Sometimes You Do Need To Quit

2013 started out with a bang.....in a bad way.  On New Year's Eve our van blew up on the freeway and needed a new engine.  We were without it for over two weeks.  During that time I drove our second car.  About a week into the repair the front left tire blew....once again on the freeway.  Then two days later our dryer broke.  And then about a week later my daughter Ellie (a Level 5 gymnast) broke her knee cap in half horizontally right across the middle during gymnastics' practice.  At that point I decided that this was not a good time to be training for a competition.  I often didn't have the energy to workout.  We only had one car between the six of us (two adults and four kids) and everybody had to be different places at the same time so going to the gym was not an option.  My kid's always come first, no matter what.

Ellie was at home bed-ridden for ten days after the accident before she had surgery to repair her patella.  She was home for another week after the surgery.  She has only been attending school half days up to this point but she is going back full time as of tomorrow.  She is finally able to get around without too much trouble although her knee aches by the end of the day, especially on her sport's therapy days.

So I have picked a competition in May because now that all of those fires have essentially been put out and I need to change my focus back to something that I want to do, which is compete again.  The competition is only nine weeks away but I am ready to go again and I don't want to wait until the next one which is in July.

I am going back to my old-school roots.  I am going to follow a very traditional weight lifting program.  What that means is I am going to choose three or four exercises per body part and stay with those exercises for the next two months and I will try to increase the weight every other workout so that I lift to failure.  It will be important for me to have a spotter for a few of my training sessions because I will want to really push to failure and that is pretty much impossible to do without a spotter on exercises like the bench press.

As for my diet the plan is pretty much the same as before except that I am going to be militant about eating every two hours throughout the day.  I am also going to add sweet potatoes back into my diet.

So that's the plan....let's hope we are done with all the drama for a while:)

Regroup and Go!

It's been two months since competition #1.  This week marks week one of the second round.  My competition is March 30th so I have given myself four extra weeks.  This whole first week is about eliminating my nightly glass of wine and clearing out any starchy carbs that have snuck into my diet over the holidays.  The nightly wine is pretty much just a habit so after a few days I don't really think about it anymore.

So the plan this time around?  Take it a little slower at the end.  I will start out the same way because that worked just fine but I will have more time to tweak the second half of the prep.  I freaked out a little on the last one because I didn't think I was going to lose the weight.  I stopped weighing myself about three weeks out because it was messing with me psychologically.  This time I'm staying on it.  Obviously I'm good at losing weight.  The problem was that I lost fat and muscle so I didn't look as lean as I would have liked, just smaller.  If you read my blogs about my last round of competition prep you'll remember that I have a problem with water retention so it is freaky to me to eat too many carbs.  I am going to add sweet potatoes into my diet as of now and monitor my bodies reaction.  Higher fat, low carb and tons of protein has been what's worked for me in the past.  I'll stick with that but try something a little different.

And as for training?  Once again my shoulders lagged.  I need to be more cut in my upper arm area.  I am have been doing, and will continue to do, heavy shoulder work but this time around I am planning on training shoulders more often.  Basically every other day or as soon as they aren't sore anymore from the previous workout.  It's a bummer because I can't get my shoulders sore very often so it doesn't feel like I am working them hard enough.  I just read an article that training a muscle group more often will not decrease strength or size which means that you can deter from the standard once a week split (for example, chest and back, bis, tris and delts and legs).  Of course if you Google it the what comes up most often is that to build mass you have to train less and train harder.  We'll see if training more often works for me.

And finally, I need to work on my posing.  I was nervous during figure because I was rushed out on stage.  During physique I was fine.  I'm sticking to figure this time because I still don't think I can get big enough to compete in that category.  It seems like they are looking for a more muscular physique then I expected.  I have the video from the show but haven't watched it yet.  I'm sure I'll learn a lot when I do watch it so I'm going to get on it:)

I will post my workouts and diet over the next 12 weeks so check back!

Workout Of The Week December 2nd, 2012

W.O.W. 12/02/2012

This is a gym workout.  You will need one dumbbell and a treadmill.  You can have a variety of dumbbells in various weights but each exercise requires only one dumbbell at a time.

On the treadmill:
Warm up for five minutes at an easy pace.  Perform a full *tabata at your most challenging speed then jog at an easy pace for one minute.  Repeat three more times.  For the last four minutes return to an easy pace but every 30 seconds increase the incline by .5.  For the last minute jog to cool down.
*The tabata formula is 20 secs on/10 secs off for eight rounds.

Pick up your dumbbell and perform all the below exercises on one side before repeating on the other.  Rest after you have done both right and left sides and then repeat everything two more times for a total of three rounds.  Finish with three sets of scissor abs (shown at bottom of page).

One arm snatch X10

Wide row X10

*the above photo shows a regular row.  Swing your elbow out to the side to perform a wide row.

 Heel pull X10

Calf raise

X10

Single side shoulder press

X10

 Plank row

X10 

 

Sumo squat

X10

Split suitcase lunge

X10

 

Scissor Crunch

3X20

D-day, November 3, 2012

Competition Day and Lesson's Learned

 

              1994                                         2012

So the competition was last Saturday and I did not place.  I was disappointed initially but then realized that I really didn't have any expectations except to compete and get an idea of where I was at compared to the other competitors.  You can't help feeling the sting of losing but it is so much better then doing nothing at all.  I know what I need to work on.  I over trained at the end.  My biggest concern in prepping for this show was that I would not be able to lose enough weight.  It had been almost 20 years since I competed and I know that losing weight is harder when your older.  Apparently not for me. It's crazy because I had written about how important the last week before a competition is and I ended up really screwing it up.  I did not eat enough.  I was shocked when I weighed in at 129lbs.  That means I lost about 16 lbs in eight weeks.  At least 5lbs of the that was water weight that came off during the final week but I should have gained some of that back the last two days as I ate more carbs and let the muscles fill up.  On the Friday before the show I ate four sweet potatoes and about 12 ounces of flank steak but that was it.   I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat.  On Saturday morning I still wasn't hungry but I ate oatmeal, a 4 ounce yogurt and half a granola bar.  After judging I ate a banana and a salad a couple hours later.  Next time I will eat a lot in the 24 hours before the competition.  As I had written earlier I was really afraid of retaining water.  What I discovered was that I looked better on the Monday morning after the show.  On the way home from the show I stopped at Safeway and bought a small jar of peanut butter and three apples to eat in the car.  They were delicious.  Obviously I also ate on Sunday :).  I had a large cheeseburger, some fries and two beers and then had some frozen yogurt later.  On Monday I posed a little in front of a mirror and I did look better.  Next time I will know.  I'm not going to eat a hamburger, fries and drink beer but I will have something more substantial during the 24 hours before the pre-judging.  I know competitors that eat sandwiches and that seems like it might be a good idea.

When I was backstage waiting to go on I noticed that every competitor was eating rice cakes covered in jam or jam and peanut butter.  The competitors that had their trainers back stage were actually being fed the rice cakes/jam combo as they pumped up.  I had never heard of that but since literally every competitor I could see was doing it then I decided that I will try it next time.  Rice cakes and jam are both super high glycemic foods so the uptake into your system would be super fast.  For that reason maybe it helps with posing.  I had a really hard time holding my poses during the Figure competition. My muscles were shaking pretty badly.  Posing is so important that I am positive I got marked down for that.  I also was not prepared to go on for Figure.  I went in to get my second coat of tan before the show started.  I needed my tattoos covered but they told me to come back when the Novice Men's Bodybuilding division was called because they needed to get other people done first.  I went back at that time and as the tanning people were working on covering my back they called my division.  '35 and over Figure is up and I need 50 and over Figure right behind them.  Now!'  Then they called out 'I'm looking for #41, Priscilla Bell.  Is Priscilla Bell back here?!'  I was completely panicked - I hadn't even been glazed yet, also I was first person who was supposed to go out.  I was pulling on my shoe as the Figure Over 35 women were filing off stage.  I had no time to regroup and that definitely contributed to my ability to pose, smile and present myself.  When Physique came up I was totally prepared, not nervous or anything.  Next time I am not going to get my tattoos covered, not because of what happened but because it was expensive and other people had large tattoos that weren't covered and they looked just fine.  Also I was WAY over tanned for Figure.  The dude ask me if I wanted to tanned for Figure or Physique and I said I didn't know and ask him what the difference was.  He told me that Physique has a darker tan.  After watching me pose he said that he thought I had a good shot at Physique so I should go that direction.  I ended up with FIVE coats of tanner on and, as you can see from the photos, I was way too tan.

So the decision between competing in Physique or Figure?  Most likely Figure.  The Physique women are still way more muscular then I would ever be able to get.  I do still think they are trying to figure out what they are looking for in Physique because a couple of those women looked like they could easily compete in bodybuilding...and a couple did compete in both divisions.

Below are two of my Figure photos.  The one on the left I am standing next to the winner and the one on the right I am standing next to the second place finisher.

The below photo is from the Physique competition:

I think in general my diet was right on up until the last ten days.  Next time I will start to relax my training the week before competition.  I will not do two a days every day and I will cut down on the cardio.  But most of all I will eat enough 24-48 hours prior to pre-judging.

I am planning on competing at the 2013 NPC Vancouver Natural and Tanji Johnson Classic in March.  Don't forget - you have to be in it to win it:)

Stripper Heels And Butt Glue

So I got my posing suit and heels on Friday afternoon and I of course immediately tried them on.  The suit is slightly too big but I can work with that but the shoes were super small.  I used baby powder and shoved my feet into them.  I could sit without pain but the instant I stood up it was horrible.  I kept thinking if it were like this on stage I would never be able to smile and hold my poses.  I was a little freaked out.  Then my daughter Ellie came home and put them on and started to walk around the house (my husband remarked 'I thought it was my job to keep her off the pole' as she teetered by).  They actually looked like they fit her and she's ten years old.  When she took them off I looked at the bottom and they were a size 7.  I ordered a size 9, and that is a size bigger then I normally wear.  I figured that plastic doesn't stretch so better safe then sorry.

I spent then entire weekend going from porn shop to porn shop trying to find a pair of clear stripper heels.  Did you know that the strip club's retail stores open at 10:00am on Sunday morning?  Just in case you need a black lace teddy at that exact moment.  Nordstrom doesn't even open that early. The only shoes I could find looked like the above pictured shoe - 3" front platform/6 1/2" heel PLUS they only had mules.  In the unlikely event that you don't know what those are they look exactly like the posted picture - they have no back, just that little bit of plastic in the front - so the odds of falling have now increased even more.  I can walk in heels no problem so I did take a turn around the floor.  Very carefully.  Even the stripper/cashier/sale's assistant said she had twisted her ankle wearing that particular shoe.  The shoe I ordered looks like the one below except that they are an inch lower.

They have straps so they stay on your feet. I emailed the person who made my suit and sold me the heels and she didn't answer back.  I sent her two more emails, still no answer.  It's Monday and my competition is in six freakin' days so I am in panic mode.  I called her yesterday, she answered and said she had been on vacation but that she would express mail the correct size.  They are suppose to be here on Wednesday.  If they aren't here I will have to go back to the De Ja Vu Superstore and buy the 6 1/2" heels.  I won't have a choice.  The shoes are required.  I'm not joking.

Now for the suit.  The problem with it being a little big is that it slides around on your butt, if you know what I mean, so I need Bikini Bite which is the 'official' butt glue for competition.  I didn't order any because it never really worked for me before.  You can use hair spray too but I'm not sure if it will work on tanned skin.  I did email the tanning guys and they told me they have a spray that will work so that problem is now solved as well.  To prepare for the tanning session I need to exfoliate and moisturize daily. It's cool because they actually send you the products they want you to use pre-tan.  I used to tan myself because there was no spray tan available, it was just a paint.  Again, not kidding.  My husband would use a brush and I would stand on an old towel and he would paint me with tanner.  I could still do my own spray tan at a salon but I opted to pay the $100 to have them do it, plus they can cover my tattoos.  Used to be you couldn't have any tattoos to compete.  They have to be a little more lenient now because I read that 40% of the population has some sort of ink on their bodies.  I have three big ones and a bunch of small ones, which I won't cover.  The big ones are on my right arm, upper and lower back. It is very hard to see my bicep or tricep so covering the one on my arm is crucial. I also have to shave every last hair.  That includes arms, abs and lower back, if you have hair there.  I am shaving everyday to make sure I don't miss anything.  The hairs catch the light on stage and detract from what they want to see.

My current schedule is two more workouts tomorrow and Thursday, rest on Friday and then kick some ass on Saturday, hopefully.  I have absolutely no energy so the workouts are extra hard.  Tomorrow and Wednesday I will do high rep workouts and just try to slug through some cardio.  Less then 20 grams of carbohydrates until Friday.

I don't normally have food cravings, I don't have a sweet tooth, but I really want a hamburger.  And a drink.

One Week To Go

The de-carb/re-carb went pretty well but I'm not sure the carbing up really did anything.  I may not have eaten enough carbs but I'd rather look smaller then have any water retention at all. Honestly I only ate about 70 grams of carbs because I was afraid of that.

All in all posing practice went well.  We tweaked a couple of things and I practiced my 'presentation walk' for the figure division.  That's going to be weird for me since I haven't competed in anything like figure before.  Physique is so close to bodybuilding that I feel a lot more comfortable with the mandatory poses and the one minute posing routine.

This week is hardcore and I am very tired...but it's only one more week.  I will work out every day straight through until next Friday.  Normally I would take Sunday or Monday off but this is my last push and Friday is a rest day before the competition on Saturday.  Workouts aren't nearly as intense because I just don't have the energy but I am pushing through as best I can.

Here are my workouts for the past four days:

October 22, 2012 Monday

8:00am
Ran around golf course twice

12:00pm
Rode bike for 20 minutes

Arnold presses 5X8 15's

Rear lateral raise 3X10/s 10's

Lateral raise 3X10 10's

Slow scissor twist 5X20


October 23, 2012 Tuesday 

8:30am

Circuit at home:

Ran 1/4 mile

Shoulder press X10/Lateral raise X10/Rear lateral raise X10 in a row then repeat other side.

Repeat both of the above for a total of 5 rounds.

2:30pm 

Tabatas on the treadmill 30 minutes

Incline DB press 5X8 30's

Incline DB flyes 3X15 15's

One arm DB row 5X8/s 30lbs

Pulldowns 3X15 50's

Small stability ball crunches 5X15

 October 24, 2012 Wednesday

Ran sprints at soccer field

TRX triceps 5X10

Single arm cable tricep cable pull down 3X15/s 10lbs

Incline bicep curl 5X8 15's

EZ bar curl 3X15 20lbs

Legs over bench abs 5X20


October 25, 2012 Thursday

7:30pm
Walked up and down Stellar hill(very steep) for 30 mins 

2:30pm
Ran for 30 mins with a couple sprints thrown in at soccer field

Stiff leg walking lunges 3 sets at field

Single leg deadlift 3X10/s 40lbs

Sumo squat 3X15 30lb DB

Reverse curls on bench 5X15 

October 26, 2012 Friday

Rode bike for 30 minutes

4 sets of the below:
Kettlebell single side upright row X8/suitcase lift X8 w/26lb KB back to back 
own each side

Rear lateral raise with 10lb KB 3X8-10/s

DB shoulder press 3X8 25's
*very hard today, feel very weak

Stability ball crunches with feet on the wall 3X15

De-carb/Re-carb

Momentary lapse came on Tuesday.  For about four hours I was wondering what the hell I had been thinking.  That there was absolutely no way I was going to be ready for this show.  Why did I think I could be ready in only eight weeks when it normally take twelve?!  It did pass by Wednesday morning.  I never seriously considered giving up (and I didn't veer from my training and diet) but I definitely was questioning the whole thing.  So everyone has those moments.  I know people that are trying to lose can feel defeated.  It happens to everyone.  It is normal to question yourself but the worst thing you can do is give up.  No one ever won anything by giving up.

I've been de-carbing for the last two days.  Today I did two workouts.  The one this morning was pretty intense.  My friend Jodi and I went to the soccer field and ran sprints in various distances.  I needed her to be there because I don't think I could have done it on my own since I am so depleted.  That took about 45 minutes and then I went to the gym and focused on high reps in order to deplete glycogen even more (prepping the muscles to fill when they get those carbs back).  I performed 4 sets of 20 incline flyes with only 10 lb weights, making sure to get a burn.  Then I went to the Hammerstrength incline press machine and put a 10 lb plate on each side for 3 sets of 15.  Then I did a similar sequence for back with wide and close rows.  My second workout of the day I rode the bike for 30 minutes followed by a shoulder press tabata with 10lb weights, which was way harder then it should have been but the point was to deplete so there you go.

Food today (not much):

6 egg whites, 3 cups power greens, 1 roma tomato

6 ounces lean pork loin

Oh Yeah protein shake

1 chicken breast

1 scoop whey protein powder



I had cut out oatmeal for a couple of days but that totally screwed up my digestion, if you know what I mean, so I added it back a couple of days ago and that fixed the problem.  Today is the serious de-carb (see food diary above) so oatmeal is out again but I am making sure to load on the power greens to get more fiber.

Tomorrow is the carb up run through.  I am going to do a short workout in the morning because I am trying to peak at around 5:00pm Sunday evening which means I will focus on the carbs starting around that time on Saturday.  I bought some sweet potatoes yesterday so I am going to see how those work.

I'll let you know how it all goes! 
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