So you carved out a pretty good body and you have been thinking you just might enter a competition to how you fare against other bodybuilders?Competition is a valuable proving ground where one can not only achieve tangible results but also obtain specific feedback and perspectives to use in future training.
Thier are major components necessary to maximize your competitive experiences. Competing can be satisfying and even fun, but it can be much more so if you master these mafor components.
Before your first contest- competition is much more thatn just strutting your stuff, collecting your trophy, and going home to bask in glory. There are a myriad of performance variables, factors, and psychological intangibles that you need to be aware of so you can achieve the most out of every competition.
Congratulations, if you have chosen to compete. ask yourself this simple question, "Just why do I want to compete?" If you come up with, "because all my friends are," "for all the glory and rewards," or "I don’t know?" you may want to delay your entry into the word of competition, for you will probabley have a disappointion experience. You need to have more clear-cut goals that competing can fulfill. If your answers to the question were, "to excel in a new personal arena," "to compare and contrast myself with others," or "to set new standards for myself and experience new things," then you will be appproaching competition with the proper frame of mind.
Many bodybuilders make the mistake of rushing into their first contest before they have any idea of what they are doing or what is necessary in order to perform well. The results are usually obvious mistakes, disappointment, and even embarrassment.
Before you enter your first contest, it is a good idea to observe a couple of contest. Get a feel for the atmosphere, the sequence of events, the pressures on the on the competitoors and how they react to them and the details that need to be mastered. Note the good as well as bad presntation points of the competitors.
It is a good idea to jot down notes on what you observe. Some items you may want to record are Poing variations, stage presence (poing as well as waiting to pose), posing suits styles and colors, tanning, lighting, positioning *especially during the posdown) music selections, sequence of poses, hiding weak points, and relating to the audience. By observing a couple of contest, you can acquire a good feel for how it well be when you compete. By obervations really set the foundation for applying the success principle called "other peoples’s experience". By using other people’s experiences, you can accelerate your own learning curve and be better abvle to avoid basic mistakes as well as benefit from good examples.
A cornerstone of employing other peoples’s experiences is realizing that there is an important distinction between adopting what you see versus adapting it. Adopting is trying to copy and replicate others; styles. This rarely works because you are trying to mold yourself to others personal styles instead of modifying these styles to your own. This latter appproach is called adapting. Adapt what your observe to create your own unique style. By developing your own style, by adapting bits and pieces of others styles, you will create a performance image thaqt is you
Using all of the information you attained, start developing your own game plan for you first competition. Choose a local or state contest in which you want to compete.. Make sure you take care of all the logistical considerations first, for failing to do this often causes a lot of stress and wates precious energy as contest time approsaches. Get you application in, learn the rules and regulations, confirm appearance times, make your travel and hotel reservations, and plot out you training time line.
Posing is a completely different and unique dimension of bodybuilding. In posing you have to put everything together andpresent it in an effective package. Posing is very different from training and the dimension thatis the most difficult to learn and refine.
 Effective posing involves dynamically and fluidly presenting the strong points of your body while covering up the weaker points. To be successful at posing, you have to be genuinely proud of the body you have created. Any fears, apprehensions, doubts, or insecrities will be reflected in your opoing. Bodybuilders who are unsure of themselves or their bodies will not present the kind of posing line, image, and air of confidence that are necessary for a successful performance. So the prerequisite to effective posing is that you have to learn to believe in yourself, resolve insecurities, Be positive, and concentrate.
The Mandatory Poses Learn the mandatory poses inside and out. Dissect each one of these oses and learn the proper position of each muscle group involved. More importantly, learn how each muscle group feels when presented well in a particular pose. So, for example, in a side chest pose, learn the arm and leg positions, but also learn how your pecs, biceps, and even calf muscles should feel.
After you have become aware of the individual parts of each pose, put them all together so you feel how the best present the whole pose. Have pictures taken or video of you from all angles so you can see how to best present yourself. Become so used to each mandatory pose that when someone says "double biceps shot" you immediately properly pop into this pose.
Learn all the mandatory poses so completely that they become second nature to you. In a pressurized competitive situation there is a tendency for the mind to go blank. Having your mandatory poses so well ingrained in you will give you the reassurance that even if your mind does go blank, you will still automatically be able to hit effective madatory poses.
Optional Poses Your optional posing routine should present your best muscles and features as well as reflect a little of your personality. This sounds simple, but this is quite a tall order.
The first step in developing your rountine is to observe the masters of posing, Watch seasoned competitores like the older bodybuilders as in Mohamad Makkay, Ed Corney, Alberty Beckles, and Bob Paris, also todays stars on the stage. See how they present theiir best features while masking their weaker ones. Also observe how they flow from one pose to another, setting the mood or tone for the overall rountine, Observe how they have coreographed precise movements to the music. Finally, see how they relate to the judges and audience and always finish with a bang.
Develop your unique style that represents who you are. Nothing is more personal than your body, so creat the kinds of poses that reflect bothe your body and your personality.
Many novice competitors do not fully understand that each pose consisits of three phases: the transition leading into the pose, the pose itself, and the movements leading out of the pose (which are also the transition into the next pose). Posing is a cyclical process that should flow easily together. It is these transtions that really give a good overall impression.
Save your best poses for the end of your routine, Realize that the last things you do are the first things the judges remember. An efffective posing routine should not so much lead to one cresendo, but should include a series of crescendos. Give them a series-something to remember!
Be careful to choose music that fits your personality and the mood you wish to present. Feel free to splice together different segments. Just make sure the splicing jpb is good quality and the segmentspresent a continuous effect. You may also want to bring at least two copies of your tape/cd to the contest, for the tape machines are notorious for eating them! Learn your music inside and out and then start fitting your poses to it.
Practice, practice, pratice your posing. Perfect it to the point where you can do the whole routine automatically. Get as much feedback on your posing routine as you can. Enlist other’ comments, have photos taken of you, and if possible, videotape/dvd the whole routine. Perfect individual poses, but also emphasize the transition movements between each pose.
As your contest approaches, spend a greater proportion of your time on your posing. There really is not much more you can do to build up your muscles. Spend this time dieting and doing more aeroblic exercises. Many novice competitors do not realize just how physicall taxing posing is. Get to the point where you can hit poses for eght to ten minutes straight. You will be amazed at how slowly time goes by! Plus it is more taxing than working out, if you do not belive me just try it!
Many experienced competitors visualize themselves to be a certain kind of animal. They then become this animal during the posing routine. For example, many competitors visualize themselves as big cats, such as cheetahs or lions, that represent of the qualities of power and grace. Or some bodybuilders combine animals to better represent all of the qualities they wish to exude, such as a gorilla and lion that symbolize mass with powerful proportion.
Whatever methods you use, learn your routine so well that you can actually free yourself up from the specifics to enfoy your posing. This is where you personlity will come out. Then you will be ready to present yourself well.
As you learn to pose effectively, you will discover special kind of pride in being able to pose well. Refined, stylish, and polished posing can overcame muscle deficencies and imbalances. Good poing can be the differnce between placing well and being an almost-so so.
Nutrition and Dieting Nowhere is the saying, "You are what you eat," more evident than in bodybuilding competition.The longer you have been bodybuilding, the more importsnt the factor of nutrition becomes in developing and maintaning a proportioned body. In competition, nutrition is the single greates variable in determining whether or not a contestant will peak. In order to really maximize your training and prepare yourself for competition, you must have a solid understanding nutrition. This is only a cusory overview of nutrition, as it relates to competition.
Food AS Fuel You need to view what we eat as the fuel that runs not only our muscles, but the rest of our bodies and brains as well. You can choose a low-octane fuel found in most processed, fried, or fast foods and pay the physical and psychological prices for it. Or you can choose a high-octane fuel found in foods as close as possible to their natural states and benefit from it.
We have to continually be conscious of the foods we choose to eat. For every splurge or lapse, our bodies and our training will usually suffer for at least the next seventy-two hours. Getting a handle on your nutrition starts with, and continually depends on, your paying attention to it. We all have to create the right system of eating that is appropriate for our unique bodies. This means that what may be good for your training partner may not be good for you. Feel free to experiment, but always base your eating habits on what works for you, It is important to keep a log on your total training, workouts, food intake, your habits, and mostly you thoughts with all in you life, it does not take much time, you will be more intune with your total body if you know what yourself is all about!
Dieting As you approach a contest, you would lide to reduce your body’s fat and water content as much as possible so you muscle definition can show through your skin. This is called getting repped. Dieting is a physically and emotionally taxing process that must always be monitored in order to work.
Contestants need to diet, but not so much that they look like they have just been released from a concentration camp! Until recently, many bodybuilding contest-especially womens’s have almost turned into a dieting rather that a muscle contest. This trend is gradually changing. Today, judges want to see clearly defined muscles, but they also want to see a healthey appearance.
Here are some guidelines to healthy and effective dieting:
* Many bodybulders do not fully understand that losing body fat is a biphasic (two-phased) process. We must reduce the number of calories going in, but we also need to increase the number of caloriews being used. The best way to accomplish this is to increase the amount of aerobic exercise you do. Swining, bicycling, or aerobicizing will burn up many calories without seriously affecting your muscle mass..
* It makes sense that the best way to diet is to always being a position where you do not have to lose much weight, Maintain your training weight within 5 percent of your desired contest weight.
* The steady approach to dietion is best. Aviod anything, such as fasts in particular, that might shock the body. Slow, controlled, and sensible dieting is best in the long run.
* During you dieting remember that any food you ingest should be quality calories. I define quality calories as food that is close to its ntural state and has minumum cooking preparation. Use the folowing rules of thumb in your nutritional intake. When you are in regular training, ingest 15 Quality calories per pund of body weight each day. When you are dieting for a contest, ingest 10 calories per pound. So, for example, if you are a 200 lb. male, you could ingest a full 3,000 calories during training and around 2,000 calories during contest dieting. This could be appear high, but this is a safe and sane approach that has the best chace for success.
*Plan your dieting to take a full one to two weeks longer than you expect. Many novice bodybuilders usually hit their peaks three to seven days after the contest because their dieting did not really grab hold when they expected. I believe that it is better to reach your desired weight a couple of days early and then maintain it rather than reach it a couple of days too late.
* Judge your dieting not so much by how much you weight, but how you look. Judges do not care about your weight. They want to see how well your muscles are defined.
* After the contest aviod binging. Just as you don’t want to shock your body going into a diet, you do"t wnat to shock your body coming out of it. Your recuperation will be greatly facilitated if you gradually regain your old eating habits and intake level.
* Finally, experience is a valuable guide. Learn from your mistakes as well as from your successes, Develop your own system of nutrition and dieting that has been proven to work ofr lYOU.
Your body can be viewed as a dynamic laboratory. Your must learn to proper ways to fuel your laboratory so it runs efficently and effectively. Continually strive to learn about nutrition and implement these learning so you will be able to show off a lean and ripped body.
Intangibles A plethora of perparation intangibles must be addressed before the contest so you perfoem well during the competition. Travel and hotel reservations, audiotaping, registration, posing suits, eating in a new city (get a suite with a kitchen, with a work out room use the mirrors, etc…), tanning, and a number of other factors need to be attended to, so you concentrate on your contest preparation and performance.
The best advice is to address all these factors as early as you can, so during the two weeks prior to a contest you can focus on your posing, dieting, and mental perparation. Attend to most of the factors yourself, Letting a trusted friend or loved one take care of some of these factors tends to waste your energy because you spehd extra time checking up on them or wondering when they are going to do the tasks. Handle these yourself and get back to your perparation. (Now of days contest are more around then ever so if your first conest, find one close to where you live it can save money all around)
If possible, well before the contest walk out on the stage on which you will be competing. Get a feel for the environment and especially for the lighting. Bright lights tend to bleach out the skin so make sure you achieve a good deep tan or as most see if the contest proves tanning at the show. You might also want to experiment with some artificial tanning techniques, but find out what combination of artifical and natural tanning works best for you. Do this experimenting two months or so before the contest. Trying to figure this out a week before the show will almost surely invite disaster.
Particularly in the gym before the competition, focus on conserving energy. Wear loose-fitting sweats to conceal yourself, aviod comparing yourself to other competitors, and go about doing the things you need to do. The combination of percontest tension and the strsses of dieting frequently make people do strange things. Plan and focus on you and the specific things you need to accomplish in order to be totally perpared for the contest.
The Actual Contest Should be fun. View this as the frosting on your bodybuilding cake, the reward for all your sacrificing and preparing. This is the time for you to show the world what your have achieved!
Believe that you are there to give the best effort and present yourself in the best way possible. Recognize that you are not there to sabotage yourself, so trust that whatever you do is for the best. Genuinely believe in yourself and be on your side.
From the time you enter the auditorium for the perjudging, focus only on you. Don’t make the mental error many novice competitors make of continually comparing. contrasting, sand competing with others. This is a waste of precious energy and concentration. Be in your own little world.
Realize that some people nay try to "psyche you out" by playing games, saying things to get a reaction, or trying any way to get under your skin. Understand that people who play such head games are trying to grag you down to their levels or are attempting to cover up their own inadequacies. Do not react to them. If you do, they have won. Concentrating on what you have to do will keep you immune from any such tactics. Be friendly, helpful, but always focus in on you. As in training for a contest be aware of these humans that are going to in the same contest for they might be out to place higher in the contest.
An increasing number of contests span a couple of days so it is essential that you relax conserve your energy. Tecognize that a little tension is good. This is a sign that your body amind are getting up for significant effort. However, control your emotions as much as possible. Use your formal relaxation sequences, visualiqation, affirmations, and any little gimmicks you have to deflect the pressure. Use the pressure, don’t let it use you.
After the contest, accumlate specific and honest feedback from a variety of sources. You may even want to contact some judges to receive their input and recommendations. Write down the things you need to emphasize or do differently next time. It has been my experience that the bodybuilders who improve upon their contest performances the most are the ones who have the honesty and courage to seek feedback. They view their efforts as learning experiences.
Most important of all, be proud of what your have done. Youhave pushed yourself into areas that few people ever do. Recognize that your are among an elite percentage of bodybuilders who have made the commitments and sacrifices and have taken the risds to compete. Pat yourself on your wide lats, take time to recuperate, and then start planning for the next contest!
Competing can be a marvelous way to add to your bodybuilding. It is both a personal proving ground and objective performing arena that can enrich your entire life. Give it your best efforts, learn from your experiences, and apply them to becoming a better bodybuilder.
System of Peaking The concept of peaking always receives a lot of attention from competitive bodybuilders. The quest for the peak has attained almost mystical proportions. For many competitors, hitting their peals is like finding the Golden Fleece.
The vast mafority of bodybuilders who miss their peaks have few clearly defined goals and no specific plans to achervr them. These people usually try to cram everthing into the last month before a contest. The result is that they usually overtrain, look gaunt, and have podla dots from their tanning lotions!
Ther is nothing magical about peaking for a contest. Peaking is a planned and intelligent program that integrates the mind and body to produce a razar-sharp performance. Presenting the system of peaking is a good way to summarize this chapter on how to maximize the competitive experience.
1- It is essential that you chosse a contest that is appropriate for you and your stage of development. Give yourself adequate time to train physically and perpare for it. Create a training cycle that culminates in the contest. Then plot out a time line that includes such factors as developing specific muscle growups, employing other exercises and activities, nutrition and dieting, posing, and mental pereparation..
All of this planing will be useless until you commit yourself to the competition. You must give this contest a priority in your life. If you don’t, you will be really working against yourself. Throw all of your bodybuilding eggs into one basket and give the entire process of peaking your best shot.
A tunel-visioned focus on your goals is essential. Keep in mind not only your plans, but your personal purpose in this quest as well. Making sacrifices goes hand in hand with any such commitment. Develop what I call a "controlled obsession" toward your training. This is a time that will test your concentration, endurance, and even patience. To sustain your intensity, keep in your mind’s eye your vision of what you want achieve.
You might develop what some call "siege mentality" toward your whole life. You become so focused in on what you need to do that thngs irrelevant to that do not matter. Realize that this siege mentality is necessary for excellence, but it is temporary. After the contest you will have to compensate for those areas that were negected. Temember, you have just one shot to peak, so give it your all.
2- The sequence of planning for a peak usually follows this general progression:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â *working on mass-working onsymmetry and definition
*quantity of weights lifted-quality of reps
*emphasizing segments and individual body parts-emphasizing tie-ins and the whole body
*longer rest between sets-shorter rest and more supersets
*balnced nutrition-imbalanced nutrition for dieting
*segmented posing-intergrated posing including transitions
*physical preparation-mental perparation
Constuct your time line in such a way that these different elements work together to achieve a unified result. This result is the peak.
3- It seems ludicrously obvious that once you have established your time line for your trainng you have to use it. But many bodybuilders establish time lines and then seem to disregard them! Slipping off onto counterproductive tangents is very easy, especially early in the training cycle. This lost time cannot be made up. Bodybuilders who use time lines have to understand the necessity of living with their prorities. Remember, planning means doing something with your plans.
Using previous experiences in peaking, top bodybuilders have learned to pace themselves. In every aspect of their training they emphasize quality. Sure, they could show off during a training session, but this would only waste precious time and concentration. Mindful bodybuilders recognize that showing off now may prevent them from showing off well at the contest. They keep the big picture in mind and prioritize their efforts.
4- Feel free to adapt, alter, and modify your time lines so they remain appropriate. Refer to your time lines often and compare your planned progress with the actual prgress. This will provide you with both the perspective and incentives to keep on going.
5-As you proceed into your training, increasingly apply your relaxing, visualizing, and affirming. These practices will not only baluable in themselves, they will also help you maintain your composure and awareness so you will be better able to stay on course.
Rely n these mental skills to channel any fears, doubts, and insecurities productively into your training. Remember, you have toal control of who you will become and how you will present yourself. Relaxing, visualizing, and affirming should be like old reliable friends to you.
6- Most competitors believe that peaking should be a process of ever-increasing intensity culminating in one exploding crescendo. This process works for only a very few. For most of us, the best approach is to reach and refine our peaks through a process called tapering.
Like an airplane landing, tapering uses all of the physical and mental perparation gained from the monthes of training to glide to the target. It is a time for easing off on some aspects of your training, but it is also a time for maintaining and even intensifying other aspects. For example, during the two weeks prior to a contst you should ease off on the heavy trainng, but increase the time and intensity of posing and mentally rehearsing the event.
Just as in the early phases of your time lines, trust is a must during tapering. Recognize that at this point you cnnot do much more to make significant improvement, but by trying harder because you mistrust yourself, you could serously detract from your peak. Convince yourself that this planned course is your best shot to hit your peak.
7-Do everything well! Really emphasize all the positive aspects about you. Fear, anxiety, and stress can erode much of the physical training you have done. Focus on being genuinely positive in everything you do as you approach the contest date.
Even though you still will have some faults and deficiencies, emphasizing your strong points and what you do well. Your weaknesses will not improve at this point and there is nothing to be gained by reminding yourself of them. Tely on and be proud of your strong points.
The week before the contst, focus on relaxing and mentally regearsing every little aspect of your perfrmance. Actually become those qualities you wish to exude onstage. Be positive, eager, proud, strong, graceful, symmetrical, and a WINNER! Do not let deoubts, fears, or other negative thoughts reside in you mind. Channel all your energies into being the best possible you.
From the time you enter the city or the auditorium, be a performer. Exude poise, confidence, control, and mastery at all times. It is illogical to expect that you ewill magically turn on poise and confidence onstage when you have been worried and negative offstage. Reinforce what you do well. FOCUS ON WHO YOU ARE. AND THEN GO DO IT1
8-Finally, learn from your experience. Although every peak youachieve is unique, there are some necessary elements you need to produce your best efforts. Develop your own formula for peaking, so the next time you start the process it will seemlide familiar territory. You will then be more effcient, for you will better know what to do.
Peaking is a wonderful process. It is a marvelous opportunity to combine all the physical, mental, nutritional, and performance parts of you into one unified whole. Not many people can commit themselves to planning a goal, much less carrying it through. Always be proud of what you are and accomplish!
Remember if you are living in the low-country of south carolina and need any advice or a trainer for only the male bodybuilder starting are intermed. at no cost or charge email me at flexit@4umirrors.com, Thank y’all Rick Lucan Lowery
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