Dairy of competition prepping
#8weeksout
What can happen in a week! Mind and body has had a huge week.
After last week losing my shit about this and having my coach reassure me to stop stressing, I took a deep breath and refocused and got even more determined to succeed.
I’ve read so much on the amazing transformation that can happen around the 8 week out mark, and it’s unbelievably true! I dropped 1.5 kg in two weeks and all of a sudden my shoulders and back have popped out! My diet is being tweaked again, I’ll drop a protein shake in the afternoons and replace with a fish and greens small meal, my meals will be closer to 2.5hrs apart not so much 3 hours and I will cut out the berries of a night and the almonds during the day. My fats will be mainly in the flaxseed oil I drizzle on my meals and the fish oil I take in the mornings. You need the fats and oils in your diet to help the muscles and joints move, eliminating these out of the diet is dangerous, plus I need the good fats to burn the body fat. My body fat is still too high, so I intend on burning this off in my cardio sessions without damaging my muscles. There’s a fine line with cardio and undo-ing the hard work I’ve done by growing these muscles, the last thing you want is to have them break down with too much cardio.
My weight sessions are still my favourite – still working at 4 set of 10 reps with 4 big muscle group exercises and 2 to 3 small muscle groups per session. I work on each body part twice a week 2 x legs, chest and triceps, back and biceps, and shoulders on their own. Each session I tweak a different sort of exercise in for that muscle group to keep a challenge. But all sessions are finished to failure; I love to know that I can’t do any more.
The week ended with a posing workshop by one of the INBA judges and she showed us what she wants in the poses on stage. It was great to be able to get my head around the poses. I have booked in for a one-on-one with her so as she can go over the best “relaxed” pose for me, but believe me there’s nothing “relaxed” about it – they are hard, to flex and smile and concentrate all at once to make sure you capture the judges is going to be one tough battle – to be up on stage against other women that are working as hard as you to be noticed and rewarded for your efforts is the main battle!
I am beginning to “trust the process”, I love waking each morning to start my training, to smash out a hard session and follow my plan I make the night before. Each day is planned with times I’ll eat and train.
The week ahead I have my beautiful boys 6th birthday on Monday and then mine on Tuesday, so we are heading up to Melbourne for a night. I have packed all my meals and will only buy dinner on the Monday night. I miss out on cake and lollies and ice cream – but I’ll be ok as I only have to wait 8 more weeks and I can have a reward then. As my coach said it’s a 100% effort, there is no room for error or temptation…. this journey is hard, but it’s amazing, and there’s not long to go now!!!
