John’s Blog: A Bikram beat down, Traveling terror, and Getting better for 2017
by John Meadows on August 26, 2016Before I get to all the get better stuff, I want to catch you up on my vacation and seminars I recently did.
I traveled to England and Ireland to do some 3-day seminar/camps. I was very excited to have promoter extraordinaire, Suby Ali setting up the England camp and the Irish Strength Institute setting up the camp in Ireland. This would end well, but man did it get off to a bad start. We had a few connections to make, one being in Madrid, Spain. From Spain we would be flying to England, but here is what went down in Spain. We went to the lounge, and were told to go to a particular gate. We did that at the time we were supposed to and there was nobody there. We went back to the lounge and they said oh the gate changed to xx. We then went to that gate, and the plane was there, and the sign said now boarding. They would not let us on though (we still had 20 minutes to departure) as they said we were late. It was infuriating. They insisted though and there was nothing we could do. We were trying to ask for help at their (Iberia) service desk, and they claimed they didn’t speak English. It got worse and worse. We ended up getting on the bus and going terminal to terminal trying to find a flight. Finally, I found a flight into England at least
on another airline and I bought it. At this point the kids had passed out on the floor due to not having slept for 24 hours. Long story short, we got on a plane and went to London. Now at least we were in the country. We then got a cab, with a broken air conditioner on the hottest day of the year there and had a 5-hour trip across England to get to our destination. We got there, and the camp went awesome. I think I was running on adrenaline at that point. The campers I think really enjoyed the honesty in which I talked about PED’s as well as being put through many workouts, and learning about my new high frequency plans.
Next it was off to Ireland. What a great group of guys there running the show and also we had over 100 people listening to the lectures. Dr. Serrano spoke and also Eoin Lacy, the camp organizer. I enjoyed presenting with them. They had fantastic presentations and also were quite entertaining. The food there was amazing, we didn’t have a bad meal! We also had some awesome workouts with the campers there as well. I hope to return to Ireland again, as does the wife!
I will have all of this loaded to the website for my members once we get it all sorted out! We are almost ready now. Those who aren’t members will have an opportunity to purchase these at a steal price.
Now it was off to go home, and an easy trip home right. Wrong. Our flights home had been canceled because we used a different airline to get to England. After discussing this all night long with the airline, we did get them to rebook us on a flight home but we had to stay in England 2 extra nights. So be it. We were ok with this, as we just got to hang out with Suby more. Once we flew back to the states into JFK in New York, we were informed out flight home to Columbus had been cancelled due to bad weather. The skies were perfect though. I asked what bad weather? They said well we anticipated it but never got it. They had canceled all flights home to Columbus though, so now it was a toss-up as to who would get the late flights home from La Guardia (yes, they made us travel over to La Guardia to fly home.). We got on the last plane, one again with exhausted kids, but we made it home.
Now after a 3 day break it was off for a real vacation to Aruba! Finally, a well-deserved true vacation. Our flight was Wednesday and on Monday we began hearing about Delta having a meltdown at their headquarters in Atlanta. Turns out they had a power outage and had to cancel 1000 plus flights that Monday. The next day they canceled 600 or so. We went to airport really early Wednesday not knowing what to expect. Sure enough our flight was delayed hours, enough so that we would miss our connection to Aruba. We got their so early though, and they had another red eye, that had been delayed still boarding for Atlanta so I asked them to put us on that, and they did! It was all gravy from there. No more flight issues.
The break was so needed. We made it a point to have a blast and we did. We rode horses on the beach, waverunners, ate a lot of ice cream, and on and on. Here is a pic of us at the swim up bar at the hotel. We will definitely go back there, and I highly recommend going there for those needing an awesome vacation spot.
Ok so now onto the get better stuff.
As always, after a contest season you have to take along honest look at yourself and come up with a game plan to make improvements. This year as always, there were some obvious things that I plan on focusing on and some that are not so obvious. Here is my list.
1) Show up looking my best
Solution – Sounds easy right? Well not when you are dry like me, lean, have no colon, and have to lose 7-9 lbs and then get it back and get your “look” back. Well this year I am not going to worry about weight at all. I know how I look in the low 220’s and it is contest ready lean. So if I happen to be that much and ready, I’ll do the open class.
This is me around 220.
2) Come in with better control in abdominal wall
Solution – Last year I was able to increase my ab training, and I did a ton of vacuum work. It helped! I got a lot of compliments in Charlotte from doing my front double bi with a vacuum. I believe I am making good headway there. I still get really excited, very wound up though, and sometimes lose control over my breathing while on stage. I am implementing Bikram Yoga to help with this. It teaches you how to breath in HIGH STRESS (high heat and fatigue) situations, and I believe this will help me in addition to the other benefits it provides.
NOTE: I took my first Bikram Yoga class today. OMG, it destroyed me. Of course the heat was nasty, but holding the positions, man, talk about burn. I am not flexible enough to do the poses, but I know it will get better. That burn, while in that heat, man, all I am gonna say is it was HARD. I did make it through the whole 90-minute class though.
3) Increase back and chest size
Solution – I am going to employ high frequency work for my back, as it helped a lot this year. For my chest, I feel like my standard MD training 2 days a week worked better though, so I will continue with this.
4) Get lower body back
I don’t mean definition, I mean size. Dropping down so low in weight really hurts the density of my hams and glutes. It also hurts my quad sweep and depth of lines in my legs.
Solution – By not forcing my weight down so much, this should allow me to get back the crazy ham density I have displayed in the past and have a rounder bubblier butt! It should also bring back my freaky quads.
I went too low with training frequency on legs as well. It might not have been too low, but dropping the weight and all the added things to do that is what really hurt my legs. I was pissed at how my legs looked in Chicago. I felt my upper body was pretty nasty, but my legs were soft. I trained them the next day with Ken Jackson, and then crushed them Wednesday, and then trained them the night before the show in North Carolina on Friday night. That’s retarded right? 3 times in the week before a show. Not for me. Here is how they looked in NC. This was much better. Probably 90% back.
5) Focus on health
With my age, and the nature of this sport, health has to continue to be a priority.
Solution – I am continuing with blood work done every 4 months, off-season cardio work 3-4 times a week, and Bikram Yoga due to incredible amount of sweating involved. Also, I am simply continuing my deep tissue work 2 times a week as well!
I continue to use Citrus Bergamot for HDL, Super Bio Curcumin to wipe out inflammation, Fish Oil, Vit D3, and Liv 52 as my main health supps.
That’s it for now, the next time will be an update on how the offseason is going as I just kicked it off!
John Meadows