My Teenage Body Was a Science Project (Part 2) – Mad Chaos: November 20, 1998

Quiet High School Years

Through high school I was pretty much a nerd, well not a nerd but I kept to myself. Arnold used to pick on me and Imad plenty and I used to have run ins with Lonnie but now we are on friendly speaking terms. There were no real girls in my life until Linda who used to visit Cara (Who is now going out with Sione) across from Johnnie’s house. I wrote her a long letter, God knows what it said in it but she’s probably laughing at it right now.

Linda got herself pregnant, something I noted a week or two ago. Of course, there was the other Linda (I think is her name) that knew Felicity that lived next to Tatton’s house when he too used to live in Airds with Keith, Imad, Sione, Nina and Candice. I remember her well and I remember that my smooth trademark started with her.

The Kiss That Went Nowhere

I’m pretty sure I’ve explained my night with Linda and then the desperate letter I sent to her the day after but let me just recite once more in quick detail. That night passion was flowing through the air as I was over Felicity’s house and Linda was lying with her legs touching mine as I sat on Felicity’s couch. They were all getting stoned apart from us youngins but as the night grew old I slept at Imad’s house.

Before I left Linda had already gone off to bed and walking upstairs to say goodnight to her she was asleep or pretending to be so I gave her a kiss, pretty foolish and obtrusive now that I can reflect upon it. The next morning I woke up early so it was on a weekend. That morning Linda was heading home and as she was packing and she was walking up and down the stairs trying to avoid me I stopped her asked her “What’s wrong” and as we stopped and glanced in each other’s eyes I leant over to her, placed my hand through her flowing hair and touched her lips pubescent with mine.

After a kiss in which Linda took part in she stopped it short and I left confused. After that was when I sent my letter to Linda because she was afraid to talk to me. Now I believe that was to be because she was probably awake when I walked upstairs and became afraid of me but I could be wrong.

The Start of Fitness

1992 was when I started doing pushups and sit-ups and even though it’s not recorded I believe that I started exercising around August 1992. This was for the reason that I had seen my belly getting bigger so the quick fix for me was weights and I never turned back. To me weights came easy and what I remember about my beginning days of fitness was the laps around my pool. Back in the days we used to have a pool in my backyard but dad took it out a couple of years after we moved here because it was never clean and the filter was broken.

Lap after lap I used to run around the pool often doing 50 laps per cycle. It used to be strenuous but I was keen on getting rid of my body fat and that I did in a big way given time.

My Paperback Gym Diary

1993 was the year that I actually started recording my progress in a paperback Diary that I had bought from the Newsagent. My brother had purchased a bar and Bench Press for the house so I started with the weights we had and also done sit ups and push ups. My brother kept telling me that it would stunt my growth but I guess I didn’t know any better back then.

All I could think of was getting bigger and more people having respect for me in hopes that one day Arnold would stop picking on me and guess what, he did. Arnold and I now that we are out of school are on speaking terms which usually happens after people leave school.

Downstairs Room Changed Everything

The very first day of April in 1993 (April Fools Day) I began training more seriously on my body and knowing the terminology of all my exercises I can only assume that I started collecting bodybuilding magazines by this time. Back around this time I also used to live upstairs in the room opposing the bathroom and my mum’s room. This was before my brother moved out and decided to let me live downstairs in his room. To me this was the greatest move towards independency and if this move hadn’t happened I probably would still have been somewhat of a prune.

Just imagine that I would have had to take Pavlina, Kathryn and all the other girls into my small room upstairs to play around with them. Of course, I would have been too shy and ashamed to take them upstairs and with that confidence gone I probably would have been like Tatton and without womanly affection for a long time. The room was given to me around 1995 or just beforehand but I can’t make a real judgment because I can’t remember.

Fuck, I’m still wondering what I would have turned out like if this chance of taking my brothers room went astray. I wouldn’t have big speakers, no sound system, no video or television. I probably would have rotted away playing my computer all day and decided to sleep out more often in the chance to pick up girls.

Training Every Single Day

Around the middle of May in 1993 was when I started excessively working out so I must have gotten bored after school. At times I would work out seven days a week and the next week I would work six days. This of course led to my very first over-training but being so young and full of energy I lasted through this phase of working out every single day for a while.

Around the middle of May was when I also started incorporating the Gym into my workouts and my visits there were copious. Imad and I started going off to the Gym together at ‘Feelin Fit’ in Campbelltown but much later we started hooking up with Kuper. Kuper’s involvement with me became important and prevalent to my continued working out as my time at the Gym progressed.

Nearing the middle of September in 1993 was when my over-training took effect and after a week or two of rest I began once again on a more smarter working out regime. In November 1993 was when I started using the Matrix System which I think as I recall meant you had to take the weight up and down very slowly. Matrix training also could have been half reps going up and down and incorporating quarter reps and other techniques similar. The Bodybuilding books were my bible and I believe that was a direct result of me getting rock hard abdominals and a chiseled but ectomorphic body.

Measuring Every Inch

Over-training started becoming evident nearing the end of 1993 so you could gather that I was also making some improvements. In my 1993 Diary I kept a fortnightly check on how big my muscle groups were getting. Every fortnight I would measure major body-parts and then work on them accordingly. The first recording was on June 6th 1993 where my neck measured 13.5 (All scaled in inches), Biceps 11, Forearm 10, Chest 33.5, Waist 28, Hips, 30.5, Thighs 18.5, Calf 12.5 and I also measured my wrist and ankle which were respectfully 6.5 and 8.5.

Back when I started measuring myself. I also weighed myself, measured my height and using my knowledge from muscle magazines came up with a conversion to measure my weight per inch. Weighing 55 Kg and at a height of 62 Inches my Weight per inch was 1.164. My last recording for the end of 1993 or the biggest I ever achieved for each body-part was as such… Neck 15 (All once again in inches), Biceps 12, Forearm 11.1, Chest 36.8, Waist 26.8 (Aimed to get it skinnier), Hips 33.9, Thighs 20.7, Calf 13.7, Wrist 6.9 and ankle which was 9.2 inches. My weight didn’t jump very far to 56 Kilograms but my height exceeded 63.5 inches.

Biorhythm Cycles Explained

1994 was the year of serious bodybuilding gains and this was also the year I started to incorporate Biorhythm cycles. Basically put, there were three biorhythm cycles, physical, emotional and mental. They each ran for successive days in accordance where the physical aspect ran for 23 day cycles, emotional for 28 days and mental for 33 days. Each biorhythm cycle runs in a positive and negative side and they each have the same amount of days from a cycle. For example, the emotional cycle runs for 28 days so there would be 14 positive days firstly and then 14 negative days.

Now, when you are in your positive stages say for your physical cycle you can expect a better workout. If you were on your negative part of the cycle for your body then you could probably expect to over-train easily. If two or more negative cycles were on the same day then you would more or less have a shitter where you won’t have good imaginative thoughts, your body will be lagging and you will feel like crying for having a boring day.

Biorhythms Meet the Gym

The reason I started with biorhythm cycles in 1994 (In the middle of June to be more precise) was for the fact that I was getting more serious and any edge over knowing when to train harder and when to ease up was a good advantage.

Starting in 1994 after a months resting (Or partying for the holidays) I became a little more technical with my style of recording my weight program. No longer did I just write down how much reps done and the type of exercise but I also recorded the amount of sets. By now I had a visual understanding of what over-training’s effect had upon me and I started to record things like how good my muscle tone started looking after a certain workout or that I worked my biceps harder than usual.

Back in 1993 I didn’t write anything but my workouts in my Diary and that’s a bit of a shame because now I can’t look back upon my Diary and see what else I was doing in my life.