Bodybuilding

Hi guys, hope you are having an excellent, healthy and successful start to 2014. January is a difficult month after the climax of christmas and I know it can be hard to focus on your goals at times. My tip? Write them down, keep them somewhere you will always be reminded of them! It helps and forces you to constantly reassess what you are doing and why you are doing it, which is a good reason to continue on.

My goal for this year is to do a Bodybuilding competition.

The sport of bodybuilding is not for everyone, I am more than aware of that fact believe me! Whatever people may think of it, it definitely has many positives. It makes you train hard, be careful about what you eat, and have focus on your goal. I enjoy all of those things, and therefore its a good fit. I’m too old and injured to play football, I didn’t really excel at any sport in particular, but love most sports. I’ve done running events, which I found boring and monotonous, played football at a decent level when I was about 24-26 years old and played many recreational sports. However, I love bodybuilding and the science that goes with it. My self confidence has always been a huge issue, (although a lot of friends will tell you I am confident, its all a  front!), so this will be a huge test for me.

There are two main types of bodybuilding, drug assisted and drug-free or natural. I will be competing as a natural. My thoughts and feelings towards drug assistance is that, if you choose to do it, and do it correctly, researching it and applying your knowledge to it then that’s fine with me and totally your choice. My choice is to compete as a natural trainee and just do the best that my body can achieve. You will definitely be able to tell the difference between drug assisted and non so I just hope I can compete!

The competition I am committing to is the UKBFF South Event in June. I will be entering in the Classic Class weight restricted, on the advice from another Bodybuilding friend Joss. Thanks mate! This will suit me slightly better because no one at my weight (aiming for 89-91kg) will be overly huge like your Arnie’s/Phil Heath’s/Jay Cutler look, it will be more athletic looking look, which I hope to achieve.

Here are some pics of the guys I definitely will NEVER look like!

It’s a bit of a minefield to be quite honest, as I am currently at 99kg, but holding a fair amount of fat. I will need to get to around about 4% Bodyfat, as conditioning is the main thing I will have to bring to the stage. I’m not a particularly massive guy, so will have to get myself in to the best condition of my life for the show.

My apprehensions are huge to be honest. My bodybuilding training is relatively new as such. I’ve lifted for a few years, but I’d say that my programming of training has improved drastically in the last year, along with learning intensity in sessions and also sorting my nutrition out! I was crap before. So I feel miles behind everyone else, but we will see on the day I suppose. The others are, just simply getting laughed off the stage. However, I’ve been assured that won’t happen, but of course it does concern me.

I think standing on stage in a tiny pair of pants is pretty worrying. I also have to deal with the negativity that will inevitably be directed at me over the coming months. Things like:

“That’s weird”
“That’s ugly”
“Its very narcissistic”
“Oh you need some balance”
Will all be said to me on a daily basis. I think it will be hard to deal with if I am honest, but I have my reasons for doing it and hopefully I will get some decent support from people for doing it.

Nutrition

Nutrition now means eating about 3400kcals a day, which consists of the usual foods I recommend people to eat, but I will admit, it is a bloody struggle to eat this many carbs.

220g Protein
400g Carbs

The remainder is made up of fat calories, which are surprisingly high.

This will be coming down over the coming 22 weeks to around about 2500kcals. However, I will adjust this accordingly and the macronutrients will change based on the days I will be training.

Training

My training is going pretty well, I am seeing changes really quick in a lot of areas. I need to bring up hamstrings and quickly, my chest also needs work along with my shoulders. It’s all covered with fat so hard to tell at the moment!

I will change from mass building into some fat loss sessions going forward. Still another 4 weeks to mass build though.

So that’s a summary of what I am doing this year and why, and if you’re interested, you can keep progress of what’s happening, amongst other posts and information by following this blog.

 

Cheers for reading guys!