Striving Towards the Ideal Body — Part IV
This is part IV of my journey through the fitness world. If you haven’t read the first three parts, you can read them here, here and here.
The next pit stop in my quest for the ideal physique was going to be very interesting. After learning that running was not going to be feasible, my thinking had morphed. I had other goals in mind.
I signed up for this gym which looked great. They had all the equipment any fitness buff could think of. They even had a swimming pool which caught my interest too. When I saw the trainers, I was in awe. They were huge looking people. They had muscles where I didn’t know you could have muscles. I knew at this point that I wanted to get bigger.
I was not paying for a trainer but this guy was very good to me and would help me out with all my workouts. He did my measurements to start with and subsequently every month. He made my programs and changed them every so often to make sure I was not plateauing.
Pretty soon, I started lifting some serious weight. I was curling 30 kilogram dumbbells. My bench press was about 60 kilograms and I was loving the size increase I was seeing. All my shirts were now tight.
There was a small problem which surfaced though. Every other day, a group of friends assembled and we played soccer (football). I am very accident prone; every so often I’d twist my ankles. I never broke anything but the nut that I was on the field, I’d twist an ankle or two and continue playing.
My trainer at the gym was not a huge fan of my soccer addiction. He asked me to stop playing as it was affecting my routine there according to him. However, I kept playing as I was crazy about the game.
I still kept getting bigger. However, the training mostly consisted of low weight high rep sets. I was indulging myself in bodybuilding. I looked big for sure, but I am not sure if I was really strong. I remember that even though I could bench 60 plus kilos, I couldn’t do a single pull up! I was building muscle imbalances without knowing. I thought I was doing great but looking back, I could have done a lot better.
It took me a little while to understand that size doesn’t equate to strength.
Read part 5 to this story here.
