General

Quote from the book 'Sheltering Sky'
which says;
Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well and yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty and yet it all seems limitless.’ Taken from an interview with Brandon Lee off the film ‘The Crow.

’ Hi guys, it’s been a long time, sorry I’ve been very, very busy. Good busy though, you know the type of -busy and stress you enjoy. Well where do I start..?

I am writing this on the 30th May 2003 sat outside in the sun with an hour to kill waiting for a client at my new gym. Body in design is now open, it’s been up and running for three weeks and I love it, it’s the best job in the world for me, apart from being the LA Raiders cheerleaders massage therapist!!! I can’t think of another job I’d rather do.

Opening up my new place and going through the sale of Future Bodies, which is being taken over in a month, has caused me to reflect on my life, where I have been, where I am going and so forth. One such day was- the first day of work here at my new place- I arrived to train at 6am; it was a nice day much like this one. Ah, first let me describe my premises- I am in a ground floor new industrial unit with blue shutter door and blue PVC window and door looking out onto a landscaped, gardened area over a car park. There are around ten units in all, I am number seven. I am sat on the rocky area across from my unit, approximately 30 feet away. So this Monday morning, just under 3 weeks ago, I opened my door. I popped my bushes in pots out at either side of the door and then stood back and looked inside. I have to say I felt a well of pride come over me. The gym looked ace, deep purple carpet, black machines with deep purple padding, black rubber discs and plates, black Olympic bars and two Power-block sets of dumbbells. There is also a black and purple counter and a private shower/changing area, a perfect one-to-one training facility.
Right across from the doorway, on the wall, hangs a large photo of Arnold in a black frame-Do you detect a pattern of colours here? I looked at it-for maybe 30 seconds; I just stood and stared at it. The picture is there for a reason.
It is opposite the door for a reason. So that I see it first thing every morning, It is a reminder of where I have come from and where my roots lie. Had it not been for Arnold, I would not have what I have today. What I have is modest but I am- in a way-a millionaire! Why? because if you are a millionaire, you would do what you love to do. You would have no worries. You would get up every day and enjoy life. You would not do a job you hate, or anything else for that matter! So that is me- I don’t have much money-spent it all on this place-and a new car. I don’t need any money, as such- all I need is enough to cover costs and a small wage of which I can save a bit. But what I do is what I love, so I am a millionaire of sorts.

I explained to one of my clients recently about the Arnold picture and this is what I said. When I was 15 years old, myself and a friend ended up in a library by some twist of fate-as you would have never got me in one- ‘read a book, no way man!’ funny now all I do is read. Anyway, my buddy and I went into the library to just mess around and be a total nuisance when I happened to glance at the sports section. There I saw a name that made me laugh. Arnold stood out in bold print- underneath the Education of a bodybuilder, I instantly became a model citizen. I called Vince over ‘Hey! Look at this!’ We sat down with the book and poured over every page many times- in fact we joined the library and loaned it out- taking it back when it was due and loaning it again. This we did for a while until we could afford to buy our own copy. I still have that book, the first book I ever purchased.
Now here is where the Arnold picture comes in. It reminds me of the day my life took a turn for the better. Before that day I was a bit of a bugger-always in trouble at school-always fighting, you wouldn’t think so as I was the height I am now, 5 foot 3, and 84 lbs wet through, but I would fight anybody. I had no direction at all, did not know what I wanted to do when I was kicked out of school-no idea. That day I decided I would be a bodybuilder- that day I decided I would make my living as a bodybuilder. I went home and said to my dad ‘I will own my own gym one day.’ He laughed out loud-‘Son, you will always be small, you will never build any muscle.’ He now always asks me what my goals are and is always positive about anything I set my mind to do. From that day on I had a goal, I had a dream, and on that morning looking at that picture, I realised that I had achieved what I had set out to do.

I don’t own a multi-million pound company and I’m not world famous but I did what I set out to do- I built Future Bodies, from nothing, and made it one of the biggest, most respected real gyms in England. I ran it with my heart and soul for nearly 15 years. If I had never picked up that book 22 years ago I would be doing god knows what- maybe be in jail. If I had never picked up that book, I would not have met my wife in the gym, I would not have two fantastic kids, all from that one- day. I think that is awesome, it blows my mind thinking about it.

My early workouts consisted of the free hand exercises outlined in that book, and at the age I was they laid the foundations for the weights to come a little later on. My buddy and I made our first set of weights from lead found on the beach- as I grew up in the seaside town of Bridlington. The lead was lead weights used by fisherman- we collected them up, melted it down and put it into small paint tins with a bar rammed in them, that 60lb weight was awesome we did everything with it. I still have a scar on my elbow where I fell over with it above my head. We were seeing how many reps we could do out in Vince’s back yard. It was a very hot summers day and I was in cut off jeans and nothing else, Arnold’s book was open on the appropriate page for inspiration as we did set after set of standing presses seeing if we could beat each other. Always competitive I struggled one last rep only to fall backwards, whacking my left elbow on the concrete yard. No pain, no gain eh?
Our weight set grew from there. We dug for bait on the beach, selling to the fishing tackle stores. We saved and bought some dumbbells, then a normal bar and discs we could actually put weights on and off; that was so cool. When the weather was good, and it always seemed to be when I was a kid, we trained outside in Vince’s yard, when bad we trained in his cellar or at my house in my bedroom. We even did some training at school as one of the teachers was into weights and one summer’s day saw us in a sports class outside with our shirts off. He asked if we had been lifting weights. After a lengthy conversation he said he would ask the head teacher if he could do a weights program in the school lunch hour. He did get it accepted and brought in a set of weights from home, housing them in a storage room just off from the outside netball court.
So now Vince and I were in heaven, we trained on a morning before school at each other’s houses and then we did some at school in our lunch hour and later on at home after school, yard or cellar. We did something most days, if we did not train we ran- believe it or not 5-10 miles along the cliff tops of Bridlington. We did make gains on this, lots of them too, Vince more so, he was very good and if he had gone down the competition route like myself he would have done so much better than I did.

It was not long before we were the strongest in the lunchtime weights program, beating even the teachers. Now we were seen a little differently, where I was once known by all the teachers for all the wrong reasons, I had now become civil- less cheeky and a hard worker, I now had a goal; and my attitude had changed.
I had gained a new kind of respect in school, no longer did people pick fights with me. I was still small but wirey and strong at now 15 ½ , I would have been about 120lbs- as you can see a massive gain when the starting point was 84lbs. At this I was very ripped, my abs were very sharp from all the running, as well as training them.
My diet then was the normal foods kids eat, or did eat back then- supplemented with 6-7 pints of milk a day and pounds of fruit. I then, as I do now, searched out information and inspiration.
I tried out every conceivable exercise and exercise combination I could. It was a true learning experience, the foundation to the knowledge I now have. I trained at least twice a day, sometimes three; between 5-7 days a week and I did grow. Even though I may have bench pressed 3 times a week or more, I did get strong on it, to the point of doing about 260lbs when I was 16-17 years old and weighing about 135-140lbs. It all goes against the grain, I should have been grossly overtrained but I wasn’t. Maybe if I had done a HIT program from the word go, I would have gained more, who knows. Who was I to argue with the stars, Arnold, Robby Robinson and Franco were like gods. Back then I knew nothing of drugs, (I thought they were all natural) or overtraining or even recovery. Maybe that is why I did grow- I did not know I wasn’t supposed to. My mind thought I train, I grow, that is it.

Maybe, thinking out loud here, we get so confused trying to do the right thing, we forget it is hard work, enthusiasm and the sheer love of it that makes us change. Just enjoy what you do and work within the boundaries of your recovery. I know that with work, family and the sheer strength I have now, I couldn’t keep up such a program for long and by the time I had got to about 20 years old and had a few junior bodybuilding shows to my name, I started to feel my gains slow up. But, looking back I feel I have not altered that much in sheer muscle size since these early days, I did make the biggest, most dramatic change in my body from the very start like everyone does.
I have hovered around the 150-160lb mark in bodyweight now for the last 15 years - it is as much muscle as a small frame can handle. I alter in condition and composition but sheer size wise I have not altered much since those early workouts.

So in reflection of my early gains, the most gains came from volume work, I used to do between 15-25 sets per body part. Am I just adding to the confusion here? Or am I giving you food for thought? I know it is something that crops up in my mind every now and then. And then it fell in my lap, I now think I understand this so called world of weights. I truly think that any program will work as long as you can recover from it and progress in strength from it.

As you reach your genetic limits, recovery is even more of a factor.
As you get older and take on the responsibilities of life, recovery becomes a factor. Job stress, kids and the hustle and bustle of life all take a toll on your recovery batteries. If you are a kid growing up in a seaside town, absolutely bursting with life, enthusiasm, with no worries and no stress then you can recover and grow from such a program- as I did. As I took on more and more in life, a house, mortgage and so forth there is little body reserves left for adaptation and growth. This is why the average Joe with a job and the rest that goes with it does well on hit programs.

I cannot train like I used to do, too much else in my life now. Even though I can do a little more then most as I have no stress. So I work a lot of hours but it is not stressful with a boss breathing down your neck kind of work hours. So we are all confused, most of us are anyway. We read about this and that on the Internet and in this and that book, we go from one program to the next. Every program we read about seems like the Holy Grail. Sure they work if you can recovery from them and be positive. When you read about some program’s working for a few individual’s and they make incredible gains then they have found the Holy Grail for them. They can recover, work hard and make gains. I do know of some bodybuilders I used to compete against that use to do far more training days and work sets then I could handle at that point in my life. This was simply because they had a very easy lifestyle. They did not work, they had no kids, no house and all they had was their training, nothing else.
Of course you could train more when you had all day to chill-out and recover, wouldn’t you grow more if that was the centre of your life?
Yea sure you would, but what a life!

Essentially they are still kids, never growing up, playing at life. To me that is not a rounded person, they are spongers living off other people. You must have a foundation for your goals and dreams. I would rather be smaller but a bigger person as a whole, then just train all day. I love to workout but there is a big world out there. That Arnold book all those years back told me that!

Take Care

Ian