Metallica’s ‘A Year and a Half in the Life of…’
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be doing a series of shorter blog posts that are intended to a bit of a ‘Day in the Life of..’ type of thing.
I got the idea after watching an old DVD I had lying around. Metallica’s ‘A Year and a Half in the Life of…’
I’d dread to think how many times I’ve seen that thing. It was on constant repeat when I was a kid, right after the release of the Black Album.
Back in the early 90’s it was all still old style VHS, and me and my brother must have pretty much wore that thing out! Not to mention the fact our parents probably lost their minds with us reciting every line word for word.
It’s what inspired me to take up the guitar and make an attempt at becoming a rock star. For the detectives out there, you can find some old videos and tracks of my band if you scour YouTube, MySpace (if it still exists), and Facebook.
You can have a pretty good laugh at my long hair and lame effort at a beard.
Now it’s Sad But True that this series of posts probably isn’t going to be as exciting, funny, and memorable as that documentary, but let’s see how close we can get.
Right now I’m sat in a coffee shop in town ploughing through some client emails and building up the courage to brave the Xmas crowds and do some last minute shopping. I thought I was pretty organised, but I can’t help but buy a few last minute treats for everyone.
This morning was the first day of my slightly modified training routine. Next week’s blog (uploading on Wednesday 28th December) goes into a lot more detail about it and lays out my new training plan for you to follow. So if you’ve got similar goals to me it’ll be well worth checking out.
Basically, I’ve decided to start another bulk cycle this winter.
Originally, I was contemplating a year of maintenance so that I could enjoy having the abs I’d worked so hard for over the summer for just a little bit longer.
But for various reasons I’ve decided to aim to build as much mass as possible in 2017. My aim is to push the limits of my physique and add shape and size to some key areas.
Ultimately, I want to compete in a physique competition. Actually scratch that. I want to WIN a physique competition. And to do that I feel as though I need to dedicate at least another year of training to pure muscle development and not worry about a 12-16 week cut right in the middle.
So. The goal is set. Win a physique competition in 2018!
Where’s my focus going to be in 2017?
Chest and Legs.
Looking back at the pics I had taken for the website a couple of months ago, I noticed that my chest could benefit from some increase in size. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not underdeveloped but it can be better.
During this bulk cycle I’ll be sacrificing arm day to focus on hitting chest and legs twice in the same week.
Let’s face it, arm day is pretty much a vanity day anyway and besides, my bicep and tricep development is pretty advanced already and I don’t need to focus on size at this stage. My aim is to get everything in the ideal proportions.
So I’ll be hitting chest twice in the week. Today was the first time of getting in that second session and it felt really good. I thought I might not be totally recovered from the first one of the week, but I was just as strong and had an awesome workout.
I mixed up the exercises, so it wasn’t a carbon copy. Watch these quick videos for a run through of the exercises from today.
Tomorrow is leg day number 2 of the week. Again, it’ll be slightly different to Saturday’s session. I’ll be focusing on a couple of different squat variations as well as some good ol’ Romanian Deadlifts for those hammies.
I’m thinking to myself that it’s a good job I’m getting the Xmas shopping in now. It could’ve been quite the challenge to get around the hoards of insane shoppers with legs of jelly, hoping they Don’t Tread On Me.
Hope you enjoyed your Monday’s people. Keep getting after it and just get stuff done, because Nothing Else Matters except progression!
Simon
p.s I make no apologies for the amount of Metallica puns in this post. In fact you could say I have No Remorse…