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