Archive for the ‘BodyBuilding’ Category

Well there are two sides to Queenstown as a fitness destination. Good & bad. I’m leaving in a week after a 2 month stay.

I’ll tell you the bad stuff first. The air here is polluted. You wont see that in any article or official report but I have coughed my guts out the whole time I have been here – especially at first.

In the tourist village its caused by chimneys all over the place. Being an alpine village it often gets a bit chilly & folks just crank up the fire.

However on other trips I have stayed at Frankton near the airport & also coughed my guts out. Over there it was a dust bowl. So if the smoke doesn’t get you the dust will.

Up on the mountain in the trees however the air is clean & fresh. As it is most places around here just not where most of the people are to be found.

OK second thing wrong with the place is drugs & alcohol. The village is full of bars & drunks. At the backpackers here they are on LSD & god knows what. So many people come here to party not keep fit.

Finally this is not a town for bodybuilding & powerlifting. Of course you can do that anywhere if you want but it is not the focus here.

I joined the local gym which makes it pretty clear its a gay friendly gym. I am not gay lol but its the only place available to train without catching a bus. So I would have much more preferred to train at a hardcore body building / powerlifting nohomo gym.

There are a bunch of CrossFit & fighting gyms in town but again – probably not for heavyweights in this town.

Now for the “good” news – kind of

This place is a meca for endurance sports & athletes. There’s are so many super fit mother fuckers around here that kick my ass at endurance. Cycling – there are races all over the place, marathons – they just do it daily, not up hill, up mountain. Even many old people here are super fit, and the freaks on LSD are also very fit at endurance.

Suffice to say all of the folk hiking for days on end & zapping up mountains in 1/4 the time of me are skinny little runts with little fat or muscle.

I can beat them all up but they are kicking my ass badly at cardio. The consolation is that Queenstown is a special destination. People that come here to participate in the sports or great hikes usually have trained hard at endurance for months in advance. If you come here as a weightlifter & they kick your ass like me, don’t feel so bad. These fuckers came prepared.

So if you are cutting, losing some fat & building up endurance this is a great place to be for a while.

Life is good

Yeah now this is a good place to endure COVID. At least in summer time. I’d love to stay a couple of months. Currently have a sore throat & nasty head cold. Blood pressure is fine.

I posted a while back about my Blood Pressure & how I quickly got it under control & everything was great.

Well during my travels up in northland for 7 weeks I got slack. I took none of my BP lowering herbs, no hibiscus tea. I trained hard at the gym but ate burgers, fish & chips and entire tubs of chocolate ice cream. I gained 6 kg.

Didn’t take my blood pressure monitor so had no idea what was going on.

Well I am in Auckland now for a few days before heading south to Queenstown. Bought a new monitor & check. 180/90

Yes it was freaking heart attack level yesterday. I tested it about 20 times over the rest of the afternoon and evening. Average reading is 160/90. Not good at all and I had a few spikes like 175/100. Over night I checked twice 137/96 & 150/90 this morning.

Following that early morning I had several normal readings. Yesterday I had only 2 normal readings out of 20 or so.

Well I went & got my Mukta Vati pills & hibiscus tea. Dropped an aspirin too. No more junk food for me – ever I hope. It should come back down pretty fast I hope. If not medical assistance will be required. My symptoms? Zero. Wouldn’t have known without the monitor.

Don’t let your guard down.

UPDATE: 5th Jan 2021. Blood pressure back to normal this morning. 122/80. Took 2 Mukta Vati pills twice a day. Hawthorn, coQ10, hibiscus tea & garlic. Also cut out all junk food & am mostly veg. So that’s it only 2 days to fix with correct herbs & diet. Most important to do slow belly breathing exercises & reset nervous system.

I used to train at the same gym for over 20 years. It had 2 gyms, a giant heated pool, squash courts & a large basketball court. There was even a shooting range underneath the gym. Sadly it got contaminated with lead from the rifle range & the cost of decontamination was too great.

Youthtown, one of the best gyms in town shut permanently. After this I did kettlebells & functional training hardcore for 5 years & ended up tearing my rotator cuff. That injury took 18 months of daily physio to get back to 90%. So much for functional training. Its bullshit.

So since that time I have been training heavily at cityfitness which has gyms all over New Zealand some of which are very large & well equipped but its not a power lifter or bodybuilders gym. In many ways its what I call a poofters gym. Plus the music they play is fucking terrible.

Anyway I am out of Auckland for the summer & recently dropped into a gym in Whangarei called Pumping Iron Gym. I also had a few sessions at the aquatic pools gym which has a sauna.

Pumping Iron Gym is a real gym for bodybuilders and power lifters. Best of all they have Keiser Air Resistance Machines.

I had never seen these machines before & they look a bit weird. A bit of a gimmick maybe but having trained for 36 years I had to try it out. I tried the leg extension first. Not bad & I liked the way you control the air pressure with buttons or a foot press. Its so easy and gives you immediate control over resistance either up or down. You can even change resistance effortlessly during an actual movement or isometric hold.

I swapped to regular weights for my hams & as there was a real hot chick doing stretches in the Keiser machine area I went back & tried the pec machine, like a fly I think it was called the butterfly machine. OK again not bad being able to change resistance on the go.

Next I tried the seated bench machine. This is when the lights went on. The machine can go up to 600 lbs. After 36 years training I know my body. This machine is what I want. I’m sure I can double my bench real fast training on this thing. Why? There is no jolting, no strain on tendons that is biomechanically compromised. It just feels way better than fixed resistance. You have foot pedals controlling resistance. You can pump it up for a super strong lock out and pull back down where you need to. you can change resistance immediately for each set.

Its a chest training machine that certainly works for me. The bummer is I leave here on thursday & will only get one more session.

I searched the net & cant find any other gyms in NZ with this gear. Thats not to say they are not out there. Still looking.

Frankly if I can find a Keiser equipped gym to train at for 1-2 years I will be stronger than I have ever been.

About a month ago after 2 lockdowns in Auckland’s CBD I finally got out of the city. Right now I am in the beautiful Bay of Islands resort town Paihia. I lived here for a year when I was 19. Had not been here for 25 years.

The ride up was pretty weird. Its been so long but after nearly 3 weeks here its gunna take some discipline to leave. I booked a bus out on thursday having delayed it by a week. I may delay for another week.

After this I intend to head to Queenstown for some mountain hiking. Here in Paihia I have been at the gym nearly every day. Current weight 106 kg with zero creatine. My only supps for 5 weeks have been vitamin D & fish oil.

I didn’t post for a while because its been a disruptive year but I have trained right through either at the gym every day when not in the 8 weeks of lockdown or with my dumbells & strength bands at home. Also I have been doing a lot of boxing bag work.

I’m in New Zealand & we had our first lock down for 6 weeks starting at the end of March. We actually eradicated the virus as New Zealand is an isolated island nation. Had zero virus or lockdowns for 3 months. Unfortunately the government has let 35,000 people in from all over the world and now we are back to square one.

A new lock down which began a few days ago with about 12 hours notice.

So here at home I have some heavy dumbbells, jumprope & a pile of strength bands of various sizes. I stocked up on strength bands after the first lock down.

So that’s it. I do 100 press ups & a bunch of dumbbell curls & tricep extensions which has resulted in great arm growth. I have a doorway pull up station & a bunch of grip training gear too. Try to do some jump rope everyday.

I went hard at the gym for 3 months between lockdowns & was doing real well. Taking creatine, whey & HMB/laxogenin. The supps did fry my kidneys however & I am letting the bod have a break from heavy supplementation for a little while.

I completed my Ostarine about 3 weeks ago.

It definitely worked & I will definitely take it again. The best thing was the healing of my rotator cuff injury & a decrease in aches and pains in my body.

Ostarine clearly has anti-aging benefits. When I was on higher dosages some of my workouts were something else – like I was 30 again.

Generally the effects were subtle. Unfortunately in the second week I got poisoned by black mold at work & got sick but this cleared up after a week.

My physique also became better. In general its a bodybuilding tonic for sure.

Now post cycle my balls did not shrink but erections deceased substantially so I have been taking a testosterone booster, boron , dim etc.

I am also using more pine pollen than usual so yes it shuts your gonads down a bit.

It’s estimated that 10 grams of pine pollen contains 0.8 micrograms of testosterone.

Thats 800 nanograms. That’s for the powder not the concentrated tincture.

Lets makes a guess that a dose of pine pollen tincture has 8000 nanograms. That seems reasonable.

Average male free testosterone is 300 to 1,000 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) of blood.

That’s one tenth of a liter so really its 3000 to 10,000 nanograms per liter & you have 7.2 liters.

So total testosterone in the blood for a 200 lb male is 21000 – 72000 nanograms.

Sublingual testosterone has a short half life possibly only four hours.

That means you will need to dose repeatedly with pine pollen tincture possibly 4x per day.

Each dose will need to be a fair amount perhaps two teaspoons absorbed under the tongue.

At that rate you may be able to get an additional 10000-20000 nanograms per day into your bloodstream.

So this is only worth it by making your own tincture. Also due to the short half life its unlikely that there will be an accumulation of testosterone over time. Its also unlikely to cause gonadal shutdown.

To be effective you will be using about a shot glass of pine pollen tincture per day.

To go into shutdown on pine pollen tincture maybe 2-3 shot glasses per day could do it over a period of time.

All of this is anecdotal. Pollen will vary in quality and testosterone levels. The extraction process will vary as will the sediment levels and strength of the tincture batches.

Certainly its worth it to buy pollen in bulk and make up large batches of tincture in multiple jars.

Its not worth it to buy small bottles of tincture and take a few small drops per day.

There is more to it though as Pine Pollen contains DHEA and a number of other androgenic substances that will enhance testosterone production by the body. Its highly likely that a shot glass per day of tincture will stimulate testosterone production in addition to the free testosterone directly introduced.

1. Pine Pollen Tincture
2. Tongkat Extract
3. Colostrum
4. IGF Antler extract

Must I elaborate? Yeah OK…

Pine Pollen I have posted about before & I recently got an email with the most awesome sales copy about a new pine pollen tincture. Here’s a copy of that sales page: Pine Pollen Advert

Pine Pollen contains much more than just testosterone, including sex pheromones that make you more attractive to the ladies. DHEA prohormone is in there too.

Its nice to see some western research backing up the TCM which has used pine pollen for a very long time. Yes Pine Pollen can dramatically boost Testosterone even to the point of shutdown if you take too much.

This brings me to the next supplement which is also backed up by leading scientific research. LJ100 extract of Tongkat Ali

Tongkat Extract Site

All the science & studies are on there. Basically the tongkat will act as a quasi PCT after using the Pine Pollen. Cycle between them four weeks each. This should keep your testosterone elevated all the time to high normal (for a young man). So us old geezers can indeed naturally have high youthful testosterone without drugs. I guess you can use both at once too if you want.

Next is colostrum

Colostrum is super calves milk basically. IGF is a large molecule that does not digest. Yet Colostrum works – go figure. There are lipo delivery options for colostrum but I don’t know that its required.

Finally an antler derived IGF tincture will do the trick sublingually.

Like Pine Pollen there is much more goodness in Antler than just IGF.

These four supplements can keep your testosterone & growth hormone levels high at any age.

PS: If you want a Number 5 I will throw in Berberine which is like an “extremely” mild cardarine. If you want to lose fat and improve cardio check it out. It is not SARM or steroid like however and will only give mild long term results. Berberine has many benefits, one of which is to activate AMPK.

AMPK reduces belly fat and combats metabolic syndrome.

https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2017/ss/boost-ampk-to-reduce-abdominal-fat

Additional supplements to activate AMPK include Hesperidin and Jiaogulan or Gynostemma pentaphyllum.

AMPK Activator (Actiponin), 450 mg (per serving), 60 Quick Release Capsules