Recap of my Arnold Classic weekend trip…

On Thursday March 3rd I arrived in Columbus Ohio around 12 pm.  As soon as I stepped outside I was hit in the face with bitter coldness considering that on Wednesday it was about 70 degrees and sunny in Nashville.

Once I made it to my hotel, I relaxed for a bit then ran on the treadmill for 30 minutes to get a really good sweat in.   Later that night was supposed to be my first shoot with photographer Tauseef but was canceled due to nerve damage in his neck causing extreme pain shooting down his arm.  I spoke with him later at the expo and we plan on working together at some point this year.  Friday morning I woke up and ran on the treadmill for a 6 minute mile, got cleaned up and headed to my shoot with Arthur Arsenik where Brittany Walker and I shot for cover tries for the Canadian publication Inside Fitness.

The shoot went great and I'm very excited to see if we can land a cover!  I got some film footage of the shoot that will be up later on this week.  After we got done I headed back to my hotel to meet up with my friend Anthony that had just arrived.  We  went to the expo for a couple of hours and enjoyed all of the free samples of a variety of protein bars.   That evening a group of us went out to eat at Marcella's and I orders a flat bread pizza.  After several Irish Car Bombs (which was the first time I'd ever had one)  all of us went to The Social Room to continue the night.  Saturday morning I enjoyed a couple of omletts from the omlet station at the hotel then went to Life Fitness with Anthony and trained Back/Bicep/Tricep.  This was the first time we had worked out together in a few years and it was as if we had been training together every week.  Both kept our head phones in and had an awesome workout.  We did:

1. Hammer strength pulldowns
2. Standing DB rows
3. Reverse grip pulldowns superset wide grip pulldown machine
4. Hammer strength one arm row
5. Standing barbell curl superset tricep dip machine pressdown
6. Standing concentration curl triset with reverse cable pressdowns and reverse grip barbell curls

All of the extra food that I ate gave me a great pump and lots of energy in the gym.  Shortly after, we went back to the Expo and I had a meeting with Brian my webmaster and Steve Cook.  Being at the expo for a couple of hours was long enough for me given the elbow to elbow amount of people.  That night the same group of us went out to eat again to Barrios Tapas and I had a piece of salmon and a braised short rib.  The good times continued again at a couple of different places after dinner.  It was a very fun and exhausting weekend.  I met a lot of great people, had an awesome shoot and got to catch up with my good friend Anthony.