BEFORE	AFTER
177.8 lbs.	178.2 lbs.

My Story

Everyone starts the New Year thinking of resolutions. This year mine was clear. I’d set goals before and seen them fail because they simply weren’t given the same importance as other parts of my life. This year was different – I’d aligned the goal with a promise made to the members of the Gaining Mass! program. That promise came in the form of an agreement to enter a contest – a commitment to three months of putting in my best effort to achieve as much of a physical transformation as I could.

All the tools I needed were there – the manual, the forum, the scale, the calliper and the program tracker. And I knew them well! I was a veteran of the program -- I’d spent almost two years finding ways to slowly improve by inches if not leaps and bounds but the gains were real and they were there. Gaining Mass! had worked for me but I had never been able to find a way to really commit to it – to do the whole thing.

Well, this time I was in for the real ride. Nothing would stop me from giving it my all...but a lot of things sure tried real hard to interfere.

The first and foremost consideration that lurked like an ogre was a pretty demanding full-time job. Ten to twelve hour days aren’t what you want to be doing when you undertake something that requires spare time.

Secondly, the spare time I did have was being spent on my family – a six month old daughter and a wonderful wife. Any time I was going to cut out of that “home time” was time that my wife had to compensate for and was even more time I lost with my young daughter. Kids grow up fast – I didn’t want to miss much of that.

Third, I didn’t have much of a social life (note to anyone thinking of starting a family…get ready for a lot of “nights in”) but we were lucky to have made some solid friends and I wanted to make sure that somehow my “working out” wouldn’t stop us from having some visits with them.

So…it seemed difficult. But a guy on the Gaining Mass! forums (if you haven’t gone online and joined up – do it!) who’d built a great physique told me something that stuck in my mind. When I got frustrated to the point of tears with some of the difficulties I faced I thought about what he’d said. This great quote was:

“If you want to have what most people don’t, you have to be willing to do what most people won’t.”

There is power in that thought! It might be another side of the same force of will that inspired the other quote that drove me:

“What one man has done, another can do.”

Well, it’s true we all have limited time. Yet other guys with families have great physiques. Other guys with jobs and families hit the gym, eat right – and they have what I want…a great bod!

So obviously it could be done. The question was: “How?”

Obstacle 1: Demanding Career.

I solved this by becoming a morning person. Ugh. It’s pretty darn hard to do when you’ve been up several times in the night (babies don’t like to sleep through you see…) “Too bad -- suck it up and get it over with” I told myself and that’s what I did. Fortunately, my job had flextime – I could arrive anywhere from 7 am to 10 am and leave anywhere from 4 pm onward. Typically that didn’t mean a lot because there was a lot of overtime involved…when you work that much everyone starts to arrive late because they’ve been there late the night before.

I stopped working most of my overtime, came in at 7, left at 4 (or 5), made up the extra time by working right through my lunch and by busting as hard as I could. One nice part: traffic was easier on the way in. If I absolutely had to work late, I did it on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, not Tuesday or Thursday (and if you ask why those days – more on that to follow).

Which leads us to the next challenge.

Obstacle 2: finding a Work/Workout/Home balance.

Solving obstacle one had another nice side effect – I was getting home earlier. So that meant I was able to be with my daughter long before she went to bed and also help my wife out more than I was before. So even though I loathed (and still do) getting up early, it was improving my life in a lot of ways.

One of those ways was knowing that if I took out an hour on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I’d more than made up for it by getting up early. Net effect: a gain in home time.

Now I promised to discuss why I’d picked Tuesday and Thursday as workout nights. I used Tuesday and Thursday because my wife and I used to play badminton on Fridays before the baby arrived and I insisted she go. Friday was her time away, only a couple of hours but if you do the math we each had the same amount of time for ourselves during the evening. Hers was just in one shot.

I suppose I could have used Monday and Wednesday…but I had a reason for that too (and once again, you’ll have to wait to see why!).

Some of you are going to notice that I’ve only mentioned two evenings. The Gaining Mass! program calls for three workout sessions a week. So what happened to the third session?

Sunday morning! A workout on the weekend reduced the number of weeknights I needed. Rather than Saturday, I chose Sunday because Saturday always seemed to have something “big” to do. Stores open late on a Sunday so odds were better I could keep to the schedule.

And finally, the trick that made it happen: I worked out at home. This was great – I could take advantage of opportunity (“hey, the baby just fell asleep”) or delay a workout if my wife needed “just a few minutes…please…” But it gets lonely lifting by yourself in a basement.

And that leads onto how I beat obstacle three.

Obstacle 3: Socializing.

My friends knew I was pretty serious about getting in shape. Sometimes they’d need help to move something. The training over the last couple of years has made me pretty strong so I would often be the guy they’d call. And so it came about that they wanted to “get in shape” too.

It seems that they all had things to do on Monday night. So my options being a choice of Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday…it was an easy choice.

Tuesday night became “visit night” – and our friends came over, laughed and lifted. My wife was able to join in. Whoever was “resting” ending up “holding” the baby lots of the time! But we are all close and she likes them all – good all around.

It was great – in fact it’s been great ever since and we’ve kept it up. Sunday morning we do the same thing. Thursday night was the night I left flexible – if I could do it, I did. If things came up then I’d be gracious and put off the lift but I’d pay the price Sunday because I’d “double up” and do both workouts at once. That makes you pretty sore…

Well, that’s a pattern some of you might be able to follow, a set of compromises that gets you pretty close to being able to follow the workouts that make up half the program.

And as for the other half, diet was a puzzle I solved by relying on supplements. I was up before my wife and daughter so I wanted something I could make quickly in order to not wake them up nor could I afford to waste time – I had to be out on the road as fast as possible. An MRP composed of Monster Maxx weight gainer and IsoFlex protein powder in a 1:2 ratio plus 1 scoop of creatine and a tablespoon of flax oil did the trick. Fast and nicely balanced in protein/carb/fats ratio.

Arriving at work, I had two tubs hidden under my desk (one tub of the weight gainer, the other of the protein powder) and in my 5-high cabinet, one drawer was full of vitamins, and a hand blender (I picked that up at a Wal-Mart for about $8 which to me was a great find!). Add a bit of water from the (overcrowded) sink and I was off and away. Since I was eating 3-4 times at my office, this really saved me. I was too busy for much interruption and was working through a lunch break so having this MRP was inexpensive yet very effective.

I got a free account with http://www.fitday.com and tracked my calories. Our evening meal was the one meal I didn’t measure, I would guess at it. It was a compromise – since my wife spent time putting a “real meal” together, I didn’t want to be a grump and refuse it. I simply asked that she try to focus on protein and healthy carbohydrates which she did. The day after, I would enter in the approximate amount into www.fitday.com and see just how it had affected the ratios and calories. So over time, my “guesstimates” with dinner became more and more accurate, my wife was happy, my daughter had a good example of her father having dinner with family and I was gaining while keeping the fat down!

How well did all of this work? Sometimes overtime meant I just couldn’t get workouts in – hey, you’ve got to keep your job. And a trip by my father to Australia meant time I needed to set aside to help: family’s first. Overall though the strategy was successful – I kept to almost all the workouts, diet was generally on target with occasional variances.

In terms of results, I was doing really well. The contest was getting close to finishing. It was March. I was tired, overworked, insufficient sleep – but still achieving! My strength had jumped fantastically, I was hitting personal bests on bench press each week. Then disaster! I attempted to bench 325 pounds. I couldn’t move it properly and as I left to walk around and psyche myself up, my front deltoid and trap got a horrible cramp. The pain was unbearable and to my dismay I discovered that my rear deltoid was very weak. The cramp caused my very strong front shoulder muscle to tear into my rear shoulder muscle and I ended up with a rotator cuff injury.

I had never been injured during (or as a result of) lifting and the cause was trying too hard to beat obstacles to the point where I’d ignored some warning signs.

So…

Obstacle 4: Injured.

I determined that injury wasn’t going to stop me. I switched to fat loss. At this point I was used to getting up early, so I got up a little earlier and hit the treadmill. Workouts I switched to dumbbells and flat-out avoided anything that could worsen my rotator cuff while I saw a Registered Massage Therapist and an Active Release Therapist. They gave me the advice I needed and the treatment was effective (ever notice how effective usually means “hurts like hell”?).

Lesson Learned --

There’s a way to succeed even though you must make a lot of compromises – stick to what you need to do. But be careful…force of will can make a lot of things happen that you don’t think are possible at first. Unfortunately, that list of things can include an injury!

When the going gets really, really hard -- remember two things: