Curtis Matthews

We made it to the Finals last night of the Fame Natural Body Building competition in Fort Lauderdale, Florida held at the War Memorial center. I was very happy that I could attend and see my first live body building show. What sucked was my camera batteries died after 2 pictures and the one posted is the best of the 2. I did have my Blackberry Bold with me but from where I was sitting the pictures came out fuzzy. I was proud to see the contestants on stage knowing these were the real deals not some Roid Boybut hard working real people from all walks of life and people whom had obstacles such as one guy used to be parlayed and the lady named Amy who loss over 300lbs. I wish this event and other natural body building events would get a better following but I guess most people rather look at a freakish monster than a person whom does not use steroids and trains hard.
The only thing that I saw bad was the turn out it was terrible. Most of the seats were empty and they had to drop the general admission tickets to $2 stating it was to promote drug free body building. What they called VIP seating was the fold up chairs in front of the stage and those tickets were $40, so you can guess most people sat in the general admission seats. The sponsorship was week, they had a new company that Donald Trump is backing that creates personalized supplements based on your body make up. The other sponsor were a vitamin water company, personal trainer certification and a guy promoting his energy pill. I did not stay to the end but the guy who did the Terminator routine and I think is name was Malik, he did a routine with a sword. Those 2 should have place very well in the competition. The 69 year old guy looked great and much respect to him.

I don’t have a diet, I just don’t eat junk food like Burger King and McDonald’s. One of my vices is food not the quality of the food but the quantity I eat. Last night I went to a Japanese buffet resturant and ate about 3000+ calories o f Sushi, Beef, Chicken, Shrimp, Squid and many other food items. I did also devour some deserts, cakes and icecream. I know that this is going to be my demon in my mission to enter a natural body building competition within the next year but if I have to change my life too drastically I won’t have fun while trying to meet my goal. I know I will have to diet sometime but while I am still trying to build muscle mass I will enjoy myself. I go out to eat dinner at least 2-3 times a week and most of the time I don’t over eat but I did over eat 3 times this week and tonight I will probably go out again for dinner. I wonder if I tweet on twitter every meal I eat if that would be to much? I think I shall tweet my meals for a least a few days to see if I pick up more followers.

Today is my chest and biceps training day. I don’t have to work today so I did not have to go to the gym at 7am, instead I will be going around 1pm today. Today Gina will go to the gym with me, so I should be able to push myself to go heavier now that I will have a spotter.
I did my workout at 2pm with Gina but I screwed up today was suppose to do chest and triceps training not biceps but I did get a good biceps workout. I am going to change my routine to do biceps with chest and triceps on the shoulder days. I did incline barbell bench press today and flat bench dumbbells along with barbell decline bench. The biceps training was all dumbbell work and I think for the next few weeks I will stick to doing chest and biceps with dumbbells instead of barbells. I am getting a better pump and the muscle is taxed more with less stress on the joints using the dumbbells.
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Today I went to Ballys in Pembroke Pines to do my shoulder training this gym has a shoulder press machine that it is easier for me to train without a spotter. I like starting the behind the neck military press from the bottom position (bar resting on my neck) and the Pines Ballys has one that I can do that easily. Most other gyms now you have to start with the bar elevated behind your neck and that hurts my shoulder reaching in the back to take the weight off the rack. Well my workout today started with the military press behind my neck I started with the bar only to warm up my shoulder doing 10 reps then I added a 25lb plate to each side and did 10 more reps, that’s warm up. I started the main weight at 1 45lb plate on each side that’s about 135lbs doing 10 reps. The next set was at 155lbs for another 10 reps, then I went up to 185lbs for 5 reps. The last set I dropped back down to 135lbs and did 13 reps. My rest between sets was no more than 1 minute. Next I went to the shoulder press machine and I put 2 45lb plates on each side and did 10 reps. I added a extra 25lb plate on each side and did another 10 reps. My last 2 set on the shoulder press machine was 3 45lb plates on each side and I did 7 reps each set. I thought I would be able to go heavier today especially on the behind the neck military presses but that’s why I am training to get in body building shape and get back my strength. Well enough of the excuses I then went to a reverse fly machine this hits the rear delts. The shoulder has three heads you need to train if you want good overall development and a lot of people neglect the rear delts. On the rear delt machine I did reps of 10 super set with behind the neck shrugs on a flat bench machine that is a good substitute for a shrug machine. I did 4 sets of each super setting between the rear delts and the shrugs, then I went to a machine for my side delts and continued to super set with the shrugs for another 4 set keeping my reps at 10. I gradually raised the weight on each set of the rear delts and the side delts machines. The shrugs I had the bench press machine and the highest weight and added an extra 20lbs.
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After shoulder I did bicep training and I am out of time. My 30 minutes of cardio is over and I need to get ready to leave the gym and go home eat breakfast and go to work.

Today my leg workout started with me standing calves raises. I did 3 sets of 10 with all the weight on the machine. Next was the calf press machine, I did 3 sets of 20 reps with 5 plates on each side, that’s the max for that machine. That warmed up my body for the real leg workout (leg presses) I start by doing 10 reps with 1 45lb plate on each side of the leg press machine then I work up to 11 plates on each side adding 1 plate at a time and doing 10 reps each set (a total of over 100 reps). My heavy set of 11 plates on each side is probably around 1100 pounds and today I squeezed out 10 reps. Then I strip 6 plates off each side leaving about 500 pounds on the leg press machine and I did a high rep set none stop, today I hit 62 reps, I pussyed out today I was supposed to do 65 reps. Then I drop down too 2 plates on each side about 200 pounds and I do one leg at a time 10 reps each. I do the one legged exercise 2 sets each leg with no rest just switching legs after each set of 10. I did about 185 reps on the leg machine by the time I am over. I then went over to the Smith machine and did squats. I don’t go heavy on squats in my opinion its dangerous for the back, that’s why I use the smith machine its much safer and I always train by myself (no spotter). Today I put 230 pounds on the Smith machine and I did 5 reps count to 30 or 30 seconds and do 5 more reps. I did this for 15 minutes straight resting 30 seconds between sets. I get at least 15 set in of 5 reps on the Smith machine doing squats. I got that idea from a guy on bodyproud.org website. After the Smith machine I do 1 set of 10 reps of sissy squats to stretch my quads. Now after the stretch I did leg lifts to pump blood into my quads, I did not go heavy I concentrated on the pump at the end holding each rep for a count of 2. I did 3 sets of 10 reps of the leg lifts.
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Now I went over to a seated leg curl machine and did reps of 7 resting only 30 seconds between sets for 15 minutes. My hamstrings are week and I am now building them up. I should have done more for my Hamstrings. I then finished my leg workout with 3 sets of 10 reps inner thigh and 3 sets of 10 reps outer thigh on the machines. I just started doing these exercises because I need overall leg symmetry if I want to ever compete.
Now I finishing up with cardio on the recumbent bike and writing this post from my Blackberry Bold.
Tomorrow is Shoulders and Biceps.
Curtis Matthews

Its almost been one week now since I started the Creatine and Glutamine supplements. I started those supplements because I lost a lot of weight and most of that weight has been muscle weight. My strength has also dropped a lot so I decided to changed my training routine to a four day split instead of three days. The supplements are suppose to help me recover faster from the workouts and allow me to train harder. The second day after taking the supplements I felt stronger but that might have been a mental thing.
Now my training routine is legs on day 1, shoulders biceps and forearms on day 2, back on day 3 and chest and triceps on day 4. This give my body parts a extra day to rest, recover and grow. My routine before was chest shoulder and triceps on day 1, back biceps and forearms on day 2 and legs on day 3. Abs and calves are thrown in randomly, I do those body parts when I have time to squeeze them in.
I know it has not been a full week yet but I should feel a little more rested and a little stronger.
Yesterday I did legs and I did 2 less reps than I normally do on the leg press with the heaviest weight and then I got dizzy when trying to do squats, so I stopped and then went real light the rest of the workout. Today I could not go heavy on shoulders like I wanted too and my biceps workout was shity, only six total sets. I did play Racquetball last night for an hour and a half but doubles and you don’t run as much or exert yourself as much in doubles.
I bitching because I want to see progress as fast as the roid boys but as a natural bodybuilder. Training natural is a science and my research and experiments are still in its infant stages. Well now at least I am doing 30 minutes of cardio after my workout today. This give me my Blog posting time and it makes the time go by much faster. Tomorrow is my back day and I will train hard the go to the beach to work on my tan, which tanning is the easy part for me because I am naturally tanned since I come from Trinidad.

I am training now to get in shape to enter a natural body building competition in the next 12 months. I will be writing about my training routine and everything I am doing to accomplish my goal. I just purchased my first 2 supplements last week, Creatine and Glutamine. I will take these supplements and record my progress.
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Curtis Matthews