I’m at the end of the week, my work is all done, so I guess I want to share story about my journey to overall fitness.
At 2012, I was diagnosed with HIV (thanks to my unprotected sex activites from 1999). By then, I lost most of my fats and muscles, and become very skinny, as one do when diagnosed with debilitating diseases. After a week of self pity, I decided to just move on with my life, follow the treatment diligently. I’m still alive, so that has to produce something. The 21st century treatment for it is very good, I began to be energized again and I’m starting to gain some of my weight back.
But I had trouble to actually be ‘bigger’. I can’t eat so much (still do) and there’s signs of fat deficiency everywhere, especially at my thigh and butt (while my belly is expanding. Horrible). So at 2015, I started to frequent a gym near my flat. It was very hard since I never did any sort of exercise all my life until then. I was determined to be sexier so I won’t sighed when looking at my mirror naked.
The first 6 months was the worst. There’s no sign of change. No muscles being formed, no weight being gain. It was partly of my condition, but partly that I didn’t push myself hard enough. I was a newbie, didn’t know that I have to push so hard until it’s HURT and push some more. The gym is also the cheap one where they didn’t hire any trainer, so I was basically clueless.
After 6 months however, there’s signs of my trainings actually worked. While I wasn’t getting any bigger, my arms and shoulder and chest started to be more … chizeled. By then I realize this won’t be an easy task. Body will responds quickly or very slooooowwwwwwlllyyyyy depending on your diets and general ambitiousness. Just don’t expect a quick change. Quality changes take TIME.
At 2016, I moved to another gym and participate in CrossFit. It was an eye opening experience. The training is so difficult and punishing, but it also what made me love to do exercise. The endorphine discharge made all the hard work worth it. I become really happy after training, never stressed, more active, and fall asleep easily. Good times.
But there’s side effect to CrossFit. Because almost all of the training regiment centers around cardio (lots of jumping, hopping and high numbered sets), I became very lean, the opposite of what I wanna be, which is to be bulk. My head looks bigger like a bobble head, and at one time, I got a constant pain all around my torso which made me think I got Rhabdomyolisis. The pain often came at night and made me jump out of the bed. Thankfully, that’s not the case. I still don’t know what happened but it stopped happening after I drink more frequently. I never have that pain again now.
That’s when I decided to switch to more traditional weight lifting, and hire a trainer. I told him I want to be bigger, so there’s so little cardio, but heavier and heavier weights used. I go to gym twice a week and the pattern is like this: Day 1 – Chest, Biceps, Abs, Day 2 – Shoulder, Back, Triceps, Abs, Day 3 – Legs, Biceps, Abs, Day 4 – Chest, Triceps, Abs. Notice how abs being trained everytime, and my belly is just getting flat (without 6 packs) AFTER A YEAR DOING SO. This makes me cringe everytime a lady (or a mangina) asks how to QUICKLY losing belly fat, because when I tell her that it’s not easy, it takes time and discipline, they lose interest and prefers complaining about their belly the next day. Maybe they wish the energy of complaining can actually burn the fat.
My trainer also give variations to always ‘shocked’ my muscles: One time it’s the same weight with same rep count each set, other time the rep decrease while the weight increase, other time it’s the opposite, other time it’s superset (2 to 3 type of training with no rests in between). This prevents me from (1) being bored, and (2) having my muscles ‘used’ to the training and not breaking down (muscle breakdown is important so that it will grow when it healed). So every session is a challenge. My body and my mentality is challenged everytime.
All this activities changed me. I’m always up for challenges at my workplace, always positive, and still having great sleeps despite the work stresses. This also made me allergic to complaints from other people about how they always tired, how they want to go to the gym but doesn’t have time, or stopped doing exercise because it’s painful. This makes me allergic to almost all hardship complains too. Real men do, not talk about planning to do. And if you’re determined and actually do the work it needed, you can achieve anything in life. I guess that’s what I wanna share in this writings.
If you guys wanted to start doing sports or any type of exercises, just do it. Don’t think twice. It’s always good for your body and sanity. Good luck guys.
Anonymous 2 years, 10 months ago.
