I know we all come across those days, moments or moods where we think we can’t do something or just put something on-hold for whatever reason! We temporarily lose sight of what our goal(s) are, which means we just sort of want to succeed, going for the videos below we’ve got to want to succeed as badly as breathing!

Let’s become greater now! Than we were 5 minutes ago!

I’ve been able to lift a lot more weights, for example: in the beginning I was curling about 12 kgs on each arm, now I’m able to do 18 kgs in 6-7 reps and 3 sets!

Looking back so far I don’t want to sound to big headed or egotistic but looking back on how far I’ve journeyed I’ve continued to excel and improve my workouts! With the help of popular websites (will post soon!) YouTube fitness and bodybuilders such as Lee Hayward, Scott Herman and Rob Riches to name a few I’ve been able to progress and learn from these resources.

Nutrition has been somewhat difficult to maintain and I know I can do a better job. For the next three months it’s my goal to begin cutting and start sculpting away at my body fat and really get down to the core of my physique! I’m sooo excited! Throughout this stage I will try some new supplements from Optimum Nutrition and start a creative detox until the end of April.

Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll provide you with all of tue resources on sites and channels that I found to be informative and encouraging throughout my fitness regime!

All the best,
Ren

Yup! I know I haven’t made a post in a long time but rest assured that I have been going to the gym every working day, up until that fateful kickboxing class on 13/02/2012! One of the last drills was to do bag rotations so that all pairs would get to rotate around the room practicing combos on the boxing/ kick and speed bags! On one of these rotations I must’ve thrown an awkward hook which forced my wrist to bend in a awkward way! Almost immediately the pain struck me where I literally thought a bone was sticking out (thankfully that did not happen!) I like to soldier through these things so I continued with the class not letting the pain get to me.

The following morning the pain in my wrist was so intense it woke me up and I was unable to get back to my dreamland! I found that any movement with my wrist was impossible (not to mention painful!) and required a lot of effort to perform even the simplest of tasks like brushing my teeth! Since then, I’ve had my wrist massaged, but I’m still finding it difficult to flex my wrist and maintain an open palm in certain wrist flexes…so it looks like I may have to visit my GP and make sure everything is okay.

On the plus side, this has given me the chance to give my body a good rest from working out so that my muscles will relax and so when I get back to the gym they’ll be in for some shock treatment, thus allowing me to develop more in my fitness and physique! I guess there is a silver lining in every grey cloud!

Stay tuned for the next post readers!

Ren!

I mentioned before that I’ve unveiled new found knowledge and drive for my success, I’ve begun to take my workout and nutrition a lot more seriously and I’ve added structure to my workout in terms of targeting certain muscle on certain days of the week for my workouts as mentioned in my previous blog. Going to the gym I was able to curl about 14kgs for each arm and bench about 20kgs and ..those were the weights I stuck to with most of the workouts I done. Since implementing some creatine into the equation and maintaining a balanced diet, I’ve found that I can lift more at the gym and be more energetic outside the gym. I feel less lethargic, I’m more lively/ energetic (for those that already know me, you probably won’t notice the difference lol!) but most of all I feel better..healthier you might say!

Here is my workout from last Thursday (19/01/2012)

• Deep squats – 3 sets 20kgs – 8 reps – on last set I pushed 30kgs;
• Calf raises – 3 sets 30kgs – 8 reps;
• Hamstring curls – 3 sets 20kgs – 8 reps – last set I curled 25kgs;
• Lunges (with the barbell on shoulders) – 3 sets – 20kgs – 8 reps;
• Leg extensions 3 sets 25kgs – 8 reps.

Most of these workouts are completely new to me and so I’m slowly working to increase the weights (if need be).

I’m playing catch-up really with my fitness updates, now that I know how to keep track at the end of every week I’ll aim to post something about my progress and workouts!

All the best!

Ren

Once I arrived home I could now feel the effects of the muscle aches/ strain that I began to experience in the gym, although I could tell where the pain was coming from namely around my shoulder/deltoid.

For the past two days I’ve decided to do the right thing (don’t I always?! lol) and skip gym for the rest of the week, it’s always best to listen to our bodies and what it’s trying to communicate to us. Especially if I want to stand a reasonable chance of winning or at least making a good standing in the USN Body and Lifestyle Challenge, a little rest should allow my body to recuperate and get back into the gym fresh!

Well at least I know that my nutrition isn’t being affected!

Breakfast: Wheatabix

Lunch: Couscous and tuna

Dinner: Beef/ Chicken and rice

Snacks between these meals would usually be peanut butter & jelly sandwich or boiled eggs.

That’s how my nutrition is shaping up so far but it’s always changing!

Next time, I’ll have a different menu to show you all!

Keep fit, keep healthy and stay happy!

Ren

One of my New Year Resolutions was to improve my health and physique. I can’t remember how I came across it the USN Challenge but since the beginning of 2012 I’ve been going to the gym after work everyday to make sure I achieve the goals I want.

With thanks to the P90x Programme I was able to adopt the knowledge about muscle confusion and implement it’s workout timetable into my own schedule. Three weeks into the programme and things are going well! I’m eating well, cutting out bad food and soft drinks and going to the gym every evening after work Monday-Friday. I was watching a youtube video (sorry, I can’t find the link) on Chest workouts and learnt about pyramid workouts and using it to break out of a plateau or just using it in general to confuse your muscles.

Here is my weekly routine:

Monday: Kickboxing

Tuesday: Back & biceps/ Abs

Wednesday: Chest, Shoulder and Triceps

Thursday: Legs/ Abs

Friday: Catch up on any workouts that I may have missed out Wednesday if I wasn’t able to target all muscle. OR Swimming

Saturday/ Sunday: Rest

Supplements that I’m currently using are:

• Optimum Nutrition Micronized Creatine Powder.
• USN Hyperbolic Mass
• USN Protein Desert
• USN Cytopower

Stay tuned for the next update!

Ren

What happened Ren?

Well, my domain and database went down and I was so busy with my internship that I didn’t have the time to sort out what was going on, eventually my host provider cleared my domain and databases that I had thus leaving me with no site and no blog! Thank goodness, before my last post back in Feb I decided to backup my database! Now that I’ve had some time to actually look into it, I’ve finally restored my blog! Hence the reason why you can see such a big time leap!

What’s New?

• Firstly, I’ve now graduated from Kingston University where I received a 2:1 in Media Technology BSc.
• I completed a 6 month internship as a Junior Graphic and Web Designer.
• With my experience in the role above I was able to secure a role as Junior Graphic and Web Designer at Skrill Moneybookers.
• I’ve played in two Dodgeball tournaments and won UK Dodgeball Championship 2010 and UK Dodgeball Playoff Champs 2010! I was very fortunate to make very awesome friends!

What can we expect?

Anything to everything! I lay it all out here! From design inspiration to my thoughts/ personal work . I’ve also created a new page about health and fitness. I’ve entered the USN Body and Lifestyle, part of my New Years resolution was to become for healthy, fit and sculpt a six-pack! Stay tuned for entries in that section, where I’ll be talking about my workouts, supplements, nutrition and motivation!

With all that said, it’s great to be back and I hope to have a better presence this time around!

*note to self – install smileys plugin*

First off just a small update or should I say realisation ?:-) I’ve had the idea to re-design my website for a long time now (which has been 2 weeks) and so far I’ve just narrowed down the pages I want to display and a creating a brief wireframe of how I want the site to look. Before I continued any further I thought to pause and invest in a little reflection. I came to the conclusion that this would be perfect opportunity for me to develop my skills and learning more about web design and development, and so I bought The Principles of Web Design by Jason Beaird

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

So far, the book is being very helpful..it’s pretty novice in the beginning but now it’s beginning to talk about wireframing. I think I’m going to finish reading the book before I continue with any practical re-design of my website. I’m pretty excited to complete reading the book so that I can then put the knowledge into practice. (NOTE TO SELF: Write review on book!)

Digressing, I’ve always been fascinated by typography and the messages they portray. Take these images for example:

I am just amazed how creative this is, I’ve taken the liberty to Google this and provide some tutorials and further examples:

• 45 Amazing Type Faces – Typographic Portraits: http://abduzeedo.com/45-amazing-type-faces-typographic-portraits
• 50+ Exceptional Collection of Typography Tutorials: http://www.smashingbuzz.com/2009/10/50-exceptional-collections-of-typography-tutorials/
• 33 Best Typography Effect Photoshop Tutorials: http://graphicalerts.com/33-best-typography-effect-photoshop-tutorials-3d-text/
• 29 Excellent Typography Tutorials for Designers : http://thedesignmag.com/29-excellent-typography-tutorials-for-designers.html

Yes, I know some of them are repeated on other pages but nonetheless they all have different examples that you might find useful. I really want to give this a go, so when I do, I’ll be sure to post up my result(s).

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Ren

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uw_Tqv5UZQ

It definitely has been awhile since I last made an entry. With this year being the year of the Rabbit/ Hare in the Chinese calendar, I’m an exhausting all efforts towards finding my starting foothold in a career. I started last year, but let’s just say that since the beginning of this year, I’ve become much more focused and envisioned on what I want to accomplish.

Moving on, I really do believe that I need redesign my website (www.jusren.com). So I’ll be sketching new wireframes and thinking of what kind of colors and themes I want to go through. Speaking if redesign..I’ve also been thinking about renaming my domain from ‘jusren.com’ to ‘renquirona.com’. Reason for this is just for the thought of my work and name just being easier to remember. Although, I’ve seen quite a few designers do this (which is not a problem) I was just thinking also that maybe this is too much of a trending effect? Knowing me, I’d like to stick to my guns..having said this all..I’m still stick with the initial question of deciding whether I want to change my domain or not?.. I suppose there’s no rush.

Time for me to start allocating time for some redesign work