How it All Began

March 29, 2007: That's the date this whole contest is based on - that's the day we're heading to Vegas for the second installation of what will hopefully be an annual occurrence of absolute insanity. Given that our bodies will be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment that weekend: minimal hours of sleep, copious amounts of booze, food, visual stimuli, and adrenaline, the five of us decided we should make our bodies as strong as possible before heading into batttle.

Hence, the contest was born - a five-month long struggle to make ourselves as strong, lean, and fit as possible before throwing it away in three nights! Since most of us had felt like we had been toiling in 'slothdom' for the last little while, it was the perfect motivation to get back on track...plus an extra $400 bucks from our chump competitors for not being able to match up, of course! Upon hearing about our contest, we had one more friend who wanted to enter the fray, which now brought the winner's pot up $500.

The contest was actually born at the end of October, which is when we all did our baseline testing which included: weight, squats, chin-ups or pull-ups, and bench press (barbell or dumbbell). We figured that since in order to win the contest, you had to reach at least your minimum goals, that it wasn't too important for everyone to do the exact same tests. Five of us did our testing here in Toronto, and OJ submitted his results from Vancouver. I know what you're thinking, "how do we know OJ didn't low-ball his results just so he could make it easier to win"? The answer: we don't, but he knows we'll kill him if we find out he cheated and I know the thought of having to deal with another night of Bacardi Limon is enough to keep him on the straight and narrow!

Here are my results: Weight (175 lbs), Chin-Ups (13), Flat Dumbbell Bench (70 x 6 reps), Squats (205 x 8 reps). I also decided to check my 1 mile time, which was 6 minutes.

Next up was to set our goals. Since the contest is five months long, we all agreed that the goals had to be pretty aggressive to make it worthwhile, thus the reason why strength was included as a goal since it prevents us from crash dieting just to lose as much weight as possible...and have our muscle mass and metabolisms go plummeting along with it. We also thought it would be a good idea to set primary goals, as well as "drastic" (or stretch) goals...in case everyone reached their goals, those that reached their drastic goals would move into a tiebreaker.

Here are my primary goals: Weight (165 lbs), Chin-Ups (8 with 25 lbs added resistance), Flat DB Bench (75 x 5 reps), Squats (205 x 12).

My "Stretch" goals: Weight (165 lbs), Chin-Ups (12 with 25 lbs), Flat DB Bench (80 x 5), Squats (225 x 10), 1 mile (5:30 min).

A little explanation about the goals: Since I'm actually going to be losing weight, to actually increase strength is quite ambitious because whenever you lose weight, you lose at least a little bit of muscle. Even if I lose 95% fat over the course of the 5 months - which would be excellent since I'm not exactly 5% body fat and would therefore lower my body fat percentage significantly - I'd still lose 0.5 lbs of lean mass. Also, increasing strength and endurance are not congruent goals either which is why the improved mile time and second-tier strength goals are in the 'stretch' category.

You'll notice the date of this post is Nov. 23rd so there have been almost 4 weeks since we did our testing...I didn't actually think of creating this blog until the 17th (the pics below are from the 18th) so it's not like I was just being lazy. However, I hadn't really started doing cardio or cutting out junk from my diet, therefore part of the reason I'm writing this is to make sure I stay disciplined because my friends, clients and family members will all have access to this, making me accountable to someone other than just myself which we all know can be a great source of motivation. Of course, I've already got all sorts of motivation for this contest: physical well-being, self-improvement, as well as the less noble motivators of pride, money, bragging rights, and vanity!

The other reason I'm blogging this contest is that I figured my clients - or anyone else for that matter - might be interested to see what I do when I'm working towards a goal (i.e. diet, exercise, time management, etc). I'll be posting the link to my Fit Day diet/activity journal below, which includes my last weekend of gluttony until the holidays - more specifically Dec. 16th - to show that I really do love to eat, but that I'm willing to sacrifice my indulgences while working towards my goals. There are a couple of days when I'll stray a bit, including the Adelaide's anniversary party on the 29th and my dad's birthday on Dec. 2, but even those won't be to the extent that I would normally indulge, and it will be back to business as usual the next day.





So there you have it, that's how it all started. The next few posts will go into more detail about what my meals are like, when I eat them, and the reasoning behind them. I'll also talk about how I've got my training structured and the reasoning behind that as well. If you have any questions or suggestions, please post your comments on this site...after all, I haven't had to write much since I finished school in '01 and this is supposed to be as much for you as it is for me!