My name is Matthew Richards, this is my first crack at creating a blog so bare with me on this process of making this blog as cool as possible. Here is some quick information about me. I am 26 years old. Currently 205 pounds at 5ft 6in. I am a current massage therapist student and I have a passion for all things strength related. I am a student of the iron and been studying under the bar since the summer before I became a junior in high school.
My athletic life started when I was fairly young. I played soccer as a boy in them young children leagues. I was fairly good at this but when my growth spurt hit I started having very painful legs. They ended up being really bad shin splints and I was diagnosed with having very flat feet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_feet
I had my arches after this but they only helped so much. I stopped playing sports, fast forward to 9th grade (it may of been between 8th-9th grade) we started expanding the lawn. At my mother's house there are plenty of trees. The back yard was in need of an extensions. The cutting of the trees began. At this time though I didn't know it I was what you would call "skinny-fat." I was a killer on the video games. Needless to say I was very out of shape.
It was summer and the trees started to come down. I had to help move them, chop them, and stack the wood. I remember hating it. It is hard work to drag, lift, swing, toss, and stack wood. I hated being sore, I hated my hands being torn up.
After about 2 weeks of this I started to really adapt, my body was becoming stronger. What was hard just a couple weeks ago was starting to become easy. I could feel myself starting to become leaner and feel my muscles working. It was a good feeling. I wouldn't call it "fun" work but I stopped hating it.
Once this work was finished I remembered in the basement stored away as my step father's old weight set. It was one of them old plastic filled with cement weight sets. It had a really old book filled with pictures of exercises and how to do them. I started working out with the weight set not knowing a damn thing. I remember loading up the barbell and doing 100 reps of curls until my biceps cramped up on me. I remember repping out on the bench to have it get stuck on my chest and needing to do the roll of shame or dumping the plates off the end. I started reading magazines and on the internet about bodybuilding.
A cousin of mine really wanted me to come out for football. It was the end of my 9th grade experience in high school. He showed me drills and exercises they make you do for football. I remember walking into the weight room at the school. They had a janitors closet that had a squat rack, a smith machine, and a deadlift platform. The other room had one of them super old universal machines. It was basically a bunch of circuit machines put together. In that same room there was a pull up bar, an incline bench, a flat bench, and a dumbbell rack. I believe the heaviest dumbbell was 70 or 80 pounds. I remember trying to pick it up and hardly budging it.
The program the school uses is http://biggerfasterstronger.com/home/home.asp. It is a great program. It was my 1st time using a program/template instead of just screwing around with a bunch of exercises. I started following this program the summer of before 10th grade. By the time I was a senior my bench went from around 100 pounds to 250pounds, my squat around 100 pounds to 405 with a belt (I don't know if it was parallel or not). I forget my other numbers but I remember my max power clean being around 250-275 and trap bar deadlifting mid 400s. My weight stayed about the same but I became clearly leaner at 175-180 range. I started on the football team 11th-12th grade and did track and field (track and field was really off season football training).
After school ended I messed around with powerlifting. I did two meets. The first meet was a great experience. I squatted 365? benched 225 (coming back from a shoulder injury) and deadlift 425 http://www.ironasylumgym.com/ap2006/mattrichards After this meet I injured my low back training for the next meet. I was being stupid and squatting without spotters and without setting the catch pins in the rack (I became used to using the monolift and having spotters). I got stuck at the bottom of the lift and had to dump the bar overhead. This injury set me back many months. I ended up coming back from it and doing this meet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=craWhcO7LN8&list=FLjaMA6Gsc2NahlEt6pB3Q6w&index=75&feature=plpp_video
I am proud of them numbers, but I was also fat. This was the last time I was serious about training again. I had a couple stints of working hard but allowing life to get in the way. I started becoming the concepts that I strongly disliked. I started saying shit like "I will start next week." "I don't have time to workout or eat right anymore." I hated this.
So what is the point of all of this. I am writing this blog for several reasons. One is to track my progress and share with others. I been following Gabe's blog. He did the 5/3/1 for a year and now his new blog http://600lbs.blogspot.com/. He has come a long way, amazing progress.
I am also writing this blog to practice my computer and writing skills. I have been thinking about writing for awhile now. "So I said well dummy you will only get better at it if you start doing it."
Goals: Get leaner, I want to see my abs again.
Increase my mobility (I currently can't squat or deadlift without my low back rounding over and hurting my spine)
Increase conditioning (pushing the prowler will always suck, but right now it REALLY SUCKS)
Maintain/build strength
Why do I want to get leaner and increase conditioning? Because I am sick of feeling and looking fat. I am in the holistic health industry as student of massage therapy. It pays to be in shape. I believe it will make clients have more confidence in you. I want to be healthier. What is the point of being strong if you are too out of shape to go for a long walk or hike?
Why do I want to increase my mobility? Because I am fairly inflexible and it is hurting me. In high school we stretched all the time. It was part of the team workouts for warm up and cool down. After school was done and I worked out on my own stretching was slowly killed off due to time restrains. Now I can feel the difference. I used to be able to squat well below parallel without losing the curves of my spine. Now I am lucky to get halfway to parallel keeping my curves. Squatting and deadlifting with tight hips is a back injury waiting to happen.
Why do I want to maintain/build strength? I hope this is obvious. I want to build strength everywhere! Now saying that I know it may not happen. My number 1 goal right now is lean out and get my body moving healthy again. I do know my core, glutes, and lateral rotators of my shoulder are fairly weak. So I expect them to get stronger. The rest will do as they will.
My next post will be my plan on how to achieve this and more stats, I need to explore blog building more as well.
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