Competition Prep - 3 Weeks In

It's another Sunday Funday here and it's been just that today -- FUN! That is, if you consider waking up early, packing in the protein & carbs, and hitting the gym for a serious lower body ass-kicking fun...which of course I do! I'm just about to wrap-up week #3 of my CSF program and can honestly say I've never felt better. After the first week of following the plan down to a "T", I must admit I was not satisfied at all. The exercises were all high-rep exercises and I was so focused on being able to get in all the required reps that I ended up going too light on the weights and thus was not working to failure or experiencing any of the muscle burn necessary in order to make the gains I need. My coach wasn't much help, just saying to "follow the program" and "go as heavy as possible"....ummm did you not just hear what I'm saying?!, I thought to myself. Therefore, in week # 2 I took matters into my own hands, increasing my weights and repping to failure (which often meant less reps than listed) and making modifications as necessary to make the most of my workouts. For example, adding-in the Bosu, SB, or MB when appropriate. At the finale of week #2 I was feeling much better and moved on to the January workouts for week #3 which I am enjoying even more. I feel like the December workouts were just disappointingly basic. I'm still making modifications as necessary but following all the exercises listed. My only complaint this time around is that there is simply not enough core work. As such, during either my one functional day a week or during my weight-free day I am doing all-core routines in order to pick up the slack. Today was my legs (and some core) day and here was the breakdown:

-Kettle bell swings

-DB alternating front lunge

-Calf raises

-DB curtsy lunge

-1 leg bridges (which I did on the bosu)

-SB Pikes (adding SB balances in between sets)

-BB squat abduction (lateral leg lifts in between squats)

-Captain's chair straight leg raises

After having done spinning yesterday, today was my steady-state cardio day so I did 30 minutes on the StairMaster  I had never been on the StairMaster before but I decided it was a necessary change in order to a) switch-up my program and trick my body with something different and b) hit my glute/upper thigh area which has a serious toning issue LOL! Needless to say, by the time I was done my workout today my ass was on fire!

I quickly snarfed down a banana and my delightfully delicious cappuccino whey shake which held me over until lunchtime when I treated myself to my favourite cheat-ish meal, sushi! I say cheat-ish because sushi itself isn't made un-clean until you insist on having your tuna with the spicy mayo which is obviously a must :)  

As far as my nutrition plan is going, it's honestly not that much different than how I was already eating. I'm hoping that as time goes on, my coach tailors it more for my individual needs though as there are some modifications I have had to make to this department as well. For example, it doesn't allow me to eat any starches after meal #3 which I think is ridiculous since I train from 5-7 Mondays-Fridays and could eat a freaking horse when I'm done in there! My guess is that the plan was made for someone who works out in the morning or mid-day. All-in-all I try to have the # of fats, carbs, and proteins listed, I just have to change up the order a bit. I'm feeling great though so I guess that's what counts! 

That's really the only update I have at the moment. I haven't done anything with maXtreme since my last photo shoot and as far as I know the website is still being built-out. Hopefully I'll have another update on that in the near future as people have been asking me a lot about it lately. I have 2 more chapters left in my ISSA CFT studying so pretty soon I'll be reviewing all of the material and preparing for the final exam! I'd rather die than go outside in this frigid weather (the sunshine is sooo deceiving) so it's the perfect time for me to make as much progress in the gym and in my studies as possible right now. My favourite Twitter hash-tag lately is #StartStrong2013 ...which I will soon have to change to #StayStrong2013 LOL. I hope all of you gym rats are making the most of your health & fitness in the new year. Feel free to comment below and share any of the changes you are or plan to make for yourself. Remember, Start Strong, Stay Strong, Finish Strong! Happy gymming :)

Reflections On 2012

This white shit just won't stop coming down. I hate it. My neighbors just had to come push my car for me because it was stuck on the teensiest amount of snow you've ever seen! My back is killing me from the amount of shoveling I've done today just in order to keep my precious beemer from disappearing under a mound of fluff and the plow guys don't seem to realize that they can't just plow one lane through the development and be done, but that they actually need to plow our parking spots too. Urghhhhhh!

Thank god I brought my laptop home last night so I could work from home today. There's no way I would have made it into the office. Luckily I happened to check Facebook at 11:00 this morning and saw that World's was going to close at 1:00 so my only chance to get in my weight sesh today was if I could make it in during my lunch hour. Thankfully, I was able to persuade my neighbor who was in need of a workout himself to take me to the gym at that time. Today was day "E" of my Cathy Savage Fitness (CSF) bikini weight training program (day 6 of the 7-day split) and I was not going to miss out on legs! Before leaving for the gym I did two of the moves, squat jumps and curtsey lunges, on my kitchen floor since they didn't require any equipment and I didn't want to make my neighbor stand around during an epic weight session. Then, once I got to the gym I did the following moves:

-Barbell front squats
-Bulgarian split squats using a bosu for the back leg
-Barbell straight leg dead-lifts on a bosu
-Hip adduction machine
-Hip abduction machine
-Walking/Twisting med ball lunges

The use of the bosu and the med ball was my own added feature as the plan as stated didn't seem to be as intense as I thought it should be. Somehow I managed to plow through this routine in under an hour so I added two ab moves, 1-leg med ball wood-chops balancing on a foam square and stability ball crunches where I had my neighbor throwing a med ball to me on each crunch. I decided today would be a no-cardio day. My new plan requires 5 days/week of cardio, 3 days of High Intensity Interval Training (spin class, running intervals, etc.) and 2 days of steady-state cardio like elliptical or a light jog/fast walk on the treadmill. Yesterday I did spin so after doing legs today I decided it would be a good off-day. Tomorrow is supposed to be a no-weights day so I'll probably do my interval run and then follow it with some core work. I just hope this snow lets up at some point soon so the gym can open back up!

I'm going to change the subject here for the remainder of this post. A couple of blogs that I follow have made similar end-of-the-year posts about 3 important areas of growth both in 2012 and in the coming year. These are career growth, mental/personal growth, and physical growth. This got me thinking about my physical transformation over the past year and how everything seems to be coming together for a strong finish to 2012 and a promising year ahead. When I think back to where I was a year ago, I realize A LOT has either changed or is in the process of changing in all three categories. However, since this a blog about health and fitness I'll stick to the physical change category here.

A year ago, I was just as much of a die hard gym rat as I am today only I didn't have any specific goals other than of course that crazy running regimen I was on and was largely at a plateau with my weight training. However, slowly over the course of the year I met many new people, each of whom implanted on me a different piece of information about either nutrition or fitness. My brain is like a sponge when I'm being told something I'm actually interested in and now as the year comes to a close I am looking back thinking how each one of these people altered my approach to my own program. Things that have stuck with me are the "eat clean get lean mantra", "more is not always better" when it comes to cardio, go heavier whenever possible when weight training, have a future goal in mind and an organized plan on how you will achieve it, and most importantly do what makes you happy and don't listen to the negativity brought forth by those who don't understand your lifestyle.

Looking ahead at 2013 I truly believe it will be my best year yet; health, fitness, personal/mental, and career-wise. I'm sure some shitty things will happen too, imperfection is inevitable, but there are just so many things to look forward to that I plan to simply brush off any crap that comes my way. I'm half-way completed with my ISSA personal training course so I'll soon have that to add to my resume and can then get started with the ISSA fitness nutrition course, I have the April OCB show to keep me motivated and making constant physique gains for, and I seem to be in an unusually happy mood lately that I can't seem to attribute to anything other than having a more positive outlook and possibly my nutritional improvements. After all, when you eat well, you feel well!

So as your year comes to a close and you think about what the new year will bring I hope that you too have something to look forward to. If not, ask yourself where you really want to be in life and then make a list of what you need to do to get there. One of my high school English teachers once shared her favourite line from a poem called The Summer Day and it has stuck with me for the past 10 or so years:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

-Mary Oliver

Think about it. 

Competition Prep Day #1

Happy Saturday, Gym Rats! This is an exciting blog entry for me as I am publicly committing to a major change in 2013. A few entries ago, I mentioned that I was starting to clean-up my diet and change my workout routine around in preparation for a new fitness venture that I was contemplating doing in the new year and if I decided to commit, I would let the blogging world know come January. Well, any of you that know me well enough know that patience is not one of my strong points so after the past month or so of feeling like I'm already seeing and feeling positive changes in myself, I have decided to jump on the committing bandwagon a bit early! This new exciting challenge is going to be training for and competing in a natural bodybuilding competition in April!

Now don't cringe, I do not plan to come out looking like the hulk or anything. For those of you who are not in-the-know when it comes to these competitions, this is something that has grown tremendously in the past decade and competitions now have several different divisions depending on your sex, age, physique, and size of the show. I plan to start small with the Organization of Competitive Bodybuilders (OCB) event in Westbrook, ME on April 6th in their Bikini division. If I'm really feeling up for it I may do another show soon thereafter in MA but I don't want to get ahead of myself just yet!

Dear family: here is your chance to freak out, calm down, then ask me all of your questions in a non-judgmental and supportive manner over the holiday. I'm sure you are thinking I'm going to become a crazy 'roid-head but I promise you will soon realize this venture is nothing of the sort and is really quite awesome!

So just how do I plan to get myself in tip-top shape in the next 3 months? With the help of my new coach at Cathy Savage Fitness (CSF) in Boston! I joined this wonderful team, "Team Savage", yesterday and began my new routine today. Immediately upon joining I was able to access my first month's weight training routine (standard for everyone in this division) and then this week when I get to speak to my new coach, I will be given my personalized cardio routine and nutritional plan as well as any tweaks that need to be made to personalize the weight training portion. Additionally, I will be checking-in with my coach on a weekly basis to go over my updated measurements and any other questions/issue that may arise. For the first few days prior to meeting my coach, I am supposed to be eating only foods off of their selected grocery list. The funny thing is that these are the only foods I eat anyway and their website makes it sound like this is supposed to be a torturous change haha!

Anyway, as is my usual Saturday morning ritual, I got up bright and early to hit up the gym prior to spin class.  Day #1 is supposed to chest & back; however, I did back & bi's in my own routine yesterday so I decided to switch days #1 and #3 this week so I didn't have to do back-to-back back workouts. Wow, I used the word "back" a lot there lol! The routine consisted of the following workouts and took me about 60 minutes to get through:

-Swimmer planks (straight arm planks where you alternate lifting arms and rotating them as you would doing a front/back stroke in the water)
-Seated shoulder presses
-Dumbbell up & back (front raises where you lift your weight in front of you, pull it in to your shoulder, push it back out again, then lower)
-Crab taps (opposite toe-to-finger taps while in a crab-like bridge position)
-Burpee presses (push-ups holding free weights where you do one push-up then shoot upright into a shoulder press then back down again....HATE these!)
-Barbell upright rows
-Reverse flies (they don't have the suggested reverse fly machine at World's so I did 1/2 of these on an incline bench and the other 1/2 standing bent-over)

I won't give up the secret amount of sets & reps since I am paying major bucks for this program (so sorry already depleted bank account!) but you get the gist of it. Aside from the burpee presses, the moves weren't anything different from what I usually do but it was many more sets than usual and seeing as I typically do only 3 different moves for each muscle group per training session, I thought my shoulders might pop out by the time I was done! Luckily I had about 20 minutes to spare before spin started so I calmed down with some core work (side crunches on the back extension machine) and stretches.

At 9:00 am I entered spin class and was happy to see an instructor I really like teaching. Of course I was nervous who it might be given recent events but honestly it ended up being one of the best classes I've done in a while! Her music was spot-on with the type of work being done and it was choreographed perfectly. Definitely a high-quality class and a nice change after the total spaz instructor I had earlier in the week who couldn't manage to make it through an entire song before flipping through 3 more trying to find the next one! I should have asked today's instructor if she was just subbing or if she was the permanent replacement so I guess I'll have to cross my fingers and find out next week.

After and intense and successful weight and cardio routine, I fueled back up with some almonds and a cappuccino flavoured protein shake. This has to be the best flavoured protein on the market right now; it's certainly the best I've ever tasted. If you want a delightful yet not sinful post-workout treat for both your taste buds and muscles, I highly recommend it. The brand is Syntrax and you can get it at PNC. After leaving, I hit up the grocery store to fill my fridge up for the week and headed home where I made my new favourite lunch: grilled chicken & avocado spinach salad. I'll try to post the recipe later on in the recipes section of my blog so be sure to check back!

That's all I have for today. I know it was a long one but there's just so much to talk about! I'm not one to make new year's resolutions as I feel that the best day to make a change is always the present day. However, I can't wait for the new year and all that it will entail! 'Til next time Gym Rats, happy gymming!