h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello Scottish Guy! Like I promised I checked out your entry. I just want to mention this thing - I bodybuild, and I'm also a vegetarian. I don't eat meat or fish, but I do eat eggs and cheese (can't drink milk, I'm allergic to it). I haven't been a vegetarian for long - only a week now in fact! I'm going to see if it makes any difference to my results. It hasn't seemed to affect my training yet, I am still getting steadily stronger.

What are you eating? Appart from soya products, eggs, cheese and artificialy produced protien suppliments (which are expensive), there aren't that many good protien sources for vegetarians. What sparked the vegetarianism?

Basically eggs, cheese, beans & lentils, oats, wheat, potatoes. I personally don't think massive amounts of protein are that necessary. I am not dead-set on being huge. I know I can still get very strong even if not very big, but I still think I can get over 220 pounds even with this restriciton.

Why vegetarian? Basically because I live in the Third World, because it is easier to feed more people with plant food than with animal food. It makes me uneasy to eat ecologically expensive kinds of food while all around me people are dying of hunger. Oh, and I happen to be quite fond of animals and it always has been a problem to me that they need to be bred and slaughtered to provide food for people.

Why I did not do this earlier? Well because eating meat was too much of a habit. The bodybuilding made it more difficult for me to give up. But now that I don't actually mind that much how big I am it's easier to do so. I've very gradually over the past years been eating less and less meat and seeing how I cope with different vegetable protein sources, and then stopped eating red meat and sticked with fish, and now finally I dropped the fish as well.

Gimme a few months on this and I'll tell you how I'm doing!

Oh well. As long as you're happy. Sice we're about the same height and weight at the moment, it should make an interesting study to see how both of us progress. Now I'll see just how effective the tuna and the pro-hormone pills really are.

Heh heh ... I don't think I'm going to put much pressure on you! I am a bit soft and flabby at the mo, being at that age when most guys get a bit sloppy. I don't have the hormones, I don't have the tuna, and I also have a few injuries that mean I can't train very heavy, but you know what? I think a challenge with a young bloke like yerself can be quite the ticket to fire me up to get in shape again!

Then it's a race! As soon as I start university after the summer, I'll have access to the uni gym. My progress has slowed down considerably due to the holiday, but it should rocket back to it's previous levels and then some once I can get my hands on some heavy duty equipment again (my progress had suffered at my old school gym because I'd maxed out on most of the machines ).

Allright! What kind of routine do you follow, if I may ask?

When I'm not on holiday, I go to the gym and work out for 30-45 minutes 4-5 times a week. I typically do about 5 sets on the bench press, leg extention, leg press, pec deck, situp bench, and shoulder press. I do 8-14 reps on most machines (20 for the situp bench, 45 degree inclination), using a load that's about 80% of my maximum. On the bench press, this means a working load of about 100 kilos. During the holidays, I maintain my muscle mass with 10 minutes of press-ups and shoulder presses each day (I don't know any effective dynamic tension exercises for my legs that dont require machinery).

What's your routine?

Well up till now I've been playing around mostly, but at least I did it on average three days a week, so I am at least in the habit of going to the gym regularly!

Now that we have a challenge I'll try to start training 'for real'!

My routine:

Day One: Bench press, Pulldown, Standing Press, Seated Row (not rowing ergometer!!! Rowing with a stack of weights!)

Day Two: Deadlift, Leg Press, Leg Curl, Calf Raise, Crunch sit-up.

Five sets of each.

I am still training very light. Today in the Bench Press I used only 50 kg and did 27, 25, 20, 20 and 17 reps. I am also going to start deadlifting tomorrow with 50 kg. I will slowly increase the weights from here on. I injured myself badly in the past, my shoulders and also my back, and over the time I've been trying to get back in training I found out that if I try to train heavy (for me that's under 12 reps) I get inflammation in my tendons, but if I go light I can go all-out and still slowly but steadily gain strength. Over time I get used enough to one 'light' weight that I can go up 5 kilos or so - then I will stay with that until I'm used to it, and then go up again. If I go slowly but steadily I can gain strength without hurting myself again. I'm not talking about muscle pain - when my muscles are sore, I'm happy, and it's over in a day or two! But when my tendons become inflamed they take months to heal, so I'm not going to take chances.

I aim to push up to 40-50 reps with 50 kilos in the bench and then increase. Over six months I'm going to try to reach 70-75 kilos for 20 reps or more. In the deadlift I'm aiming for 50 kilos for 50 reps first, and then build up, hoping to get to 100-120 kilos for at least 20 reps within 6 months. That will give me a base for increasing the weights further over the next 6 months and I hope will be worth about 5-10 kg of extra, quality bodyweight.

I'm glad I'm too young to have any old injuries or problems, but I sometimes wonder what condition I'll be in after 30 years of hard training.

"I sometimes wonder what condition I'll be in after 30 years of hard training."

I believe there are people in their 60s and 70s who still train. Their doctors may
scold them, and they may ache at times, but they continue. There are worse
things one could be doing with one's life.

Getting enough protein on a vegetarian diet is not necessarily hard as long as you
combine complementary proteins. Examples would include: rice with legumes,
dairy products with grains, legumes with seeds, potatoes with dairy products.
A varied, well-balanced diet should give you what you need. The body is even
capable of borrowing the amino acids it needs from bacteria in the digestive
tract. People on a strict vegan diet may need to take Vitamin B-12 supplements.

It might even be wise to avoid getting too much protein. This is because the kidneys
and liver have to work hard to dispose of extra protein. This may not be a concern
for someone who is young and healthy, but later in life a problem might arise.

Yes! Scottish Guy, if you don't do anything stupid in the gym you'll probably never injure yourself seriously! My own injuries are not completely gym-related - I had serious health problems in the past that affected my muscles and nervous system and that caused pain and damage apart from anything I did in the gym. It did exacerbate a few mild gym injuries as well to the point where they were bad problems. I am getting over all that now.

In that case, I might find my old age quite enjoyable, showing the young whipper-snappers how it's done and everything. .

Now you know how I feel, ha ha ha!

Well, this is farewell for a while. I'm going on a navigation and mountain skills course on Sunday, and I won't be back until Friday.

Enjoy it!

I'm back now, and I have a nice shiny certificate for my wall.

So was it good? Was it tough? I imagine it musta been in the Scottish Highlands somewhere! Was it cold and rainy or sunny and warm?

Some bits were good, some were tough, it rained, it sunned and yes, it was in the Cairngorms in the eastern Highlands. The rain was wet and my clothes were sodden, the wind was strong and the views were spectacular. The food was good, the girls were hot and my factor 45 sunblock did the job well on the one day that there was some sun (I'm Scottish. I burn easier than an albeno Eskimo). On the whole it was pretty good.

Sounds like it! I went mountaineering about Christmastime last year. It was in the Drakensberg where there are thousands of peaks over 10 000 ft. Unfortunately we did not go that high - only up to about 7 000 ft. There was lotsa sun - you woulda been fried to a crisp, sunblock or not, ha ha! Africa, close to the tropics, and high up i.e. close to the sun as well! And it is also so dang hot it's impossible to keep yourself covered up!