STOPJABBAINGON

NATIONAL TRUST DAY OUT

Posted on July 12, 2015August 3, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So, while the wife is away in Slovakia visiting her family, I’ve decided to take myself out a few times over the next 10 days on a few mini adventures to places I’ve never visited in the local area.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Jeff kindly took me up flying, you can read the blog here. Part of the route was flying over the Uffington, White Horse. I’ve driven around the area many times, but, I’ve never actually taken the time to stop and take a look at the area, it’s the highest peak in Oxfordshire, and on a clear day you can see 6 counties from one point as you look around. It’s such a beautiful area, as are all National Trust parks and houses.

I arrived and the car park was filling up already. A lot of people go along to spend the day having picnics and tiring out the kids as the run around in the big open spaces. If you’re a National Trust member the car park was free, sadly, Zuzana and I aren’t members, but, the car park costs just £4 for the whole day, so it’s not exactly going to break the bank for a whole family to go up their and spend the day enjoying themselves.

I took a wander up to the viewing area first, you can’t really see the horse from anywhere perfectly (except for the sky) but the area itself is just amazing.

I then walked up to the top of the hill and just above the horse to the highest point on the peak. At this point if you go around a full 360 degrees you can see six counties on a clear day.

I can have a less than rosey view of the UK at times, and have often thought about us moving abroad, however, when you see views like this, it’s makes you realise the UK is a beautiful places and the national trust helps us keep places like this as stunning as they are. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, and it’s great having this opportunity to appreciate what we truly have in this country.

So, where is your favourite National Trust place to visit near you? Maybe, I’ll have to come and see it soon, I know for sure I’m going to try and visit many more this year.

SUMMER BODY – WEEK 2

Posted on July 10, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

Well, week 2 of operation “summer body” thanks to Julian at Titanium Fitness in Newbury, is on us from tomorrow. For those of you who don’t know the process I’m going through, click here for last weeks blog for you to get up to date.

So, now everyone know’s what’s going on, how has my last 7 days been. Well honestly……really hard work. I’ve dropped down a simple 200 calories off my carb in take and it’s made hitting my other numbers on proteins and fat’s really quite difficult, especially as I’m trying to do this diet on a bit of a budget, due to me being self employed at the moment.

So my current diet break down consists of:

350g protein per day, 212.5g carbohydrates per day & 115g fats per day.

However, the hard work I feel is paying off. I’ve had some excellent gym sessions this week, including a PB in the shoulder press on the hammer smith machine of 60kg per side plus the arm weight, and this was done at the end of the session and still for 8 reps, so I’d hazard a guess and there being much more left in me to go heavier soon.

Also, I lifted a new best on the hammer strength inclined chest press as well of 55kg per side plus arm weight and along with those personal bests this week, my general day to day sessions have just felt like they’ve gone really well. The carb cut down has meant I’ve felt tired mid afternoon and wanted to just have an afternoon nap, but, I’ve usually made myself a fruit blender drink and that’s given me a perk up I needed with natural sugars, to keep me going until dinner time and then bed.

One of the big things with this diet is you have to be so careful with your intake. One wrong item and it throws the numbers out of whack, so yet, I can have a choc bar, but, it’s wise not too as everything will be harder to achieve on the numbers front. So instead, I’ve been eating far healthier and no snacking or crap, not even any crisps “which are my achilles heel”.

I have been eating, a lot of tuna (can’t stand the stuff, but it’s great for high protein and low fat and carbs), turkey, turkey mince, chicken and salmon too. Just be sure, if you’re going to do a diet like this, you must include everything, even those juices etc you’re possibly drinking each day, they’ll contain carbs and fats you had no idea where there. A great website I use for nutritional information is Nutrition Data.

So, onto the important stuff. I started this week weighing in at 93.4kg, and after a week on lower carbs I’m currently down to 92.2kg, so that’s a loss of 1.2kg. This means I stay on the diet for another week at least, as I don’t drop any further calories until my body plateaus.

(Next week I’ll give you an idea of a days diet)

What do you think, has my body shape changed in the last 7 days? (P.S. Sorry for the mess on the bed 🙂 )

Front Facing - Week 2 — Front Facing – Week 2

Side Facing - Week 2 — Side Facing – Week 2

Let me know how your summer body diet is going in the comments, I’d love to hear any of your hints and tips to help my diet along and hit those numbers.

Chat next week,

Simon

FLYING OVER NEWBURY

Posted on July 4, 2015August 3, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So, unless you watch my daily vlogs (stopjabbaingon) you will have no idea that once upon a time I had my PPL. Now this was nearly 7 years ago and I’ve literally not flown since passing as I simply couldn’t afford to.

It was always a dream of mine to be a commercial pilot but I let that dream pass me by many years ago, so when I could afford to learn I took the opportunity with both hands, I even did some of my hours over in Florida at Daytona Beach.

Since passing a lot has happened including meeting a new friend of mine Jeff. He also has a huge passion for flying and has his own sailplanes and a share in an aircraft.

So, we’ve spoken many times about going up together, but, even though it’s been fantastically sunny lately it’s also been quite windy too mean the plane was grounded.

Well, last Monday night I got the email from Jeff, if I was free the next morning we’d be heading up for a flight, but, yet again the wind was going to pick up so we only had a small window to go up.

I arrived at the airfield at 9am. After a brew, we got the plane out the hanger, did all the pre flight checks and got on board and away we went.

Jeff had control for the take off etc and then just chucked the flight into my hands. Gave me a course to fly and away we went. We flew over the White Horse, back down over Watership Down and then around Newbury (Donnington Castle, my home area) a fair bit before coming back down again.

DONNINGTON SQUARE — DONNING TON CASTLE, BERKSHIRE

I really can’t thank Jeff enough for the experience of going up flying again after all this time and I can’t wait to do it all, and next time I’ll buy us lunch wherever we land.

GETTING MY SUMMER BODY

Posted on July 3, 2015August 4, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

So, I’ve been writing my training plans in blog form for a little while now on and off. However, like lots of people I’ve felt things just weren’t quite going my way. My body shape wasn’t changing to how I’d like it and my weight was steady fluctuating by about 500g up and down.

I know I’m not going to look like Steve Cooke anytime soon, but, I wanted to start to make a difference to my body shape and size. I was chatting to a business friend of mine (Titanium Training) I did some filming for a little while ago. He’s a former powerlifter and I filmed a competition for him.

Anyway, he has studied for years and works as a trainer but also helps people with nutrition etc. He kindly offered to sit down with me and discuss my current diet and improve on.

Oh boy, did we improve on it.

I kind of knew it myself, but, he pointed out a lot of my diet was supplement based and there certainly wasn’t enough actual food involved in it at all. We worked out my actual maintenance level of calories which went from around 1600 calories to 3500. Your bodies metabolism alters to suit the calories we take in, and mine had moved to such a low level that for me to drop any weight or mainly lose fat I’d be taking so few calories in my body wouldn’t function or be able to train.

We broke down the calorie intake to my macros which we went for 350g protein, 262.5g Carbohydrates & 115g Fat. My start weight two weeks ago was 91.1kg

So, for the last 2 weeks I’ve been eating more which is been interesting diet wise and I’ve put on weight. Today is the end of my 2 week process of building my metabolism again and have gained weight to 93.4kg.

So from today I’ll be slowly cutting down my calorie intake. We’re starting by removing 200 calories from my carbohydrate intake (My protein level always stays at 350g to keep muscle size). Once my body settles into the new calorie intake and I stop losing weight I’ll then drop another 200 calories and so on and so forth until I get to an ideal body weight for my fat content that I’d like (10%) which is 85kg.

So here we go, this is me now and I’ll keep you updated each week as to my progress with photos and the food I’ve been eating and training I’ve been doing, or you can follow me on instagram (stopjabbaingon) and see daily pictures.

WEEK 1- SIDE 93.4KG — WEEK 1 – SIDE 93.4KG

WEEK 1 - FACING 93.4KG — WEEK 1 – FACING 93.4KG

I hope you enjoy my journey, and I’d love to hear your stories about changes you’ve made to make a difference.

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(SUMMER BODY) 16TH JUNE 2015 – AM BICEPS AND TRICEPS

Posted on June 18, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So this morning was a super set session. Basically splitting each set between the EZ bar for curls and then skull crushers on the flat bench for my triceps.

After a short warm up my session consisted of (until failure)

18 x 12 reps (getting lower as biceps began to fail) ez bar @ 20kg
18 X 15 rep skull crushers @ 20kg

Cable rope curls 10 x 8 @15kg
Cable rope tricep push downs 10 x 8 @15kg
Single Arm Cable Curls 10 x 6 @ 10kg

Then finished the session off with weighted machine core work until failure for 4 reps. Each failure normally happened around 30 reps at 50kg for the crunches.

I’m certainly finding this new way of training where I try to not worry about numbers but worry about keeping the tempo up and hypertrophy of the muscle is really working. I get a good sweat going on in the sessions now and certainly feel like i’m working harder than i have done in a very long time.

How do you try to shake your training up to make a difference?

(SUMMER BODY) TUESDAY 15TH JUNE PM – BICEPS

Posted on June 17, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

So this afternoon was a quick lunch session and I concentrated on biceps and just two exercises until exhaustion in the muscle. The first was inclined seated dumb bell curls:

16 sets of 12 reps @ 15kg 5 sets of 8 @ 10kg
EZ Bar 21’s 7 sets @ 20kg + bar

As you can see, I got the numbers into the reps and a real pump on the muscle too which was fun. It doesn’t take much to put the muscle into fatigue and get some real build going on.

It would seem my training is going well at the moment, now I just need to sort out my diet and get this summer body happening.

TUESDAY 16TH JUNE 2015 – CHEST SESSION

Posted on June 16, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So, it was chest fun this morning. Just went for major repave. So much so, I forgot to keep a note of how many reps and sets I did this morning. I can honestly say though with seated incline, smith incline, flat bench, cable flyers low, cable flyers high and tricep chest based push downs I completed about 10 sets on each exercise.

We didn’t go too high on the weights, mainly because we where knackered but we kept the intensity high and hard.

Sometimes, it’s not about the numbers but more about getting the session out in the first place.

Do you always keep a copy of what you’ve done in the gym session wise?

It is wise to do so obviously, so you can see improvements etc, but sometimes, well it’s just not that simple, like with my session today.

MONDAY 15TH JUNE 2015 – LUNCH CARDIO SESSION

Posted on June 15, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

So, we hit the gym again this lunch time for a cardio session. I’m trying to keep up the steady state cardio work at the moment rather than HIIT training. In the last 3 weeks or so, I must admit, I’ve found I’m getting more muscular definition and size, especially in my shoulders and legs and although it’s still early days so I can’t be sure, I’d like to think it’s the alterations to my cardio sessions that are making a big difference.

Rather than burning muscle to complete a cardio session I’m just burning fat, which is never a bad thing.

So todays session was:

30 minutes, incline of 15% (maximum for machine) at 5kph. Calorie burn of 462.

What kind of cardio training do you do in your weekly sessions?

Monday 15th June 2015 – SHOULDER SESSION

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

Good Morning,

Hope you’re all well and had a fantastic weekend. So, I’m sorry, I’ve been very remiss the last few weeks getting my training posted up for you to take a look at.

We’ve been switching things up a little to really try and get some higher rep work out, using heavier weights and also trying to work on my diet a little too.

My maintenance calorie intake is 3304 a day, however, I’m in a process of trying to lose a little of the fat right now, especially around the love handles area, and at 38 years old, it ain’t gonna go easily.

I’ve lowered the fat in take I have every day and I’m generally trying to just snack less on crap, which isn’t easy when you pop into a coffee shop, grab a green tea and then see the CAKES.

Anyway, on to this mornings training session. We’re working on pyramid reps starts high, working down, back up and back down again every set.

SEATED LATERAL RAISES: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,6,6,6 reps
SEATED FORWARD RAISES: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,6,6,6 reps
SEATED REAR DELTS: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,4,6,8 reps
SEATED DUMBELL PRESS: 3 X 15 @ 20KG

It’s only 4 exercises, but with that number of reps I certainly got a good sweat going on so decided to cool down on the bike rather than go for any real extra calories burn. I ticked along for just 15 minutes as I know I have a hard cardio session coming up at lunch time.

How’s your summer body training going? Are you getting the results you’d like, maybe you need to switch things up a little bit in your diet or your training plan.

TRAINING 28TH MAY 2015

Posted on June 4, 2015June 4, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So today was a leg’s session for the morning. I’m trying to exhaust the muscles during my sessions at the moment so I work through hypertrophy. I’ve a couple of leg niggles so have to be careful still managed this session

Hammer strength leg raises, 12 x 10 (for 6) 8 (for 3) 4 (for 3) @ 20kg per leg

Leg Press, 1 x 8 @ 100,150,200,250,300,350,300,250,200,150,100kg super setted with leg raises @ 10kg per leg x 8

Deadlift 4 x 12 @ 60kg

Calf Raises (hammer strength seated machine) 6 x 15 @ 40kg