Thursday, September 23, 2010

Decide My Future - Fitness Edition

I have been recently working my way through the anime Baki The Grappler (great anime btw) and being the highly suggestible person that I am it made me want to get big and lift some weights. So I did one set of dumbbell curls and now feel like the most buff motherfucker on the planet.

I thought what I'd mention today is my history of fitness / unfitness. I have mentioned before that I used to do martial arts but I also did competitive swimming. Up until I was 17 I trained Monday to Saturday, sometimes multiple times a day. I would train swimming with my swim club in the morning before school and train Taekwondo in the afternoons. I even trained twice on Saturdays.

I could literally swim before I could walk and I started Karate not long after I started walking. I left Karate for Taekwondo because I wanted full contact competition. In Taekwondo I became state champion five times and national champion twice. In swimming the best I did was make it to the state championships for 100m backstroke and 100m butterfly. I made it to the finals for butterfly but did not place. I made the school cross country team every year and made the school swim team every year.

I was one fit motherfucker.

when I was 17 I first injured my ankle and weakened the ligaments in my ankle which put me out of any sport for a while, when I finally got better and was about to start training again I injured my knee badly. I was at the BMX track and stacked it, dislocating my knee and tearing my PCL (a ligament in the back of the knee). This took me out of action for a long time. I was on crutches for months and it took a lot longer to recover completely, although it is an injury which will never be completely fixed without surgery, which I do not plan on having.

After that I moved with my family interstate and started TAFE (similar to college for you Americans) and did not get back into training at all. After a while I put on a lot weight. When you train as much as I did your calorie intake is much higher than a normal person because you require immense amounts of energy to burn during training. When I suddenly stopped training it is nearly impossible to also suddenly cut your food intake at the same time. I was eating 4+ times the recommended calories for a normal person. So obviously I put on a lot of weight.

At my peak I hit about 125kg (metric system motherfuckers... it's about 275 pounds) The weird thing though is, when I was way overweight like that I had no problem getting girlfriends, and I'm not talking girls my size, I'm talking hot girls that even at my physical peak I would have considered out of my league. The other thing is at this point, although I was not 'fit' I was way stronger than I was when I was training. I could lift things that I could never lift before and can not lift now. I had big arms and a massive chest, even if they were covered with fat.

After a while I made a decision to loose the weight. I immediately cut my food intake by half, completely stopped eating all the junk food snacks, and at the same time try to speed up my metabolism by basically eating many times during the day but in small, low energy portions. After a few weeks of much stomach pain I think my stomach actually shrunk and I would become full with much less food. After a while this just became the way I lived without thinking about it and I started loosing a lot of weight without even realising it. Over time I began eating more and more but the weight kept coming off and I didn't realise because I never actually weighed myself during this time. (and it was also the time when I kind of stopped having any normal type of social interactions with people)

When I finally realised I had actually lost a lot of weight was when someone got me a new t-shirt for Christmas and it was a medium and I put it on and it actually fit me. I looked at myself in the mirror thinking 'WTF?' and then decided to weigh myself to see what I weighed now. Last time I had weighed myself I was about 120kg... when I got on the scale it said 85kg. I actually thought there was something wrong with the scale and tried again. I had lost 35kg without even realising it, mostly because by this time I was back to eating whatever I want and it no longer affected me.

So now I am... actually I have not weighed myself recently... but somewhere around the 77kg-82kg area. The thing is now I feel so weak. First I was super fit, then I was pretty damn strong when I was fat, now I am neither. I want to start trying to do something again but I don't know what. There are a lot of weights at my house that I can use at any time to bulk up and get stronger, but at the same time my real passion is doing martial arts and getting fitter. But to train martial arts I would need to join a club, which means paying them money and taking up a lot of my time which even now I feel I do not have enough time to give. I don't even have enough time to choose between playing a game and watching a movie or some anime. I literally had to completely stop gaming for the last few weeks to find the time to watch Baki The Grappler (which I still have not finished).

To overcome the time restraints at the moment I have taken a pair of dumbbells and some extra weight up to my room and I just do some sets while watching shows at the same time.

So what is your opinion on this? Should I just keep doing what I'm doing and just lift some weights in my room while watching shows? or should I cave in, join a club, start training again, and have even less / almost no time to do the things I love like gaming and watching anime and movies?

I guess there is also the social interaction that comes with being in a club, and also the possibility that some day down the track I could become a better fighter than I ever was before and one day be a champion again...

... that post turned out way longer than I expected.

TLDR; gaming, anime, and doing weights in my room? or join a martial arts club and have no time for shit?

18 comments:

  1. Man your writing is cool! and you have a lot to say uh? that´s great. You know, about the weight lifting, sometimes making exercise destroys muscles, maybe that is the reason for you to not lift as much weight as when you trained

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  2. I don't know man. Do the martial arts thing if you're really up for it. Doubt you'd get as much out of it if you went in half-cocked.

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  3. I wish I could lose 35 kg without even noticing. Losing 10kg was painful enough for me. Right now just bulk up by yourself but when you start having more time then you might want to look into joining a club.

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  4. Good job at loosing this weight! I don't know, you can do your training while relaxing at home, by doing this I made so much muscle that I stopped one week ago to loose what's too much.

    I think in 3 week it'll be okay, and I'll start training again ^^

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  5. I'd probably multitask with shows and weights. Also, what the hell do you do that you don't have time? My stomach is so freaking small that I can't even eat/finish breakfast. Note - I'm not anorexic, I got a flabby stomach. >_>

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  6. @The Loon - Wake up @ 6:30am, get to work at 8am, work to 5pm and get home ~5:45pm, get changed, help with dinner, eat, clean up, get in room 7-7:30pm, watch anime or other shows or a movie while lifting some weight (or play a game), FAP!, bed ~10:30pm, repeat.

    Of course I fit all the internet and email etc. stuff in there somewhere also.

    Weekends consist of sleeping in, cleaning house, doing things like shopping, getting car fixed, paying stuff, more fapping etc.

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  7. Why don't you bike? You can bike to places and you'll look awesome doing it, with the wind in your hair and all. Of course you can be lazy like me and DDR for a few songs everyday. I lift weights too but don't do anything heavy. I get the feeling your body is made to be more flexible and fast than bulky? Just go bike. Go buy an apple and bike. NOW.

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  8. This post reminds me I need to get back in the gym.

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  9. You have a good thing going here :)

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  10. wow that was really well written, I'm kinda i nthe same boat I let myself go and I'm trying to get back in shape how I used to be.

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  11. I think you should join a club and start training again!

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  12. Following and showing some daily love

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