Dead Lifts Update – Nearly Twice My Weight!

Posted on by Edmund

I won’t be going anywhere for the time being until my trip to the US in February next year. I’ll be clocking in gym time again on at least two times a week – and beyond that, do my own workouts at home with body weight training.

My motivation has been renewed ever since friends commented I look buffer now. YES, A BIG WIN considering that I failed my attempt in 2012. I was putting on muscles but vomited it all out and felt nausea for a very loooong time, thus shrunk back. Plus for most of my life I have to bare with people around me saying how thin and scrawny I was, and “ah boy boy, you need to eat more rice”.

I weighed 59-60 kilos average then; now I am consistently 65 kilos for the last three months.

IMG_8960One of my recent photos. Yes, I’m making gains!

Yesterday I visited the QLS Fitness gym and my latest PR for dead lifts is 120 kilos or 264 lbs. A 22 lbs increase since my best record of 242 lbs in 2013!

I was gunning for 130 kilos which would have been double my body weight but alas, I couldn’t even lift the bar off the ground. Not even 125 kilos. So 120 kilos it was. I shall try again in a couple of months.

While I am happy with my progress, the increase in body weight came at a price: I also put on some unwanted love handles on the sides. And I’ll be hitting 30 soon, which means I need to watch what I eat now more than before.

Now that I’ve achieved my long desired ideal body weight, it’s time to go for that ideal body: get rid of the flabs and replace with six packs!

Viper Challenge 2015 – Accomplished!

Posted on by Edmund

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5 months since the last Viper Challenge… and that’s one more Viper Challenge accomplished! 20 km of 20 obstacles, though this time’s VC is harder than last year’s. Some of the people I came across and talked to agreed.

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Joining me this time is my friend Shawn Liau from Sabah. When he planned to come to KL to do the Viper Challenge this year I wasn’t really up for it but he saved my ass back in Mount KK and that said, I owed him one. lol

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I came across a few familiar faces, one of them in particular Shanker Jayroma whom I’ve not seen in years – but he’s definitely making waves in the local entrepreneur scene!

IMO this time’s Viper Challenge is better organized, and the difficulty level has gone up a bit. I didn’t train as hard as for last year, and I had 3 hours sleep prior to the event.

This time we were the first batch at 6:00 AM, though we truly got started 10 minutes later. We had to climb over a short hurdle to even get to the starting line… foreshadowing the fate of the challengers on the obstacles to come!

Ok I’m writing these down real quick before I forget!

(Some of them may not be in the precise arrangement… just counting on my memory power!)

1. Submerging into muddy ice water. It’s actually easy but I gave this a pass due to the muddy waters. Didn’t want to start out nauseas too early!

2. Jump over fire. Seems to be recycled from the last challenge, only that there is no water pool on the other side. Easy.

3. Bunker of mud. This used to be a later obstacle, seems to be moved forward this time. There were at least 4 to 5 trenches to overcome, with two of them filled with muddy water.Medium difficulty.

4. Commando crawling. Easy.

5. ‘Mountain Dew’ grappling. Hard. I overcame this last year. The organizers had since then lined up a few of the same obstacles to overcome congested traffic here. Gave this a pass though.

6. Log crossing. Climbing over four waist-level logs. Easy.

7. Climbing up a tall wall around 4-5 meters high. Psychologically scary due to the height, it scared off quite some challengers. I got this over with.

8. Inclined wall (minor). Easy. No teamwork required.

9. Muddy river. Easy.

10. Walk over fencing (should be commando crawl in watery mud). Easy.

11. Bad plumbing (5 feet water). Easy IMO but probably not so for anyone with claustrophobia. Took me a while to muster my courage to enter the pipe.

12. Long slide. This one was scary as the longer one slides the faster it gets and off he goes into the muddy water at high impact. Needs a lot of mental courage to overcome the perceived fear.

13. Bunker of mud (minor). Same as (3) as except that there are only two trenches filled with muddy waters.

14. Monkey ring. Hard. Failed this before, and I know better than to force myself.

15. Nerves of steel. Hard. I observed challengers holding onto steel wires with their legs but I followed a girl’s example of climbing the wire by hand. That worked for me despite the lack of grace!

16. Bad plumbing (6 feet). For confident swimmers only. I can’t swim. So…. skipped.

17. Crossing the plank. Hard. Wiped out.

18. Inclined wall (major). Hard. Didn’t get to do this last round but now with Shawn’s help I overcame it!

19. Underbarrel by the lake. Same as (1) but multiple underwater submerge and in cleaner waters. Did this!

20. Running up the ramp. Very hard. I failed in all three attempts here. Shawn is a seasoned climber and trains like hell. Alas, he injured his right arm at this final obstacle and that ended our attempts, as we have to get him some medical attention.

So that’s 14 out of 20 obstacles completed successfully for me.

That’s enough Viper for a long time to come!

Month #45: Newest PR & Viper Challenge 2015

Posted on by Edmund

I’m now at 62.8 KG (138 lbs). Yes! Gained some weight since. For the longest time I was stuck at 59 to 60 kilos. I still have a bit more to beat my heaviest weight achieved back in June 2012 which was 63.1 KG – some of which I puked out later no thanks to stomach issues!

Also achieved 2 new PRs today:

  • Bench Press – 130 lbs x 3 reps, and
  • Bench Press – 140 lbs x 1

I’ve never been strong at bench presses and usually lift about 80% of my body weight at best – that is until today.

The best I did was April last year when I was on a 4 day-a-week intensive training regime. So to get to this level on just once a week training (and gaining weight to top that) is really good!

Most of my time is occupied with my new Musemancer venture and since I abandoned the ‘work from home’ lifestyle, my gym training fell from 3 times a week to once a week average now.

Which is why I signed on to the next Viper Challenge in March 2015, so I remain committed to training and give myself a solid purpose. It would really suck to slouch back into mediocrity and surrender my years of training. LOL

Viper Challenge – DONE!

Posted on by Edmund

20 kilometers. 20 obstacle courses. And the unexpected rain half way through.

I didn’t accomplish all the obstacles successfully – screwed up 3 of them and paid the price with ‘minum teh tarik’, spoilt shoes by the finishing line and drenched in mud. Would have fared better for sure had I put in the same initiative I did in preparing for Mount KK hiking months earlier.

Still finished regardless! YEAAA

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BREAKDOWN ON EACH OBSTACLE COURSE I WENT TO

(This is written to the best of my memory; the order may not be correct especially around the middle part of the challenge)

#1 – Knee up – walking over tires. WARM UP

#2 – Dip in ice water. EASY

#3 – Climbing the grill while dipped in muddy water. EASY

#4 – Gripping on the plank to get from one side to another est. 2 to 3 meters distance. I got past here; feels like 50% people fail. HARD. Short people and people with poor grip won’t make it here.

#5 – Climb up some barn to get to the other side. EASY

#6 – Commando crawling with low hanging wires. EASY

#7 – Jump over fire and into the muddy water pool. Looks intimidating but it is actually EASY

#8 – ‘Electric Fire’ it’s same as #6 except that the wire is higher so you can possibly ‘crawl like a dog’ but this time there’s a powerful water hose spraying at you. EASY

#9 – ‘Multi dug in trench’. Team work is needed. You slide into the trench; you need to get up the other side and usually a team mate will be there to help you; you also do this in turn until you clear the trenches. MEDIUM

#10 – Roping up a tall wall and get to the other side. MEDIUM

[This is around the time it started raining heavily… subsides later to the end of the course]

#11 – Inclined Wall Climbing. HARD. Definitely need team work to get this over with.

#12 – Inclined Wall Climbing part 2 but taller. HARD. Also need team work to get over.

[This is the 12KM mark… until the 16KM mark there was no obstacle so the adrenaline rush died down… shoes were getting ruined too. So it’s just walking uphill from here]

#13 – After a long hiatus, suddenly there is an obstacle course again. “Mini Walls”. EASY but repetitive and meaningless; a lot of people and myself got bored of it and started walking after halfway through.

#14 – “Wall Street” – a tall straight wall. Need team mates to help get your ass up, jumping down on road pavement on the other side is ill advised at this point since legs are more ruined than when starting out. HARD

#15 – ‘Climbing Loops’ – it’s like climbing the monkey bar but it’s those ‘gymnastic loops’ instead. HARD. I failed here and fell into the muddy waters. Higher failure rate than #3

#16 – Lake Crossing. It’s just crossing a shallow part of the lake, albeit the muddy part of it. EASY. Then again, it’s not for short people. If anyone is shorter than me, he or she is done for.

#17 & #18 – apparently there were two more obstacles about ‘floats’ and ‘water’ that I missed out. I was following majority of the group (didn’t realize they were taking a shortcut, and they were followed by many others) until someone said we missed two more. Didn’t bother to turn back cos near the finishing line already.

#19 – ‘Ninja Warrior’ slope. VERY HARD. Needed a rope cloth to get up. Highest failure rate here IMO, and the cause of ‘traffic jams’ to the finishing line too.

Don’t remember there being a 20th obstacle unless I forgot about it.