Nowhere to go, but Up!

Decline Push Crunches with a 10 lb Plate

Super sweaty me fresh off the elliptical and a 517 cal kill (Darene! This one is for you! Remember harassing me for that other gym pic with perfect hair etc.? This is what sweaty me fresh off the machine looks like ;)

A killer 45 min on the elliptical: 4.7 miles and 517 cals burned res 5 gluteal 2 routine, woop woop!

My new playlist! =)

Nowhere to go but up

We are on a brief break from college / preschool right now until summer quarter starts up on Tuesday. It’s nice to be all about the gym! I took advantage of the opportunity and went to two today. The Rec on campus this morning as I didn’t have C and I avoid doing glutes at Gold’s if I can help it. Then, in the afternoon, Gold’s with C for cardio and abs. I prefer glutes at The Rec because Gold’s is ill-equipped for two of my fave glutes exercises: cable kickbacks and unilateral standing leg presses. For a cable kickback you simply need a cable station with a pulley on the lowest setting and the ankle straps. The Rec has top of the line padded leather ones with metal buckles and Gold’s just has some old black cloth Velcro ones that are smelly and I can’t find half the time lately anyway. The unilateral (single) standing leg press is done on an assisted pull-ups/dips machine. At The Rec there are two and they both have coated metal bars for standing on while Gold’s has a big pad for kneeling on instead that I’m guessing I’ll eventually get in trouble for standing on. Thus, The Rec’s glutes set-up “wins.” My access to The Rec will, sniff sniff, be heavily curtailed in August and most of September with C out of preschool. I plan to take any/every opportunity that I’m not in possession of him to go do glutes at The Rec, hopefully that will amount to at least 2X a week, or Gold’s it will be!

I’ve been easing myself into competition prep mode / mindset. I don’t feel like I can successfully go from zero to sixty with it. If starting tomorrow morning I was setting the 6 am alarm for empty stomached am cardio daily, eating tiny meals 6X daily with no cheats and strict cals/macros, and having a daily pm weights/cardio session I don’t know if I’d be fully vested in it. Not being fully committed equals being ripe for quitting, and we don’t want that! So I’m easing in. Starting with little bits. I ate well today, small quantities of clean foods, but I haven’t started counting cals yet. I worked out twice today, woot woot, but none of it was at 6 am. I think easing in will work.

During my cardio today at Gold’s I was spacing out to my playlist as usual and got to thinking about how truly fearless I ought to be about my next competition. I have nowhere to go but up! With other pet projects or ambitions that I’ve deemed to be my “thing” over time I have often shot out of the gate high and truly only been able to either maintain or fall from grace. Well, with bodybuilding I did not hire a nutritionist; I made it up myself. I cannot yet say that I’ve been lifting weights for a year. I took up with Body Pump classes late last July after moving here and didn’t take up with free weights outside of that until November. The Emerald Cup (unless I’m grossly misinformed) is pretty much the biggest figure competition in the state. Go big or go home! When I got there I did kind of freak out realizing: I’m such a newbie! Look at these women, what am I doing amongst them?? Eek! I didn’t go home though, nope I went big, and in my own heart and mind I failed big too. I don’t know that I’m entirely over that yet to be truthful. I’m getting there and my mindset today, while maxing out on the elliptical, was simple and beautiful: I have nowhere to go but up. There’s no GPA to suffer a hit, no former placing to come in under, or any other perceived lessening of achievement to be had. Nope! My posing will get better, I will come in leaner than last time, and my weak areas (primarily my “wings”) will be stronger and more prominent than their first showing.

I got to see Laura when I was at The Rec earlier and found out our schedules will be matching up summer quarter: yay! She is so great at mentally pumping you up and making you believe in yourself, I don’t even know if she does it intentionally or just exudes that quality. I’m not the only person I’ve heard it from either =) For my glutes I warmed up on an AMT and then did 4 sets of hack squats (drop it to the floor! Ala T-pain hehe) superset with 4 sets of Smith lunges, then 6 sets of waking barbell lunges, 5 sets of cable kickbacks, and 5 sets of standing unilateral leg presses. Yes, a shorty I know, by the time I got there I only had 50 minutes until I had to depart to pick up C and was equal parts distracted by being social and trying not to want to puke. Hah, yeah. I tried a sample pack of Advocare Muscle Fuel (creatine, caffeine, some other stuff). I took it about 2 hours after eating breakfast so a theoretically “empty stomach.” I will definitely use it again, just likely on a less empty stomach. It had me all jacked up and powering through things that would normally cause me to quit at fewer reps or take longer between set breaks. I like the energy of that supplement, it’s super hyper; it’s just a tad rough on an empty stomach. Then I took off down I-5 munching my raw almonds, drinking my 100 cals of Pure Protein shake and happily munching my super sweet delicious plain red bell pepper slices. Those things are the candy of competition prep! I have a serious bell pepper weakness, mmmm.

I meant to eat again before gym round two, but instead we stopped on by Costco and I dined on samples. I tried to balance it into a legitimate fuel source, sneaking back for seconds on the panko sweet chili shrimps and Korean style bbq chicken. Both of those are so tasty and both of those are things I can’t even dream of buying much less eating during contest prep. Sure, they sound like innocent protein, nope! They are protein, yes, but coated in sugary carbs and lots of bad fats! No wonder they’re so yummy, haha. We hit the freeway home and thankfully C didn’t fall asleep. I had been going to stop at home first, but feared if I didn’t we might not make it out again so straight off the freeway to Gold’s we went. I hit the cardio hard and then, go figure, saw C’s best friend from preschool walk in with his mom. I didn’t even know we shared a gym, yay! I knew C wouldn’t want to leave right away with his buddy there so I hit abs too. They have the best benches for decline weighted push crunches at Gold’s. I usually do no more than 20 reps per set, but I was all hopped up on cardio and made myself do 4 sets at 30 reps each with a 10 lb plate superset with 4 sets of side bends at 12 reps per side with a 35 lb plate. It was good.

When we first got home I was starved so I had a TJ’s chicken nitrate free hot dog (60 measly cals 1 g carbs 1 g fat 9 g protein) with a little ketchup wrapped in a toasted Dave’s Killer Bread sprouted wheat slice. Dinner was only an hour later, it was chicken breast based and also had a small amount of yam and a large amount of kale. If I was in competition prep that would have been overeating, blowing a budget. Actually, I’m sitting here guilt-tripping myself about that and I shouldn’t be, haha. For my bedtime snack I had a Kashi 7 grain waffle (75 cals only 12.5 g carbs) smeared with my kryptonite, I mean Bees Knees peanut butter. If you have not tried it, don’t start! Well, unless you aren’t a bodybuilder, in which case, DO IT!!! Hehe. The uh kryptonite was accompanied by ¾ of a scoop of Optimum Gold Standard Whey with 6 oz. REAL milk. I must tell you, I will be MISSING dairy when it is gone again. I LOVE my dairy. I feel good about my whole grain and my protein, if I was in contest prep it would have been whey in water, no waffle, and 1 teaspoon of the pb on a spoon for a treat, maybe, depending on how many weeks in. I’m working up to that though, and I’m actually excited to be. Yay! =)