If you don't use it, you lose it

24th April 2012

As the Austrian Oak Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say, 'If you don't use it, you lose it.'

OK, he might not have coined the phrase, and perhaps he didn't say it, but it is something he could have said in the documentary Pumping Iron.

I used images from that film and lots of other images as well when I was going to Golds Gym in Tokyo. I got to the point where I had lost most of my excess body fat but I had this loose tyre of skin around my waist where my fat belly had been for the previous 15 years.

I showed it to one of the guys in the gym and asked him what I had to do to get rid of it.

He kind of grimaced and shrugged and recommended an operation.

He was German.

Three months later and a month before my birthday, I lost this sack of flesh and had the six pack I had promised myself for my 40th birthday. It had been a two year journey.


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On the way to the gym during my lunch break when I was working in London, my mate Shaun used to ask, 'Going to pump Ian?'

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At the moment, I feel as though I have been taking part in a space agency experiment into the effects of zero gravity on muscular atrophy. I haven't done any real exercise for a long time and my muscles have started to whither away, especially the vastus medialus (internus) quadricep above my left knee.

I ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), like Michael Owen did a few years ago.

I was messing about at football when I tried to show off by doing a Marseille Roulette. This is something that French footballer Zinedine Zidane perfected and entails stepping on the ball and spinning round while the free leg protects the ball from an opponent. I got it wrong and as the ball was kicked from under me, my foot shot forward as my knee snapped back like a flamingo. There was a loud snapping sound as I went crashing to the ground clutching my left knee. A flash of black lightening exploded behind my tightly crunched eyelids and my knee started filling up with blood like a balloon.

Because I was dependent on the National Health Service at the time and I was flying back and forth to Japan, I was unable to have the required operation straight away.

I was a runner with goals and targets I wanted to achieve; I wanted to complete the marathon in under three hours and I was well on my way to this.

I was put on a waiting list and had to postpone the operation a couple of times. Eventually the NHS took me off the list entirely and told me to take up swimming instead.

I was able to have the operation two years after the accident thanks to the private insurance I was on through my work.

The operation entails rebuilding the ligament in the knee by shredding a ligament in the hamstring in half along its length. This is then removed from a small hole at the front of the leg just below the knee. The knee is flexed and a hole drilled through the upper part of the tibia, through the knee and through the femur in the thigh. The ligament has a pin attached to one end and it is threaded through the hole and fixed in place in the femur with the lower end grafted onto the tibia.

The rehabilitation process is long and arduous and as it had already been two years since the accident, I had lost a lot of muscle around my knee.

However, I never received any physiotherapy and as it has now been a few years since the operation, my knee has withered quite a lot.

I haven't been walking or cycling as much as I was back in England and the creaking and cracking sounds have increased recently.

It is time I did something about it.

I now have a bicycle and Minna got me an electronic key to the local school which means I can use the gym for free. This is the gym Markus took me to a few weeks ago and now that I have the key, I can start to get fit again.

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'The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.' Arnold Schwarzenegger did say that. Lots of people have said something similar and I have found it to be true. I have always been a believer in positive thinking and I remember having a discussion about its benefits with my father before I went to Japan.

There is no possibility of the physical body going anywhere or achieving anything if the mind hasn't already been there. Andre Agassi said he lifted the Wimbledon Trophy a hundred times in his mind and in his dreams before he actually won the tournament for the first time.

The mind is a muscle we are not really taught how to take full advantage of. It is so powerful and yet so underused. Writing down your goals is the first step but repeating these to yourself over and over again like a mantra is the only way to really attain them.

There are different ways of doing this - you can have your goals written down and posted on the wall next to your bed, in the toilet, on your desk. You can have memos in your telephone or on your computer. You can use images of what it is you want to be and collect pictures of these and post them in places you are going to see them.

When it comes to this sort of training, not many people tell you how the mind uses these prompts. The mind always works in the present and therefore you need to reinforce your goals and aspirations in the present. It is no good saying to yourself, 'I want to lose 10 kilograms.' Or 'I wish I were rich.' or even 'I am going to be healthy.' These are just wishes or statements about the future and for the mind the future is always in the future. You have to think in the present.

Everything has to be in the present and reinforced over and over again.

Decide what your goal is and repeat it to yourself, 'I am 90 kilograms of lean body weight. My body fat content is 5%.' This is specific and accurate and you have to repeat this in the present until you become this. Of course you have to make plans for how you are to become your dream, but it is the ultimate goal that you have to keep in your mind. The plans you make to reach your goal are shorter term goals that you can tick off as you reach them.

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Now to start on my image training. I have decided to do this part of the exercise by collecting pictures of famous athletes and body builders. They will be my motivation.

My mantra is, 'I am fit and healthy and can run like the wind. I can run 15 kilometres in one hour. I weigh 83 kilograms and my body fat content is 5%.'