The IDFA Western Canada Classic

It seems like lately a string of friends, male and female, have entered the world of competitive weightlifting or bodybuilding as the next step in their fitness journey. Photos are popping up all over Facebook (yes, I admit to creeping a little bit) and it's hard not to be impressed and inspired by the hard work that goes into prepping for these events. It really is an all-consuming pursuit, and if the competitors in this weekend's competition are any indication, it usually takes a whole team of professionals as well as the support of friends and family. I find it so fascinating to see how hard work can really transform someone's body, not only into a healthier version of itself, but truly a sculpted prime specimen. The kind you could learn anatomy off of. So when the opportunity presented itself to attend the IDFA (International Drug Free Athletics) Western Canada Classic Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure competition, I jumped at the chance. 

I suppose it's easy to misunderstand competitive bodybuilding. For every person who can watch a video of Ronnie Coleman, or Arnold in his prime, or any Mr. Universe competition and respect them for pushing the limits of the human body, there are those who would write them off as posing fake'n'bake roid monkeys (like the poor woman in the video below - one can only assume she didn't survive her encounter with the Governator).

Sure, sometimes the tans are a few shades closer to turkey than they are to Tahiti, and the oil and the posing can seem a bit comical, but they all serve a purpose. Everything acts to amplify the body beneath the oil and the tan. And what a body too. It's one thing, and not an easy one, to lean out and aim for the dangerously thin swimsuit model physique. But hitting the body fat targets, muscle definition, symmetry and size that bodybuilders are judged on is another ordeal entirely. These guys often had to hit a pose, essentially flexing as hard as they can, and hold it for what seemed like over a minute before rotating and hitting another. We tried it ourselves, just sitting in the crowd, flexing alongside the competitors and tired ourselves out pretty quickly. The competition took over four hours to run through all the contestants and poses, so you can imagine, that is a lot of flexing.

I took photos during the competition (not bad for an iPhone, but I still wish I had brought a better camera), so you can see for yourself how impressive they were. 

These competitors were from the Transformation Challenge. Some of them had lost over 100 lbs!

The middle height ladies fitness class. Some serious abs and back going on in this division.

 Top 5 in the mens lightweight bodybuilding division.

Third Place, Lightweight division.

Fourth Place, Lightweight division. We all thought he was top 3 for sure. I even thought he would win it all. Our guess is that he simply didn't look like he was trying hard enough in his poses. Largely because...

This guy won first place in the lightweight division. In all of his poses, he was flexing so hard, he was shaking. 

Top three, Mens heavyweight division. The winner? The Breaking Bad look-a-like in the centre. He also hit his poses hard, usually turning red from lack of oxygen. And badassness.

At the end of the day, as silly as it sounds, Arnold was right. It looks better with the oil. 

Fruit/Veggie Shakes

It's Alex here.

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, not that anyone actually reads this but before I go into what I've been up to here's a nice recipe for a smoothie that I have every morning to kick start my day.  I've always loved fruit smoothies in the morning with strawberries, yogurt, etc, but after listening to Joe Rogan rave about kale shakes, I decided to mix it up a bit.  Here's the recipe I got from Joe's twitter:

Kale Shakes

4 large kale leaves

4 stalks of celery

1 cucumber

1 pager size hunk of ginger

4 cloves of garlic

pineapple for taste

Ok I'm not going to lie, that sounds really gross and Joe himself says it's disgusting but he does it for the benefits.  While I don't doubt that, I'd rather have some of those veggies separate from my shake and actually have something that tastes relatively good.  So here's the concoction I put together in the morning:

A hand full of strawberries

1 orange

1 banana

yogurt

milk

1 scoop of vanilla protein

1 teaspoon of powdered glutamine

1 large kale leaf

small handful of spinach

1/4 cup of water (because the vanilla can be a little overpowering)

Variety of frozen fruits (to make the shake thick and cold)

I've been doing this for the past few weeks every morning and I love it!  It gives me energy all morning especially since I have it after my breakfast and drink it throughout the morning so it just keeps me going, and I get all my day's fruit servings in one shot.  Another reason why I haven't tried Joe Rogan's kale shake recipe is because I don't think my blender would blend the vegetables enough such that I don't choke on chunkies.  He uses a $500 blender called the vitamix, (seems like an amazing product but is it worth it? I'm still considering it and if I do get it, I'll do a review on it).  

 That's it.  I'll try to post more in the next little while.  Happy training everyone

The Road to Twenty: Week One

First, a little introduction and a note about motivation:

Though this is my first post, I've been dabbling with weight training for somewhere around 6 years. I say dabbling mostly because I've never followed a strict plan, had a trainer or even been able to settle on less than 5 or 6 fitness goals. The result? Middling results and at the present moment, a pretty solid plateau. To fix this, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to focus myself. This means settling down and setting concrete goals, both long term, like qualifying for the Boston Marathon before I'm 30, and short, like conquering female kryptonite: the pull up. 

The inspiration for the latter came to me while  messing around at the same playground Lex and I visited over a year ago in this post. Let me tell you, nothing motivates you more than watching video immortalizing your feeble attempts at a muscle up. One year later, and I still couldn't do a muscle up. In fact, strength wise, I was largely in the same place I was back then. As a girl, I've always been proud to be able to do solid sets of pull ups (my one set PR is 10, though I usually only hit 5-7 consistently), but since nailing a muscle up wasn't happening, working on my pull ups seemed the next best thing. Enter the Twenty Pull-Up Challenge, a six week program I came across on bodybuilding.com intended to get you to a 20 pull-up set in six weeks. 

Physiologically speaking, pull ups, and their close cousins, chin ups, are widely considered particularly hard for women to do. But not impossible. Crystal West is a great example of this, and if we're really talking role models, so is Sarah Connor. If you're a 90's child like me, the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day probably holds a special place in your heart. Who could forget those iconic shots of Sarah Connor knocking out chin ups in her cell or loading a shot gun with one arm. These days it's pretty common for female stars to get into amazing shape for a movie (i.e Jessica Biel), but Linda Hamilton was the original, and she wasn't messing with one pound weights or toning either. Even though she had an ex-Israeli Military trainer on her side, it was all her in those scenes. So there you have it ladies, proof that not only can you do one pull up, you can do twenty. (For the record, the most ever done by a female is 36 in a minute, set by Ms. West herself).

Embedding was disabled by the owner of this video, but you can still check out Sarah Connor in all her glory here.

The Initial Test

The 20 Pull-up program, like most other plans, is based off your initial stats. For me, this came out to be 5 full pull ups, from a dead hang with little to no kip or swinging. 

This places me in the lowest category, and to be honest, I am a little skeptical, judging from the low reps set for the first few days (5 sets at 2-1-1-2-3 and 2-2-1-2-3). At this point I've had little trouble completing with far less than the 90 seconds of rest allowed by the program. But I guess this isn't surprising since I am on the higher end of the lowest category and these programs tend to really build momentum in later weeks. 

And maybe that's the best part about committing to programs like this: whatever my doubts or motivation levels, at the very least, I have to see it through.