My training history

At the time of writing.

Name; Nathan Smith, nice ta meetcha :]

Height; 5ft 8 / 172cm

Weight; About 150lbs right now at give or take 9% bodyfat.

I started training sometime in 2008, I weighed 133lbs and had medium low but not exactly magical bodyfat. Typical skinny kid of 17 years old. I'd just let 6th form (high school) early because I just weren't feeling it for school anymore and had a 5kg tub of protein powder at home that I'd bought a year earlier but never used, ever. I had a weight bench upstairs that my brother left behind when he moved out with about 100kg of weights. My dad used to be a pretty massive bodybuilder and taught me all about nutrition and weightlifting, I also did conditioning myself for Parkour at the time (lol), so I'd at least done some reading.

That being said I took my first initiative, bought a copy of Flex magazine that my dad used to buy when he did bodybuilding, got a routine outta there and got doing it. I knew it wasn't perfect, but at least doing any routine was better than doing none while I started reading and developing my knowledge.



Somewhere along the line I'd want to audition for the circus school. I'd finish my 'bulk' weighing 180lbs. My first cut I finished at 165lbs so I was still far from lean. I started powerlifting when Lees Dragon (my friend Mohsen) came to Liverpool to live but never really started properly until Joe Paxton moved down in late 2009. I was pretty weak (compared to now anyway), but had a decent base and we three were all about the same strength. So we got to it...

8 months later in the summer of 2010, my PR lifts would be;


Bodyweight; 73kg / 160lbsDeadlift; 195kg / 430lbs
Bench; 100kg / 220lbs officially (couldda done more, but yaknow, officially)
Squat; 140kg / 320lbs. Always did have a balls squat.




Nothing special. During this time I went through a pretty mad drug period and was playing around with all kinds of things, I smoked alotta weed, I sniffed plenty of stuff. My training sucked, my diet sucked. So, after the UK2010 gathering I did what I thought would be best;

I injected a testosterone blend for 8 weeks ^.^ yayyy. I did the absolute minimal amount, 250mg, injected it once every 6 days so I didn't get half of what I could have, but that being said I wanted to keep side effects down. Long story short I still got side effects, had very bad problems managing hormones and totally fucked up PCT, so 5 weeks later I wasn't back to stage one, but I wasn't far off where I was BEFORE my fucking cycle.




So what about now? where am I? Well for the last 6 months I've just been doing bodyweight exercises. I've got medium at them, went from being about to do 8 chin ups and a 3 secondish tuck planche, to doing 20 chin ups, 6-7 second flag holds, 8-10 second advanced tuck planches and I've finally became reasonably proficient at handstands. It's paid off really well, I enjoy this training much more, I'm smaller but I'm a look I enjoy now.


Lastly, the last 4 weeks I've been using 30mg anavar a day, so I can cut down whilst losing really no muscle and try and gain some strength. Went okay, I've only gotten stronger if not by alot while cutting bodyfat and in 3 weeks I finish my cut, I'm hoping with my new precautions to finish at 6-7% bodyfat. Although I've just recently got elbow tendonitis training for one arm chin ups =\ Booooo. the last 2 and a bit weeks of my cycle now will suck majorly haha.




Although I know it may be surprising that I've actually cycled anything, I feel the need to be open and honest with the community about how shit goes down. I haven't done any of my cycles with the best of knowledge really, but working with and getting to see a lot of people in the sports industry it's something that is well...encouraged, so it's not really a scary or wrong thing in my eyes to do since I'm totally aware of what to expect. Kinda.