Encouraged and Intimidated

1) My biggest worry about competition remains my “wings” aka having big enough lats and pulling them out for an effective back pose come competition. As such, I was as entertained as could be when picking my son up at school one day this week. He’d made a set of paper wings and antennas with his teacher that he was wearing. He was super excited to show me his butterfly wings and I couldn’t help but wish it were that simple to create my own wings.





2) Me curling an Olympic barbell during a biceps workout this week. This is a recent addition to my repertoire. What makes it different is that an Olympic barbell is 7.22 feet long so your muscles are challenged beyond simply lifting the weight to stabilizing it as well. Also, an Olympic barbell weighs 45 lbs and my coach has me do sets of 15 reps. For perspective, I used to curl a 40 lb or sometimes 50 lb standard barbell in my EC training, but would only do 8-10 reps for most sets.

3) My coaching is primarily online so I have to take periodic pictures to email my coach so that he can assess my progress and base the next phase of my nutrition and training upon it. These were taken yesterday, 11 days into training. I have a long ways to go yet!

4) My freaky thigh picture. I snapped this while doing leg extensions on quad day this week. I really love the degree of quad definition I have built up at this point =)


Encouraged and Intimidated

Day 12 Ironman Prep

Having 5 days off from blogging has definitely shown me that I’m a better blogger on a daily basis. I’ve had many fleeting thoughts in the last few days, wisps of things to write about, and I’ve forgotten most of them. When I write daily I get to focus in and devote a few paragraphs to whatever little idiosyncrasy of this bodybuilding lifestyle has most struck my fancy that day. On that note, aside from sporadic days off I intend to go back to my daily entries. They kept me straight for my first competition and I’m finding I really need the routine of daily reflection on my sport to stay focused for my second competition.

I feel both encouraged and intimidated. I know where I erred last time (diet – allowed myself too much total intake) and I’ve remedied that by taking out the guesswork and acquiring a nutritionist. I’m also starting with a better base from which to build. There is substantially more muscle on me now than there was in January when I began my first quest. I find these facts encouraging. However, having some history now I know I have to take my game up a notch. Any cheating on my diet will have to be very small in scale and very infrequent, no decadent cheat meal events like last round. I will have to become very diligent about my sleep routine. I’m quickly realizing that I need at least 9 hours on this kind of calorie deficit. Getting in my workouts is easy to meet, but I need to jack up every rep to maximum effort, every cardio session to maximum rpms, and every set rest to the minimum plausible. I am intimidated by these necessary changes, but I can do these things and I will find the will and energy to follow through.