Happy new year to y'all! Hope everyone meets their workout goals and has an awesome year ahead.

Also, I have decided to grow a goatee.

Also, my arms are now 19.5" cold again. I really do hope I can do well at the comp this year. :-)

Only 20lb short of my next bodyweight goal; let's do this!

No-one uses Livejournal these days anymore, do they?

Which is a pity, because I think I'm going to start posting here again...

Took that pic last night. Really getting into the swing of preparing for my next bodybuilding comp in 2011, I'm a quarter of the way through my current bulking cycle. Big Arm. 'nuff said

Well, I had meant to fill journal-readers in on the overall plan for my training for the next ten months, but time is not my friend. Hopefully by the end of the week; there's just some information about how long I'm mass-building for, when I start cutting, how I'm targeting specific bodyparts and when etc.

In the meantime, I had to express how good a week it's been; my bodyweight's back up to 235lb, which I'm really pleased with - it's way ahead of schedule, and bodes well for my ambition to be very large indeed come the competition. The best thing about my current diet is dinner - 1lb of steak for dinner EVERY night. At current going, I'll have eaten a whole cow's worth of meat in... 2.5 years (I asked wikipedia). Kind of amusing to think that I am literally becoming 'the beef' :p

The other goodie from my week is that my barbell curls are now up to 70kg (155lb) for the first time. This is beyond anything I've put my arms through before, and they're responding really well. Getting the arm training 'out of my system' early on this time though, the focus completely changes next weekend and I start giving more priority to other bodyparts. First up - the chest. Let's see if I can beat my previous bench press records!

It's all rather fun and going well. Thanks for your support - there's a long hard road ahead yet though. Let's hope it continues to be fun.

OK, I'm officially back to bodybuilding. This time all the chips are on the table. I'm competing next year, and I'm in it to win it! Tell you all about it very soon. The above photo taken playing around with my webcam.

Does that count as a smile yet, kylet ?

Good morning internet,

I have an 'announcement' that I'm making today, which is really just letting everyone know where I am and what I'm up to. But I've come to tell you that I'm going to be on hiatus in this journal for awhile; I'm taking a break from bodybuilding.

And by that, I mean I'm taking a break from the constant grind that has been the last two and a half years of constantly trying to get bigger.

Why this, and why now? Well, let me briefly take you back to September 2006 one more time. I have said this before - but it really is an important point to me - but when I started out and began with the intention of 'getting big' for the first time, it was an aspiration more than something I thought was going to actually happen. I'd spent my whole life skinny and being made miserable because of that fact, and I didn't imagine that was going to change just because I joined a gym. When I said then that I wanted to compete one day, that for me was as far-away a notion as if I'd said I wanted to one day walk on the moon.

History now has shown that I was wrong in my pessimism; and as I changed my body, boy what a feeling. It was unexpected. And if I had compiled a list of all the things I would have wanted to achieve through bodybuilding, right at the beginning... I have fulfilled them. I've competed; made family and friends in awe of my size; ripped my old clothes asunder; been admired for my success by hundreds of guys across the globe; inspired others to do the same; flexed an arm that was 20" around.

It was about the time I found my arm was that big in March that a new feeling began to grow within me for the first time; satisfaction. I grew up dealing with body dysmorphia, "bigorexia", suffering from crushingly poor body-image and self-esteem. To start off with, it seemed like the desire to put on muscle was a thirst I could never quench. But indeed - to have grown so much in just over two years should be enough for anyone. And it is enough - for now.

There has been a price I have paid for this success; spending all my free time training, neglecting my other pursuits, partner, friends. An empty bank account as I pour more and more money into food and supplements. I was happy to pay it. But now I've reached a point where it is time to do something else for awhile; prior to bodybuilding, I recieved more notice for my writing. I've been published before. I've often joked with myself over the last two years that if I'd put as much effort into my writing career as I had into my bodybuilding, I'd already have a book contract by now. It's been a choice; I couldn't have everything. I'm now writing more again - and acting too. It will emerge on my ccroft journal.

I've thought of many metaphors to describe the situation over the last couple of weeks, but the only one that has stayed with me is the vision of spinning plates. My life is a lot like that. I've got this one (a big bod) spinning; there's a stack of others to be picked up. I couldn't spin them all at once, but now I can take the next one on the pile and put it up. Spin. And then, eventually I may see, that I have all of the plates going, and then I shall feel like I have finally fulfilled the potential I feel I have.

This is not the end of the line for 'ccmuscle' by any means; I still plan to maintain the muscle I have by training 3-4 times a week. I just won't be getting any bigger for awhile - and that should be fine. But come another year, I will no doubt feel the bug, and will return to spin this plate some more so that it doesn't fall down. I had wanted to be 300lb by 2013; if I should postpone that now until 2014, or 2015, but have made other accomplishments instead, that shall be no bad thing. It's like when a band goes away awhile after releasing one successful album; they're in the studio recording the next one, so you don't see them for awhile. But they come back eventually... to rock your world all over again.

See you down the line, and thanks again for all of your support.

- Charles Croft, April 2009

So yesterday was my day off training, as I was doing some theatre work. I didn't eat as much for most of yesterday, but enough... right up until dinner time. I get partway through my meal and suddenly experience stomach cramps of doom and have to lie down. I figure it's something I ate earlier for breakfast or lunch.

I went to bed - forgoing the usual protein shake just in case things are still dodgy - and about 3am this morning I woke up in agony from the pain in my belly. The pain undulated between feeling like I was being stabbed through the belly with hot knitting-needles, and a general bloated ache. Oh yeah, there's nothing like feeling like your guts want to explode out your abdomen kids :p

This morning most of the pain is gone, but I've been very gassy; seems like I had critical levels of trapped wind, or something. Nonetheless my stomach feels tender like I just spent the night being pummelled in the gut by a heavyweight boxer, so making myself eat has been a challenge. I daren't train in this condition either.

Plus I seem to have hurt my wrist during my last arm-session. (I think it was the super-heavy preacher curls that did it). This is not helping me towards my goals :(

Ah well. Tomorrow's another day.

I knew things were going well. I knew Morph was helping me out. I knew I'd been growing again.

Today, 8:25am in the gym locker-room, I wrapped the tape-measure around my arm, flexed, adjusted tight, looked down and saw the magnificent figure of...

20 inches !

People have been asking me ever since I achieved 19" arms last year when that was going to be - and the answer is now, sooner, so sooner than I expected. This is crazy. I feel like a muscle-balloon again. How is this Morph stuff even legal?! The feeling of my guns straining against the sleeves of my XL work-shirt all day was... incredible.

Onwards and upwards to 21" now. Damn.

And oh yes, there will be pics!