and i rant

there are some people who train at my gym who i am not fond of.

damn it this is my blog i can call a spade a spade. if certain gym members where to be sucked off the planet i would not miss them.

these people i dislike, i do so because of their behaviour on the gym floor.

i do not for one second believe that i am perfect. and if i had any interest in making this post any longer i would list out for you all my shortcomings.

i do believe that i am respectful of the other gym members and the staff. to that end i try to behave in a manner that is not obnoxious and i also make a point to return weights, benches and the like to the position in which i found them. unless of course i found them haphazardly strewn about the gym floor.

today we were entertained by captain sinew. he struts around in shorts and sleeveless tees, he is really lean. but truth is, he is not as muscular as he thinks he is.

timmy tendon needs to leave weights and bars on the floor. and any bar he uses he leaves loaded with the weight he used.

there were 6-8 dumbbells on the floor today weighing anywhere from seventy to ninety-five pounds. there was one lone female working at the club at that time and if she out-weighed the heaviest dumbbell it wasn't by much.

the next time i see slim shady he has a barbell wedged into the corner and he is doing t-bar rows. i think he had at least 200 lbs on that barbell. he just put it down after his last set and walked away. he had another barbell loaded with full plates for shrugs and he left that too.

now i could easily have included luthor lean-ass with today's earlier post but he is such a enormous POS i felt he deserved his own blog.

hey gilbert gristle!! learn to put your effin' weights away!!!

point to ponder

during our 30-day challenge the bloke suggested i post something about the sense of entitlement among today's youth. and although i did post about his chosen subject i have had cause of late to consider that blog was far too narrow and specific.

i am still friends with a gentleman i used to work with many years ago. approximately 4 years ago during the economic downturn we both ran into financial difficulties and we were unable to find work in our field.

it is important to note that my friend is a husband, a father with children he needs to put through university and a home-owner.

what i so admire about this man is that he took a job that he was grossly over-qualified for, but it was an honest living and if he was extremely careful he could still care for his family. as time went by he started to rebuild his business by offering his graphic services to the companies on his delivery route.

four years later and he is practically working round the clock. but he has built up a steady client base. he created something from nothing, if you will. and the best part is, it is now a lot easier for him to provide for his family.

let's compare that with yet another man i know who's life fell apart around the same time period.

now the second man is the father of toddler.

he wasn't able to find a job opportunity in his chosen field. and this man was quite content to sit at home waiting for that 'perfect' job.

the toddler's mother suggested that he go out and get a job. would you believe that he was incensed? he was convinced that he couldn't just hold a job. i guess he felt that he was destined for so much more. and anything else was simply beneath him.

in retrospect i wonder if our youth have a false sense of entitlement because their elders do? is it not a learned behaviour.

but the question is, how do we make sure that we have more people in our society like the first man?

they like me... they really like me

i was sitting at my desk at work last week wednesday and i was doing a whole lot of nothing. the studio manager came up to ask me it i had a moment. not only did i have a moment i had several. at that point i think i'd been idle for about an hour.

it turns out that they wanted to send me to calgary for two weeks to work on another flyer program. she explained that they would take care of all airfare and hotel costs. the kicker was, i was to fly out the sunday... a mere three days later.

i was rocked by the offer to be honest. i knew that they were happy with the work i had been doing for them... but to send me across the country! well that was just something i never expected. i will add that in my years of working in this field i had never before been sent on a business trip. hell, i didn't even think it was a possibility.

nevertheless i went home that night and set about rearranging my familial obligations so that i could go and i went to work thursday prepared to accept the offer.

it would seem the trip was not meant to be as they had located an artist in another part of the province to send in my stead. it made sense financially. they would still have to put the person up in a hotel but they would not also have to eat the $500 airfare.

was i disappointed? yes.

i have a friend who lives in edmonton who i haven't seen in a few years. we had planned to meet up during my stay. as well i have never been to calgary. besides it would have been an opportunity to expand my professional experience and work on a different account.

but clearly it was not meant to be.

regardless of how it all played out there is still one undeniable truth and it makes me feel really good. they asked me!! that will never change.

and who knows, maybe there will be other opportunities??

reflections

the other day i took a moment to go back to the start of this blog and read it through.

my first thought was that i am a truly sick individual and i firmly believe i require the help of a team of therapists working round the clock.

but that said. it was kind of interesting to go through the journey again. to remember some of the joys and of course relieve some of the lows.

i am hopeful that i have grown as a person in the six years i have been doing this. but it truly is hard to notice your growths, particularly when you are distracted by your short comings.

one of the things i couldn't help but notice was the people who were there in the beginning who aren't here now. some by their choice, some by mine and some by circumstance.

i can't really say what i believe, or if i believe in any official religious deity. but i am a firm believer that there is a plan, that certain people enter and exit your life to teach you things or to put you on the path you are supposed to travel.

with that thought i can't be heartbroken about those who are gone. i can only hope that i made the most of the lessons they were here to teach me.

its official

frequently through the work day, when i have down time, i will log onto the boards to see what is up in the world of women's basketball. i did so today at 2:30 p.m. and there front and center on the summitt forum was a post i never really ever wanted to see... but knew that one day i was going to.

at 1:30 p.m. a post was announced that coach pat summitt was stepping down as the head coach of the lady vols. she had been in that position for 38 years. imagine, she took over the head coaching duties back in 1974!!

she is going to continue on as coach emeritus. which means she can still be part of the recruiting process and attend practices as her health allows, everything right now is dictated by her illness. she was diagnosed with early onset dementia eight months ago. pat summitt had hoped to coach for another few seasons but i guess this past season proved to too difficult for everyone concerned.

pat summitt is tennessee lady vol basketball.

hell pat summitt is women's basketball! she influenced the game at the college level. pat summitt was involved in the inaugural years of the wnba so she influenced the game at the pro level. finally she had many years of service with the national team as both player and coach so she had influenced the international game as well.

when i logged onto twitter today the reactions were as inspiring as the woman herself. athletes from all over were tweeting in response to the news. from those who worked with her directly to those who know that the sport would not be where it is today without her influence.

so as sad as today is and it is sad. it is also a positive time as well.

one other thing i want to add. since i've had many a person point out to me so far that i had to know this day would come. yes i knew it was coming but just because i knew it was coming doesn't make it any easier to take.

party of one

You are still feeling pretty thoughtful, so hunker down and record some of the deeper stuff that bubbles up from down below. You may hit on a huge idea that helps you find new ways to deal with life.
~~ daily horoscope by astrology.com ~~

my mother for reasons of her own needs to see all of her children romantically paired. there is a problem with that need. her two youngest children are terminally single.

my mother and her friend were recently discussing my life, what i have done with it and the non-existent state of my love life. because my mother and her friends are from a different time they don't understand that it might be difficult to find someone to date. it is as if they think i simply need to wander into my local men 'R' us, where i can pick out someone suitable from the strong and muscular aisle.

what frightens me most is the knowledge that my mother still hopes that i will someday marry. i was in my late teens when i first announced that i would never marry. around that time my parents marriage was the most rocky.

it is also very important to note that i have never had an adult relationship that lasted any longer than six weeks. i simply can't see how i could marry anyone. i haven't learned how to be in a relationship to be part of a couple. a lesson most people figure out as early as high school.

a successful relationship is a balance. it is a give and take between two people. when you have spent your entire life alone you don't have that balance. you are either inclined to take as that is all that you know or you give unconditionally to ensure that the other person doesn't leave you.

i suspect that at this point i am a bad bet. i am probably too set in my ways and far too unyielding to make anyone a decent partner.

i honestly believe that we don't all get to fall in love. i firmly believe that we want it and that we look for it and some of the lucky ones even find it. perhaps if everyone experienced it then it wouldn't be as special? maybe some of us are supposed to go through life without ever experiencing romantic love. maybe as long as we experience some form of love; the love of family, friends, pets or food, we can still live a happy and balanced life.

my horoscope suggested that i had something to say and that i should say it. so that is where this blog post comes from. a thought that has been rattling around in my head for sometime. a thought that i kept refusing to blog about but the longer you ignore an idea the more noise it makes inside your head.

the signs of spring

have you ever noticed the sudden surge in people running and jogging along our city streets as soon as it gets warmer out?

i can't help but notice that 90% of those people move like they haven't run since they were in grade school. their stride looks awkward, their gait is off, their body posture looks counter productive.

i saw this black woman running this morning and i have never seen anyone move like that. she didn't run all crazy like the television character from 'friends' but i am sure if she had, it would have been less traumatic for me.

do you know how some men and women walk with some extra backseat undulation? well try to imagine someone jogging along the roadway with that kind of extraneous movement. for the life of me i can't understand how she was able to continue to move in a forward direction. surely that booty flailing should have shaken her off course some how.

you know sometimes i think maybe i shouldn't allow folks to experience the madness that happens betwixt my ears.

the plus one

after the challenge was complete it felt really weird to end the day without a post. so i guess that is what has me posting when i should be getting ready for work.'

but it wasn't as though there wasn't any writing yesterday. i shared my eve dallas story with another fan-fiction writer and it was well received. so i am currently working on making it longer, or at least long enough to come to an acceptable climax.

as well my mother is going to be making a speech in the coming weeks and i spent last night, reorganizing her thoughts for her. my mother writes with a very formal style and tone, which can make for a rather awkward sounding speech delivered to family and friends.

there was a change i felt compelled to make. my mother her, bless her heart, was recounting the good old days and used the phrase 'we partied together'. a simple enough comment and back when my mother and her friends we attending parties that phrase simply meant that they went to the same parties. however as soon as i read that line, do to the popular connotation of that phrase i instantly had the mental image of my mother and aunt dancing around a beer bong and smokin' weed. needless to say that was an image that was horrifically uncomfortable for me and HAD to be changed.

and on the 30th day she wrote...

well it is with both pride and a bit of a heavy heart that i submit this post. this being the official last post of the 30-day challenge. i am quite proud of the bloke and i, we got a lot of things accomplished.

mostly what i got out of this challenge, besides the opportunity to have some fun abusing the english language, was learning that there are still some uncharted writing skills that i have yet to develop. but mostly what i have learned was that my high school english teachers didn't know sh#t and they all just can suck it!!

i really didn't want to limp to the finish line with this post, i really wanted to finish strong. sort of the written equivalent of usain bolt. but for that i would need a really awesome topic and unfortunately i don't have one. so instead i will tell you a true story.

i used to entertain myself in online chat rooms and through that media i virtually met a lot of people throughout the u.s and canada. i didn't however always meet the smartest of people.

some americans, for whatever reason, have really unrealistic impressions of the canadian climate. and in these chat rooms i found myself frequently correcting the belief that i lived in an igloo and travelled by husky.

as you may have gathered from reading my blog, i am a bit of a smart ass by nature, i have a pretty vivid imagination, a quick wit and can spin a believable yarn. it now occurs to me that i may have missed my true calling... a life of crime, anyway i digress.

i was having a virtual conversation with a women who claimed to be a grade school teacher. if memory serves it wasn't even winter and she was convinced that we were completely snow bound. since i was in a mood i went with it.

i recall telling the woman there was a basically a four foot wall of snow that you hit as soon as you crossed the 49th parallel. i admitted to owning and exclusively driving a snowmobile.

but the piece de resistance and to this date i couldn't tell you where this pile of bull came from, i told her that there was a law in canada that you could only dress your children in a snowsuit that was neon yellow. she demanded to know why and was aghast to learn that the government held that kind of control. until i reminded her that with 4 ft. snow drifts it was far too easy to loose one's children unless they were appropriately dressed.

and you guessed it... she freakin' bought it!!!

more upheaval

it is very uncomfortable at work these days.

the new parent company made more of its plans known in a meeting today. that only full-time employees were invited to. another three people lost their jobs today and the parent company intends to cut another 15 jobs!

they held their meeting at 2:30 p.m. afterwards people wandered in a zombie-like state back to their desks. most gamely tried to work but the rest sat there, in stunned silence or talked in hushed tones with others.

these next few weeks are going to be really trying and i do not envy the full-time employees.

civility lost

the bloke and i had a brief chat the other day. the chat was inspired by a rather unfortunate set of experiences, he had while tending to the grocery shopping during the holiday weekend. the bloke was sorely amazed at how rude we have become as a society. for the most part, social niceties and good manners seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird.

i listened to his rant and i sympathized with his experiences but i cannot admit to having been alarmed. i had an interesting experience with someone who, at the time, i considered a friend. you'll notice i used the past tense, as the entire exchange really coloured my opinion of her. which might not be fair, as it is likely that my behaviour contributed to the mess that ensued.

i got an invite to a wedding shower. i am not 'wedding shower' people and those who truly know me, know this. in fact i opted not to attend wedding shower of my sister-in-law and i had the misfortune of being in her wedding party!

anyway i arrived 2 hours late to the bridal shower. the event was hosted by one of her cousins. not counting the bride i only knew one other guest. there were 4 small children racing around on those little push toys. at least one other guest and i almost had our toes run over by these micro-hooligans. i lasted an hour before i escaped.

when i walked into the house, 2 hours late, i gave the bride a card that contained a $50 gift certificate. she did not open my gift and i understood that, as the gifts were opened before i arrived.

several weeks passed and i had yet to hear anything from the bride. she said thank you when i passed her the sealed envelope at her cousins door. but i expected a separate thank you for the gift within, or at the very least, the acknowledgement of the picture of the bride and groom i had super-imposed onto the gift certificate.

during a blackberry text exchange i asked how many weeks had passed since her bridal shower. the answer was six. i then asked her how long i should expect to wait before she thanked me for the present.

i heard that she was sorry, i heard about how much she had to drink that night, i heard about how many days straight she had been working for weeks on end, i heard that she had thought she thanked me.

she did text the hugging smiley to me through the phone to say thank you.

she honestly thought that was an acceptable way to thank someone for a gift. but for me that was unacceptable. if she had remembered on her own and had sent me a text i would have been receptive. but she didn't and to do so after she realized her error, lacked sincerity.

she however could not understand why that wasn't acceptable. and i can't understand why she thinks it should have been.

so how could i expect strangers, john and/or jane q. public to say please and thank you when i can't even count social graces from people i considered friends?

we live in a microwave society where we have, in the interest of time, shortened a lot of processes and cut out a lot of unnecessary steps. unfortunately along with that we have also lost some of our more civilized behaviours.

tis a shame that.

who's that guy?

grant jeffries was 28 years old. he knew that he had, baring injury or a sudden health issue, lived for less than half his life expectancy. he was aware he still had many good years to come. unfortunately he was also convinced his best years were long behind him.

perhaps they were, when he was in grade school, when he first started to show an affinity for the sport of hockey. the teams he played on, the games they won, the tournaments there was a lot of attention paid to little grant and he soaked it all up like a sponge.

maybe grant’s happiest years were when he was in junior high school. when it became apparent that he was a half a stride faster than everyone else, that his stick-handling ability was just a bit better and his passes were just a bit crisper. coupled with his ability to be in the right place at the right time, he was hands down the star player in the league.

that was the time when grant’s hockey future was set. every break from school and he was in a skills camp. he began to move through the midget hockey league ranks as his parents sought a more competitive environment. grant couldn’t have been happier... or so he thought.

by the time high school rolled around grant had truly hit his stride. he had a strapping 6 foot frame, he was strong and he explosive speed. by now grant had a good stride and a half on the competition. he just seemed to ‘know’ exactly where the puck was going to be when it came off the boards. grant could fake any goalie right out of his skates. then the university scouts started coming around, offering grant his pick of some of the best hockey playing schools in ontario. but probably best of all, was the women. as a hockey player, no as a star hockey player grant had his pick of the girls in his school. at the party, just about anywhere he happened to be. yes, grant’s life was that good.

things changed when grant got to nipissing. for the first time in his life he wasn’t the fastest on the ice, in fact he was one of the slowest. he was no longer the best stick handler on the team and he still ‘knew’ exactly where the puck would be but only because there was another player ‘there’ waiting for it.

in a very short time grant went from being the man to the nobody. he didn’t just roll over and die. he hit the ice every chance he could, he worked with the coaches, he worked out in the weight room. nothing seemed to make much of a difference. he just kept sliding further and further down the rotation until he was basically in danger of falling right off the end of the bench.

nothing was going along with the plan grant had. he had planned on at least one invite to join the canadian junior hockey team. either after his first or definitely after his second season of national team play, the nhl was supposed to come calling. he’d even had several scenarios in his head where he scored the game winning goal to seal the stanley cup victory.

grant had no clue what went wrong. all he knew was he was 28, strong and healthy. he still plays hockey but it was just for an adult recreation hockey team. he still had all his moves but he was still a nobody.

once again another blog post inspired by a member in my gym. it is not that i think that every one on the gym floor has a tale of woe. but the real life 'grant', much like the real life, 'frankie' strut around the gym. they appear both cocky and incredibly self-conscious at the same time. it is that juxtaposition that stands out to me and usually inspires me to 'write' their story.

a question posed by the bloke

"do you know any truly happy people?"

thankfully i say that i do not. why would i be thankful about that? because i believe that being truly happy would make you lethargic. i am convinced that because we are not truly happy, we push ourselves to make improvements and changes that will hopefully lead to true happiness.

it is my belief that technological advancements and societal improvements happen when people try to make things better... try to make themselves happier. consider that someone might realize that they would be happier if they had more time to spend with their loved ones. that desire might inspire him/her to improve current technology, invent a new machine or application that saves time.

i would say that i know people who a happier than i.

i have a friend who is a constant source of inspiration to me. she is the kind of person who always seems to be making lemonade, no matter how many lemons life throws at her. she lives her life knowing that you can't make yourself miserable, worrying over the things you cannot change. she approaches any problem by first getting as much information as she can. and with that information she devises the best plan of how to 'fix' it.

i know people who are secure in the knowledge that they are in the career they are meant to be in. or if they are not already in it, the are well aware of what that career is and are taking the necessary steps to get there.

i have both friends and acquaintances who have love in their lives. granted relationships can be rocky to negotiate at times but in most cases, the love is still there.

as i suggested earlier i am not as happy as i could be. there are still too many things that are uncertain or unsettled in my life. but i want to be happy. so i continue to strive for that goal. that unachievable goal- true happiness.

everyday i get that much closer and yet everyday it moves that much further away.

good friday eve

tomorrow is good friday. generally people will be spending time with their families this long weekend. i however will not be with mine. my oldest brother and his wife have invited everyone up to their house for dinner. i imagine there will be quite a number of people there as my sister-in-law has 3 sisters and 2 brothers and among the lot of them, there are a number of children.

i stopped going to family dinners quite some time ago. it just got to the point where the dinners weren't fun or even interesting anymore. i found myself forcing conversation, feigning interest and counting the minutes until it was time to leave.

i eventually began to wonder if there was even a point of putting myself through that and i really couldn't find any compelling reasons why i should. how did it go over with the family? not well. they were visibly hurt, offended and finally resigned to the fact that i wasn't going to show. every now and then my mother likes to try to play the guilt card. just like she tried last night.

i succumbed to the guilt and i went to dinner. it was good friday several years ago. as my sister-in-law was getting ready to plate the meal she asked if i eat fish. i do not, in fact i never have. all they had was fish. i was not motivated to try to make a meal out of side dishes and dessert so i left.

when my mother started suggesting i go to tomorrow night's dinner i mentioned that i would have nothing to eat. she suggested that i bring my own dinner.

yeah... i think i'll pass.

gym follies

tonight i was in one of the power racks at the gym. i had just stepped under a 95 lb barbell and was in the process of lifting said weight overhead. suddenly this mensa giant, who had been quasi-training a woman beside me, decided that my rack had the only 2.5 lb plates in the entire freaking gym.

he suddenly grabs for a plate and my eye immediately tracks to him. i drop the barbell back down onto the pins and stepped out of the rack. i did not hide my displeasure although i didn't say anything. goober walks to the other side of the rack to get another 2.5 lb plate. at this point he stops and asks if it is okay. i was ignoring him and i may have been frowning in the general vicinity of my barbell.

you are going to risk injurying me for 5 freaking pounds??? i still can't believe that he intended to increase the woman's rack deadlift by 5 lbs??? that made about as much sense as adding a second set of clips to increase the resistance. a 5 lb increment is better for smaller muscle groups; delts, bi's, tri's. chest pressing with free weight falls under the same guideline because delts and tri's are a very real weak link in pressing movements.

a rack deadlift targets the legs and the back. the delts and bi's aren't a real factor in this lift. if you miss the lift, the bar harmlessly slips out of your hands. you are not likely to damage your shoulders or biceps. a lift like that you should be increasing by 10 lb increments. and before you say that she isn't a bodybuilder or powerlifter, that guideline rings true regardless of the person's fitness goals. as long as there isn't a predetermined health issue a 10 lb increment makes sense. i know there was no such health issue as she had been pulling in excess of 135 lbs.

i was in a tank top for the first time this year and there were a couple of young guys training to my right. one of the two started hanging out in my periphery, he kept looking over at me. he seemed to be spreading out his arms and puffing out his chest. he had to have been all of 125 lbs soaking wet. i weigh significantly more than that, so yes i was bigger than he was and i didn't need to stand beside him to figure that out.

after i finished my set, i put my weights away and i put the bench in an empty smith rack. that smith rack had the same weight that i had been using. i watched that kid adjust the bench under the bar. i guess he was going to crawl under that bar and try to do the same exercise that i was doing, with the same weight i finished with! part of me wanted to watch how it would have turned out for him. most smith racks are counter-balanced to 10-15 lbs. which means if you have 95 lbs on the machine, you are actually only lifting about 80 lbs.

i was doing a reverse bench press which is a difficult lift, the weight of the bar would have been about 40 lbs less than his body weight. yeah that would have ended all kinds of bad.

brought to you by the letters c-o-f-f-e-e

today was a rough one. i went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and i can only assume that i didn't sleep all that well, because i was not in good shape when i woke up this morning.

and when i say not in good shape i am not kidding. i drank a ridiculous amount of coffee today. between 6:30 am to 3:30 p.m i ingested about 68 oz. of coffee. and that is a lot. even for me.

now here is the kicker, after all of that i was still barely able to keep my face off my desk and my eyelids were well past half-mast. i left work as early as i could and i was home a little after 6:00 pm. where i promptly executed a perfect swan-dive into my bed and i was not seen or heard from for 2 solid hours.

you would think with all that coffee running through my system i would have been able to attend med school. nope! i slept like a baby. in fact it took everything i had to drag myself out of bed at 8:30 pm. i really don't forsee any problems sleeping tonight either.

go team coffee!!!

in other news tonight is the last official game of the NCAA women's basketball season and i couldn't be any less disengaged. i am not being a sore sport because my team got ousted in the elite eight. this year was just boring.

the elite 8 came down to all the teams ranked 1st and 2nd. then the 1's promptly dispatched the 2's. last year was exciting. 11th seed gonzaga came seemingly out of nowhere and made it all the way to the elite 8! texas a&m a team ranked 2nd took care of the number 1 seed baylor!

the most exciting thing about this season is the 40-0 win streak of baylor's. and frankly it isn't exciting at this point that team is just so dominant, a perfect season is a given. as they best more and more teams in these final games they have a swagger, a confidence... and that is a huge part in taking care of business.

either way i still don't like 'em. so there!

slow and steady...

it is the 1st week of april, 3 months after i started and i currently am sitting at a 15 lb loss. now it wasn't that long ago that i was telling you all of my 12 lb loss.

the human body always regulates itself. it is always trying to achieve homeostasis. it will allow you make more significant losses in body fat when you have more body fat to lose. however, as you get closer to where your body 'thinks' it should be, which is rarely where you want to or need to be, your ability to make significant loses becomes more difficult.

what many people do at this point is assume that they can't possibly lose any more and break their diet. your body wins and it is happy. significant losses can set your body into panic mode and it resists your dieting efforts, since it doesn't know what the hell is going on. for all your body knows there is a famine going on. and if it doesn't slow the weight loss down you might soon resemble one of sally or alex's kids. if you were to continue to stick to the diet you would find that you would start to make losses again. not huge changes because your body is still a little unsure, but there will be changes.

when i first started this diet i was aiming for 170 lbs, i used to have a decent amount of muscular detail at that weight. but since i have lost muscle mass from my knee issues i need to keep dieting past that weight, to hit that same level of definition.

i initially predicted my target weight to be 165 lbs. i am now 2 lbs away from that goal and i am no longer confident that is my true goal weight. i may end up having to get closer to 160 lbs and i can't begin to tell you how that does not sit well with me.

i knew i was going to lose muscle mass when my knees first started to affect my training. but i was completely unprepared for how much muscle i was going to lose. i honestly did not expect that it would take well over 2 years to get that regain the lost muscle. for that matter, i also did not anticipate the difficulties with my other knee.

so although i am happy to have lost the 15 lbs, i am not happy to realize how small i have become.

bollocks!!

that said, may 5th i am having pizza and chocolate cake till i explode.

up on a soap box

you would think since i have my own blog and i have only released the URL to a select few, i would be more comfortable talking about, whatever the hell i wanted to talk about. that however, is not the case. i have on more than one occasion had a subject demands to be discussed. so far every time it has bounced into my head, i have bounced it right back out again. today however, it wins.

it is not uncommon for people to develop an interest in the physique sports, specifically in the competitive end. there is nothing wrong with that, in fact i am all for it. my concern however is what frequently happens next. as soon as someone decides to compete they format a plan in which they become the sport's newest phenom. the plan usually involves a ridiculous number of shows their rookie season with them either placing top three or winning outright. confidence is not the issue, confidence is sport is a good thing. realism is also good.

for everyone doing their first show there are a ton of other athletes who have been at it longer, have been training longer, been dieting longer, have a better physique or just have more show experience.

not long after starting on their plan the rookie will also decide that not only will they take the local bodybuilding world by storm but they will also achieve pro status in record time. overnight the athlete seemingly morphs into someone else. they will likely go from someone quite pleasant to someone quite cocky. the skin of the paler athlete will then start to sport a almost cherry red hue. these kind of changes can suggest a change in what the athlete might be taking.

now i am a firm believer that it is your body to do what you want. i only hope that you make the best decisions you can and that you research the hell out of anything you might choose to take. but what i truly wish, particularly for the female competitors, is that people make it a habit to do a few shows first... before moving onto the high octane supplementation.

the male can 'try it' and change his mind with little or no change to his general physique. he can come off and his body will go back to the way it was. women just can't 'try it' but for some reason a lot of women believe they can.

so let us go back to what inspired today's post. a young woman did her first show last year and her behaviour changed in the manner which i mentioned earlier. as i understand it, she did well at the show(s) she entered. today she was asked about her future competitive plans. it turns out she realized that she just didn't like the competitive aspect.

she has crossed a line she can't uncross and she did it without even bothering to find out if she even liked doing shows. that is such a common mistake and it so ridiculously stupid. sadly it is almost an insult to be thought of as an natural competitor and few people are willing to go that route. regardless your final physique aspirations, you would do yourself a greater service by putting your muscle on naturally first.

the best bodies in the sport had years of lifting under their belts before they crossed the line. the drug what took and already impressive physique to the next level. let's compare it to a meal from a 5-star restaurant served on fine exquisite china. but you can't take a plateful of shit and put in on fine china and have anything other than a plate of shit.

finally i would like to add that i am not pro-use nor am i exactly anti-use. as a fan of professional bodybuilding i can't actually be anti-use. right or wrong those athletes are by no means unassisted and there is no way to convince yourself that they are.

it is not for me and maybe you feel it is for you. that is your right. but for goodness sake be smart. you really only get the one go-around.