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Sometimes on my blog, I like to talk about workout and diet routine. Generally, these posts don't get much attention, and are so they are more like a kind of diary for myself to stay motivated and know how far I have come lol So, I have made some gains, I lost about six kilos, doubled the amount I could lift in almost every aspect. I cut done on carbs and ate protein like a caveman. You would probably think that I would start looking like the hulk a couple of months later, right?

Surprisingly, now it stopped, I wasn't able to lift the bars any higher or put on new muscle, and it took something drastic to change that.

Overdoing it

If you want to read the post I made before, you can find it here. I was cramming a lot into each day and eating a pretty balanced diet, except for one part, which I will get to. After I finished Insanity, though, I tried filling that cardio with ab exercises. I wake up, I do hanging bar ab workouts and ten pull-ups, ride to work, do about 5 minutes of an ab workout after class, then do more pull-ups and dips after lunch, ride to the gym, workout, ride home, do another ab workout and pushups. There is a problem with this, that problem was, I wasn't letting my body recover. I just go all day, and by the time I actually get to the gym, I have nothing to work with, and I don't improve my overall performance.

Dropped the bar for the first time

The next problem was, I hurt myself. I met a new girl, we became lovers, I got to the gym that next Monday, I set the bench press to 90kgs (I usually did 140 on the machine) an older man talked me up to another guy that I was really strong, I got cocky thought I could add another 10. I put the bar up by arms buckled; I dropped about 110kgs on the right side of my chest. The adrenaline hit, I put it back up but was wobbling, so the two guys helped me reset it. That was the end of making chest gains for the next two months lol I took a break for a week on the chest, buy the time I went back to it, I had to set it down to 80kgs on the machine. Now, I just got back to 140 without any pains. Lesson learned, don't get cocky.

Gotta change it up

Another thing that I have been learning to do is to change things up every week and work on strength sometimes and muscle mass the other times. So, when I am working on mass, I do it in three sets of twelve at overload to break down my muscle to rebuild them. Then, when I want to improve strength, I do five sets of five increasing the weight with each set. By doing that I can adjust the max amount of weights I can do and improve my overall strength for when I want to increase muscle mass. So, by going back and forth swapping weeks of how I go about my exercises I can make overall improvements. Also, by changing the exercises themselves, but that is a topic for another day.

How eating right was wrong

The last thing, and I think the this is the most important. My diet, if you go back and see what I was eating each week, it seems pretty healthy and straightforward. There was one glaring problem with it though that I didn't think would become a problem. See, the girl I have been seeing does not mind what she eats, so my diet has reflected that. We eat pizza, fried chicken, pasta, and drink beer together.

You could say my diet has taken a turn and I have gained two kilos since we started dating. However, when I come to the gym this week, I noticed that after I healed my chest, I can lift more, and I have more energy. How can that be, I ask myself? I might be working out less, but my diet is kind of bad, I eat pizza and pasta for dinner....... oooooooh.... ooooooooh this has been the problem. It explains why I am so tired and don't have energy in the gym; I don't have enough carbs in my diet to have energy. Earlier, I wanted to lose weight, so I cut carbs almost entirely, and I lost weight, but now I want to gain muscle, so I need to incorporate them. It's crazy that what I initially thought was wrong, was actually the thing I needed to improve.

Why I am recording this

To review this, I need to cut down on how often I work out to allow my body to rest. I also learned from my mistake of being cocky and hurting myself; I will remember that in the future. It is best to change things up every week and two weeks to improve strength and mass. Then the last thing, I need to incorporate healthy carbs into my diet. It is probably not the best thing to eat pizza and drink beer. But, I can't just cut them out entirely, I should have some toast for breakfast and probably some sweet potatoes for dinner or a small pasta with chicken. It opens my options of what I can have for dinner now lol

As I prepare to go back to America for a month, I am keeping in mind what I should do when I get back. Considering that I won't have a gym I can regularly go to in America, muscle loss might be an issue, and I am forming a plan for when I get back here. Train regularly, but not over-train, change it up always, and give my body the energy it needs.

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