We Threw Golf Balls at Trains (Part 3) – Mad Chaos: November 20, 1998

Calves Chests and Abs

February 21st 1994 was the first day I entered the Gym again for 1994 where I do believe I caused quit an upset to my growing body. This was also the year that friends came to visit the Gym with us including people from Imad’s old street and I do believe we bumped into Kuper around the start of 1994. Back then it used to be competitions with Imad, Kuper and I where Imad always thought he had the best Calves but really, they were mostly fat that held the clump together.

Kuper undoubtedly had the biggest Chest and a wide back for his tall body but without fail, I was always the one seen with the hardest abdominals. Now I remember, Tobin was the guy that used to hang out with Lonnie incase you are wondering who the other fella was. Tobin also came down to the Gym and we had all seen him as scrawny, loud but I admired his forearms, chiseled like rock.

Where My Stomach Went

Everyone had a dominant muscle group back then but to look at me now you would differ with the strength of my abdominals. No longer are they rock hard and as everyone keeps telling me that I’ve put on weight around that area (Where I really haven’t put on that much) I am fighting to get fit once more, for myself and for summer. Now that I have just measured myself in the normal fashion my stomach was 31.8 inches.

Looking back five years to 1993’s best measurements of my waist I can see that I’ve gained 5 inches, one inch for every year. I still don’t feel that I’ve gained too much weight, if I measured the rest of my body now I would be able to tell if my stomach has grown out of proportion to the rest of my body as it is now and as it was five years ago.

My Peak Measurements

For recollections sake let me now record my best measurements for 1994 but not for 1995 as I stopped formally measuring myself seeing this as a stressing factor of my working out. My best measurements for 1994 were as follows and once again all in inches… Chest 39.2, Biceps 12.9, Forearm 11.8, Shoulder 17, Neck 14, Waist 27.1, Hips 35, Thigh 22.1 and Calf which was 14.2 inches. My weight had boomed from the pervious year to 60 Kilograms when first I weighed myself in February 1994 and my heaviest weight was 64 Kilograms in June. My height had boomed also to 65.5 inches where I have now grown almost to 67 inches.

A New Training Cycle

The last week of April in 1994 was when I started a brand new and exciting cycle to my world of bodybuilding. By now I had spent many hours studying books of anatomy and normal muscle magazines for new programs that would work for me as well as a whole new approach to weightlifting. This approach marked the start of my weight lifting progress and from this new Cycle I recorded the highest poundage for each exercise that I lifted that day.

This of course became my new standard as you have seen countless times in my Diary but as I always need to advance my ideas I became more instructive in how I went about performing my sets instead of just labeling my workout. My computerized Diary brought a whole new aspect to detailing my progressive workouts and instead of being precise I could now be more literate in the essence that I was explaining my workout like a novel. Of course, this didn’t come to be until March in 1996 but we shall soon get to that since I’ve come so far into the past now…

The push for fresh and unseasoned methods came to me with my new cycle at the end of April and with it came principles like Giant sets, staggered sets, negative reps, supersets, descending sets and many other ‘Weider’ devised principles. This cycle led to my interest in taking my first set of pictures of my muscular body and I know that Kuper and Osama were definitely known to me now. May 29th 1994 was the date that we actually took the pictures and I remember it was at my house, the lighting was dull and we were posing to my life sized mirrors on my wardrobe.

When we liked our pose we had either person snap a picture. Kuper was competitive back then and he still is now but he tries to keep his competition modest by disguising his intentions. Once a communist always a communist I say, just a joke.

Double Splits and Exhaustion

Around the start of June 1994 of course was about the time I read about Biorhythm cycles and decided to incorporate this method into my exercise regime. I think what fascinated me most about this cyclic system was that when a person was born the three cycles are all at zero. The very first day of your birth is the only day they eclipse each other as being the very first positive day of each cycle. Only until you turn 40 or around there do your cycles eclipse once again, cool.

Near the middle of June 1994 I also began double splits, which meant I worked in the morning and then in the afternoon, each time on different body-parts. This came into full swing at the end of June where I once again worked out six days a week and done double splits at least four times a week. Within three months of strenuously exercising my body and forcing it to shape up I started doing heavy breathing exercises to strengthen and broaden my Chest cavity. Around this time was when my Aunty ‘Teta Mitza’ gave my parents an exercise bike and I rode it 60 kilometers at a time, at least twice a week.

In all the muscular excitement I also accomplished spending time in the sauna, the spa and I worked out on the treadmill a couple of times. Over-training became evident with all this undue pressure on my body to perform and I soon stopped training for a week at the end of August and stopped completely mid September for a couple of weeks to question my purpose. This was definitely over-training directly resulting from my picking up the pace in June through these hectic times.

Heavy Duty Training

The 1st of August 1994 brought about the ‘Mentzer’ Heavy Duty Training style. Similar to that of Dorian Yates workouts you do two sets of warm-ups on a certain exercise and then the last exercise is all out heavy for 8-10 reps. Around this time was when I also started recording the amount of time I spent in the Gym so I could better understand how grueling or how fast my workout had become. The faster I worked out the more focused I seemed as I was always looking at the time and forcing myself upon the weights for the sake of finishing ten minutes earlier.

Golf Balls at Trains

September 6th 1994 was the date where Jett, Fred, myself and some others headed to the golf range and that’s where I sprained my ankle. This is known as I have noted it in my Diary for that day. While at the Golf range in Macarthur Square’s Campus Jett hit a couple of balls onto the field and I had my go. Walking onto the field we collected the balls that we hit and while down there we threw a couple at oncoming trains but none of them hit. Jett’s aim was to hit the ball far enough to catch a train on it’s way to Macarthur Square but he wasn’t that good a shot.

Walking on our way back to the station I stepped on an elevated part of the walkway and as a result my leg slipped to one side and I sprained my ankle. It was swollen rather large and as I limped the rest of the way I was lucky for it not to happen again. There I was peaceably walking when it happened to me again, my foot slipped on the elevated part of the walkway. Luckily my other foot didn’t suffer the same consequence but it felt like it was just about to sprain.

That took me a couple of days to heal from, that’s what I remember. To the train station we kept throwing golf balls that we had saved at rounded lights on the campus and shook some of them so much that we turned them off. We caused so much havoc with the boom gates that the security ended up driving out but we were gone by that time.