Training on hiatus

Since the fasting month of Ramadhan is approaching,I have decided to put training on hold for now. Since the muslim lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar year, the dates for Ramadhan move backwards relative to the common Western calendar, so fasting will be during the long hot days of summer. With that and work pressure, I've decided training would be counter productive. I just hope I don't go stir crazy in the meantime!

I first started thinking about weight lifting when I was about 17 and bought my first issue of the UK edition of Mens Health. Before that, I probably had not really considered worrying about my general bodyshape or physique all that much. That changed. Thankfully I have never become overly concerned or neurotic about it. In those days, MH magazine was of a much better standard than it is now, with better articles on training, and fewer ridiculous claims like "Get ripped in 7 days while eating pizza!"
or the like. I decided to go buy a set of weights with dumbells and barbells from Argos. I didn't even bother thinking about how I was going to get 40kg of weights home. Cue me struggling, dragging it from the shop for 5m, stopping to rest, drag another 5m, rest..... I bumped into a friend who took pity, and called a taxi for me. Used the weights for a while to train in my bedroom, but with no bench, training was limited.

I truly regret not learning more at the time, and wasting the years that followed. While at Uni, I trained only intermittently at the gym, with no real progress, and no clue as to what I was doing. Diet was not even considered at all. At 5'8'', I weighed 57kg.

It went on like that in the years that followed. I did make some progress during 2006, getting my weight up from 57 to 67kg. It wasn't until I signed up to http://www.mansized.co.uk/talk, and read up on training, that I finally started to learn something. In February 2008 I finally moved from machines to more free weights style, and actually saw some real progress. Finding the stronglifts program (http://www.stronglifts.com) made the biggest change, I went from 67 to 75kg. Improving my diet went a ways too.

SInce then, various pressures (usually work) have kept me from going much further. At the moment, my personal bests are

Bench 60kg
Squat 95kg
Deadlift 120kg

I am still learning, and I hope that after Ramadan is over, I can get back into training with purpose anew, and eat, train and sleep properly to achieve my best. There are various programs I want to try out, will probably have a go at Eric Cressey's book Maximum Strength,