Always Improving the Balancing Act

I have really slacked off on blogging lately so I'll try and catch up. After the last show we did, AL State Championships, we decided it was time to shut it down for awhile. I have been contest dieting for way too long. It's funny how you get so caught up in preparing for a show. It's really an all or nothing kind of deal. You either dive head first and all in, or you're just wasting your time. Problem with that is you let everything else just sort of slide. Not good!

So we have been backing up a little bit of the "it's all about me" sport and focusing on other things, mainly our fitness business, HammerFitBody. We have built the business up to a dozen or so very competitive and driven clients and it takes alot of time to make sure all of them stay on track and reach their own goals.

We came up with this idea last year to offer online training and nutritional planning services to people who just wanted to get in shape and live a healthy lifestyle. As it has turned out most of our clients are competitors. Does that mean the general population just doesn't care enough about their health to invest $100? Some folks just don't get it! At the time there didn't seem to be many people doing this. Now I read even Branch Warren has jumped on the band wagon. There are so many boot camps out there they are running into each other and everybody it seems is a "personal trainer" these days. If you've got $600 to spend on a certification, you must be a guru. I'm not even going to get started on that subject, maybe another blog post.

The only reason I brought that up was to talk about how the focus on my contest prep has now changed to prep for other people as well as keeping my eye on the goal. There is definitely a balancing act there to be sure. I can easily sit down and work on training splits and diet tweaks for clients for hours on end only to suddenly to realize I have not eaten in 4 hours! Not a big deal for most, but to a competitive bodybuilder in an off season mass program, disastrous consequences. If I don't force feed myself every 2 or 3 hours, my metablolisn slows and I loose my appetite. The longer this process occurs the worse it gets. I mean it's alot easier not to eat all day than it is to eat every 2 hours. For those of you that don't compete try it sometimes. Eat 50 grams of protein and 75 grams of carbs every 2 hours to see what I mean. Lisa and I were talking about this subject last night, you are either in or you're out, there is no in between. If you half ass this, then you're wasting your time. Training hard and intense in the gym comes easy for me, I've been doing that for over 35 years, it's second nature. But stuffing yourself with food constantly is alot of work! And in off season, the mid section sure doesn't look the same. Now instead of getting the "you look amazing remarks", "it's wow you sure are thick, you must have really gotten stronger! Ugh!

I don't need to be stronger. I was strong when I was 30. Hell I was strong when I was 40. Now I'm 50 pushing 60 and I'm still strong, hell I may be stronger now than I was at 30! That's sick. I don't train to be strong. I train to be build my body into something it has never been before. Always trying to improve. The problem is the more you train, the bigger you get, the stronger you get, the heavier weight you lift (always got to improve), the more susceptible to injuries you become. Especially as you age your tendons and ligaments become less flexible. So it's an ever evolving chess match between me and myself. I'm always researching, listening to the pros, and the pro's advisers, especially the older ones. Not knocking the young guys, but just like the comment about everybody's a trainer now, you have to have lifetime experience to really know what works and what doesn't. You don't get this out of a book or a training coarse for an exam. You get this info from decades of trials, failures, re-thinking and experimentation.

I threw this comment up on face book yesterday just to see who would get what I was talking about. "What is worse, lifting as heavy and as intense as you can while contest dieting when your joints are dry or lifting insanely heavy during off season when you are full and at your strongest?" It's an interesting question if you stop and think about it. For those of you that have dieted down for a show know that when you start to dry out, not only does the water leave where you want it too but it leaves everywhere else as well, mainly your joints. If you have nagging injuries, creaky joints, tendinitis, etc., dry yourself out and still train intense, you will feel every ache and pain to the 10th degree, because the lubrication of the joints has been depleted. Now compare that with off season, you're bigger, fuller, full of water, stronger. The object of off season training is to improve. That normally means bringing up lagging body parts, improving, growing. To grow you must eat, rest and train as heavily as possible. I left the gym yesterday gong what the heck is going on?! I just used as much weight on every exercise I did that the machine or bar would hold! Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it! The stronger you get the more weight you throw on there. It's not an ego trip for me I don't have anything to prove, been there, done that. It's just instinctive. Always improving. Sorry I rambled just my crazy thought process after a mega blast of back work. My back is stronger than my mind sometimes!

So for me for the next several months it's about improvements. Improving my family, the business, my clients, my family, my life and not least of all my bodybuilding (hobby) as Lisa calls it. You notice family is in there twice.

I am seriously dialed in on one goal as it pertains to bodybuilding. The 2011 Masters
over 50 overall title. It's being held in Pittsburgh on July 22. That gives me 9 months to prepare. The last month makes it 10 months. I have already made some sizable gains in my legs which were and are my weakness. But we have a plan and I think it is a good one. I have really great people in my corner, my friends are few but awesome. My wife is the greatest supporter in the world. What else can I ask for? It's up to me. I ask my clients this all the time, it's all about how bad you want something. I want this pretty bad. Not life threatening, I will kill for bad, but I will be very smart on how I approach this and know I'm only going to get out of my prep what I put into it. I read a great comment this morning from George Farah about his clients, "you can tell the ones that did exactly what I told them to and the ones that did most of what I told them to. The ones that listened are the ones that have the hardware in their hands, the ones that didn't listen to everything I said, are blaming me for their placings."

Great comment from George. If you need a trainer, find out what they are all about. Once you select them to be your advisor, trust them to guide you and do what ever it is they tell you to do. If you don't agree with something, discuss it before you go off and listen to someone else or just do something on the fly.

If you need some help with your overall fitness or competition prep hit me up at hammerfitbodybuilding@gmail.com. Only those who can listen need apply.

Got go eat! Lata!

Peace and Stay Strong!