Early years
Elephonto; that's what my brother called me. That in itself should give you an idea of my general shape, but for your amusement, here are some hilarious photos.
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| Look at this chubby, goofy little fuck. |
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| This was definitely not a regular occurrence. |
I'd like to say this was me at my fattest, in fact these are pretty far from it. I was a little blob, unsurprising as my diet consisted mainly of sweets and pasta. I'm going to assume my parents burned any pictures of me at my peak adipose percentage, probably out of pure shame, can't say I would blame them.
Adolescence
The above were only really provided for your amusement and my humility. Being chubby as a kid is pretty common; once you burst through your early teens and get your growth spurt, however, you end up with a real idea of your body type. Mine was gangly. Really, really gangly.
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| Tragic hair, hollow bird chest, coat hanger shoulders and biceps thinner than my Father's forearms. |
This was me circa 15 years of age, post deciding I didn't want to be fat and dramatically reducing my food intake, but pre any sort of focussed lifting programme. Tragically, I think I was actually going to the gym now and then in this time frame, I was also playing rugby somehow. I couldn't find any topless photos of myself from this time, which is likely because I was never topless due to having a horrible skinny fat physique. So yes, as you can see: a naturally gifted, genetic freak muscle man, I am not.
I do really think it bears saying twice: my biceps were thinner than my Father's forearms.
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| Still pale and skinny. |
This is at 17, I believe. Clearly I thought I had some sort of appreciable muscle mass, hence the cut-off. Still a hollow bird chest, but I'm possibly starting to resemble a respectable human male here. This was the product of at least a year in the gym. At an age when T levels and growth hormone are off the fucking chart I must have been training with a ratio of dicking around to achieving actual results that rivals the UK Government.
To the present
As mentioned in my first post, a number of intended and unintended extended lay-offs led to me pretty much maintaining the above muscle mass for about 3 years, but getting leaner from fight training. Around September 2011, I began training (sort of) properly and more importantly started to view training as a learning process. I made the mistakes and learned the lessons and after some time started to enjoy researching the theory behind it all, which is when things actually started coming together. Over this period I managed to naturally add significant amounts of muscle, whilst staying lean enough to see my abs. I'm no mass monster for sure, nor am I shredded to the bone; but take a look at the photo of me when I was 15 and you can see I must be doing something right.
Below are a collection of progress photos I have found hanging around and semi-naked photos I've found on Facebook.
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| The start of 2012, still pale, but signs of a physique developing. |
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| May 2012 (I believe), putting a bit of meat on the bones. |
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| July 2012. Tanning shorts. |
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| September 2012, I reach a point where I'm actually pretty happy with my physique (Apologies for the degree of nudity). |
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| November 2012 (I think) slowly adding mass. |
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| Valentines day 2013. Loco fam. Not the best picture, but this is the most recent topless shot I can find. |
Thus brings us to the end of my documented progress, but never to the end of my quest to get big, strong and jacked. 2013 has been a relatively shitty year thus far for me in terms of progress due to a couple of recurring injuries being complete dicks. I'm not using that as an excuse, that's just the way it is. Fear not though, I fully intend to tell my shoulder and hamstring who the boss is, sort them out and continue on my journey to the summit of physical excellence.
I realise I've talked a lot of journeys and quests; this isn't because I want to be some sort of mountain man. I want to be a mountain, man.
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