In my mid-twenties my body was in pretty rough shape. I was suffering from chronic pain and had terrible mobility to the pain where my quality of life and mental state were being severely adversely impacted. I was also terrified at the idea of entering a gym. I worked with an excellent chiropractor in Birmingham (UK) who helped to provide significant pain relief and subsequently referred me on to a physical therapist.

Since my last post back in June, I have been steadily eating at a surplus while focusing my training on powerlifting. During this period I have run three different programmes: Metallicadpa’s Push/Pull/Legs Split nSuns 531 Linear Progression GZCL Linear Progression Metallicapda’s PPL While I was cutting I was running a full body calisthenics-focused programme three-to-four days a week, but I had been wanting to try a split programme which would allow me to train with more frequency throughout the week.

Some time around early May I decided to change up my eating habits. Since January 2016 I have been working on cutting body fat, conquering my appetite and improving my poor eating habits. By May I felt I had reached a point where the returns I was getting from eating at a deficit were diminishing; my stomach was flat, my abs were visible, and my relationship with food had substantially changed for the better.

At the beginning of 2016 I was overweight. My frame since childhood had been wiry, and through adolescence to young adulthood, finding myself a victim of pop culture’s false dichotomy of intellectualism/athleticism, my activity levels decreased and my percentage of body fat rose. My activity levels as an undergraduate student were already low, but I was not prepared for just how physically static my life would become when I began working.

When I initially set a goal for myself, nine times out of ten it will be abstract and unmeasurable; not particularly useful in the long run, but enough to get me moving in the right direction. My specific fitness goal for 2017 is to be able to hold an l-sit on gymnastics rings, and this goal is helping to shape my long-term approach to fitness throughout the year. On the other hand, I have not had any sort of equivalently defined goal when it comes to writing; it has essentially just been ‘improve writing skills’.