~Michele~’s BodyBlog

One of the things that I am most excited about at the Olympia this year is the Powerlifting Supershow, taking place on Saturday at 3pm on the expo main stage. A year ago I might not have taken such an interest in it, but since then I have been learning a lot about sport and admire the work and dedication that these guys put into their training. I first met Brad Heck at the Arnold Classic in 2007, where he claimed the world record in the 181 weight class by benching 679 pounds. I met a few of the other guys on the Big Iron team that weekend, but had no clue at the time that I would soon be training at their gym, and that we would all become good friends.

Big Iron Gym in Omaha, Nebraska is one of the most respected powerlifting gyms in the world, and although I am not a powerlifter myself, its hard not to get excited about the amazing accomplishments that the lifters achieve meet after meet. When I first started training there, I didn’t know what a monolift was. After a few weeks in the gym, I understood what it was all about. And after watching my first meet, my level of respect for powerlifters increased dramatically. Led by coach Rick Hussey, the Big Iron team has some of the top powerlifters in the sport, and I am very excited to see some of the guys in Vegas benching on the Expo stage!

Shawn Frankl (810 at 198), Jim Grandick (800 at 242), Brad Heck (705 at 181), and Richie Briggs (866 at 275 & is 23 years old) will all be competing at the Powerlifting Supershow. Make sure you don’t miss it on Saturday afternoon, I’ll be there cheering for these guys - its gonna be a good show! This competition in a slightly different format from traditional bench press meets. They will be not lifitng the standard one-rep max, but the lifters will be required to do a two-rep minimum. This is more of an exhibition so that bodybuilders and other fitness enthusiasts can relate to it, but I encourage everyone to check out a traditional full meet to see the big numbers, as well as the squats and deadlifts.

And if you’d like to see what the training atmosphere at Big Iron Gym is like, or want to learn more about the techniques that these guys use, they just made a really cool DVD that is on the gym’s site www.bigirongym.com .

I think it is safe to say that most people have a love/hate relationship with cardio. We love what it does for our physiques, but hate spending so much time on those machines with nothing to do but count down the minutes until we are done. I am lucky that I am pretty coordinated, so I don’t need to focus very much energy on what I am doing. When I am on the stepmill (my preferred cardio machine), I will do anything I can to distract myself from watching the clock: reading trashy magazines, reading books, texting anyone and everyone, listening to music, glancing at the tvs in the gym, talking to myself…. okay kidding on the last one, but you get my point!

Recently I made an investment that is so awesome when it comes to cardio that I just had to share. I bought a portable DVD player and a subscription to Netflix. It sits right on the magazine rack, and with the headphones on I can zone out everything else and just keep moving my feet up those stairs while watching a movie. I always end up doing more minutes than I planned because I just wanna see one more scene…. okay one more scene. Really, this is the last scene then I gotta go!

I don’t see a lot of people with these at the gyms I go to, which is why I wanted to share. The DVD players are actually pretty cheap (under $100!) and you can use it when traveling too.

The only downside is that people might not understand why you may burst out in laughter in the middle of a silent gym. I think its funny when people think I am nuts so I just roll with it. So if you happen to be in Omaha and see a little blond girl climbing the stepmill with a goofy smile on her face and randomly giggling, don’t make fun of her… cause she is having way more fun doing cardio than you are!

Thanks for the laughs, Will!

So I held off posting about this until I was 100% sure that it was going to happen. It looks like today is the day to make the announcement! It has been a year since I competed last, and if you have seen my earlier blogs you have read about my thoughts with regards to what was next for me.

But now it’s official: I will be competing at the Olympia in the Flex Bikini Model Search! A little different from my past shows, I know, but I think it is going to be a fun change of pace and a great opportunity. My stage presence is probably what I get complimented on the most at shows, so I feel like this is a great way to have lots of fun on stage really show my best characteristics! Ultimately, I would like to do more modeling and steer away from the contests, so this is an opportunity that I just can’t pass up. The winner will be featured in the 2009 Flex Swimsuit issue and will get an exclusive contract with Weider Publications.

From May 1 to May 15, Flex with open up the online voting so the public can vote to guarantee a few spots in the Finals! I could use your help! Click on the link during the first two weeks of May and help get that spot for me!! http://www.flexonline.com/flexmodelsearch/april

I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately - thinking about where I have been and where I am headed. My fitness journey has not been as glamorous as it may seem from the outside, looking at a few photos posted on a website. It has been about five years since I first started lifting weights, and although I am not proud of every moment along the way, the things I have learned in the process are extremely valuable to me, and I would not change anything that I have gone through.

I want to talk a little about the beginning. I hope my story can help others that might be going through something similar, or who have a friend that is. I am so proud that I was able to overcome this obstacle and turn it into something positive in my life, and it hurts to see others who are experiencing and feeling the same things I went through five years ago.

I started lifting weights because I needed to strengthen my arm after a snowboarding injury. The more I learned about training, the more I wanted to learn about everything involved in fitness. I read books and magazines that said protein was good for you, but carbs and fats were bad. So my solution? Eat nothing but protein. I ate tons of tuna and cottage cheese, getting really lean in the process. It started as simply not knowing enough about nutrition, but it turned into a genuine eating disorder. The big problem was that I wasn’t fueling myself for my lifestyle, let alone my workouts. It was to the point where I became afraid of calories and all I could think about all day long was training and trying to avoid food, unless it was tuna or cottage cheese, of course. I hit a low of 104 pounds, and although I had muscle from training, it looked like muscle on a skeleton.

I knew I had taken it too far, but was so caught up in seeing changes that I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t until a guy at the gym took me aside and said, "Michele, I know what you are trying to achieve and you won’t be able to get there if you don’t eat more." I needed someone to say something, and it was the right time to hear it. I remember he made me a weight gainer shake and I drank it without feeling like I did something bad. That was a huge turning point for me and I am so thankful.

I set a new goal to add muscle to my physique, and to not be afraid of gaining weight back. It took about a year for me to fully change my attitude about food, and it was a tough fight, but I am so thankful that I made the committment to do it. This year my goal is to get on stage at 128-130 pounds. That will be about the same or lower body fat pecentage than I was at 104. Anyone can lose fat, that is the easy part, but this kind of progress is what you KNOW you had to work your ass off for! Oh, and remember the guy who made me the weight gainer shake? Well, he saw me at the Emerald Cup in 2006 where I was 122 pounds on stage, and he said he almost cried he was so proud of me!

In another blog I will talk about rebounding post-contest. I owe a lot of my muscle gain to it, but it sure isn’t fun feeling thick in the off-season!

The Protein Gods have answered my prayers. Either that or the team at Allmax just really likes me. I can see it now: they were browsing though my bodyspace profile, saw that my favorite cheat foods are anything chocolate and peanut butter, and went to work in the lab creating the perfect protein just for me. Right?

Well, I guess it is possible that this is just a coincidence that happens to be AWESOME! Allmax has new flavors of IsoFlex coming out very soon, and one of them is CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER! Yum!

I miss competing! Plain and simple. This has been the longest break away from the stage that I have taken since I started. It was a much needed break, but at the same time I am itching to bust out my Jan Tana and clear heels and get my little brown butt back under those stage lights. And the million-dollar question: What is next?

This is where I need some help. Any advice from my competitor friends would be so great, so please chime in!

I competed in the NPC for over 2 years. I know that organization, I am familiar with it, and I like the exposure that it provides. BUT… I don’t think I have what it takes to make it to the top, for reasons that have to do with my own personal values and preference to remain marketable and feminine. At the national level, there are 200 girls at these shows and I am afraid I will get lost in the crowd. But that isn’t too much of a worry to stop me from trying!

I am also curious about other natural organizations, where I feel like it would be a much more realistic goal to get a pro card. But I don’t know a lot about these shows, so that would be like starting all over again, although I wouldn’t expect it to be too difficult.

So basically, I haven’t made any decisions yet so I don’t have a set plan of what is next. What do you think?

I’m back! Some of my bodyspace friends may have noticed that I haven’t been posting or replying to comments lately. So this blog is to let all of you know that no, I haven’t fallen of the face of the earth, I have just been a little distracted. I think we all can relate to a time when we really need to focus on getting our life in order, which is exactly what I’ve been up to. But the good news is, I have missed this place! I am sorry to everyone who I haven’t responded to, please know that it’s not that I don’t care! I really do!

A lot of you have asked how training is going, and I can honestly say that it is not going as well as I would like it to. We all seem to suffer from a lack of motivation every once in awhile, and how work and responsibilties can distract from our best intentions in the gym. I have definately been training, but it hasn’t been on the same level that I am used to. So if anyone has any advice for me, I would love to hear it!

Today I went to the gym on my lunch break. I don’t usually go in at noon, but I needed to get out of the office and felt like it would be a nice way to break up the day. I didn’t really have a game plan on what my workout was going to be, because today was kind of an "extra" day in my routine. So without any set workout, I randomly walked up to the squat rack, threw on some plates, and decided it was going to be leg day.

Here is some advice: If you are doing a "workout on a whim," and have to get back to work in 45 minutes, don’t train your legs! I learned a little lesson today. If you want to assume that you won’t get sweaty because you aren’t going to do any cardio or circuits in this session, then lay off the lunges! I probably would have been better off doing a shoulder workout, or arms, chest, and abs, for that matter. But no, I was smart and squatted my way into a rather uncomfortable afternoon. It took me about an hour to cool down enough to put my suit jacket back on.

And the other funny thing about my workout today is that I saw some of the same people that I see every day, yet I swear I see them in the mornings, or nights, or both. It seems like there is always one person I see EVERY single day, no matter what time I go. Either they work out a LOT, or they just have a random schedule like I do. I wonder if they think the same thing about me…

So I can’t give anything away just yet, but I thought it would be fun to drop a little teaser: A fun project that I recently worked on is due to be released in the near future. Boy, that is pretty vague, huh?

Check out the SecondFocus bodyblog in the coming weeks for the official announcement, I will leave that up to my good friend and SecondFocus blogger, Ian. He is an amazing person and a very talented photographer. And he writes an awesome blog, too.

http://blog.bodybuilding.com/SecondFocus

Maybe it’s just me, but I think this is quite possibly the worst question you can ask a girl. I don’t mind answering most questions, but come on, be original! Actually, this hasn’t been an issue here on Bodyspace (which I am very thankful for), but it is out in my day-to-day interactions with people that this seems to get asked quite frequently.

Just because I lift weights does not mean I am trying to break any strength records. This kind of relates back to that earlier blog that I wrote. But the interesting thing is that I really don’t bench press at all. I train in a way that works the muscles that I want to develop, because my goal is purely aesthetic. Correct me if I am wrong, but pectoral muscles don’t seem to be the main factor in figure judging. And I am talking about MUSCLES here, not anything else that may be a part of a woman’s chest.

My chest workout usually is just a few sets of incline dumbbell presses, with moderate weights. I actually set the incline up pretty steep so I still get quite a bit of front delt work as well. The way I see it, doing flat barbell presses will do nothing to enhance my physique in a way that will accomplish my personal goals. So I don’t do it. So if you ask me how much I can bench, I will not answer you.

I feel like I am being compared to one of the guys when you ask me a question like that, and that is the last thing I want! I work out to feel fit and feminine, so don’t be cheesy and ask me something original. I would be happy to answer any question but that one.