Lean Bodies Consulting

So the long awaited trip to Chicago for the NPC Junior Nationals has come and gone. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

From a competitive standpoint, wow, what a huge show. I believe there were over 300 competitors with approximately 200 female competitors. The Figure girls were split into 6 classes based on height. I think they should have split it more evenly as you had classes ranging from as low as 15 girls to as high as 38 girls. Doesn’t seem that fair as it’s quite easy to get lost in a sea of 38.

The other thing? It makes for an incredibly looooooong show. After a while, they all start to look the same.

We had a great group there - it turned into a ‘meet and greet’ with around 35 people showing up from around the country to meet some people they’ve only known online, catch up with people they’d already met previously, as well as show support to the five girls competing that weekend. Meeting a number of new people that I’ve had as clients or just known online was one of the trip’s highlights. So to any of them reading this, it was great to meet you finally.

I’d arrived Wednesday, along with Noel and two other friends, Cindy and Ileen. That was just a day to hang out, celebrate Noel’s birthday (I ate her candy for her and ignored her dirty looks) and just get settled in. We basically just hung out, went and trained at Bally’s, hit up Gibson’s for dinner and called it a night. Thursday was when more of the crowd would start to roll in.

Going to these shows is always interesting, especially huge shows like this. Talk about the freaks coming out of the wood work. It’s amazing how much muscle a body can carry when you combine drugs, genetics and some work ethic (the latter not even always required, lol). Both the men and women bodybuilders looked just crazy - competitors and attendees.

I felt like a swimmer.

The issue for me was determining what exactly to do to maintain condition for a show set up like this. You see, traditionally, you have a show prejudging Saturday morning, and show finals Saturday evening. Pretty straight forward. But with this show, you had Figure one-piece Friday night, Figure two-piece Saturday morning and Figure finals Saturday night. That complicates things a bit as holding conditioning and staying dry becomes a bit trickier since you have to hold it longer. It’s all in the correct timing.

It’d be easier with the use of some aldosterone-suppressing diuretics, but all the girls that we were with are natural competitors, so that simply was not an option for us.

The goal with the water, salt, carbs/fat manipulation is to ‘ride the system’ so to speak. So we want to catch the trail end of the time between the first water drop and when the body catches onto what you’re doing and shifts it’s focus to water conservation. Ideally, we’re right at the end of this timeline. Any longer and your body starts to want to hold water, you flatten out, can’t get a pump, have no vascularity, etc.

What compounded the problem? And I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying so (lol), three of the five hit their … umm, TOM … right on show day. What are the odds? Geez.

Anyway, so given that figure one-piece is where the judges get their first look, this is the round to make sure you’re ON. Of course, being on for all rounds is the goal. I felt this was accomplished and that conditioning was held for the duration of the show. Friday night everyone looked good, and Saturday morning it was maintained, and in some instances improved.

Placings weren’t as we hoped, but at the national stage the game is played a little different. The highlight however, even with less than hoped for placings, was that the girls all looked great and were arguably the best they’d been to date, so that’s a small victory in itself. It’s all about the progress.

Saturday night the entire group got to hang out in the hotel bar and have a good time.

So a long week, but a good week.

I’ve got some pics up of Neely and Laura on the main LBC page, and have added some pics of Kelley and Ali to their pages as well. Noel’s will get updated soon too.

Greetings

Finally back from Chicago …

I’ll have an update on the trip soon.

Anyway, just a quick message to let you know of a new product that has just been released that I am a contributor to.

The product is called Fat Loss Pros and is an audio collection of over 15 hours of interviews with various industry ‘fat loss experts’ on the subject of fat loss and physique transformation. This is a product that Jennifer Heath, who is an NGA pro bodybuilder I’ve worked with, created.
The contributors include:

Dr. Eric Serrano
Dr. Lonnie Lowery
John Parillo
Roger Riedinger
Alwyn Cosgrove
Scott Abel
Cassandra Forsythe
Dr. Mauro Dipasquale
Erik Ledin
Kelli Calabrese
Ryan Lee
Chad Waterbury
Don Alessi
Charles Staley
Chad Ikei
Krista Scott-Dixon
Craig Ballantyne
Paul Chek

In addition to the audo interviews a number of contributors have included some ‘extras’

There’s a full 10 extra bonuses:

Bonus 1: THE specific training and diet plan used by Cassandra Forsythe in a legitimate scientific research study that enabled clients to gain up to 10 pounds of muscle and shed 15 pounds of fat over a 3 month period of time.

Bonus 2: A complete 4 day rotational diet by Paul Chek he uses to maximize body composition through avoiding the development of food intolerances that can destroy your lean physique!

Bonus 3: A specific weekly fat loss routine by Krista-Scott Dixon that incorporates compound movements, olympic complexes, bodyweight circuits, cardio conditioning, and more

Bonus 4: A 5 day metabolic enhancement hypertrophy training program by Scott Abel along with 3 programs incorporating high level cardiovascular circuits which are used to replace traditional cardio for bodybuilders and fitness competitors

Bonus 5: Weekly Total Body Circuits for Fat Loss by Chad Waterbury

Bonus 6: Complete Build Muscle and Lose Fat Menus for men and women by Roger Riedinger

Bonus 7: Body Composition Edge e-book by Don Alessi. How the average physique and strength athlete can use body composition methodology as a competitive edge.

Bonus 8: Turbulence Training e-book by Craig Ballantyne - 33 pages of fat burning Dumbbell and Bodyweight workouts

Bonus 9: Feminine, Firm, and Fit e-book by Kelli Calabrese - Building A Lean, Strong Body in 12 Weeks

Bonus 10: AN AMAZING FULL LENGTH PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEW with expert Kelly Baggett! An manuscript interview where you will learn how to manipulate your body-fat set-point through specific supplemental, training and psychological strategies. How to assess your metabolic status and determine whether you are best suited for a carb-based diet or a fat based diet. How to use a simple thermometer to monitor changes in your metabolic state. Learning from Kelly is an absolute must!! This interview alone is worth well over the price of the entire package!!! PLUS get Kelly’s 14 day “cut the fat” diet and training cycle!

You can check out this product here

Fat Loss Pros

Erik

The Overload Principle as at the root of all training progress. It states that a greater than normal stress on the body is required for a training adaptation to take place. The body will in turn adapt to this increased stress. In the context of getting stronger, you must subject your body to stresses greater than it is used to in order to force your body to adapt. This is basically how all training adaptations occur. There are multiple ways in which you can increase the workload and stress your body is subjected to and interestingly enough they all relate back to the three primary triggers for muscle growth – mechanical load, density and total time under tension.

First, you can increase the amount of force generated during the workout. Quite simply, this means using more weight or even moving the same weight faster. This ties into the earlier point on the need to get strong. Remember, that explosive concentric contractions have the ability to recruit the high threshold motor units – the big, powerful ones. Secondly, you can also decrease the amount of time it takes to complete the workout. In this case you’re doing the same amount of work (or perhaps even more) in less time, which increases training density. And finally, you can increase the amount of total workload or volume in a given workout, which positively affects the total time under tension that you subject your muscles to. Not paying attention to this training principle means that you’re doing the same thing day in and day out, and that pretty much guarantees no progress.