As I mentioned in my last post, my awesome coach gave me a whole new game plan after Masters Nationals, headed into the biggest contest of the year–the NPC Nationals, which is like the BCS Championship of amateur bodybuilding & figure. My diet had been very low-carb for months on end, as I competed in several shows back-to-back. Finally my body just seemed to break down and I was really struggling mentally as well.

The first phase of my new plan had TONS of food on it, with plenty of really good carbs. Shannon knew exactly what I needed because my physique just exploded with growth & improvement. My body loved the nutrition it was getting, & with the renewed energy I felt from the carbs, my training was more intense & effective than ever. I felt like a new woman, & within just a few weeks, I LOOKED like a new woman as well.

It Finally ‘Clicked’………

I have had a very difficult time learning to perfect my back pose & spread my lats. I have a really good, muscular back, but I just couldn’t grasp how to pose it to show it off to my best advantage. Part of the problem was the lack of mobility in my scapulae, mainly from the injuries I had sustained from the horse falling on me, plus the injuries affected the muscles & tissues so they were ‘bound up’. My wonderful A.R.T. therapist, Dr. Renick, worked hard on those areas to release the scar tissue & showed me stretches to improve my shoulder mobility. Medical massage & rolfing also really helped to release the compromised muscles, tendons, & fascia, further breaking up the scar tissue.

And then one day, after sending my progress pictures to Shannon, she made a comment to me about ‘pushing my traps down’ when I hit my back pose. Suddenly, the light went on, & it just ‘clicked’ mentally. Shannon had told me that one day I would just ‘get it’, but I was losing hope. I had practiced for hours, but never could get it right. Then, suddenly, I was seeing in the mirror what I had been hoping for all along—a beautiful V-taper! My scapulae were spreading properly & I had finally made the mind-muscle connection that allowed me to control the muscles. I practiced until my back cramped! Knowing I FINALLY was able to display my physique properly in the all-important rear pose did wonders for my confidence of how I would appear on stage.

The Final Countdown

As the contest drew closer, Shannon tweaked my diet & training routine to methodically bring me in lean & tight, but still maintaining a ‘full’ look, especially in my upper body & shoulders where I tend to get too striated & ’stringy’. Of course, those wonderful carbs began disappearing quickly, but this time, the body fat did too. I had definitely added muscle, & was so pleased to see no reduction in muscle fullness as the leaning-out phase of the diet gained intensity.

We were really focusing on my legs, as I just have a really hard time showing much definition in my quads. Even with very low bodyfat, I still don’t show a lot of detail. I know that is just because my quad muscles don’t have the size & shape that they need—yet. As they grow & develop, the fuller larger muscle bellies will definitely begin to add detail. I was doing FOUR weight leg workouts per week, on top of all my cardio & plyometric sessions, which are really high-rep leg workouts for the most part. So with 11 cardios & 4 leg workouts in a 6-day week (1 rest day), I was basically doing 15 leg workouts a week! Wow! Yes, my legs were dead!

(It all worked very well, though, because I showed more definition than I ever had. And I have kept it after the show, too, which is nice. I love working legs, with weights that is. Cardio——notsomuch. I’m such a guy, though. I LOVE to go heavy & keep records of all my lifts, so I can see my progress over time. And I am always trying to beat my personal records.

I did hit a couple nice personal records during the phase of my prep when I was eating so much. The best I had previously done on barbell squats was 225 pounds, and that was way back about 15 years ago. I had stopped squatting heavy due to my bad knees. But all this training has–believe it or not–really helped my knees. So I decided to go for it again. And I got TWO sets of 6 reps each of 245 pounds! I was proud of that! And really, really sore the next day too!)

Feeding My Addiction

As the contest inched closer, I was given less and less food to eat each day. That is SOOOO tough for me. I am an eater, in a big way. Not that I eat badly, but I need a big volume of food to even feel slightly full, physically. I eat 6 or 7 small meals spaced throughout the day, and when I say small, I mean small! I am generally hungrier after I eat a meal than before! But mentally I was handling everything so much better this time around. With the increased sleep, that also shortened my days so I didn’t have nearly as many hours to spread the meals over. That helped. I also found that the later I pushed my first meal back, the better I did. Because once I ate that first meal, the hunger would kick in with a vengeance. So if I could eat my meals in the middle of the day closer together, I was much more balanced.

As the food volume and carb intake decreased, naturally my energy did too. One of my ‘vices’ and favorite things in the world is coffee. Coffee really helps blunt my hunger and satisfies my sweet tooth. But coffee also causes the body to store fat, so I had to limit my intake. That was killing me. Then my friend told me about this new coffee that actually BURNS fat! Oh man, you might as well have told a smoker that there’s a new cigarette that would make you healthier when you smoked it—I had that kind of reaction! Talk about a Godsend! I was finally able to drink all the coffee I wanted! And that for me is about a pot a day! I had to drink it with no sweeteners in it, because artificial sweeteners are way worse for causing fat gain than even sugar is, but still I could get the flavor & the appetite suppression. The extreme hunger issues went away, & I still was releasing bodyfat at a great rate.

Everything was right on schedule, & I was a much happier camper with my ubiquitous large coffee mug in hand. Mmmmmm….hot coffee in the morning and iced coffee in the afternoon. Gotta love it! Yes, I’m a cooffee-holic, & no, it’s not the caffeine. I can drink a pot of coffee & go straight to sleep. I never feel any effects from the caffeine. It’s the FLAVOR I love. Just smelling coffee brewing sends me into withdrawals!

It’s now down to precontest prep week………more on that in my next post!

Until then,

Be Defiant! Fight for Your Health!!!

Christy

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November 30th, 2010
Categories: Main. Author: Christy

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