I’m going to be on stage in not very much…

I’m going to compete in the WBFF show in May: http://www.wbffshows.com/ and I’m going to tell you all how it goeth. Right up until I’m a sparkling muscly twiglet (the random buff one in the packet!) on stage – pushing, squeezing, turning and tensing in a £300 bikini – made for winners!

My life currently consists of this:

• Train • Work • Weigh all food • Stick eyeballs to MyFitnessPal • Say no to booze, gateaux even if they are healthy… organic… fair trade… soil associated… skinny… gluten free • Check all pockets and handbags (including my partners! Pockets…) for spare change to pay for my supplement needs

I was going to do a similar comp last November, but having had some ‘life challenges’ shall we say, I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t. I trained and ate and abstained from flapjacks (99.9% of the time) but I wasn’t growing. It’s called Catabolism. It’s when the hormone cortisol (a hormone which erodes tissue) caused by stress is flowing around your body, dining out on your gains – think Pac Man.

However, being a relentless kinda gal, I’m always moving forward. I’ll take it on the chin, dust myself off and push-on and look forward to any opportunity there may be to better my situation, and well, I have a lot to look forward to of late! I’m moving back to Cardiff, my home town, and I’m reopening my personal training studio in Cardiff. My fantastic partner, my rambunctious dog, my dogs dismembered best-friend chicken (toy) and I, together – a #FitFam. He’s going to learn Welsh. He is. (YOU ARE!)

Entering this competition, as hard as it is and as gruelling as it will get – it drives me forward towards the blue sky masterpiece beneath. It’s like gravity but in reverse – the weight of this project is pulling me up, and out!

Sorry – it’s all good! Really, it’s great. We all have tough times and what I’m saying here is that there is always a way to get back on top. I’m going to write a blog about what it takes to compete: The training, the dieting, the supplementation the contribution from family and friends and the expense. Sweet Baby Cheezes the expense! When I talk to my partner about it, I call it “the investment”.

You generally start the process 12 weeks out and this is the glorious ‘Bulking’ phase. You train hard and eat harder because, there’s a stage called “Cutting” around 8/6 weeks out (different for everyone) and you want enough heft on you by the time you get around to this stage because you don’t want to be cutting in to muscle. This is my current battle. I have trained so hard for so long my metabolism is super-duper stoked and despite having upped my calories from 1300 (pre-contest) to 1600 to 1850+ on legs and back day, I am still struggling to gain bulk around my lower body. I mean, I’m pretty ripped but I still need some more podge to safeguard my muscle when cutting.

I’m a trainer, I know how to train and I know how to research, but training for your first comp means building a specific kind of body – different to the one you currently have, so your training has to change to some degree, or totally, and you just don’t know how you’re going to respond to any of it! It’s a real suck-it-and-see deal and it’s against the clock too. It’s tense!

My friend and coach (favour no 1) Richard Broom is a superb trainer and he is the man tasked with trying to find the stimulus I respond to best. I suggested flapjacks and I’m still waiting for a response…

Even though I started a month or so ago, I AM OFFICIALLY 11 WEEKS OUT AS OF TOMORROW. Until last week, Richard and I have been playing with pyramid sets to build up my strength and shock my muscles because my norm before this has predominately been hard and heavy 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 12 Reps. Why was I not hench already then you ask yourself? Well, because I wasn’t eating appropriately to fuel that kind of growth.

This regime has worked on my upper body (as you can see below), but not so much on my lower, as I mentioned. My glutes and legs are lagging. So as of tomorrow, we’re spreading the legs (e-hem) workouts across the week. I’ll be doing two big leg sessions (Tuesday and Saturday) and then one round (about 3 sets) of another lower body exercise after every other workout.

• Monday: Chest & 1 round of Glutes Extensions • Tuesdays: Quads and calves • Wednesday: Shoulders & 1 round of adductor /abductor work • Thursday: Back & 1 round of leg extensions • Saturday: Hamstrings and glutes • Sunday: DO ONE!

I think a few images are now called for, to stop me rambling and to show you where I am physically right at this moment. I’ll keep blogging about the entire experience and will infuse it all with actual workouts and recipes. Should you be interested in looking anything like me…

It’s CHESTICLES tomorrow – my weakest body part because I’ve got jelly tots (implants) which makes activating the pec harder and I’ve got a bad-bad shoulder too. Lucky I’m tough…