I know it’s been a week since we last talked, but I had to keep you wanting more. I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, but I guess I have to bring something good since it’s been a while. To start off, my sleep schedule is a mess as always. As I type this, and I type it up in sections, I just woke up from a 3 hour nap and it’s 10:00 on Friday night. Who sleeps from 7:00-10:00 PM on Friday? Only me I guess. I wanted to stay up late tonight, so I was due, plus last night I got about 4 hours sleep for a work night, came home to workout and I was done. Speaking of working out, per Dom’s request, I’ll break down my workout routine later in this Blog. Other than that, I’ll talk a little wrestling, an interesting ball story, and some CD action.
I’ll start out with a new book I got. The wrestling fans will be the only ones interested, but I can’t always have a topic for everyone. The legendary Terry Funk recently came out with a book called Terry Funk: More Than Just Hardcore. He’s now 60 years old, 61 in June, and has more stories than you can imagine. He’s been all over the world and still gets it done in the wrestling ring. How many 60-year old guys do you know who can still do a Moonsault? I’m only 45 pages in and can’t put the book down.
Thursday night at ball was one of the worst balls nights we’ve had in a while. I don’t ask for much on ball nights at Big Elm. We have 4 hours a week to play (Tuesday and Thursday nights). I’m happy just to be there and get away from my normal schedule, hang with my boys, have some good runs, and just enjoy it while I can still play well. It’s that simple. If I have a great night of playing personally, that adds to it, but it’s not necessary. The only thing I don’t want is drama. Well, Thursday, we got drama. I’ll probably end up going off on a tangent here, but just let me vent. A guy we call Crazy Gunner Dude (given by DerekHood) always brings about some kind of stupid thing along. You know that type of guy. The guy who shoots way too much, yet has no business doing so. If you’re hot, you can gun all you want, but know your role out there, especially when you’re not that good. Anyways, Crazy Gunner Dude brings his chick to play. Uh oh. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a shot at chicks, but they have no business whatsoever playing basketball with guys. They just can’t hang physically, it’s true. And they’re not as quick no matter what you think. Well, that night we had 9 people playing and we run 4-on-4 full court. After one game, the guy sitting picks up. I nicely sit myself the first game so she can get a game in. After that, she takes her seat to the bench. It’s only expected that the chick would get sat down in the next pickup game. Well, she flips out. First off, she’s an awful player, even for chicks ball standards, but she has emotional baggage to go with it. Just great. Then she starts throwing stuff around and turns into drama central. She runs out the door beating on stuff and we’re cracking up. Crazy Gunner Dude then goes out to console her, ugh. After a while, we cuss him to get him back in to play and to deal with that later. Ball is no time to handle chick problems. Then she comes back with her Dad. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, it’s already a messed up story. Not sure what he thought he was going to do. Then she flips again and says she’s going to go talk to another buddy of ours for advice. The buddy comes back and tells us the drama that is going on and can’t believe it either. That’s when Crazy Gunner Dude goes outside and talks to her some more. He was out there a good half hour. Normally, let him stay out there, but when we only had 8 guys playing, we actually needed the dude on the court to make even teams. To make a long story short, after everyone cusses this kid to get him back on the court, we play a few more games. Then everyone goes off on him (deservedly so). As I’ve said in here before, 99% of the time, especially when I’m not playing ball, I’m very calm and don’t cuss too much. It takes a lot to fire me up and I can get along with anyone. I felt like I had a roid rage that night, just being honest and launching f-bombs like it’s my job (my barber teaches me well) and we all went crazy because this kid ruined our night of ball. Things should get interesting on Tuesday and Thursday of next week, because some of my crew definitely won’t take any of this on a regular basis again.
I got a few new CDs over the week. One decent, another awful. The first one I got is the Choices II Soundtrack. This is Three 6 Mafia stuff for those who are wondering about that. The first soundtrack is really good, so I had to try for the latest. A good crew on this album other than Three 6 of course, also features Trillville and Lil Flip. If you need something to wake you up, pop in this CD. Three 6 just screams and yells the same stuff over and over, but I’ve never minded their stuff. The second CD I loaded up on is Ludacris’ new boy, Bobby Valentino, his self-titled album. A thug with the name of Bobby Valentino? When I see that name, you’d think he was bred in the Mafia. Anyways, this guy is a pimpin’ R&B type singer and it’s not too good. I have to be in the mood to listen to this stuff, but it grows on me usually, except this CD didn’t. His single, Slow Down, is about the only good thing I’ve heard. 20 songs on this album, and I was able to make it through 10 before giving up on it. Maybe I’ll give it another try one day.
Fantasy basketball season is over. This takes up most of my time and it’s one of my favorite things to do, if not my favorite. It consumes my life and I like it that way. I guess that’s why I’m single. We’ve been doing this for years and I’ve won the big money for the past 3 years. My reign of terror is finally over and I didn’t even get to place in any of the money spots this year. The 2004-05 E-Town Diaper Dandies Fantasy League Champion (EDDFL) is none other than Steve Sidell for the locals. 2nd Place is my boy Spank and 3rd is one the Blog fans all know, my buddy Cork. All of those guys ended up getting cash to blow on who knows what. Video games, porn, strippers, Gatorade, you name it. I don’t have any excuses for my team. Sure, I had some injuries, but who doesn’t? I just didn’t have that deep of a team this year. It happens. I’ll be back.
In comments on my last Blog, Dom wanted me to touch on my current workout schedule. I could get really in-depth with this, but I’ll try to condense it down for those not following along. Right now I’m on a 3-day routine. On this routine, I workout 2 days in a row, take 1 day off, go 2 days back on, 1 day off, etc. Day 1 features Chest and Triceps. Day 2 is Legs and Biceps. Day 3 is Shoulders and Back. On each of those days, I do Abs as well. I switch it up on each day as far as what exercises I do, but here are the exercises I rotate around for each body part:
Chest: Flat bench presses, incline dumbbell presses, decline bench presses, flat dumbbell flies, and decline push ups. Due to hitting each body part roughly twice a week, I’m doing about 10-12 sets of each part during a workout. With that, you can’t slack though as you have to push yourself hard on each exercise. I try not to get caught up in numbers though. As a smaller dude, I know I can’t compete with the roid freaks anyways, but I focus more on getting ripped up. I don’t max a lot, especially on the bench, but I do pretty well when I do for a little guy. My max is 250 and I did that while I weighed 158. My goal is to get 100 pounds more than my weight up. I’ve been very close over the years, but never got that mark yet. Pound-for-pound (yeah, all little guys use that one) I hang good. I range between 155-160 on my weight and have been the same weight now for about 10 years solid, true story.
Triceps: Cable pushdowns, Cable over-the-head kickouts, dips, and tricep over-the-head barbell extensions. Dips with a weighted vest are mean and I like doing those a lot for an extra burn. I see a lot of guys with good biceps, but awful looking triceps and that’s not a good balance. Work out both if you want the full result.
Legs: Squats, dumbbell lunges, and leg presses. By playing ball a few times a week at least, I can’t go hardcore on legs in the gym or I won’t have anything left. I’m not big into going heavy on legs anyways, because it can be brutal on your knees. And knock on wood, I haven’t had many leg problems over the years. If you’re looking into something that will straight pump your legs and hamstrings up, you need to do dumbbell lunges and go way down. That first time you do them, you’ll be a mess the next morning, but it’s worth it. I’ve seen a lot of gains by doing this exercise. On the leg press machine I use, I’m not seated. I’m flat on my back and the machine presses up in the air if that makes sense. If you have bad knees, this is definitely not the exercise you want to be doing. Also as far as legs, but I do this at home, is stretching. I take pride in being really flexible and being able to do splits and things of that nature. Not bad for an old guy huh? I make sure to have a stretch routine everyday to make sure I can keep that up. Not many of my guy buddies can stretch well, but I don’t even know too many chicks who can stretch as well as I can, especially the ones not my age. I’m not just tooting my own horn, just making a statement. I’m sure some teenage chicks can do some crazy stuff, but I have like 10 years on those kids.
Biceps: Preacher curls, stand up barbell curls, dumbbell curls, and 21s. I’ve been making some nice gains on curls lately. You may call 21s something different from where you’re from, but that’s what I’ve always known them by. After you do these at the end of your workout, your arms are shaking so bad and you really feel it. To explain that, use a bar and very little weight. I just put 10s on each side and that’s plenty to get the job done, trust me. You start out by doing 7 reps from your chest up to your chin. Then you take it down and do 7 reps from your waist to your chest. Then you do 7 full reps from your waist to your chin. It doesn’t sound like much, but you’ll be dead after a few sets of this and may not be able to do 21 reps each time, but do what you can.
Shoulders: Behind-the-neck presses, military presses, barbell shrugs, dumbbell shrugs, dumbbell pull-ups, front dumbbell extensions, and shoulder flies. This is one of the things I can actually hang with the big guys on. I’ve always been strong on shoulders for some reason and behind-the-neck presses are probably my favorite thing to do in the gym. Front dumbbell extensions are tough to do, but if you do them strict, they pay off for you.
Back: Front chin-ups, Behind-the-neck chin-ups, front lat pulls, behind-the-back lat pulls, seated rows, and bent-over rows. I absolutely hate doing back, even though it’s important. You need a strong back and abs since it’s the centerpoint of your body. I just don’t push myself as much as I should on back. I can rip of chin-ups like a madman (that is to my advantage being a little guy), but I get complacent with being able to do a certain number that I stop. I’ve stepped it up lately, but I still need to get on track with more back exercises.
I know I wrote a bunch there, but the masses requested that, so there ya go Dom and everyone else. Hope that gives you a little idea of what I do, without putting up numbers there. Numbers are overrated anyways, or at least I think so. Sure, it’s a bonus if you can push weight like crazy, but it’s not necessary. Or as Ice Cube would say, pushing rhymes like weight. I’d rather be ripped up and be happy with how I look rather than just going after what I can bench and not focusing on the all around goal. Maybe that works for the big guys, but not me.
3 Quick Thangs:
1. NBA Playoffs start tonight and I didn’t hype that up in this space? Don’t worry, I will. Pacers at Celtics! Game 1! 8:00!
2. Crazy that it’s almost May and there is snow predicted for the big Dub-V this weekend.
3. Right now I’m drinking some Donald Duck brand orange juice, mmm..
No comments:
Post a Comment