16 Weeks Out from First Show


Weight hasn’t dropped too much over the last few weeks … sitting at 74kg … bodyfat at 5% (done with calipers)

Dude you must have a really small waist.

How was the competition? Updates? Or did you post them elsewhere?

On 6/1 Ghost_Panther created a post in Injuries and Rehab in which he expressed concern that he had ruptured a biceps tendon. He has yet to update it.

[quote]EyeDentist wrote:
On 6/1 Ghost_Panther created a post in Injuries and Rehab in which he expressed concern that he had ruptured a biceps tendon. He has yet to update it.[/quote]

Ugh :frowning:

S


Hey fellas, thanks for the nudge and sorry for being slack with this thread … Well the contest campaign is done and despite a really disappointing finish, overall it went far better than I ever could’ve imagined… The big show on May 23-24 ( they claimed it set a world record for the most number of competitors at more than 1,100) started with an absolute shock 1st placing in the under 77kg (170lb) category … I remember being backstage and looking down the line of competitors and thinking I’d be about 6th or 7th at best.

I was actually up against my coach (who finished 2nd) and it was really a bit of an awkward feeling afterwards when everyone was all over him backstage asking how the heck one of his clients had beaten him.
I think I was extremely lucky to win - I was one of the smallest in the lineup but obviously the judges were leaning towards conditioning and liked mine (?)

Anyway, the event was terrific - very well run and they really looked after competitors with endless supplies of food & fluids in a huge backstage area. I just received the files for the pics from the event photographer, so here’s just a few of the literally hundreds they snapped of each and every competitor.

Here’s a shot of me and my coach who I somehow edged out for 1st


And another

Well, it’s certainly not something to feel bad about. In fact, the bit about someone asking your coach how one of his clients could beat him shows that whoever posed the question doesn’t quite understand how these things work.

I’ve competed in shows against clients of mine, and damn it if I didn’t push them, and do everything I could to ensure they showed up their best on game day. Yes, I beat them (took 1st actually), but it was because I had better size, AND conditioning. It wasn’t because I was more experienced (although I was), or that I had some magic secret that I witheld from them knowing we were entering the same contest.

As I’m writing this, I can only see two pics of you and your coach, and even with that, I realize that a couple of pics don’t ever come close to telling the full story. As a judge, I can tell you that very often, a heavier competitor, who is lacking in the conditioning dept will lose to a slightly smaller, but much more polished looking competitor, because showing up not as lean as you could, is totally within your control.

It’s always, no matter what “experts” in the audience or online say, the overall package that gets the nod. Sometimes it’s a smaller, albeit tighter and better conditioned package, and sometimes it’s a larger, but still somewhat conditioned one. Without seeing anything else, I would ASSUME (again, based on nothing else!) that your coach was smooth, while you presented a more crisp appearance. It’s certainly nothing to feel bad about, but yeah, I see how neither of you were expecting that outcome.

S

and another

MM …


and finally …

Yeah Stu, I don’t know what to think … it was completely ‘rarified air’ as far as I was concerned because I remember looking down the line at my coach before we went on and just pinching myself that I was even in a position to line up in a competition against an experienced and successful competitor like him.

Anyway, came back to earth with a huge thud in my second and final show yesterday … it was a slightly more difficult category being under 80kg and I didn’t even get a call out … My coach and another fella who finished behind me in the May competition both placed higher than me yesterday… I tried to change a couple of things with my tan and water / sodium / carbs on the final couple of days and it just didn’t work out … I felt and looked flat and just got flatter and worse as the day wore on…

The aforementioned injury I suffered early last week certainly didn’t help … basically couldn’t train most upper body for the final 7 days and the bicep was sore to flex and all out of shape due to the swelling and whatever I tore in there. It’s going to need a few weeks rest now before I can do much with it.

Although this second foray into competition was more successful than the first and there were some noticeable improvements, it’s clear as daylight I still need to be bigger … everywhere.

Am excited to start a proper reverse diet … I’m starting out about 30cals a day above my final comp prep macros (2000) and am going to cycle through three different macro splits - four ‘medium’ carb days, two ‘low’ days (days off training) and one ‘higher’ day … protein and fats will vary slightly on these three days, carbs will differ the most but the overall weekly average will still be the calorie target - 2000 cals.

I plan to watch the scale and bump cals by 100 per fortnight while scaling cardio back from where it finished at 4.5 hrs per week to 60 mins per week over the course of about six weeks.
Of course all of this is just on paper right now and I’ll adjust depending on how things play out …

Training wise, its going to be pretty lower body focused for the first few weeks for the reasons mentioned above … but that’s certainly not a bad thing as I love training legs because I need to !

Congratulations! You look great.

With regard to your less-successful second show performance, you said “I tried to change a couple of things with my tan and water / sodium / carbs on the final couple of days and it just didn’t work out.” Would love to hear what you did in the final week of your first show, and what you did differently in the second that you feel didn’t work as well.