I am now 9 weeks out from the Excalibur show on December 1, 2012. I am aiming to be in the most amazing shape of my life. I've already made some incredible changes and now I am focusing on getting super lean. My diet and training are aimed at that goal right now. At the same time, I am keeping protein high to aid in the building of muscle because I am still lagging in several areas of my body. This is a marathon, not a sprint and that is something I have to keep reminding myself of.
After taking new progress pictures this weekend it appears that most of my body is growing. I need to give extra attention to my arms because they are still lagging, but the rest of me is growing nicely so I am going to focus on continuing that growth over the next 9 weeks. My goal is to have a six pack 4 weeks before the show, so in the next 5 weeks. Let's see if that happens.
I am feeling amazingly good right now. I feel like my progress has been awesome. I look better now than I did 2 weeks out from my very first show. A lot of that has to do with the extra cardio I've been doing right from the start of preparation. I am really pushing hard and getting the job done. The experience I gained from the past 2 shows has taught me a few things:
- You can never do cardio too early in your preparation. I know that cardio is what gets you shredded (along with diet) so doing it early and often has been the key this time.
- Training instinctively will help build up lagging body parts. Instead of following a set split where there is only a certain number of times a body part can be trained, train with your instincts. If your arms are lagging, train them more often. Find a way to fit in extra arm workouts even if it means training twice in one day.
- Try different things to see what works for your body. My arms are not responding well right now so we are changing things up. We are going to try a workout where we hit them with lighter weight and higher repetitions and then another where we hit them with heavier weight and lower repetitions. We will see what works and then leverage that going forward.
- Push yourself. We all have days where we wake up and don't want to train. Do not give in. Push yourself and make yourself train. You will not be sorry. This type of discipline is what champions are made of.
These are the things I've learned and anyone attempting their first bodybuilding show can learn from these as well.
Some progress pictures:
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