest and calfs, 4-5 exercises chest, 1-2 calf

Chest

Bench press

Incline press or incline dumbbell press

Decline press or dumbbell press

Crossover flyes, incline flyes or flyes

Pull overs, sets of 12 reps

Calf

Barbell toe raises on a ledge, 15 reps

Calf press

Back, 5-6 exercises, 1-3 trapezius

Back (including lower back)
Bent over row and/or T-bar row
Chin ups, to failure
Lateral pull-downs
Seated rows
Back hyperextension
One-arm dumbbell row
Romanian deadlift

Deadlift

Trapezius

Barbell or EZ upright row

Lying cable upright row

Barbell shrug

Legs, 5-7 exercises
Squats, 12 reps per set
Barbell lunges

Leg press

Calf raises

Calf press
Leg extensions
Leg curls

Shoulders, 4-6 exercises, 1-3 trapezius
Standing overhead press
Seated overhead DB press
Lateral DB raises
Lateral cable raises
Front DB raises
Incline EZ front raises

Bent over reverse fly

Arms, 3-4 exercises each, 1-2 calf
Triceps
Skullcrushers/French press
Dips, to failure
Tricep pull down

Tricep overheard cable pullover
Close-grip bench press

Tricep dumbbell extension

Biceps, some of these exercises can be used with a preacher bench for increased isolation
Reverse EZ curl
EZ curl
Bicep pull down
Pull ups
Wrist curls (forearm exercise)

Seated hammers
Dumbbell curl

Cable curls*

Abdominals
Jack knives on a bench**, 20 reps,
Slow crunches (focus on constantly keeping your abdominals tense)
Plank, 60 - 120 seconds
Side plank, 60 - 90 seconds, 4 sets
Cable crunches

*I do my cable curls differently from what most people would - I do 5x2 curls with one arm while holding the other at a 90 degree angle at the elbow. 

**Doing any abdominals exercise on a bench will automatically make it harder as you'll need to balance, which I recommend. 

I'm going to either write a blog on diet, motivation, supplementation or rest in my next blog. If anyone has any preferences, please comment!