I think it was sometime back in February that I hurt my shoulder while bench pressing around 200lbs, which was really good weight for me at the time. Around that same time, I moved up to the South Bay and started going to the gym with Eric 2-3x a week. While for the longest time, I wasn’t able to lift much weight at all, it all kind of worked out, because I was able to help Eric get into a good routine and he’s made some good progress. But after seeing those recent wakeboarding pics and how much muscle mass i’d lost over the last few months, I realized i needed to step back up, and on Monday, I was finally able to do heavy weight without any pain in my shoulder at all. I pulled out 6×185, 7×185 and 8×185 on the flat bench press, and I’m sure i could’ve done more weight. So i’m pscyhed to be back in the gym and doing it up right.

Now that i’m not working against any injuries and excited about the gym again, I thought i’d start another fitness blog. I killed getbig.kentomatic.com, because aside from me being injured and not lifting heavy weight, it was only about me and my routine, and i can’t imagine that many people were interested in following it. It did have a page rank of 2, but that might just have been from the kentomatic.com link alone.

The new fitness blog is going to be a general blog about fitness, probably focused on weight lifting, but cover all areas of exercise. It’s not just going to be about me and what i’m doing, although most of the articles will be from my experience and perspective. The problem is, I need a name for it and am looking for suggestions, so comment or email me anything you can think of.

Here are some that have been mentioned to me or that i’ve come up with that i’m thinking about:
onemoremile.com
fullrep.com
perfectrep.com
lookatmymuscles.com

gimme your input!

so after two months of a busted shoulder and then broken finger, i’ve finally been able to get through some full workouts (with codeine, but whatever) and today did a chest workout and moved some heavy weight.

read the article on getbig.kentomatic.com

i usually drink an energy drink before the gym, but that much caffiene has really been affecting my sleep, and at $2-3 each, it’s getting too expensive. yesterday i bought a case of diet pepsi max, and i think i’ve found my new pre-gym and whenever i need a kick-in-the-pants caffiene drink. it tastes just like regular diet pepsi, and has 70 grams of caffiene (a redbull has 80) it’s just enough without being over the top. the 12 can fridge-pack i bought was only $2.99, so that’s only $.25 each!

too bad i’m not going to the gym for a while :(

after about 6 weeks of light workouts due to a shoulder injury during a chest workout, i’ve recently been starting to lift heavy weights again. yesterday while i was warming up for a dumbell chest workout (with measley 30lb weights), my left ring finger got sandwiched between them and it hurt like hell. i stayed around to spot eric in his workouts as my finger got more swollen and more purple. it hurt so much last night that i decided to go to the doctor this morning and it turns out that i fucking broke it!

so looks like it’ll be another 4-6 weeks before i can grip weights. i can use machines and focus on abs and stuff i guess, but it looks like it won’t be a very big summer for me :(

only a couple more months before it’s boating season!

speaking of which, eric finally bought his 24 hour fitness membership and we hit the gym last night. my workouts have been all over the place lately. about a month ago, i fucked up my shoulder doing some of my biggest weights, so i really haven’t been able to work out chest and shoulders too hard at all. but this has given me more time to focus on arms and abs and back (apparently of which i need the most work on).

my shoulder is finally starting to get better and now that i’ve got a workout buddy again i can hopefully get back on track and be ready for summer!

so i have a few different things wrong with me right now, my left shoulder is fucked up from working out, although it’s definitely getting better, my right knee has been messed up for a long time, and recently i noticed that my spine wasn’t perfectly straight near my lower back.

so yesterday i went to the back specialist, and he was trying really hard to get me to admit to some pain, although i hadn’t been having any. i said sometimes when i’d been sitting at my desk all day, my back would get a bit sore, and he asked “what do you do to take the edge off”? i was like wtf? is he trying to bust me for drugs or something? anyway, he also criticized me for slouching which i often do, especially when i’m tired, even though this apparently had nothing to do with my scoliosis, he kept saying, oh, we’ll get to that.

so he tells me that my back muscles are too weak to support me (this is without even taking off my shirt, or feeling up my sweet back muscles). i tell him that i have a strong back and tell him the weights of different exercises i can do, which he seemingly doesn’t believe. (this is a tall thin nigerian runner looking dude) he starts telling me that i must not work out right, that my form is bad, that i need to do slower reps, all this stuff, without asking me about my routine, seeing my form, or even seeing my sweet back! and then we get into this kinda argumentative conversation about muscles for looks vs. muscles for function, and he says something like “why would you want to be big and buff, when you can be stronger and lean like me?” at which point i’m just sick of this quack and bet him $100 that i can outlift him in any back exercise.

obviously the consulation just got awkward from there. he recommends me to go to physical therapy to build up my atrophied back, and i then steer the conversation to my crooked spine which he says has a 10 degree bend, but that that’s not too uncommon and isn’t likely to get much worse if i can build up some muscle in by back. jerk.

i’ve been taking protein shakes on and off for more than 5 years, and i’ve always gone with the chocolate flavor because it was marginally less gross than the strawberry, vanilla or banana flavors they offered. to me, protein has almost become synonymous with chococalate because of it. but in my quest to change things up, and after reading about what works well, i bought a couple of jugs of ast vp2 whey protein in… citrus flavor! it tastes way better than the chocolate shake i was taking (although i may just have been sick of the chocolate, and i may be just as sick of this soon enough), almost like orange julius.

it’s about twice as expensive as the bargain stuff i used to take, and if i don’t see a difference with it, i won’t keep forking out the money, but it’s worth a shot. the cheapest i found was $24 for a 2lb jug at cheapvitamins.com.

i’ve been going to the 24 near my office during my lunch break for the last week or two, but once eric starts working out with me later this month, i plan on switching to the 24 that’s near both our places. since i was working from home today i checked it out, and it’s seriously the nicest 24 i’ve been to. brand new equipment, the rubber weights with handles that i like (the hb gym used to have them but switched to these slippery plastic coated ones), and they even have the inbetween dumbbells like 37.5#. the best thing is that it’s only 2 miles away, so that gym coupled with the gym that’s on the same block my office is on, i really can’t find an excuse to skip the gym.

at first i thought this was about a giant, but turns out that trendy blond haired indian is only 2′ 9″! little romeo claims to be the strongest dwarf in the world, but i bet my cat could still tear that boy up.

thanks for the link james!

[read the original story with lots of creepy pics]

for some reason in 2006 (or maybe it was 2005), one of my wacky new year’s resolutions was to solve a rubik’s cube. i went to the mall, bought a cube and after playing with it for an hour or so, let it sit on my shelf for the rest of the year. i’d occasionally pick it up and figure out an algorithm or two, but never made solid progress. this last week i’d been reading a lot about how to solve the cube and have been working at it for an hour or two a day. well a year or two late, but cube solved!

speaking of past new year’s resolutions, i’ve been writing in my workout journal during this get-big process and noticed that my 2007 workout goals were to be able to pull out 4 reps of 200lbs in the lateral pull down and flat bench press. two weeks ago, i exceeded the bench press goal when i did 215lbs, and last week i barely eeked out the 200lb lat pull down goal.

since i’m talking about goals, i’m going to go ahead and reset those same goals to 4 reps of 215lbs for the lat pull down and 4 reps of 230lbs for the flat bench press. if those end up being too conservative, i’ll bump them up when i achieve them.