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Having trained on and off for the best part of 12 years, I thought it was best to get my fat lazy ass back into the dungeon! It has been 3.5 years since I was last in decent shape, and quite possibly the best shape of my life. May 2005, Dean, Aaron, Dan (my bro) and I were kicking some serious ass. The gym became our battleground, and the free weights became our weapons of choice!

Back then I remember back squatting around 150kg, my best was 180kg – way back in my Olympic weightlifting days! I was bench pressing 120kg for multiple reps, and needless to say we were in the zone! So much hard work, naturally, without the assistance of performance enhancing drugs. Only regular intake of good quality protein supplemented with Creatine and Glutamine.

So here I am 3.5 years later, in a different country to my fellow warriors, looking rather worse for wear, and with the wife realizing that perhaps I am not quite the same guy she fell in love with. I am less than 2 years from 30 and hardly have the base fitness levels to compete in any sport (chess aside) so perhaps now is time I actually do something about it, before it gets too late to bother!

For some strange reason I found motivation? My brother in law Gary is currently living with us Down Under, and he found my motivation too. We decided to check out our local gym, yeah it is slightly commercial in that it caters for all users, but it has the raw materials to achieve godlike physiques! We joined, and so far having had just 4 sessions I have this amazing buzz back, just like I had in the trenches all those years ago. There are less warriors this time around, just Gary and I. But I am passing on years of knowledge, and years of battles won against the steel of barbells to my new young apprentice.

We are hitting our second chest & legs session tonight, and I am looking to bench press 75kg, and then squat 85kg. I know I can do more, but I am trying to break myself back into the zone. I am currently weighing about 93kg, no doubt my heaviest in my life and my new partner is not quite up to 60kg. We are complete opposite ends of the spectrum, I need to cut up, he needs to bulk up, but the common goal and focus to lift good heavy weights and look pretty good is the key motivational tool.

So this section of my blog will be dedicated to my fitness and workouts. I will endeavour to update it weekly, discuss training, muscle groups, nutrition and supplements. And I will also try and add photo updates!

This photo is a little old, taken about 10 months ago, when I was actually in better shape than I am now. Hopefully by the end of Feb (my 29th Birthday) I will be able to post a picture with a much improved physique. Unfortunately I don’t dare put a current picture live on the net.

I have neglected my blog for a few weeks, not because I wanted to, more because I was stacked with a project which took up far too much my free time.

I have always believed in doing whatever is needed in order to get job done. That collective team togetherness, working under pressure, can create amazing results. Perhaps for a few days it is ok, but when the past 5 weeks of your life have been systematically taken over by something else it becomes far too much, even for me!

I am a perfectionist, I am creative, and I personally feel responsible for the work I do. My parents drilled into me that level of responsibility and so I generally will do what it takes to get the job done. Sadly 100 hour working weeks are way over-rated and as that was the culmination of 5 weeks of intensive work I can honestly say now, was it worth it? The job got done, by all accounts it was considered reasonably successful. I got to work with some great people with a real “can do” attitude. I managed to get my team of people motivated and working in unison for a common cause. On the face of it, I should be proud of the achievement.

You see for every hour outside of work I spent on that project, I spent another hour away from my wife and my home. Having moved to Australia together, she shouldn’t have gone without her husband for that amount of time. I enjoy our time together, and for the small amount of time I was at home, I spent most of it complaining about the project. The past 5 weeks have put a tremendous strain on our marriage, no reward, financial or otherwise was worth that strain.

My boss spoke about how impressed he was with my performance, and that my work was beyond exceptional, but was it really worth having to work to that level, under that amount of stress, and putting both myself and my wife through all that?

Quite simply the answer is no, regardless of how impressed many people are/were with the project, personally for me I am quite sad that what is truly important in my life (wife & family) were relegated whilst something else took priority for 5 weeks of my life. You cannot put a value on time, those 5 weeks are lost, never to be replaced again, no praise, money or time off could account for those lost hours.

Part of the reason I left the UK to move to Australia was to get the whole work/life balance correct, having nearly worked to the point of mental and physical exhaustion I can honestly say I never want to be that involved with a project ever again, life is too short, and quite frankly I don’t get paid anywhere near enough for that.

So rather than thanking the countless people who actually made the project a possibility, and there are a lot of thank you’s needed, instead I would like to say sorry to my wife for not being around much the past few weeks. I work to live, I work so I can enjoy a good life with my wife, for us to enjoy our time together. I’m sorry the past few weeks have not reflected that, and only hope I never have to do this again!

Love ya babes