Fitness Update...

My plan over last nine months has been attempting to get into good shape. It is only a year and three months until I'm forty and so never have been more serious. Being a father helps make one become painfully aware of their own vices and cultural procrastination.

A false start at Virgin Gym finally led me to Forest Gym in Tilgate Park, upon the recommendation of a few folk within Crawley.

It isn’t that I have an aversion to commercial gyms, but I don't necessarily belief that they encourage a person to fitness. Tending only to be full of only meat-heads (you can spot them for their over developed arms, no shoulders, weak backs and spindly legs), or otherwise populated by preening narcissists whose puffed up self-image and range of hair products are move important to them than their health and fitness. Conversely, I may just be a bitter ageing baldy who has the sort of middle-class education that makes him condescendingly smug, pouring scorn at others lifestyle decisions, albeit entirely sneering at own as well. After all, it would hardly be fair if one wasn't down on oneself as well.

Nonetheless, Forest Gym provides the sort of environment which commercial franchises fail. It provides an identity. Whilst it is a foremost a bodybuilding gym it remains entirely old-fashioned in its feel. A refurbed hut in the middle of a forest. Equipment without brand names. Tepid showers. A staffy dog lacking one eye and the ability to walk. A South African manager, Harold "Big H" Marillier, who is an IFBB pro that has another job of restoring historic military tanks.

It is an extremely supportive environment used by a lot of bodybuilding pro's, which has the advantage of there being people who are able to assist you in correct and effect techniques. You have to bear in mind that bodybuilding techniques has greatly influences all areas of athletics. Nevertheless, it is inspiring and at times worrying. Just the sort of environment I prefer. Some people, both men and women, have trained their bodies to repulsively colossal proportions.

My interest here is the Grecian Ideal, which is wholly divorced from the monsters which are too often associated to contemporary bodybuilding. I am more a realist that, as with my weight loss, this is also something which needs to be progressive for it to be sustainable, and not something rapid which can be lost as fast as it is gained.

I'm presently facing the toughest challenge of nutrition. It's 75% of the battle and whilst I don't have an unhealthy diet neither do I have a selectively healthy one. It would be logically for me to return to a vegetarian diet, albeit one in which every month I have at least four high-quality meat meals. It’s going to tough but then getting older isn’t any easier.

Otherwise, progress is good and muscle is developing. I will get some photos up here to show the progress over the course of a year. Contrast is all important.

But, it is then the particular application of this. I would like to do the Mens Health Survival of the Fitness possibly this year. I’ve been doing some running around the rec ground close to my house, but need to build this up to some decent sort of distances. Typically I do a 30-45min set on a standing bicycle once a week to also build up my cardio and stamina. I’d like to think I could nail something like this before I’m 40, not least as progress means I’ll prob be fitter in my 40s than in pervious decades. There are some runs in Sussex which I am tempting to test the water with. But I like the idea of a run having obstacles within it as well.