Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Only Thing That Seems to be Going Right

Lately, I seem to be faced with one hurdle after another. At this point I feel like, if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Fortunately, my training is the one bright spot in what otherwise feels like just bunch of shit. After finding the body of a man on my caseload after he committed suicide a couple weeks ago, I didn't think things could get much worse. Unfortunately, they kinda did. This past Friday, I was in a four-car accident, and my car had to be towed. Ok, not such a huge deal, that's why I have insurance, right? I got myself a rental car and was on my way. Literally 24 hours later, I find myself in another fucking accident. A drunk driver crossed over into my lane and struck my side view mirror (of the freaking rental car). Good thing I was paying attention because I was able to swerve out of the way and narrowly missed a head on collision, literally. The drunk bitch then proceeded to drive off. Fortunately, the police caught her just down the road. Another driver called in the vehicle just before my accident and informed the police of a potentially drunk driver, so they were already looking for her. Turns out the woman had a BAC of .23, nearly triple the legal limit. She told the police that she was coming from a graduation party in Plattekill (which is about an hour away from where the accident happened and on the other side of the Hudson River). She also told them that she'd drank a case of wine coolers...WTF?!?!

Somehow, in all this, I have actually managed to keep my head on straight and continue to get really good workouts in. With three weeks to go before prep starts, I'm getting more and more excited. Even though I have my down days where I question whether or not I've made any progress and how things will unfold this season, overall I'm confident that I am in a very good place to present a noticably improved look this year. While I know that I still need to fill out my frame a little more, I'm happy with the work I've done this year. I am slowly accepting that it's going to take time for me to fill out, but if there's one thing I am, it's persistent. Not very patient, but definitely persistent. And I know I'll get there, wherever "there" is.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Where Have I Been?

Instead of spending my time whining on hear about how fat I am and how this hurts or whatever bs I can come up with, I've been hammering away in the gym trying to make progress, and it seems to be working. I've been in a really good place lately with my training, physically and mentally. Of course, I still have the usual nagging injuries of mine, but lately I've been able to be mentally strong enough to work through/past them. I've surprised myself with my strength increases over the past month and a half. As my coach has reminded me a million times, when I get in to a bad funk, everything follows suit, and my progress just stops. Once I get my head on track, everything seems to fall into place and things move in the right direction. And I have finally seemed to have gotten back to myself, for the most part, and it shows. Unfortunately, I do think I've reached a point of diminishing return and am now putting on more bodyfat than muscle. So we have changed some things up with my diet and added another day of cardio in, all in hopes of trying to keep the fat gain at bay for the next 5 weeks until the diet starts.

That's right bitches....the diet. I gotta say, I can't wait. That's right, I am finally completely excited about starting to diet. I was so scared a few weeks back that I wasn't going to be able to get my head into it this year and that it would be a (mentally) half-assed prep. But after taking another set of progress pictures yesterday, I'm ready to GO! Granted, I have quite a bit of extra fat hanging around, but I can still see where there's been some serious progress. According to my coach, I have some "freaky" bodyparts this year....one of them being my quads. Holy hell have they grown like weeds. I think I'll have a little better sweep in them this year, but mostly I think the difference will be just have more lines and crazy separation. I don't seem to have the genetics to have massive, sweeping quads. And that's just fine by me...I like crazy striations. My back also seems to have made quite a bit of progress, both in width and especially in thickness. It's hard to tell just how much improvement there's been in my back width because I have quite the spare tire, so there's very little v-taper going on these days. As usual, my shoulders have made steady progress and are still probably my standout bodypart. Anyway, I'm ready to start dropping some of the fat and seeing what's underneath...will I reach my goal for the year of 120?

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Another Good Week Down

It's officially been a month of good workouts and feeling back to my normal self again. While I have my typical disgust with my offseason look, I have to say, that in the grand scheme of what my goals are for the year, I'm very happy with where I'm at overall. As of today, my weight's 148.8, and I've been putting on about a pound each week, give or take a couple tenths of a pound here or there. I'm pretty sure I got up to 152 last year, but that's not where I started my contest prep. I'd have to look back to make sure, but I think that somewhere around 6 or 9 weeks before my diet started, I cut my calories back to a decent maintenance level, and wound up starting prep around 145ish pounds. There's no doubt that today's 148 looks different (AKA better) than it did a year ago. But I was so effing stubborn last year about taking pictures because I hated what I looked like, so I don't have anything to make a comparison. I can say that I'm actually outgrowing my bras....I know, who'd have thought? But it's not because the girls are growing, it's actually because my back is finally growing. While I shudder at the thought of having to drop a ton of cash on some new Vickis, this certainly isn't a bad problem for a bodybuilder to have. I imagine that, at the pace I'm going, I'll probably wind up around 152 or so by the time my prep starts.

I'm finally getting excited at the thought of competing this year...like genuinely excited. I get those little butterflies in my stomach thinking about prep and being able to find out on a weekly basis what kind of improvements were made over the last several months. I think that I'll be able to reach my goal of getting to 120 this year, which puts me right in the middle of the middleweight class (none of that sucking down to make weight, well at least for this year anyway). As I've said before, my "long" short-term goal is 125--the top end of middleweight.

One of the things that has helped me get back this spark is that I'm really working hard on accepting the fact that some people who I had hoped would be my biggest supporters have turned out to be my biggest critics, and in more ways than just this sport. Fortunately for me, it's opened my eyes to see and really appreciate the support I do get from the few close people in my life.