First post. Most things I start, I never finish. So far my lifestyle changes for health have been true to form; hopefully this journal will follow suit.

My stats currently: 6'3" at 77kg. I estimate 15% bf. This obviously puts me at tall and thin with a fair amount of skinny fat. I'll post pictures at a later stage.

My history:
Oct 2005 I starting training in various forms. This mostly involved weight training with a sprinkling of cardio. This was essentially my first introduction to physical activity of any kind, which basically meant I had a 21 year defecit to make up for (something I'm still suffering for). Exceptionally bad posture, joints out of alignment and serious lack of flexibility are just some of the things I'm still trying to overcome (not to mention no muscle mass).

My initial foray into training was somewhat misguided, drinking a ton of MRP shakes my weight went from 72 to 85 in a short period. Too short, I put on a lot of fat, but I didn't realise this at the time since I was also gaining a lot of strength and "size". I eventually did realise and started my misguided cut that basically caused my weight to yoyo. I dropped back down to 73kg and just stuck there for quite a while. My time wasn't all for naught though, as the knowledge I'd gained was invaluable; I also retained a bit of my musculature.

About 4 months ago after a 3 month hiatus from training I decided to get really serious. This meant properly defining a diet and using a training plan I could actually handle and progress with.

The here and now:
In the past I did a 5-day split routine; I now do a 3-day full body workout (time restrictions). I've just completed this: http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=508031 and I'm now working on a variation of that workout that I can continue with. In my short 4 months of doing full body I've made more gains than I ever did with my split routines (great for my confidence). I believe this is mostly due to my diet, but the right frame of mind and the desire to succeed at the workout has definitely been pushing me.

My goals:
First and foremost is strength. Being borderline anorexic (I was at 62kg with a height of 6'3" for a very long time) for most of your life really does something to you. I'm not so naive to believe that it had no effect on me; thus my primary goal has become strength. 4 months ago I couldn't do a single bodyweight pullup, now I generally manage 21-22 in 5-6 sets (first 3 sets are usually 5).

Next goal is muscle endurance and physical fitness. My heart rate spikes to 170+ very very easily, so this is something I really need to work on.

Lastly for me there's the aesthetics and muscle build. I would love to be there, but it's just not my primary aims for where I am.

This brings my first post to a close. I will expound my diet and training routine in posts to come.

Welcome and good luck with both the journal and your fitness goals! I hear the journals are a great tool for those!

Welcome and good luck with both the journal and your fitness goals! I hear the journals are a great tool for those!

I guess I will find out. I only started keeping track of my actual weights about 3 months ago in a spreadsheet. This has been huge benefit for me already as I don't have the habit of picking the wrong weight and wasting my time at the gym anymore.

Recently I've been struggling to get any sort of quality sleep, this is not helping my progress. I usually sleep around 7 hours without any problems. For the last 2 weeks I've been going to sleep and waking up after about 4 hours, and then sleeping in bits and pieces for the next 2 - 3 hours. This usually leaves me feeling wrecked when I have to get up. Today was no different, neither was yesterday which is somewhat interesting.

As fatigued as I was yesterday I still had a really good training session. I increased the weights on some of my exercises, and the ones I didn't increase I felt I could push another 5-10%. My bench press bothered me somewhat though. On the first set I lowered the bar and my right shoulder did a whole bunch of cracking and popping. I only take the bar about 2-3" above my chest which puts my arms at around parallel to the floor. This just goes to show how much damage I've done just by sleeping on my right hand side my entire life.

Workout went as follows: 4x5 with 60-90s rest periods. I did squats, standing calf raises, pullups, hammer curls, military press and flat bb bench. Not in that order, I don't really follow an order anymore.

Overall I find doing a full-body workout a lot more convenient than my split. I go to gym in the evenings and the gym I go to is pretty huge, which means it's pretty much packed at any time of the day and getting equipment can really wear at ones patience. Thus the full-body routine in any order works for me.

Last night saw me doing another very good session even considering the fatigue. These sleep issues are really bothering me now and are rather confusing. I haven't altered my diet, my environment, my meds (I'm asthmatic) or any other factor I can think of that would be causing this. Maybe I should be seeing a doctor soon about this.

Anyways, as far as last nights session goes I did: squats, hamstring curl, pullups, bent over row bb, front raises and incline db press. Did 3x8 heavy weights with 60s rests and ended up getting a pretty solid cardio workout at the same time.

I workout on Tuesday, Thursday and Sat or Sun depending on my weekend plan. Sometimes work interferes and I'm forced to skip a session. I use 2-3day rest period so I can often make up a session I miss. I currently do cardio on Monday which consists of 2 20minute sessions: cycling, treadmill or rowing. My cardio usually I tend to keep my heart rate between 150 and 170.

Weather permitting I also like to cycle (mtb with slicks) on weekends.

Well I didn't wake up in the middle of the night today, but that might be because I went to bed a bit late. At least I feel better, even though a bit tired.

Yesterday's training session went pretty well. I did 3x8 with 60-90s rest of pullups, squats, rdl, decline db bench, standing military press & skullcrushers. My back muscles are still pretty weak so I struggle with the pullups. At the moment I'm widening my grip by about a fingers width each time so I can shift the emphasis off my biceps and onto my back more. Yesterday was the widest I've used, almost by angles and I still managed to do my typical 5, 5, 5, 3, 3 rep sets.

I somehow managed to get the skin on my finger caught between the end of the bar and the plate when I was the db down after my chest press. Sliced the skin right off :) so that wasn't particularly great and left my grip on my right hand minus one finger for the remainder of my exercises.

Well I guess training will be a bit difficult this week considering it's Christmas tomorrow, which is when I'd usually go. Guess I'll skip a day and go on Wed if the gym is open.

Last week was my week off in my training cycle. 8 weeks on 1 week off. I also happened to be a bit sick early in the week so at least I didn't lose out on any training sessions. I did screw up my diet though as I have major problems eating whenever I get sick or don't feel too well. Fortunately I didn't lose much weight (maybe about half a kg) but in the past I've lost up to 5kg in 3 days... not very good.

I went cycling yesterday. A nice 21km ride in the middle of the day. It was quite a scorcher and I got a bit burnt... I'll have to remember to use suntan lotion next time. It took me 1h10 mins to do that ride, about 80% of the time was spent on hill climbs. Where I live there is not a single flat piece of road to cycle on, so it's a case of spend 20 minutes climbing a hill and 3 minutes going down the other side; and some of these hills are pretty painful. Overall my average heart rate ended up at 166.

It seems I have a naturally high heart rate which hampers my ability to do cardiovascular training. My idle heart rate (sitting in a chair doing nothing) is around 100. When I initially started cycling I struggled because my heart rate spiked so much. Now it's a lot better in that I recover a lot quicker than I used to so I can maintain a higher heart rate for longer.

So it seems I tweaked my knee on my ride on Sunday. I've been waking up with a knee that aches a bit for the first few hours of the day... a bit odd really, normally any sort of knee pain I get seems to last longer and actually be painful. This was more of an annoyance than anything.

The knee didn't hamper my training last night fortunately. I finally managed to hit the 70kg mark on my squats in a 4x5 rep/set workout. Not much weight for many I'm sure but at least I'm getting closer to my bodyweight (78kg) which is really more a psychological goal than anything else. It wasn't so long ago when I was struggling to even push 50kg, and I'm sure I could have managed a little more than 70. My concentration lapsed on the last rep of the last set though as I fired the left leg before the right and ended up twisting and being a bit unbalanced. I managed to keep my form though and only had to strain a bit to compensate.

Otherwise I'm changing up my diet again as I seem to be a bit "carb sensitive", so I've swapped out some carbs for more chicken breasts. I'll have to rework my macros as I've also bumped up my calories a bit since it seems I've only put on about 1kg in the last 3 months. The curious thing is I appear to have more body fat except I've barely put on any weight and my muscles must be getting bigger if my increasing weights are anything to go by. I'll have to get a camera so I can take regular photos of myself to keep track.

Last night saw me hitting 72.5kg on my squat. So I'm on my way to bodyweight and then 80kg. My legs are really aching today though.

I only managed to get to gym last night for the whole of last week, so it was a bit of a waste. Waking up with a headache for a few days where any physical exertion caused it to throb abominably left me with little desire to go to gym. On the days I was feeling fine I go to gym only to discover there was no power. So overall, a bad week. I feel I made up for it last night though, as I'm definitely getting more powerful in all my exercises.

The scale weight seems to be fluctuating a bit in the same range as per usual, so my increased food intake doesn't appear to have had much immediate effect. I'll leave my diet alone for the next few weeks and see what happens. Still, my weights are increasing so something is definitely working, even if I don't appear to be gaining any muscle.

Also I almost managed to hit my 4x5 bodyweight pullups last night. Managed 4 reps on the last set and just failed at pulling that very last rep to the top. So I finished off with another set of 3.

Try using your cellphone camera. Otherwise try using a tape measure as a start as well (they cost about R2). Or come over and borrow the camera from me.

My last 2 heavy workouts I managed to do 75kg squats. 3kg shy of my current bodyweight so I've almost made my goal. The first night my form was a bit troublesome as I struggled with the extra weight. Last night was much better, with much better form though I'm still leaning forward a bit too much towards the end up my sets. So I guess I'm stuck at this weight till I nail the form and feel that I can safely increase the weight again.

Otherwise I hit another goal of 4x5 for bodyweight pullups, so now I guess it's a case of bigger sets and more overall reps.

The other goal I would love to attain is bodyweight bench press. This unfortunately is a long way off. It seems my scapula are a bit too unhealthy; there's some really awful cracking from them when I try go above 60kg bench.

Bodyweight hasn't moved since I changed my diet. Hmm... time to change it up again, it's been over a month now.

Took some pics on the weekend and made a new thread:

http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?t=41250