Im Mark, 35 years old, married, no kids, work for an Aerospace company as a planner.
Ive had an on and off love affair with training and fitness that in summary goes something like this
10-16 - Promising footballer, playing at county level couple of sniffs of interest from small clubs but comes to nothing.
17-19 - Student thats a bit disallusioned with not making it as a footballer so does no sport and puts on a lot of weight.
19-21 - Realising i look more like a darts player, i join a gym for the first time and get fit again.. deciding to join the army.
21-23 - Telecoms engineer in the Royal corp of Signals, comes to an abrupt end with a knee/hip injury.
23-24 - Struggling to recover from the injury, again put on a lot of weight
24-25 - Meet a sponsored bodybuilder at work and begin training with him, also meet wife.
25 - Fittest of my life so far, but taking a metric crap tonne of ephedrine.. managing to resist the temptation of other goodies offered by Bodybuilding training partner tho.
26 - Almost split with soon to be wife as my aggression is getting too much (never directed at her) so stop training and spend more time with her.
27-34 - The nesting years, good times, lots of travel with wife, sorting out house etc etc.. but become the fattest ive ever been, peaking at 20 stone.
34 - Early mid life crisis caused by chest pains. Turns out to be nothing major, but it rings enough alarm bells to get me back in a gym.
Where i am now fitness wise is im 18 stone but having spent most of last year focusing on my strength Im quite happy where i am.
My goal last year was to hit a combined total of 500kg for the 3 power lifts, i managed to exceed that with a 240kg deadlift, 120kg bench press and 165kg squat. It did pile on a bit more bodyfat on though as i totally ignored other areas to get the lifts up.
This year ive decided to take a more BB approach, clean up my diet and try and drop my bodyweight to acceptable levels.. im not fussed about getting a ripped look, genetically im not built to look like that, but i need to get rid of the gut and moobs. I would like to maintain or even increase strength as my long term goal is to join a PL federation and start doing some meets.
Thats about it.. ive been in the USA for most of January and had a heavy cold most of december so ive spent the last week easing back into things and reminding my body that its supposed to do more than ride roller coasters and eat pancakes, but im looking forward to starting my new program and journal on saturday.
