Taking the Plunge

Welcome to my shiny new blog.

I am starting this blog to track my workouts, note any thoughts on programs and methods I try and generally help provide another feedback loop in my fitness regime for motivation. I will also post links that inform my thinking and my own non expert take on these articles/studies before and after I have tried their methodologies.  I guess we will see where things evolve from there.

I guess a first blog post should address my own history.  I first started to 'workout' shortly after realising the fairer sex were indeeed very fair, a second realisation then became that a good looking physique would help in the wooing process.  I think I just did the usual push ups, crunches and db curls at home until joining a gym at university.  I have no real idea what I did during this period as I did not track progress, I suspect I was a victim of fuckarounditis with some curls to finish.  Needless to say none of this was helpful in making any kind of physical improvement.  Being fortunate with my genes however, I did eat lot throughout all this period but stay sufficiently lean to have a varying level of 2-6 pack throughout uni (the then girlfriend, now wife still talks of that midsection with fondness).  To make it clear, this was due to extreme skinnyness, I was in no way muscular.

This kind of behaviour continued on and off (except with a slowly expanding girth – not to the point of skinny fat but certainly to the loss of a 2 pack), until I broke my leg playing indoor soccer.  During my rehabilitation period, I stumbled onto both Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution book and Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, the die was cast and it was game on.  Four months later eating mostly paleo, following Starting Strength and drinking my milk.  I went from barely squatting/deadlifting the 20kg bar alone (definitely not overhead pressing it) to:

• 120kg deadlift for 5 reps
• 105 kg squat for a double
• 65kg bench press for 5 reps
• 45kg Overhead Press for 5  
• at a bodyweght of 80kg.

This was the biggest and strongest I have ever been.  Then my gym membership expired...  Rather than renewing it, my Wife and I saved our money until March 2012 where we could purchase our own basic home gym (a squat rack, barbell and plates).  During the downtime, I loosely followed convict conditioning but it was hard to stay motivated.

I guess this blog will follow my progress since restarting in the Garage.  I did find after all that downtime my strength was vastly reduced.  Again, using starting strength, I have since worked back up to:

• 90kg squat for 5 reps
• 97.5kg deadlift for 5 reps
• 50kg bench press for 5 reps
• and overhead pressing 40kg for 4 reps
• at a bodyweight of 73 kg. 

That is where I am today and that will do for now,

Warm regards to the internets,

Johnny.