BARKING MAD!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought my little Ollie was a weirdo, but this cat is crazy! check him out he is barking out the window until he realizes he is being watched then he switches back to meowing! what a little NUTTER!

As you may have noticed I love cats they are all mental!

Hero Figure SERGIO (The Myth) OLIVA

Damn! now that's what I call an arm!
You can imagine sergio's pool cue looking like a kebab stick skewered with pool balls after he take's a shot with those massive arms,

Early life

Oliva was born in Cuba on July 4, 1941. At the age of twelve he worked with his father in the sugar cane fields of Guambaco. When Oliva was 16, his father suggested that he enlist in Fulgencio Batista's army. In the absence of a birth certificate, the recruiting officer took the senior Oliva's word that his son was old enough to enlist in the fight against communism.

After losing the war to Fidel Castro, Oliva stayed local and took to hanging out at the beach. There he met a fellow sun worshipper who invited him to the local weightlifting club. After just six months of training Oliva was doing clean & jerks with over 300 pounds and totaling 1000 pounds in the three Olympic lifts at a bodyweight of 195 lbs, considered a middle-heavyweight.

Because of an injury of the top weightlifter, Alberto R. Games, he was chosen to represent Cuba at the 1962 Central America Games hosted in Kingston, Jamaica. In 1962 the National Weightlifting Championship for Cuba was won by Alberto Rey Games Hernandez; Sergio Oliva took second place. Alberto Games was unable to attend the Central American Games because of an injury.

During his stay in Jamaica, Oliva snuck out of his quarters while the guards were distracted. He ran at top speed until he was safely inside the American consulate. Arriving breathlessly he demanded and received political asylum. Soon, sixty-five other Cuban nationals followed him, including Castro's entire weightlifting team. Soon afterward, Oliva was living in Miami, Florida working as a TV repairman.

Life in the United States

In 1963 Oliva moved to Chicago, Illinois. There he worked at a local steel mill and began working out at the Duncan YMCA. Working 10-12 hour days at the steel mill and putting in another 2.5–3 hours at the gym gave Oliva very little time for anything else. Soon the bodybuilding grapevine was abuzz with gossip about a Cuban powerhouse who lifted more than any of the local Olympic champs. Oliva won his first bodybuilding competition the Mr. Chicagoland contest in 1963. Then he was successful again at the Mr. Illinois in 1964 but he lost in 1965 at the AAU Jr. Mr. America winning 2nd place even though he won the trophy for "Most Muscular". In 1966, he won the AAU Jr. Mr. America and again he claimed the trophy for "Most Muscular". He then joined the International Federation of BodyBuilders IFBB in which he won both the professional Mr. World and Mr. Universe Contests. In 1967 he won the prestigious Mr. Olympia contest, making him the undisputed world champion of bodybuilding.

Oliva then went on to win the Mr. Olympia title three years in a row. At 5 feet 9 inches and at a contest weight that varied between 240-255 lbs.

Distinctions

• The first non-white athlete to win Mr. America, Mr. World, Mr. International, Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia.
• The second bodybuilder to win the Mr.Olympia competition.
• The only bodybuilder to ever defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Mr Olympia contest, 1969.
• The only Mr. Olympia champion to ever win uncontested in 1968.

                             Sergio & Arnold at the olympia 1972

Bodybuilding titles

• 1963 Mr Chicago
• 1964 Mr Illinois
• 1964 Mr America – AAU, 7th
• 1965 Junior Mr America – AAU, 2nd
• 1965 Junior Mr America – AAU, Most Muscular
• 1965 Mr America – AAU, 4th
• 1965 Mr America – AAU, Most Muscular,
• 1966 Junior Mr America – AAU, Winner
• 1966 Junior Mr America – AAU, Most Muscular
• 1966 Mr America – AAU, 2nd
• 1966 Mr America – AAU, Most Muscular,
• 1966 Mr World – IFBB, Overall Winner
• 1966 Mr World – IFBB, Tall, 1st
• 1966 Mr Universe – IFBB Winner
• 1966 Olympia – IFBB, 4th
• 1967 Olympia – IFBB, Winner
• 1967 Universe – IFBB, Overall Winner
• 1968 Olympia – IFBB, Winner
• 1969 Olympia – IFBB, Winner
• 1970 Mr World – AAU, Pro Tall, 2nd
• 1970 Olympia – IFBB, 2nd
• 1971 Universe – Pro - NABBA, Tall, 2nd
• 1972 Olympia – IFBB, 2nd
• 1973 Mr International – IFBB, Professional, 1st
• 1974 Mr International – WBBG, Professional, 1st
• 1975 Olympus – WBBG, Winner
• 1976 Olympus – WBBG, Winner
• 1977 World Championships – WABBA, Professional, 1st
• 1978 Olympus – WBBG, Winner
• 1980 World Championships – WABBA, Professional, 1st
• 1981 Pro World Cup – WABBA, Winner
• 1984 Olympia – IFBB, 8th
• 1984 Pro States Championships – WABBA
• 1985 Olympia – IFBB, 8th

When you look at photos of Sergio it is not surprising he is known as the MYTH!

ROGUE'S GALLERY

Hello this is your captain speaking, we will be landing in Idiotsville shortly, population too F*#KING MANY!

If you have spent any significant amount of time in a commercial gym then I'm sure you will have come across this particular breed of dimwit! they are the one's with the massive weights and horrible form, generally seen walking around with their weight belts on for the whole of their Chest and Tricep marathon workout, with there little weight lifting gloves to protect their little handy's from those nasty callouses! and sending text messages between sets.

You can usually find this type of gym idiot doing bicep curls inside the squat or power rack!

and they are always ready to help some poor newbie with training tips, having spent more than my fair share of time training and coaching in these types of facility's I have more stories and memory's of these halfwit's than I care to mention,

But they are always good entertainment value, so here is a selection of clips of this I'm sad to say not rare breed of gym rat.

We kick off the proceeding's with the PULL UP, the king of upper body movements!

And if you cant manage these there is always the lat Pulldown!

On to the SQUAT, the king of lower or some might say whole body movements, and a cautionary tale of why you should never squat in a smith machine!

                On to every gym rats favorite the BENCH PRESS
                you have a thumb for a reason, GRIP! now use it!

I love the fact that in this next clip the idiot is wearing a belt for his bench press! maybe it's to help with the glute bridges he is doing way to multi task dude! and why lower that heavy weight when you can simply raise your chest to meet it GENIUS!

Another of the gym idiots favorite's they can always be found trying to curl more than their body weight!

Head on over to your local fitness first and go to the squat rack (if they have one) and there you will find him doing BICEP CURLS!

Complex's are a popular alternative to boring Cardio, a series of Dumbell or Barbell movements performed in a sequence, here is how not to do them!

The TRICEP PRESS DOWN, is a simple movement so simple there is only one joint involved! so how can so many gym idiots get it sooo wrong?

Always be careful when training, your face could be destroyed at any given moment!

                                     Welcome to CROSSFIT

This is a tutorial on how not to lift from the floor!

And returning for the grand finale, if you looked up gym idiot in the dictionary you would find this dude curling 210lbs!

Well I hope this brightened up the day of any one visiting the blog, it certainly made me laugh out loud a few times, but seriously with the internet there are so many ways to get good sound lifting and training advice video tutorials of proper form and technique there really is no excuse for us to be subjected to this kind of idiocy on a daily basis!
And did you notice how many of them had belts and gloves on? all except the ones dead lifting heavy!
hey I don't make the stereotype's I just point em out!

We Are Back!

Another Sunday Another NIGHTMARE set up from the Thing!
He is expecting to get a real verbal bashing in this post, but actually it went great, and by that I mean it sucked big time! like a full cavity search at Bogota airport!, 10 consecutive stations
assault course style, only thing we need to tweek is switching the moves to alternate between upper and lower body and I think this will become a firm favorite, for the Sunday madness Elite!

"Lets see what you got!"

Brett wanted to call this workout, so you think your conditioned!

I had a much simpler name that had only four letters

and two of them where C & T


THE SET UP:

1, Sled drag 2 lengths of the basketball court


2, Med ball burpee thrusters x10


3, Icky shuffles 60ft agility ladder


4, Hand to hand kettlebell swings x10 each side


5, Heavy rope waves x10 each side


6, Dumbbell renegade rows x10


7, Med ball slams x12


8, Powerwheel rollouts x10


9, Overhand 60ft rope pull with 40kg attached


10, Farmers walks 2 lengths of basketball court with the 32's


2 rounds of this, increasing the weight of the sled and upping the reps to 15 on the second round and doubling the agility ladder, everyone was totally destroyed!
I had grand plans of moving onto weighted and resisted bear crawls but that's just how they stayed PLANS!

Resting after the first round

Maan gives the thumbs up but the eye's tell a different story

Flexing in the face of adversity!

Look at him! happy as a pig in shit!

And again he's off

Maan has had a tough initiation into the Sunday madness ranks

but passed with flying colours! we hope to see him in future 

posts!

Grown men in playgrounds oh dear!

as you can see from my expression this was a breeze!

I managed my first proper L sit though a little bit shaky and legs not completely straight after all we had done, but long enough for some photo's
I have been inspired by coach sommer's Gymnastic bodies site, also all the body weight proponents like Al Kavadlo & Mike Fitch, so I want to try and practice whatever I can manage, keep a look out for handstands and the like, also the subsequent photo's of me in various plaster casts!

Nuff said!

What Motivates Us?

I had an interesting day today
I received a message from another fitness professional  friend asking me
what I thought were the top 5 motivators for people to get back into training from say injury or life change
or just to get out of a good old fashioned rut!
So this got me thinking,
This question is not so easily answered though as we are all very different people and are motivated by different reasons,
I could only draw from my own experience with clients and also my own motivations and how they have changed over the years,
some people are motivated by challenge as in the case of some of my clients, I also have another client who suffers from back pain and his motivations for training are not performance or really strength motivated just to live his day to day life with as little pain from his back issue as possible! but now I come to think about it his motivations have changed since starting training with me, lately he has become more interested in his nutrition, and when we started training it was with a main focus on strengthening the core to support the spine and improving posture to combat the hours spent sitting at his desk,
but now he can be seen in the photos from Sunday madness sessions and is doing all sorts of dynamic strength based movements and has a much broader range of interest in training! yes Phil I'm talking about you!


Other people are motivated by competition for example those active in club sports or Sunday league football or rugby,


I have had numerous clients that are post rehab and just want to get back to their previous performance levels university rugby players recreational tennis players all with ACL surgeries, so their motivations are clear and easily understandable,


Then there are people like me who are not challenge driven or competitive, my original motivations where purely aesthetic I just wanted to look better and feel good about myself, so improved self esteem was my main motivator but over the years my focus changed to strength and strength is a learned skill that has to be practiced to be improved and the only way to improve is to challenge your self, now I am older fitness is a factor also but as I'm sure anyone who has read through my blog will know I simply detest cardio!
so I had to find modes of training that would give me my desired improved fitness without causing brain death from sheer boredom!
So new ways of training can also be motivational hey its fun to try new stuff! even if your crap at it there's a motivator right there the desire to get better at a given task,
Training with someone who does things differently from you can also be great for motivation and can get you out of a rut,
Take me training with the Thing for example whilst strength and power are always a big part of his focus he is also mad on conditioning as he is motivated from his background in boxing and also his love of MMA and lets face it fighters are some of the fittest athletes there are, which makes him the perfect choice for me to train with in light of what I need to work on, I still get to do the strength and hypertrophy stuff I love but training with him means I'm made to do the stuff I really need to focus on and his sadistic love of torturing people and depriving them of rest means I work pretty hard too!
Then we have the postpartum ladies who want to regain their pre baby figures also the guys who just want to fight off the mid life spread,
and I could go on and on there are so many different people so many different motivations and reasons for training yet to my mind they are all very personal and need to be addressed on a case by case basis.


Like I said in my last post all I need to do is look at a few Frank zane photos and I'm motivated,

He is the same height and weight as me, so there is my motivator right there! if we are the same height and weight why the f#*k don't I look that awesome? better get training!


This is still quiet open ended as I really cannot say what are the top 5 motivators but hopefully I have touched on a few that can help people whatever their motivational needs are.

Hero Figure FRANK ZANE

For those who don't know my bodybuilding hero is Frank Zane, maybe not as well known as Arnold, Franco, Sergio, & Lou, but in my opinion the best physique that ever graced the olympia stage!

A physique that encompasses every aesthetic aspect strong, fit, lean, perfectly proportioned, he truly looked as though he was carved out of marble.

And in my opinion far superior to the drug bloated monsters that parade the stages of modern bodybuilding competitions

Dorian Yates was a great champion but here he looks barely human, and far from statuesque! 

Check out this comparison of Frank & Markus Ruhl

see what I mean!

Another comparison between Arnold and Ronnie!

Who do you rate as the better physique?

 

Frank posing at the 83 olympia he placed 4th




Bodybuilding career

Zane is a three-time Mr. Olympia (1977 to 1979). His reign represented a shift of emphasis from mass to aesthetics. Zane's proportionate physique featured the second thinnest waistline of all the Mr. Olympias (after Sergio Oliva), with his wide shoulders making for a distinctive V-taper. He stood at 5'9" and had a competition weight of 187-195 pounds when he won Mr Olympia (He weighed over 200 lbs when he competed in the 60s). Zane is one of only three people who have beaten Arnold Schwarzenegger in a bodybuilding contest (1968 Mr. Universe in Miami, FL) and one of the very few Mr. Olympia winners under 200 pounds. Overall, he competed for over 20 years (retiring after the 1983 Mr Olympia contest) and won Mr America, Mr Universe, Mr World and Mr Olympia throughout his illustrious career.

Competitive stats

• Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
• Contest weight: 185 lbs (84 kg)
• Off-season weight: 200 lbs
• Arms: 18"
• Neck: 17.5"
• Chest: 51"
• Waist: 29"
• Thighs: 26"
• Calves: 16.5"
• 
  

BODYBUILDING TITLES

• 1961 Mr. Pennsylvania (17th place)
• 1962 Mr. Keystone (Winner)
• 1963 Mr. Keystone 2nd
• 1965 Mr. Sunshine State (Winner)
• 1965 IFBB Mr. Universe (1st, Medium Height category)
• 1966 IFBB Mr. America (1st, Medium)
• 1967 IFBB Mr. America (1st, Medium)
• 1967 IFBB Mr. Universe (3rd, Tall)
• 1968 IFBB Mr. America (Winner)
• 1968 IFBB Mr. Universe (Winner)
• 1970 NABBA Mr. Universe (Winner)
• 1971 NABBA Pro Mr. Universe (1st, Short)
• 1972 NABBA Pro Mr. Universe (Winner)
• 1972 IFBB Mr. Olympia (Under 200 lbs, 4th)
• 1973 - did not compete (retired)
• 1974 IFBB Mr. Olympia (Under 200 lbs, 2nd)
• 1975 IFBB Mr. Olympia (did not place)
• 1976 IFBB Mr. Olympia (2nd overall)
• 1977 IFBB Mr. Olympia (Winner)
• 1978 IFBB Mr. Olympia (Winner)
• 1979 IFBB Mr. Olympia (Winner; perhaps the greatest shape of his career)
• 1980 IFBB Mr. Olympia (3rd, after suffering a near-fatal injury at his home, requiring lengthy hospitalization)
• 1981 - did not compete (boycotted the Mr Olympia contest after the controversial 1980 contest)
• 1982 IFBB Mr. Olympia (2nd)
• 1983 IFBB Mr. Olympia (4th, after suffering another accident on his bicycle, requiring extensive shoulder surgery shortly after the contest)

I get nothing other than inspiration and motivation when I see pictures of Frank, a true bodybuilding and physique training legend!

NEW FOCUS

So no Sunday madness for the last 2 weeks as the gang have been scattered across the globe,
as I have been training clients in the gym I decided to do some old fashioned heavy compound work focusing on the lower body,

Deadlifts, Squats, goblet squats, Lunges, Weighted dips, and Chins, 3 whole body workouts a week, my recovery and stamina have been great thanks to the Sunday workouts,
I have been super setting my leg work to add intensity so for example deadlifts with as much weight as I can handle for 5 sets of 8 reps 250lb with good form to hit the rear chain then 100lb goblet squats to shift the focus more towards the quads.

The monster legs of legendary bodybuilder Tom (the golden eagle) Platz genetically gifted and chemically enhanced.

                              Tom Platz hamstrings and calf's

         Tom Platz with fellow bodybuilding legend Lou Ferrigno 


I like many people have always struggled with leg training, gaining mass on my legs seemed impossible, hence in all our photos I'm the only guy in long pants! mind you I worked as a postman for 18 years so walking for 3 hours a day 6 days a week carrying 25kg bags up and down stairs and pushing trolly's up to 100kg up and down hills can hamper your efforts when trying to bulk up
then hitting the gym for an hour forget it! but great for endurance.
Also calf's the bane of my existence!  notoriously difficult to grow if you are not genetically blessed even Arnie suffered from this in his early days but sheer determination and volume (and a little chemical enhancement) 
sorted his right out.

                                      Not too shabby Arnie!

Only I find calf training so boring! second only to ab training, which also is another area for me to shift my focus,
When I was younger and considerably leaner yeah I loved training abs cause that's pretty much all I had
now I'm 41 I am not really into parading around with out my shirt on! but hey if I get a six pack in my forties look out downtown KL you may just see a crazy white dude parading around with no shirt on HA! HA! HA!

                                    
          "Yes and? What are you looking at?" I always sit like this!

INSPIRATION

               Here are a couple of inspirational posters for you all!

                         Not very PC I know but neither are we!

                            WELCOME TO OUR CHURCH!

This really is the most comfy sink in the house!

"Yes I must agree"