Dream Adventure: Part 2 of 3

My incredibly supportive, creative, and gorgeous entourage

For my show I chose to go big and chose the 22nd Annual Natural Bodybuilding Championships in Boise, Idaho.  It is a certified drug-free show. Every competitor has to take a lie-detector (polygraph) to ensure that for at least 7 years the athlete has been drug free.  The polygraph was an adventure in itself. Lol. I have pictures of me hooked up to the polygraph, but I am prohibited from posting them in any public forum. The second reason I chose Boise was because I met David Madvine who owns the most prestigious and amazing salon in downtown Boise, and he agreed to sponsor me during this adventure.  

Within minutes of meeting David I liked him.  He is a dreamer, and more importantly a believer in what we were trying to do.  Most people try and keep you grounded, David tries to get you to shoot for the stars, and for that I am thankful, he was always there when I needed something.

*David and I at the Boise Salon

I owe David and everyone at The Studio: An Elite Spa of Boise, as well as Elite Spa of Spokane a big thank you for all their support and incredible generosity.  I am so eternally grateful because anything I needed was provided, David helped me everyday to get where I needed to go to be in a position to succeed.  Selflessness and helping facilitate the achievement of dreams are very powerful traits for a person to have.  

*Amazing location in downtown Boise

 

*Chatting with Daisy, you can see how dark I was for the show.

*Boise Capital from the roof of the salon

Everyone at both salons were very encouraging, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend time with them for a few days.  I admit that I enjoyed being the center of attention during the week, but I more so enjoyed being with all the great people at the salon and show.  I owe Skyler a big thank you for spending hours and hours on my competition tan.  It was by the far the best tan at the show.

 

"In Boise a girl came up to me and said, "You're gorgeous! You know who you look like, Ricky Martin!"  I found this hilarious because I'm not latino...not a bit, it was all the spray tan. 

*Three weeks before the show, no spray tan, still leaning out.

*The night before the show, leaned out with a blackout competition spray tan. 

*Taking 5 at the salon. lol

This journey allowed me to meet people, like those at the show and salon, who were supportive of me and what I was doing.  I also encountered a few who were, surprisingly less supportive.  

Let me give you some advice, if someone you care about is pursuing (or even just talking about) a dream, no matter how crazy their dream might seem, just go with it and be supportive of it.  Don’t doubt them, even if it’s crazy, be there encouraging them.  

I remember as the topic of the show would come up most people were encouraging and told me I would do great at this sort of thing.  However, a few people were very off-putting with their comments to me. “You’re doing bodybuilding, don’t you have to like have muscles for that?”  Or “This isn’t real bodybuilding, is it?”  I owe a very special thank you to those people, their insensitive, snap-judgments about what I was capable (or not capable) of fueled the never-say-die attitude and training necessary to not only live my dream, but to completely obliterate what I thought would be considered “success.

To the people who doubted me: Thank you very much, as irritating as I find doubt to be, I am so thankful for those people, they have pushed me to succeed my whole athletic life. Thanks again, keep it coming…look at me now.

Signing up for the show was the easy part.  Once I signed up, it hit home like a hammer what I was asking for.  I was essentially asking to get on stage in front of a crowd of people, and ask them to judge my body (and imperfections) against some of the best bodies in the Northwest.  You wouldn’t know unless you have done it, what it feels like to be on a stage, blinding lights in your eyes, a full auditorium looking at your every move and body part.  That alone is enough to cause heart-failure, it takes a very unique person to ask for that. I definitely questioned whether I had what it took, and at times, if I had made a huge mistake in asking for this.

It quickly became apparent that I had a mountain to climb. I had to learn how to train, how to diet, how to pose, how the show worked, what to wear, what was judged, how to stand, how to walk, how to edit music, what freestyle and pre-judging routines were.  The list goes on and on.

*Nothing was going to stop me, I learned to edit music. My music routine for the freestyle routine was a great success after hours of hard work. Music editing was another skill I learned as part of the show.

I can’t really do justice to the pressure I felt every day, I woke up sweating at night thinking about how much I had to do, and if I had what it took to ever be ready.  Every single day I had to focus on taking at least one step forward.  Some days were better than others, some days I had to call my support group and say, “Am I crazy for doing this?”  I focused every day on diet and some aspect of the show.  Whether it was watching Youtube or reading, I was always learning about the judging, posing, and the show.  Once I strung months of doing this together, things started to fall in place.
 

Many people probably want to know what the diet looked liked, and was it hard?  The diet was mostly clean eating with no treats for the final few months. The last two months were low carbohydrate.  The diet was not hard per se, I was rarely hungry because I was eating a lot of clean proteins which digest slowly and satiate your appetite.  What made the diet hard was not being able to have treats or a lot of carbs.  

*The day before the show I had to help deliver 14 pizzas to the salon for a big party. Not eating the entire day and having these near me was my final mental conditioning. 

 

*I ate a lot of lean protein like these lean ground turkey and spinach balls I make...bland. 

Short bouts of high protein and low carbohydrate dieting is proven to be a great way to get lean, and it did that.  But, trying to do cardio without carbohydrates was mentally and physically a challenge because I simply had no energy in my muscles, it was mostly fueled by body reserves, which is the point of low carb dieting.  The positive side was the clean eating made me feel and look great when I did ingest carbs.  Now, when a carb does go in my body it feels like rocket fuel.  The higher protein also allowed me to maintain/build muscle while still leaning out. 

Thank you to Hammer Nutrition for their support, their Whey Isolate was a perfect powder to get in adequate protein intake, eating protein rich foods was simply not practical to meet my needs so the isolate powder was great.  I also utilized Hammer's Phytolean which is natural starch blocker derived from herbs and root extracts.  People think eating fat makes you "fat."  It's not true, I ate a lot of healthy fats when slimming down.  Excess carbohydrates and starches (or consuming them at the wrong time) are what make you gain excess body fat. The herbs in Phytolean help prevent the absorption of excess starches. Both of those products were great when I was dieting.  

*Starting to look like a bodybuilder about 1 month before the show. Adding muscle was surprisingly easy with exercise, adequate protein intake, and a clean diet.

 

*Let me blow your mind: I have not lifted weights in a gym for almost 10 years. I use free weights and body-weight exercises.  I self-trained and "killed it" for this show in my basement with a set of free weights and a desire to suffer.

I loved the training, lots of free-weights, hard resistance exercises, pull-ups, push-ups, squats, lunges, things that hurt so good.  My overall level of cardio was decreased and much less in intensity compared to triathlon training. I knew my cardio and leanness was a strong suit for me, but it was hard to do a lot of volume.  I found the thought of going to a gym and doing bench press or lat pull downs boring.  I wanted to prove that you can get functional strength, and prepare for a show like this by being creative, and having fun.  I am not a gym person so my training was all outside of the gym and it was a lot of fun. On top of that, my strength is functional.

When I stepped on the scale the day of the show I was almost 180 pounds without food and very little water in my system.  That would put me up around 190 if I was fully hydrated and fed.  That is HUGE for me.  The change was drastic because I was the heaviest I have ever been, but also the leanest and most muscled I have ever been. It was kind of fun to have more muscles and get shredded, I like to wear bro-tanks now :)  

*Killin' the iso-lunges in the basement, love it!

If there were a negative to this adventure, it would be the fact that it was easy to become very critical of my appearance and how I looked. We all have things we are "working on" with our bodies.  Knowing you are going to get on stage and compare bodies with super fit people magnifies those issues.  It comes with the territory to be  constantly assessing body parts saying "This needs to get better." "I need to change this."  I think it's fair to say that in the weeks before the show my image of myself became somewhat skewed and overly-critical, that comes with the sport I think.  I realized this and was able to keep it in check, but I can see how it would easily get out of hand if this was someone's job or a lot of money was on the line at the show. 

*I did a lot of posing, practicing, and assessing of my routines. A big part of the show is not just how your muscles look, but how well you are able to show them. The posing is actually quite in-depth, there is definitely an art and craft to it.

My go-until-failure leg, pull-up, and push-up workouts were quite satisfying and fun in a sadistic way.  I enjoy that type of training.  In the 3 months before the show I put on some quality muscle and noticed a pretty amazing shift in my body in terms of leanness and how it looked and adapted to the workouts.  A big part of that was the clean diet.  Overall I learned a lot about training and how food works through this whole thing. 

After a hundred days of taking small steps I could see major progress, every day the show became less impossible.  I worked hard right up until the day of the show and I still wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, but this was my best. It wasn’t until the night before the show, after some encouragement from David, and self-reflection, that I felt ready to mount my charge.  

 I surprised myself with what I had accomplished and the never-ending fear and anxiety that I faced for months changing from a triathlete to bodybuilder.  I was a winner before I even stepped on stage because I had the courage to dream this up, and the mental and physical strength to say, “I am going to do this, I am willing to risk failure in order to see what I am capable of.”

What I don't want is to be 30, or 40, or 50, or 60 and to say, "I wish I would have tried that when I had the chance."  I was a winner because I had the strength not to lift weights, or this, or that.  I was a winner because I had the courage to try....and follow through on something. 

My destiny and my time had come.  After months and months, the far-off show was finally tomorrow.

All I had left to do was to get on stage and do it.