Obedience

     What a difference a week makes. I've had a complete 180 degree turn of attitude and emotion. I went from feeling extremely down and scared, to being completely lifted up. So why the change? It's just faith and perspective.
    I talked to someone last week and my last post come up in the subject. I asked her how she felt about the blog, she said for the most part she enjoyed it, but asked if she offer one small critique. Of course I accepted, after all I'm forcing my opinions on you all each and every post, I have to be ready for response. Being who this was, and this isn't a bad thing, I was expecting a grammar correction, or sentence structure or something along the lines. Thankfully that isn't what I got at all. She asked a simple question that did not get met with a simple answer. "Where is God?"
    I sat there and tried to come up with excuse after excuse and it actually took long enough that she thought she offended me and quickly apologized. It turns out that no matter what reason/excuse I could come up with, the ultimate reason that God wasn't in my writing is that God wasn't in my life. What a sad realization that was for me. This isn't a person I talk to everyday, as a matter of fact it had been quite a while, and within 10 min of talking to me, with reading 5 entries of what I wrote she could tell something was off.  So I looked into my heart and realized that I had turned against God. I wasn't denying him, but I certainly wasn't pursuing him. I was choosing other things, other people to lean on to get me through the trials, but if you have the Lord by your side what trials could possibly bring you down?
    There is a passage in the Bible about Moses crossing the desert with his people. Many of you know this story, some will not. Moses took his people, who is said to have been in excess of 600,000 fighting men, which means possibly over 2 million total, and was to cross the desert to Judah. God gave Moses a path to follow however they strayed from this path. People were stubborn, ignorant, disobedient and overall lacked faith. This trip could have been completed in a week, instead it took 40 years. All because people wanted to do things their own way.
    I'm tired of doing things my own way. I'm tired of taking on all the challenges set before me on my own. If God has planned a particular storm for me to go through, then who am I to question that?? I will lean on him, and he will lead me to where he wants me to be. I want to challenge all of you to look into your own lives. Are you on a 40 year path or a 1 week path?
   

This has pretty much gone away from a workout blog, mostly because I can't workout lol Update on the ear is there is no update. Still messed up. Doctor appointment is set for thursday so we shall see.

If  I've said something that has caught your attention, please talk to me about it. If you didn't know the above story, feel free to text or call or fb message or twitter me. Send me an email, a postcard, steal harry potters owl if you need to, just get with me and we can talk so much more

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week

Pursuit of Happiness

"Happiness is acceptance."-Anonymous 

    No matter what your role in this world, your profession, your situation, the size of your family, the size of your wallet, everybody shares a common goal. You can go to work, go to school, go to an nfl arena but at the end of the day you just want to be happy. We are all stuck in the pursuit of happiness. However, like everything else we pursue, we have to know what happiness means to be able to achieve it. I asked what happiness meant to people I know. 

"Seeing my family happy and spending time with them is what truly makes me happy"

"Seeing the ones I love"

"All the little things put together make me happy"

"Happiness is the art of wanting what you have, not wanting to have something"

     Amazing answers, that's just a sample. I wanted to stop at that last one because it smacked me right in the face. HARD. We just had thanksgiving, and in my last post I mentioned enjoying what you have and not what you don't. I don't like change personally. Unfortunately in my life, like everyone else's, it seems like change can't find me quick enough. I try to do everything I can to help out people that I care about, people that I love. It's how I was raised. It's led me to heartbreak, financial stress, living completely out of my comfort zone. I rarely stop and think about what makes me happy. 

    It turns out nobody can make you as happy as you can make yourself. People come and go, money and material belongings come and go, the one thing you are stuck with every day of your life is yourself and if you aren't making yourself happy then nobody can. Is it a lot easier with someone else? Absolutely  Does it make everything feel better having someone to share with? You bet. Is life easier with plenty of money? I don't know the answer to that, may not ever, but I'm guessing yes. But you know what? When it comes down to it that person won't always be there, that wallet or credit card may not be in your back pocket. You have yourself and whatever you believe in. 

    I haven't been happy lately. I'm extremely unhappy tonight, which is why I guess I decided to write. It helps to write things down and be able to read how you feel. Too bad all of life can't just be written down. There's no workout scheduled for this post. No training update. I'm still sick, have about 40% hearing in my left ear and about 60% in my right ear. I haven't heard anything from the fire department which leads me to think I didn't advance. I lost something very important to me, and I'm extremely angry about it, even though I promised never to be like this again. So is happiness for everyone? I don't know. It takes a lot more for some people than others I guess. Happiness could be around the corner, could be a city over, it could be 3 hours away, or it could be right in front of you. You never know. What you do know is that it can always be inside of you. Just have to let it.

     

Failure. Hope. Perseverance

Ladies and Gentleman, children of all ages, and the millions reading around the world, (ok maybe like 10-15 of you), ARE YOU READY TO FAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL?

   Pretty stupid question right? Who actually asks themselves if they are ready to falter at what they are trying to attain. We do of course, every single day. It's human nature to doubt. It's human nature to fail. What is not human nature is to have the drive and tenacity to look at that failure, see what went wrong, and keep working so that you aren't in that position again.  

   I'm a large person. About 6'2 277 pounds, (thats right down another 3 baby!), so when I was laying down for sleep last night planning out the millions of things I plan to do today, after winning a million dollars on a scratch off I wanted to walk/jog/run/crawl if need be 5 miles total. I hate running. I would rather simulate all 22 saw movies and be the victim than to move my body 5 miles at any time. So this task was about as likely to happen as the million dollar scratch off. I went and saw a movie and when I got back, I decided I was not going to fail. I didn't care how long it took, how tired I was, I was getting my 5 miles. 1 hour and 11 minutes later, I did it. 5 miles in the beautiful mountains of Westfield, NC sucks. There is no flat land. I still overcame it, because I had faith in myself, and I knew I could persevere.

   No matter what we are going through in life, someone has done it before. They had two options, they could fail and become part of the millions that fail every day. Or they could work through it, show nothing can break you, and give hope to anyone and everyone watching. 

    Imagine if people just gave up everytime there was a problem. Alan, Stu, and Phil would have never found Doug, the right Doug not the black doug. Dancing would have never been restored in the Footloose movie.  Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan would never have ended up together in Sleepless in Seattle. Danny O'shea would have never beat Kevin O'shea in the race down Cherry Hill. Robin Hood, God forbid, would've never got Maid Marian and I would not have a favorite movie ever. And that's cartoon, don't come at me with the real stuff.  

   The point of my rambling is that there is always hope. You can fail 9 times out of 10. Who cares. We weren't meant to be perfect. Women screwed that up by not resisting to eat a fruit from a tree, so thanks for that guys. Next time you're stuck in a bind, next time you think you're in a situation that you can do nothing about because you are too limited or whatever the excuse that you are conjuring up is, just remember someone has been there. They've done it and you can to. 

Persevere

I have a big day tomorrow. I'm taking my second to final step for the fire department entrance, hanging out with someone that's pretty cool during the day, then have a big workout at night. Any prayers that are said will be appreciated. If any of you guys set any goals after reading that blog, please share them! This should be a community setting, not just me babbling. I'm aware that some comments weren't able to be left, I'm sorry about that. I don't know what happened but hopefully it's fixed. If not, feel free to hit me up on facebook.

I took the weekend off for Cardio work, tomorrow is back to the Heavy stuff. Squats, Deadlifts, Bench, Good mornings, and more cardio! 2 lbs a week of weight loss while improving my numbers is the goal. Ultimately I'll stop the weight loss if its affecting my progress. 

Hope everyone has a good week. I will update my progress once again soon. 

There is a finish line

    I'm sorry I haven't been as active on the blog this week, been pretty tired and haven't even turned my computer on to be honest. Tonight seemed like a good time to write though so here I am.  I've had a pretty trying month, have thought a lot about things that I don't have and it's consumed me so much that I haven't taken time to stop and look around. I have a great family, my mom has taken me in and given me a place to stay when I haven't deserved it, I have great friends that offer love and support all the time. Thanksgiving is nearing us, a mere 13 days away now. I remember growing up we'd always have a lunch at the house with our family, then head to my grannys for a huge dinner with my whole family. As we all got older, people started working, getting in relationships that deterred them from being there, or just simply lost interest in the time we had. Growing older has certainly made me appreciate those around me and what they do for me so much more.
    Patience is something I am not good at. I'm like the brats from willy wonka, I want it and I want it now. Unfortunately that's not how the world works. I sometimes get so caught up in the world that I forget that I'm only 23. I expect myself to have this college degree and be into my career and be making all this money and that's just not the path the Lord has chosen for me. So instead I will work, and wait, and learn to appreciate the things that I earn.
   Of course this all translates into lifting, as much as I not so secretly try to slide in little threads of insight. The workouts are going OK. To me, that's a bad word. Equivalent to the words that used to induce child abuse by making me eat irish spring soap as a child -_-     I'm not getting to lift as often as I'd like. However, I did have two sessions this week in which I burned over 1000 calories. Add that to my diet, and 2 days took care of a good bit of my 7000 calorie a week deficit I am striving for. I'm down 12 pounds, and gaining strength which is great. Still a long way to go though. My alarm clock is going off at 8 am it seems tomorrow, and I have some 4 mile run planned, so if I don't write again, just assume my death.

Again, thank you all for reading. I appreciate you taking the 5 min out of your busy lives to read about my boring one. Hope I make you all feel better about yourself! haha  :)
Holla

Goal Oriented

People ask me all the time what my goals are, 2 year, 5 year, 10 year. We've all had to write the papers in school, make up some stuff about in 10 years from now I want to be Batman at night and David Beckham during the day. My goal in life is the wake up every single day. I'm on a 23 year completion streak, 100%. That's better than Aaron Rodgers this year.  Of course I have things I want to accomplish, degree, career, wife and children. Right now though, my goal is to be happy and to live the life I should be. The others will come. When you start putting time restraints on things, you begin to rush. IT'S NEVER GOOD TO RUSH! Slow down, take a breath, and assess the situation. How many people run through museums? You see a whole lot more walking.
When it comes to lifting, take all that and just throw it as far away as you can. lifting has to be goal oriented. I have daily goals, monthly goals, and yearly goals. I'll post those today along with my work out. Thank you to everyone who read my first post and also commented. It's definitely appreciated. Feel free to comment here as well. I'll read it even if you tell me I'm an idiot and need structure in my life =)

Daily Goals-
Stick to the plan- This includes diet, rest and the lifts. This is especially true in the gym. You don't get magically stronger because the guy next to you is throwing up bigger weight.
Finish- This pertains to the weight room. Some days we get there and have the energy of a 3 year od boy at the park. The other 99% of the time we feel like we need to call a nursing home very soon to check in. No matter how you feel, finish. Unless safety is a concern. Don't get hurt. Which leads to...
Be smart- I've taken a good amount of time off, muscle memory works well but it's not a video game, doesn't just come back immediately. Train hard, but be smart.An extra set isn't worth a month layoff for injury

Short Term-
Lose weight- This is going to be extremely hard because I'm lifting for strength, but I'm not concerned with my overall number as much as how healthy I am. I've lost 15 pounds since Oct 15, so its a good start.
Gain stamina- I recently went hiking and almost died. Multiple times. Having tons of strength isn't good for anything if you can't do simple fun things.
Compete- It's been almost 6 years since my last tournament. I want to get in one, with no aspirations of winning, just to get the feel again. There's one in January that I'm looking at, that should be the one.

Long Term-
Happiness- This is going to come in so many different forms. Happiness with myself by getting into shape and improving my health, happiness with others by improving my attitude and outlook.
Success- I want to win a competition in the next 2 years. I'm about 300 total pounds away right now, so it's definitely attainable.

Before I post my workout, I'd just like to ask everyone to keep me in thoughts and prayer. Not many know this, only about 5-10 people outside of my family actually, but I'm trying to get into a recruit program with the Winston Salem Fire Department. I completed the physical abilities test last month and have a written portion a week from Monday. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and haven't had the means. The Lord has presented an opportunity for me, I want to take advantage of it. I appreciate you all, and thank you.

Workout-
Squats- 325 4 sets * 10 reps

Bench -
180*8   210*4  225*3  255*3  270*2  300

Deadlifts-
200*3  240*3  280*3  320*3  360*3

Follow that up with 3 minutes on stair climber at 60 steps a minute, a mile run and 10 laps at the pool.

I'll post an edit with results later of which lifts I hit, or exceeded.
Thanks for the read!

The Start

My name is Mark Alford. I'm 23 years old and I'm in terrible shape, in my own regards. I understand that puts me in the same boat with probably 90% of America, but I'd like to be a part of the few that do something about it.
     In high school I stayed very active. I played baseball, football, basketball. I worked out twice a day and had a job that kept me running around. I was in fantastic shape and thought nothing about it. As time went by, I graduated and different things started taking precedent in my life. No longer was sports, working out, staying in shape at the top of my list. I wasn't even on the top of my own list. Time went by and my weight went up. 5 years later, I'm the heaviest I've ever been and feel terrible physically. I've tried to get back in the gym, but there always seemed to be something better to do. When I did get to the gym, I had no motivation. I lifted with the same couple guys all through high school and loved it. We drove each other and pushed each other to be better. My current gym has an 87 year old man on a treadmill that waves to me. I don't know how I feel about it, but the only motivation it gives me is to get the heck out of there.
     While sitting at work today, instead of staring at a screen like I normally do, I was talking with my friend about competition lifting. I began thinking about how happy I was when I did it, how I always had goals that I worked towards. My life is busier than ever right now, even with some voids, but I decided to start taking back up something I had a strong passion for. I decided to blog about it for several reasons. A major one being accountability for me. If I'm not lifting, then what will I have to write about? I haven't decided whether I will post weekly or nightly, but I will definitely keep everyone reading updated of progress.I'll post weekly workouts, weekly updates on my gains and weight, and depending how things go maybe some pictures, but I doubt it.
    I'm  hoping someone reads this and gets something out of it, whether its health related or not. I've been absent of goals the last couple years and its led me down a path I don't particularly enjoy. There's still time though. Time for me and time for everyone. You have to find what you want in life and go after it. It's never too late. Ever.
That'll wrap things up for tonight. A bit long winded. I'm sure no other night will be like. Any comments will be appreciated as I'm sure I'll need the motivation. Any questions will also be answered.
Thanks guys
Mark Aford


Side note: My starting maxes right now are Bench-315 Squat-500 Deadlift-400
I'm concentrating mainly on those because those are the competition lifts. I'm giving myself until Christmas to increase each lift by 10%