Next up is how I’m getting on with the weight training, since I started back in February I think it was, I’ve come a long way from being a skinny bean pole who could barely lift anything that could be considered to have a substantial weight, when I first started I was curling like 8kg and doing way too many different exercise per session 4 times a week I was basically running my self into the ground even with the small amount of weight I even had the complete wrong idea on how to do sets, basically after every set you should take about 60-90 second brake (good for Hypertrophy) for maximum testosterone production then go on to your next set after completing your sets for one exercise you jump to the next.

The big mistake we were doing is we did each set of an exercise concurrently, no rest, then we would rest for 60 seconds and start the next set of all exercises we were doing more harm than good basically wrecking havoc on our nervous system. Anyway the mistakes we made and the things we learned over the past 5 months or so can wait for a future post as there were more ^^

Any woo I gained a few pounds of muscle over the first few months of training averaging about 1 pound of weight each week which is about what your aiming for if your wanting to gain muscle and not fat this was helped by my increase of calorie and protein intake helped by the weight gainer protein shakes took some time to get used to the banana flavor but its grown on me.

Then typically when I was starting to see change in my physique I injured my right deltoid may have been caused by not warming up adequately or just from general wear and tear as weight lifting for hypertrophy puts a lot of strain on your body, this took about 3-4 weeks to get back to shape although I did no weights in that time I kept my weight/muscle by keeping my protein intake high and calories clean.

Then finally I could start again this time reading much more into what routines, exercises were best for me being a hard gainer, the basic idea for us hard gainers and beginner weight lifters alike is to do mostly compound exercises for the first month or so these include the bench press, deadlift, squats, military press etc on alternate days 3 times a week the idea is to build over all mass and increase strength rapidly then later when your bulked up you define the muscles by doing the non compounds e.g. bicep curls etc

One tip if its strength and size your after you need to constantly be increasing the weight you lift find your perfect weight that you can only manage around 6-8 reps per set with and each sessions try to add a little more weight from everything I’ve read over the months this is the best way to increase bulk and strength.

Anyway I keep getting off topic, with the change in exercises and new found knowledge on how to weight lift correctly for maximum results we again started to gain 1-2 pounds of weight each week and can now see a good change in my physique, I’ve added 9 pounds of weight from 8.5 stone to 9 stone which I’ve never weighed that much in my life always been either below 8 stone or just above.

Current stats below, this is over a month with the new routine (except the body weight which is from February)

Body weight: 8.5 stone to 9 stone
Deadlift: 132 pounds to 176 pounds
Bench Press: 100 pounds (not been doing long, but started not being able to even lift 100 pounds now I can do 3 sets of 6 reps)

Military press: 66 pounds to 77 pounds
Pendley Rows: 77 pounds to 90 pounds
Squats: 103 pounds to 123 pounds
Crunches: 3 sets of 15 with 10kg weight + 15 reps of leg raises on pull up bar
Pull Ups: 6 reps to 14 reps (working on lats not bicep pull ups to get that v shape)

Not huge weights by any means but for me its a great improvement, will keep posting updates over the coming months and maybe even some before and after pictures.

Well over the coming days I plan to do post some updates on my progress with my goals that I listed a while ago, to recap these were.

Learn Japanese
To keep improving my Japanese and hopefully step it up a gear.

Weight Training
To improve my overall physique to basically not look like a beanpole.

Healthy Body and Mind
Generally to improve the way I live and eat always believe you should look after yourself as you only get one body no point when your 50 starting to eat healthy because your obese and can barely move from all the crap you’ve eat and drunk over the years same goes for the mind.

Savings
One thing that I’ve always had trouble with is saving now that I realise I’ve gotta save if I ever plan to live my dream of going to Japan for a year to enjoy myself and job hunt.

Other goals I planned to set were to expand my reality in general experience as many different things as I could and to also network more in and out of my career.

- Body and Mind -
For the first post I’m going to do a quick rundown on my body and mind goal, overall this is going pretty well most days I’ve kept with the eating healthy at least having some fruit and veg everyday, although I have had a bad habit of taking trips to KFC and the local Chinese a few times a week as they tend to be more convenient and a quick way of getting my required calorie/protein intake to keep adding more body weight this needs to be pretty high especially as I tend to be pretty active with 3 weight sessions a week and lots of cardio in between.

I’ve also started to take much more care on the way I look for years I had the same set of clothes and would only buy new clothes when they were worn thin but now if I see something I like (or my wife does) I’ll go out my way to buy it, caring about the way you look doesn’t just help change what people think about you it also makes you feel better and more confident.

On the mind front I think this has improved from before I’m generally feeling much happier and have a huge renewed interest in my Japanese language studies, web development and technology in general. Everyday I get closer to my trip to Japan even if it is years away planning for it now helps stop my interest waning and keep me motivated and happy.

Next up Weight Lifting