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!