Still Walking the Talk One Year On
Back in August 2008 I posted an article called Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk. In that article I expressed how I refuse to take advice regarding health and fitness from a doctor or nutritionist who are themselves unhealthy or overweight. Sick people cannot help other sick people get well.
So, just as I would not take advice from an unhealthy and overweight person, I don’t expect you to either. To that end back in August 2008 I had some photos taken of myself while I was enjoying my regular workout and I posted those photos here on Balanced Existence. That way I figured you could see the product of my knowledge and experience despite (or perhaps because of?) the hands life has dealt me.
It’s now just over a year since I posted that article up so I figured it was high time for an update. If you’re a regular reader here you would have read about my experiences with the deadlift and with kettlebells before that. Below you’ll find some pictures from my workout on Friday.
Chalking up
Visualizing the lift
Pulling 2 x bodyweight (160kg or 352lbs) for reps
Bottoms Up Kettlbell Clean (32kg or 70lbs)
Double Kettlebell Clean...
...and press
Sledgehammer Levering
September 26th, 2009 at 7:46 am
[...] Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk Aug.30, 2008 in Fitness, Health, Just For Fun, Nutrition & Diet If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to Balanced Existence for free via email. Or you can grab our free RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Edit: Since this post is now a year old (as at September 2009) you can find more recent photos here: Still Walking the Talk One Year On. [...]
September 28th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hey Stephen -
I like the post–I like the concept of living by your actions and not by your words. I recently started to work on getting back into a regular fitness routine, been running regularly about 3 months now and I’ve lost about 15lbs, with my goal being about another 10lbs down to my ideal weight. Weight loss seems like the easy part - do you have any other suggestions for muscle building and toning (preferably without a gym membership)–seems to be an area that I’ve never been very good with. Hope all is well, and thanks again for the post.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Hi Andrew,
Glad you liked it. I feel that people can say all manner of thing but it is what they do that tells the truth.
I certainly do have recommendations for muscle building and toning beyond commercial gyms. I suggest kettlebells and Pavel’s Enter the Kettlebell book and DVD. You seriously cannot go wrong if you follow the program. Check out the archives here on Balanced Existence for articles about kettlebells. Or you could get into the deadlift with Pavel’s Power to the People program. Both work. Both are simple. Both don’t require a gym.
All the best,
Stephen
October 8th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
[...] threshold above which is considered unhealthy? How is it that if fat makes you fat that I happen to look like this every day without hours of cardio every [...]
October 9th, 2009 at 12:43 am
[...] does not make it so. To my mind it all comes down to explanatory power. You can see for yourself the product of myself taking my own advice and at least with this article you can confirm my description of how the body works by consulting [...]
October 11th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Hey, great article! Do you have any intention of cutting or do you only care about functional strength? You have great power for your body size, but if you started cutting fat/hardening muscles or whatever people do to get the vascularity of Bruce Lee, what would you have to do with your exercise routine and eating habits?
October 12th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Hey Fullcrum, good to see you’re still reading and enjoying my blog! As for your questions - no I don’t go in for the bulk/cut idea. I’ve found that when I stick to eating what my body tells me is right for me and just enjoy effective exercise that my body composition always improves. That is I become more muscular and reduce the amount of fat I’m carrying. So essentially my whole program is geared towards getting stronger while becoming leaner and staying basically the same body weight.
Too often losing weight is losing both muscle and fat. So the person ends up being simply smaller but with the same body fat percentage or even a worse body fat percentage.
If I really wanted to cut I would go very low carb and calorie restrict for a couple of weeks and then start carb cycling. I think most people probably don’t realize that a fitness model in a photo has spent months dieting down and then dehydrated themselves to get the way they look. Then they touch them up on the computer. It is far from realistic. Nor do I consider it healthy. How I look here is how I look every single day.
Stephen