So I got picked on for the last time today for not updating my blog. No I didn’t quit, get hurt, or picked up for drug dealing… I got insanely busy designing an entire precast concrete building from the foundation up. Not only did I have to learn how to design in a material I had never worked with before but I also had to design it for a seismic event which adds an entire other layer of complexity in buildings as structures tend to not like moving a lot. So for those of you that have skimmed over the last few sentences thinking they were in a different language… in layman’s terms… I had design a bunch of large concrete Legos that when stacked together would be able to handle an earthquake shaking the crap out of it. Imagine a Jenga stack standing there and someone coming up and shaking the table underneath it. Yeah… exactly. So even though I didn’t miss a beat with the training and exercise all of my free time was suddenly gone and my creative energy was ZILCH!
But enough with the excuses I am back and things have really started to accelerate in terms of the training and show prep and I’m sure you are all dying to hear where things stand. I apologize in advance for the plethora of information I am about to dump on you and the lack of witty quips but I want to make sure everyone is up to speed with where I am now so the following more witty updates make sense.
Here we go… back in September my coach leaned me down to near stage weight to see what my physique looked like to determine what we needed to work on (picture shows progress from when I started this in July to this point in September). Let’s just say it was NOT hard to pinpoint. God must’ve been doing the Atkins diet when forming me because I have NO buns in the oven! And when I say “no” I mean “NO”… like Oklahoma plains flat! It would’ve been insanely depressing had it not been for how comical it was. Waist up I looked pretty good, waist down had no definition, no curve, and no chance of placing. So we decided to take the next 5-6 months and go through a build phase focusing on the lower body.
I spent the better parts of September – February walking around like I had just gotten off a horse I completed the Oregon Trail on. My quads, hamstrings, and glutes were in a constant state of sore and tight. I was hitting different parts of my legs/glutes 3 times per week! Was BRUTAL! The nice part was I got to be in a calorie surplus through the holiday’s which made that time waaaaay more palatable (pun intended). Good news is… it worked! Mamma got some junk back in her trunk!
In January we started to look at potential shows for the June/July timeframe in one of the areas I live in. We decided to do a show in each! That way I can tweak some things in the second show if I want to from my experience in the first show. The two shows I’ll be competing in are:
Muscle Classic in Garden City, ID on June 2nd
(https://craigproductions.com/idaho-classic)
Greater Gulf States in Metarie, LA on June 23rd
(http://louisianamuscle.com/greater_gulf_states).
Side note – Definitely come out and support me if you are around one of those venues on those dates. Crowd participation and support of an athlete can actually help your score!
With the shows selected and hard dates set we started my prep early – 20 weeks out – to allow for some flexibility and time to adapt as this will be the first time getting to true stage lean. I am now 10 weeks into it and things are going well. For those that are curious I am still around 2000 calories a day and am averaging about 1lb of weight loss per week. However I am now up to cardio 5 times per week rather than just 2 HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) sessions and my training workouts are averaging between 1.5 – 2 hrs. So I am in the gym 2 – 3 hrs every day after work. It really is like having a second full time job at this point.
Anyway… now everyone is caught up to where I am at in the process. I’m not going to turn this into a novel by posting all of the random, funny, and awkward moments that have happened in the interim but they will follow shortly over the next few weeks and I promise some should have you rolling assuming I can get into words even a fraction of what actually happened. Topics will include getting a piece of fabric in the mail with an invoice for a posing bikini, the selection process of the stage bikini, my first posing sessions, and me going through the realization that I walk whatever the opposite of sexy is. This is definitely not a sport for the faint hearted or thin skinned I can tell you that! Stay tuned!
PS – The last piece of the building I designed was erected a week ago… and it’s still standing! (check out my FB to see pics).