I’ve just spent a month of my life living like a bodybuilder.

For years now I’ve been planning to do a month-long bodybuilding project. Life (and more recently, the COVID lockdowns) has repeatedly got in the way, and I’ve had to keep putting it off. 

March ‘23 was the month in which I finally got around to it. Using Arnold Schwarzenegger’s New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding as a guide, I started to structure the project the way I think he would have done it. 

I quickly found that 6am getups weren’t that difficult. The routine made it manageable and the loading on of porridge every morning filled me up til lunch, and gave me the strength to prep food and protein shake (which I occasionally forgot) and be ready to get to the gym for 7am. Plus the 2 sessions a day tired me out enough to sleep. I was an idiot though and kept my phone in my room. I’m terribly addicted to it. Avoiding rush hour was a benefit, as was making use of a reasonably empty gym in the morning. 

Oldham Sports Centre only has one Smith machine, and you’ve no hope of getting on it in the evening. In the morning, the opportunity was there. 

This depended, additionally, on which body area I was working on. I rotated between chest, back and legs, focussing on one of these areas in each session. Doing 2 of these sessions, 1 in the morning and 1 in the evening, Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to as ‘double split training.’ 

On Thursdays I’d stick with my regular Cardiotone class, like step aerobics with weights, in time to music. The instructor pointed out that I was missing shoulders exercises from my routine, so perhaps I should have rotated between 4 body areas. This, of course, would have meant more movements, fewer attempts on each movement and fewer PBs. Swings and roundabouts. 

Friday nights have seen a Circuit class ran for the last few years, although this appears to have ended. This, like Cardiotone, was great for an all-over body workout, working most muscle sets and in particular the heart. 

Avoiding junk food was pretty easy, as my mind was occupied with the structure of training and the meals I was planning to eat. At the start of the project I had some not-so-healthy food at home that I’d bought before starting, and I didn’t want to waste it. There’s always going to be a bit of a transitional period when you’re eating what you still had in the fridge from the last food shop. No point those pizza subs going to waste. But eventually, the chicken and veg comes to the forefront. 

What I did eat kept me full throughout the day, so I always had the energy. Sometimes, when training, if you don’t eat enough, instead of feeling hunger in the stomach, you feel an overall tiredness, mostly in the head, that you might not recognise as hunger. So, it doesn’t always occur to you to stock up on food for the working day. 

I managed to follow a few healthy recipes and cut out a lot of junk. Chicken stir fry, chicken fajitas loaded with peppers and spices, burritos with lean mince – sometimes pork, sometimes beef – sweet potato fries, tuna sandwiches, bananas, apples etc. etc. But this all steadily got me through the day. 

I’d advise against Everlast protein shakers though – they leak everywhere. For safe keeps, if you’re bringing a protein shake to work, wrap it in a carrier bag. After the first gym session, once you get into work, then take the shake. It will aid recovery and the sugar in it will have plenty of time to work through your system. Have it in the evening and you probably won’t sleep. I used Bulk Pure Whey Protein, a bag donated by an instructor at Oldham Sports Centre. Great tasting, and kept me stocked up. I’ve still got a load of it left. 

There really isn’t much to say about the workouts – weightlifting is a routine, repetitious activity that doesn’t make good reading. But I definitely enjoyed the feeling of going back to movements I’ve not tried in a while, creeping back to the PBs and, toward the end of the month, beating one. 

So which did I beat? The only PB I set was on dumbbell press, like a bench press but without the support of the bar. I was lifting 2X 38kg before the project. I cut the reps down from 10 to 6 for the top weight, as per the Schwarzenegger book, matching my existing record in my first session. On the final day of the project, I managed to lift the 44kg dumbbells, the heaviest in the gym. 

The main obstacle I found is that the Centre is a council gym, a facility for the whole town. It’s not Gold’s Gym in California. There are meatheads, long distance runners, pretty boys, old folk staying active and 20-something influencer type girls. There’s a broad cross-section of society using the gym, and the facilities reflect this – one Smith machine, one leg press that I lifted the top weight on years ago, lots of other resistance machines that don’t go particularly heavy, one lateral pulldown machine that is usually being used… and a good handful of bars to do chinups from. So, when you’re focussing on one particular body area, it’s 3 times as hard to get on any piece of equipment. You’re kinda dictated to what you can do. If you’re doing chest, and all the benches are in use, it may be that 1 of the 2 dip stations are the only things free to do. 

But I never found I was crowded out of all the machines for any particular body area. There was always something I could do. As a result, though, progress is slow. 

What also put the handbrake on the situation: life gets in the way. Whenever I do a monthly project, there’s always going to be other things I want to do. For my birthday last July I got a trip to Glasgow, featuring a distillery tour. So, a week before the project ended, I was getting pissed, eating artisan chocolate and going to restaurants, and walking around a city, not grunting away shredding my body in the corner of a tiny community gym. I had a great time in Scotland though (and a blog post is on the way regarding that). I started the project at 81.4kg. I ended at 81.5kg. Riiight.

Before and after beasting the gym twice a day for a month (sorta). What an incredible, uh, improvement. pic.twitter.com/7RLLS2XQRk

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 mastodonapp.uk/@matttuckey (@matthewtuckey) March 31, 2023

I’m planning to keep my alarm at 6am from now on, and keeping some of the morning sessions. I may not do all the evenings too, just so I can eat at a reasonable time for once. The main drawback, as per, is self discipline. I needed to be stricter with what I ate, and with time spent on screens at home, particularly before bed. If I could have denied myself that, I believe I’d be a lot slimmer, and stronger.