Many of you are wondering when I will be hitting the stage again. After a few months of “down time,” I am back training full steam in preparation for the 2012 FLEX Pro and Arnold Classic. I really enjoyed those shows last year and I feel I needed time to grow and improve certain areas in order to be able to hang with the best in the world. Feb 2012….its ON!! I had been traveling a lot so it gets difficult to train and eat enough food. I am sitting currently at around 305lbs. When I travel, I keep my eating really simple and try to maintain high calorie intake through healthy fats. I always travel with almond butter, cashews, walnuts, protein powders, and oats. My fat intake can sometimes get as high as 40% when I’m on the road, because its convenient and Its difficult to get in other healthy meals. Not always the best for body composition, but great for helping to heal the body and reduce inflammation (I bet I’d have beautiful hair if I had any!) Last week, I was able to travel back to LA and train in Venice for a week. Great to see friends I hadn’t seen in a few months. Training with Chris Cormier, Justin Lovato, Eli Blahut, Joey Gloor, ….always great workouts. Thanks boys! Nobody puked, so it was abad week! That place seriously needs its own reality TV show(call me NBC!). The characters never cease to make me chuckle. After LA, I had a guest posing in Vancouver Canada, I have never spent any amount of time there, but it’s an incredibly beautiful place and the people love their athletics! Check it out if you ever get a chance. The way home was an adventure of cancelled flights and scummy hotels, but that’s another blog all together. It seems that the entire bodybuilding world now knows that I have been lucky enough to train a few times with the world’s number one strength and conditioning coach, Charles Poliquin. Charles is based in Rhode Island, and for those of you that don’t know who he is, he’s the guy writing the text books that everyone has learned from for the last 25 years. He has trained hundreds of world champion and Olympic athletes. I’m pretty sure Charles has every text book and research paper ever written, memorized in his brain. It really seems the man knows everything when it comes to the body. Unlike most people, he can tell you WHY something is true, and not just what you should do. The great thing about Charles is that he is very down to earth, and truly loves what he does. Super cool guy. The list of things he has helped me with thus far is enormous. Having someone with his trained eye to watch me train and correct the little details (and the huge glaring ones!) is priceless. Charles has revamped my training volume, frequency, and even made significant suggestions to my nutrition plan. Like me, Charles is also gluten sensitive and avoids it completely. A few people have asked if I no longer work with Charles Glass. As a matter of fact I definitely still do. I love working with him and will continue to do so for contest prep. What Poliquin does is very different from what Glass does. As it turns out, the two men know each other and have a tremendous amount of respect for one another. It humbles me each time I get to train with either of these men. I’ve been looking up to them since I was 15 years old. In an attempt to learn even more from Charles, I have signed up for his training and biosignature courses in the fall. No matter how much you think you know, someone is always smarter and can teach you something that may take your training to the next level. Charles and I will be holding 5 day “Hypertrophy Camps” in the fall. These camps will be in great detail, very intense, and very exclusive. Max 12 participants per camp, so as to ensure every one gets as much individual attention as they require to learn and get their asses whooped in some killer 2/day workouts! Check out www.CharlesPoliquin.com and www.Benpakulski.com for details in coming weeks. Keep striving for greatness in all that you do! BPak
