It’s been almost two weeks now since I took part in my very first Figure competition and life is almost back to normal again.
The past few months have been very interesting for us because, being our first competition, everything has been very new to Fabian and I, and we have been forced to learn everything as we go. My 9-week contest preparation, peak week diet and training, contest day diet, posing, tanning, show presentation, and so on . . . these are all things that we have had to face and come to terms with for the first time ourselves.
Looking back, I have to say it was all a really wonderful experience, Fabian and I both had a ball and we agree that if we could do it every week, we would!
I feel very fortunate to have come away from my first contest with a trophy (3rd place in my class). I guess it confirms that even as first-timers doing everything on our own, we did OK. But I’m under no illusion about what needs to be done now. I know I have a lot of hard work ahead of me and that there is a lot that I still need to improve. It will be a long journey but one that I am looking forward to because it’s what I love to do.
The very first female competitor that I ever met was a woman who I connected with on Facebook and later met in person at the 2011 Sydney Fitness & Health Expo. She had competed just once. I remember her telling me that her trainer simply told her to “trust him” and to do everything he told her to do, and he would get her to the stage.
Well he did achieve that, but following her contest her body rebounded very badly, leaving her very disillusioned and not really wanting to ever compete again.
It’s sad that she was unlucky enough to have had such bad guidance for her contest. I’m glad to say I haven’t had the same negative experience at all, in fact, quite the opposite. The contest preparation we put together was very sensible and not abusive to my body, so now that my competition is over I feel great. All those many hours of research and program design really paid off!
Now that I have one contest under my belt, I honestly feel more motivated than ever before, for two reasons.
Firstly, I had so much fun at my contest that I want to compete as often as I can in the future!
And secondly, it was such an incredibly awesome experience just being among all the amazing competitors as they prepared to step onto the stage. To see the amount of dedication and hard work in the physiques in that room was truly inspiring to me. I felt so lucky and proud to be among them and to have the opportunity to compete with them that I knew that just by being there, I was already a winner.
All of the competitors – the Bikini, Fitness and Figure girls, are so inspirational – each and every one of them. And it’s so motivating and inspiring for me just to be counted as part of this amazing group of women. It makes me so happy that I have chosen this lifestyle!
Following my contest I took a week off from training last week and started to get some more calories into me (even some naughty ones!), to get my body fat and energy levels up a bit for my off-season program. I have enjoyed getting back into the gym this week, even though I’m paying for the week off a bit through some muscle soreness.
This week my workouts are similar to what I was doing pre-contest, but I’m only going to failure on the last set for each exercise. This will ramp me up back into the swing of things before I start on my new off-season program next week, which Fabian is designing as we speak. That will focus on building my size and bringing up the areas that need more development, and will involve some very intense lifting.
So everything is going great, I’m grateful for everything and I’m excited about the new program and seeing how I develop over the next few months, so that I can bring a much-improved package to the stage when I next compete in March 2013. I’ll also be working on some fancy new posing moves for then too!!
If you would like to see some photos from my competition, click here.