Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Travel isn't my favorite thing

I’m back from my business trip to Denver. I’ve decided that I’m not meant to travel much when I’m on a program – whether it’s an on or off season program! Of course that’s not realistic but boy is it a challenge. It’s so hard to find the right food to eat. You’d think it’s be easy to find grilled chicken and baked potato (I know better than to try to find yams in restaurants) but what ends up happening is that everything has salt on it and a lot of it has been marinated in some sort of butter or oil based marinade. Yuck! I just want pure, simple, clean food. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is.

Then there’s flying. I need to eat every 2 to 3 hours. That means waiting in airports and flying on planes can be challenging depending on how long the wait/flight and what time I need to eat. And if there’s a delay, yikes! I’m in trouble.

At least I was able to get in most of my workouts. The hotel gym wasn’t awful. It wasn’t great (not nearly as complete as the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego) but it was adequate for biceps, triceps and cardio. I had to adapt my normal leg workout and focus on dumbbell squats and lunges. Got some core and ab work in as well.

The good news is I don’t travel again until later in October and then it’s just a couple of overnight trips. That shouldn’t be too painful (she said hopefully). :o)

I met with Kim yesterday to mark my progress on my off season program. He’s very pleased. He started the conversation by telling me I have curves! LOL. This is cause for celebration because I tend to be long and lean. My lower body is exploding right now – yippee!! This is super exciting to me because legs are typically the slowest growing of all my muscle groups. The new training routine is absolutely what I needed and I’m excited to see the end result in another 10 weeks. In the meantime, we’re upping my protein a bit to support my new muscle growth and keeping all else the same.

More later – time for me to have a protein shake before bed.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

End of week one of program

I just finished the first week on my program. It went great! I think it’s just the change up my body needed. My right shoulder, tricep and lat were all suffering from overtraining. Gosh, to be honest, all of me was suffering from overtraining. But the rest did me good and this week all the little nagging strains were gone. I felt great and super strong. The only injury that’s still a bit of a problem is my lower right hip/back area. This is an injury that’s several years old and it continues to flare up on legs day and for 1 to 2 days following legs training. Since I’m training legs twice a week my hip is sore pretty much constantly. It definitely means I have to lift lighter than I’d like, but at least I can still lift. Maybe I need to do some lower back strengthening. I’ll have to consider that.

My body is slowly getting used to eating the extra lean ground beef in the early morning with my egg whites and oatmeal. I definitely have more energy now that I’ve added a little red meat to my diet. I’m also eating turkey, chicken and white fish for protein so my day is full of variety. I’m starting to notice that I’m a bit hungry between my afternoon snacks. That means my metabolism is revving up and within a week or so I’ll need to add more food. It’s not good to be hungry on a muscle building program. Gotta keep the body fueled to grow muscle.

I’m getting ready for a business trip to Denver. I’ll be gone 2 ½ days so of course I’m fretting over how to get my meals in and when and where I’m going to train. I think I’m going to rent a car because the hotel’s fitness center just has cardio and free weights. I need a full gym and 24 Hr. Fitness is just a 10 minute drive from the hotel. As for food, I’ve asked the hotel for a fridge so I’ll just need to find a store to pick up a few things, including the gallon of water per day that I drink! I’m going to put a few protein bars and packets of Meta Meal in my purse in case I get stuck at the airport for a few hours. That happened to me a few months ago – a 5 hour unplanned layover at night, with no food. It was brutal.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Rest day from the gym and the day I prep and cook my food for the week. Talk to you later!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Day one of fall muscle building program

Welcome to my blog. I’ve decided to keep a journal as I prep for my upcoming figure competition season. I’ve got two major competitions decided upon for 2010 and one that’s a maybe. The two I’m definitely going to do are The Emerald Cup in Washington State in April and Masters Nationals in Pittsburgh in July. Woot! I’ve never done a national competition before so I’m very excited – and nervous. The competition I haven’t decided on yet is the USA’s, also in July, following Masters Nationals. The reason I’m not sure about doing the USA’s is because (a) I may be wiped out following Nationals; and (b) there are no masters classes in the USA’s so I’ll be competing again top level women of all ages – mostly younger – waaay younger. I’ve done that numerous times before but not at the USA’s – that’s the big time, baby.

I met with my trainer/nutritionist, Kim Oddo, today to go over my new training program, supplements and nutrition plan. We’re changing it up a quite a bit. To be clear, since I’m not competing until spring 2010, I’m not actually in contest prep yet. I’m in a muscle building phase for the next 12 weeks. Then I’ll take a break over the holidays and start my lean down towards the Emerald Cup in late January.

For my new program I’m working one body part per day on a 6 day split – legs get two days since that’s an area I need to focus on. Sunday is rest day. Cardio is a mere 15 minutes per day, 5 days per week at a warm up or cool down tempo, just enough to keep my metabolism running, not so much to ruin my hard earned new muscle. My weight training program is based on Hany Rambod’s FST program. It’s great! I did one variation of it last year and I really grew some muscle from it. This is a new variation – gotta keep the muscle guessing!

My diet is high in protein to help support the muscle growth. Typically, I eat egg whites and oatmeal with a tad of peanut butter for breakfast. For the next 12 weeks, I’ll be eating extra lean ground sirloin with my egg whites and oatmeal. I’m not used to eating meat at breakfast and my body definitely wasn’t sure it liked it this morning. I’m sure I’ll get use to it soon, though. I eat 7 times per day and as I perused the menu Kim set up for me, I saw that a couple of the meals may be challenging to make happen if I’m at a client’s office or otherwise away from home. Oh well, I’m the queen of planning my meals to fit in during the day so I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy coming along with me on my journey to my 2010 competition season. Please feel free to post comments and questions.

Best,
Barbara