A Journey to Remember - Thoughts

Tomorrow will be officially one week that I began my training for the MABBA Fall Classics. I thought for this blog I would share my thoughts and feelings I had and currently have over the past week as I go through this journey of mine.

At the beginning of the week I was so excited to train for the MABBA Fall Classics. I was preparing myself to work hard, train hard, bulk up and everything and I was committed into doing this. I knew I have a lot of work to do because of how lean/skinny I am and that I need to bulk up if I want to be in a position to compete for the Fall Classics. Though I was preparing myself physically I didn’t mentally and I guess also emotionally prepare myself enough before making the decision to jump and train for a competition. I have thought about bodybuilding and thought about competing ever since my Kuya Larry (older brother) suggested it. I can’t remember as to when he suggested it, but I declined the idea when he did suggested it. However, the thought lingered in the back of my mind. The obvious advantage of becoming a bodybuilder is the look. I would end up having the chiselled chest, the big arms, abs, legs pretty much what almost every guy would want to have for themselves. Another advantage would be living a healthier lifestyle, such as eating healthier meals, making the right food choices, exercising and staying fit, etc. These are all great advantages of doing this but I never thought that there can be some downsides to bodybuilding as well, personally.

(not me; image capture google)

I found that within the week that I’ve started training I have noticed that I would have to mentally prepare myself also. As most people know I was pretty ‘big’ to a point that I needed to change the way I ate and exercised. During my ‘bigger’ days I always thought to myself how ‘big’ I was (when I refer to ‘big’ I’m referring to me being fat. I’m sugar coating it). I would literally be on an emotional rollercoaster making myself feel gross, disgusted, and that I’m nothing, which is sad and would make myself feel down. Once I started working out I started to feel better about myself. I started to treat myself better, rewarding myself on a good run that I’ve done or just pushing myself to become better. But there were still the odd times where I would still put myself down, even to this day. From being close to 200lbs and down to 158lbs brought an array amount of emotions. I always felt that I was still ‘big’, I felt that I didn’t look good, and I felt gross whenever I looked at myself in the mirror. Of course I was ecstatic to have lost an enormous amount of weight but, it was so quick that my emotions as well as my thoughts weren’t able to catch up when I lost the weight.

I am currently working on myself where I do tell myself that “I’m not fat” or “I am something”. I think for the most part I just need to love myself. All of my life I’ve always put others before my needs. I always thought, “if I put people first before my own needs it will make me happy because I have helped them with a problem that they had” however, I can’t make others happy unless I help myself first. Don’t get me wrong, helping others out if they need it is a great gesture, but in my situation I can’t help everyone out and satisfy everyone’s needs, I’m not superman (but I can dream I am, favourite superhero for the record). For the most part what I need to do is focus on myself first before helping others. Of course I can help others out whenever I can however, I need to do what is beneficial for me in order for me to grow.

This is why I’m doing this journey. It isn’t just because I want to look good in the summer and all year round, though it does have it’s benefits, but more so I want to grow and be able to achieve this goal that I actually want with the help and support of family and friends like Yu, Kuya Larry, my coach Brian and others. I am grateful that people from Instagram, Facebook, and other social media sites are so encouraging and it makes me feel inspired to go on and push forward onto this journey which I am sharing with everyone. I continue to be excited each day as I workout and train myself to do well in the competition as well as continue to motivate myself in loving myself and caring for myself so I am not on an emotional rollercoaster to a point that I suppress the feelings.

Thank you for all of your support, encouragement and inspiring words to help me push forward on this journey. I hope that I can be able to help inspire people around with my journey and encourage others to overcome any emotional states to grow and appreciate, care and love our own lives.

A Journey to Remember - Day 4 & 5

Day 4 was a week when I decided to hire Brian as my coach and build muscle to compete in the MABBA Fall Classics as well as it was rest day. It’s surreal that I made the decision to bodybuild and compete in a competition. It’s as if I’m still dreaming and I’m still deciding whether or not to do this, however I am doing it and going through with my decision. It was nice to have a rest day after training pretty hard the three days. Rest days are nice, but I do still have to work harder in order to build more muscle and bulk up a lot if I want to be where I want to be. I know it sounds harsh and I should not be so hard on myself, however I think the reason as to why I am so hard on myself is because I don’t want to give up and it’s a way of motivating myself to keep going and to push through.

Day 5, hypertrophy push was interesting when I was working out on this day. Usually I don’t have a problem with working out, but for some reason I was not able to do well in my opinion. The workout plan called it to be all push, which consisted of incline and flat dumbbell presses, chest crossovers, etc. However, there was one workout that I had to do, which was the rope face pulls. I didn’t question the fact that it was on a push day, maybe it’s because the following day was a pull day. Regardless I still did the workout. When I was doing the rope face pulls I did notice that I’m stronger on my pulls rather than my pushes. This was really interesting and very odd. I’m not sure if it is just me, but I always thought I was stronger on pushing rather than pulling and I was wrong. To give an idea of what I mean on my bench press I can bench two plates (one of each side) of 30lbs plus the bars, which is 45lbs making it a total of 105lbs. With the rope face pulls I was able to pull 110lbs. Mind you rope face pulls consist of using a cable machine. Regardless of the machine my pulls are a bit stronger than my pushes, even if it is just a difference of 5lbs from the example. Nevertheless I’m still improving and plus its only been 5 days since I started.

So far in my journey I have noticed a few things. One is the amount of food I have to consume in order to reach my daily macro goal. Second my push exercises need far more work than my pull exercises. Third, I have a long way to go. Although these seem very minor, they are big changes that I have to make in comparison to what I was use to during the summer and into fall and winter. I am continuing to learn as I go into my second week making those tweaks in my workouts. Going into my second week what I’ll do is I’ll push myself to workout hard on both push and pull days but I’ll workout harder on my push days. Also I’m a little confused as to what hypertrophy days are. I guess I need to do more research.

But I do have a question. Do you find that your push exercises (i.e. pushups, triceps, etc.) are weaker than you pull exercises? Also what motivates you in situations? It doesn’t have to be working out but in other scenarios such as assignments, work, goals you want to reach. 

Let me know write a comment. I’ll appreciate all submissions and reply to each one.

A Journey to Remember - Day 3

Day three was progress day. Although I just started a couple of days ago (literally the past Monday) I feel like I made some progress when I started. As you may know that I started training to become a physique bodybuilder and compete at the MABBA Fall Classic’s. If I were to compare myself from last week until now I would have to say I made a slight difference in just a couple of days. You may be thinking, how can there be a difference when you literally started

THREE DAYS AGO?!

Well that’s a very good question because I asked myself the exact same question. For a couple of months now I have been consistently working out and making healthier choices to stay fit, and eat right. I’ve jogged, rollerbladed and weight lifted; cut artificial sugars, desserts, candies, and ate a lot of fruits, vegetables, and various proteins. So I was fairly familiar on what I had to do when I began training. Despite knowing what to do there is always room for improvement on top of what I had already know. I honestly thought to myself that I knew what to do when I was working out and making sure I was making the correct food choices yet I surprised myself in when starting training.

When I started the prep plan the past Monday I never knew how to monitor my macro intake. I always counted my calories just like everyone else would. Checking the nutritional facts on the product and seeing how many calories there were. Brian, my coach, told me not to count my calories but my macros. It was definitely an adjustment to what I was use to and I am continuing to learn how to count my macros. Fortunately, I have an app that is able to keep track of my macros (and calories if I wanted to count them) to make sure I meet my daily macro goals. I use the app called MyFitnessPal. The app is super convenient that I’m able to decide whether the food I’m about to eat or think about eating fits in my macros (wow I never thought I would actually say that, “fit in my macros”). I have used the app for a while even before training. I did look at the macros to see if I was doing well, but for the most part I checked out my calories more than macros.

I thought I knew what to do when it came to working out. I guess you can say that I was being conceited thinking I knew what to do however, I don’t and did not. I’ll admit that I need a lot of improvement on my workouts and pushing myself to “go hard or go home”. Nonetheless everything counts. Even if I don’t push myself as hard one day then I’ll go hard another time because slow progress it better than no progress at all. Since I started training I tried my best to push myself to go hard. I would not go hard to a point where I’m compromising my form, I would go hard where I know I am capable of lifting the weight as well as not compromising my form or push myself to lift heavy weights with good form. Again the quote comes to mind, “train like there is always a competition”which I do train as if there is always a competition and that competition is with myself. I find this quote motivating, for myself, because let’s face it we are our own worse critic, and we make tonnes of excuses to put something off. However, for myself, I will continue to push hard each training day and make my macro goals as if “there is always a competition”.

I think, regardless of me just having started my training and showing a slight difference in my physique shows that every little bit counts. I was actually messaging a good friend of mine, Kylie, who lives out in Toronto and was telling me about how she did not put in a really good workout. I told her to not think that it wasn’t a really good workout because every bit counts, which is true. No matter how heavy, or how much time you put into something a little bit comes a long way. It is encouraging to see people who are motivating and passionate about what they’re doing, not just in working out, but also work, school or life in general. I do hope that more people can be encouraged and inspired to continue to push through even if it is one small step at a time.

(If you're looking for progress pics I won't be putting them up just yet until there is a significant difference. I do apologize for not posting a few. I will post some next progress day so please keep coming back for updates on my journey.)

A Journey to Remember - Day 1 & 2

As of right now it has been two days since I started working out and familiarizing my prep plan that my coach - Brain Duaqui - has given me. I have to say that I never realized how little I ate during the past few months. It definitely has been pushing my body to not only consume more food but also to use the food that I consume into fuel to workout better.

The day I received my prep plan from Brian I was pretty pumped. I read everything over a couple of times just to make sure that I understood everything that I had to do leading to the competition. Two quotes that struck me when I was reading the plan was, “There is no such thing as dirty foods” and “Train like there is always a competition” (Duaqui). These two quotes really stuck with me because I always thought that in order to be built, fit, and….BE BUILT you had to eat correctly as well as workout moderately. But to understand that “there is no such thing as dirty foods” blows my mind. Of course you would have food in moderation and be food cautious about what you’re having however, you are not restricted to just eating greens, chicken breast, tuna, salmon, etc. you are able to have other options that are able to benefit you and your body. As well as with the other quote, “train like there is always a competition” gives me the motivation to train everyday as if there is a competition. I wouldn’t go into the gym and compete with a guy that is squatting 4 plates of 55lbs on each side, no, I’m only competing with myself from what I did previous. For example, if I did 45lbs plates on each side of the bar one day then I would challenge myself to add more weight. Both quotes I will be holding to continually motivate myself in pushing through.

On my first official day I was pretty excited but nervous at the same time. I felt as if I was relearning everything - eating and exercising - all over again. Luckily I have a few workout buddies like Yu and others, as well as Brian my coach who are able to help me out if have any questions or problems with training and/or what food to consume. What kind of caught me off guard was the amount of food that I had to consume. I was mentally prepared to lift a lot of weight but I was not prepared to eat the amount of food that I have to consume. I became so use to not eating so much from when I was slimming down over the summer and now I have to eat pretty much double the amount of carbs and proteins than what I use to eat.
As far as working out on the first day it was a pretty new workout program that I was doing. The program that  Brian gave me was different than what I was use to. Usually I would focus on a group of muscles for example, I would focus on chest with triceps or I would do abs and shoulders. The program was comprised of power push and pulls and hypertrophy push and pulls. I am not going into much detail about it but I am sure a lot of people recognize this form of working out. When I started  I noticed that my body was not use to the program. I kind of felt like I was working out for the first time all over again, but instead of giving up like I have done in the past, I kept going.

On my second day I noticed that my body was kind of recognizing what I needed to do. It was interesting because from only one day my body was recognizing things that I had to do such as prep food and workout. I’m still having a bit of trouble when it comes to food consumption though. Most know about counting macronutrients or macros. I am still fairly new to the concept because I always counted my calories rather than my macros. Now that I have to actually count my macros I have to make sure that I meet the goal amounts. Working out however, is enjoyable. I always get pumped up when I get to the gym or even before I go to the gym; it’s as if I get a boost of energy before hand and actually workout. Once I am at the gym I’m in the zone. When I am at the gym I am focused on what I need to do and what I need to work on, I don’t waste time, which really bugs me when I see a number of people just sitting there for 5 minutes or more. Don’t get me wrong you need rest, but don’t comprise your workout. Rest for 1-2 minutes then go back at it, unless you have some occurring pain. Regardless of that I enjoy working out.

As of right now I am still currently getting use to the program that Brian provided me. The workouts are difficult only because I’m pushing and pulling weights that I have not tried attempting before. I am glad that I can have people around me to help spot just in case I cannot handle the weight. So far, I’m enjoying the program and I know I need to work harder more and more as days pass and I progress because typically I want to have a body like Ryan Reynolds but in order to achieve that I have to “train as if there’s always a competition”, a competition with myself to do and be better than before.