I am awake

We're gonna need a montage,  a Rocky or Karate Kid style montage, or even just a Team America Montage would do.  Hop in Doc Browns  DeLorean and it’s now 3 months later. I’m still a member of Kirklees Active Leisure just outside of Huddersfield Town centre. I’ve now moved on to work at Mamas and Papas as an Allocator, so I’m still sitting on my ass all day with loads of pent up energy to waste in the gym. Remember when I mentioned the newbie gains I had made, and how I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger after my first few sessions working out? Well, that phase has passed. I’m now around 66kg  which is a vast improvement from when I first realised I had weight issues. I’m still eating more than I ever used to, still buying the whey protein just like all my YouTube fitness idols tell me, but I’ve hit a wall. I’ve hit the dreaded plateau.

In bodybuilding terms, what is meant by “hitting a plateau” is that you’ve reached a certain peak and remained there for some time. I had near enough stuck to the same workout routine which my gym instructor had shown me, added in one or two different exercises for fun but I wasn’t continuing to improve either in strength or size. One way to think of this is, after Vegeta first became a Super Saiyan ( this was me after gaining my newbie muscles), he knew there was another level beyond, he knew he could ascend. Just like I knew I could do better, I could get bigger or at least improve on the skills I had learned over the last 3 months. But how? I was lifting weights thrice weekly, I felt sore after every workout, I was eating clean and was dedicated. Looking back now it’s easy to see where I had gone wrong.

Whoever is reading this may be thinking that I’m still a slim guy, who doesn’t know much about fitness, lifting or nutrition. They’d be right!

I am still very slim, I know more about fitness than I once did but I’m learning new things every day about fitness and also nutrition. What I’m trying to get across here is that the work out plan I use now as opposed to back then is working for me a lot more but  I’ll get into the present day in later posts. Back to this plateau I was talking about, well all was about to change when my then fiancé and I moved into our very first house in Waterloo, just outside of Huddersfield. Our new lovely home just so happened to be five minutes’ walk from Total Fitness gym. A much bigger, more advanced and friendlier gym than Kirklees Active Leisure. Kirklees Active Leisure  has now moved into a much bigger building, but I stand by the fact that Total Fitness is a better fit for me. Not only is it near my home but the staff and fitness instructors are amazing. Back to our story;  I had now paid my way out of my old gyms membership and the same day signed up to Total Fitness and also booked in with one of the gym instructors to give me a tour of their various different machines and to see what stage I was at in regards to fitness. Oh, was I in for a treat!

The next Saturday morning I met up with another gym instructor whose name I cannot remember. We had a quick chat about what I knew about lifting and how long I’d been doing it and also what I wanted to gain from all of this. Again, I told him the sob story about the doctor telling me I was pretty much an anorexic and that I wanted to be healthy and fit. After our quick chat he lead me out to the gym floor and to my absolute horror, to the treadmills! I looked at him strangely and said “ but I’m skinny, I shouldn’t have to do cardio, I’ll waste away”. To which he told me that there is more to cardio than losing weight,  it’s also about improving your cardiovascular system and getting your body pumped up and warmed up for the workout ahead. So, after ten whole painful minutes on the treadmill we finally moved to the weights. I was already beyond tired as I rarely did cardio unless it was to chat to my wife whilst she finished up her routine. Next up for me was the bench press of which I’d only attempted once with great degradation. I had only ever done dumbbell press with 10kg max, now I was being forced to do a barbell bench press with a whole 30kg. This was a total shock to my body, all the newbie gains I had made were not prepared for this weight or the actual movement of the barbell bench press. It was beginning to dawn on me how little I knew and how weak I still was.

After the torture of the bench press we walked towards the power rack, this particular power rack is now my second home but again, more on the present day later. The gym instructor, who I shall name Agent Smith, wanted me to try barbell squats. Again this was another movement I had never tried. For legs I only ever did light leg press or leg extensions. The squat is a totally different beast. He showed me how it should be performed, then let me have a go with the empty bar, which weighs only 20kg. Well folks, once I went below parallel I could not get back up. Any attempt to rise made the veins in my forehead stick out, my face went bright red and I looked like I had just opened up the Ark of the Covenant. Agent Smith had to take the bar off me and I had to sit down for five minutes. This was going so terrifically dreadful that I thought it could only get better. I could just imagine D:Ream singing at me in the corner now, “things can only get better”. I was wrong. One word, deadlifts.

I had heard about this particular exercise before, how it works almost every muscle group in the body and along with the squat, releases loads of testosterone which for a skinny guy like me is exactly what my body needs to grow, along with my spinach.  Agent Smith again showed me how to perform the lift and watched as I failed. We had loaded the 20kg bar up with 5kg plates each side, so 30kg to lift off of the floor and return to the floor in a controlled manner. Rinse and repeat. Not too hard. Wrong.  The number one problem with deadlifts is lower back injuries when rounding. Picture a frightened cat, when they arch their back and hiss. That’s what happened to me, and this is what still happens to me every time I try a heavier weight when deadlifting. An on-going issues for me which I will soon remedy. This can cause a lot of problems, slip discs to name but one. Agent Smith also showed me some other non-compound lifts, dips, shrugs, the Arnold press and many more. All in all, I felt humiliated. I knew I had lots to learn but to see how weak and amateur I still was hit me hard. I felt deflated and real sorry for myself. But as always I shrugged it off, did my homework, and found a great new workout routine online which incorporated all these new moves. I was finally awake.

All there was left to do was to really think about where I wanted to go with this new life style and what my ideal body would look like.

Ladies and gentlemen, next post, “Captain Irish”.