A little less than a year and I'm finally posting.

The original idea behind "What the Gluck?" was to provide friends and well-wishers with witty and relevant musings on current events and topical issues. Since it turns out that I'm not witty, nor am I relevant, that idea didn't work out so well.

Those who know me will have heard about my excursion into the strength game this summer. After two consecutive fall/winter seasons of rather serious knee and shoulder problems, I wasn't in super-awesome shape (in my mind at least). In the summer of 2008, I was 6' 1-2" and 155 with about a 30" waist. Pretty damn lean but not particularly big. This past summer, I was up to 175+ at my heaviest after a cycle of creatine, with the same waist size. 20 pounds of muscle and a lot of newfound strength seemed like a pretty good gain for a year filled with IT band and rotator cuff issues.

The injuries keep following me, despite my success - some more rotator cuff and knee problems and the straining of my rhomboid/trapezius in the middle of the summer slowed me down from the heavy training I was doing only weeks before.

So here we are - September 27, 2009 and I'm starting a new 4-week cycle of creatine. I'm going to use this blog for me to reflect upon my training and diet in my quest to get to at least 180 pounds with a minimal amount of fat gain. And, you can come along for the ride. But only if you want.

Each day I'll post my workout or food log - generally I only work out 3 days a week because my training is very heavy. But this month I might add one or two workouts a week (lower weight, hypertrophy based), and a lot more cardio than I used to do because I feel very out of shape in an athletic/endurance sense. But, now that I'm in Maplewood for the time being, I can get in a lot more cycling. That, and I can finally do some odd-object training that I've been excited to try. In fact, I bought 300 pounds of sand for my sandbag training this afternoon...so we'll see if that increases my functional strength even further.

In terms of food, I'm going to try and keep a food log for as long as I can stand it. I need to take in more calories and protein than I currently do to gain weight, and I'm hoping that this can keep me on top of it. You might think to yourself, "I'd love to be able to eat 3000-3500 calories a day and not get fat," but it's much easier said than done, at least when you're not accomplishing it with McDonald's.

So there it is...I'd be honored to be on your RSS feed if you want some insight into the world of strength, and bodybuilding to a much smaller extent. And if they hate, then let them hate and watch the muscle pile up, as my friend 50 Cent once said.