Off-Season 2011-2012

Oct 30th, 2011…I’ve been back in Mumbai teaching yoga and training at True Fitness, and things are going really well. It’s been 6 weeks since my last competition, the Fitness America Pageant, (FAP) in Boston, and I’ve settled into the rhythm of the off-season. I feel like I’ve gone through a really big “growing up” phase in the world of weight-training. I’ve learned a lot training with Jean-Jacques Barrett of Active Performance, and I’ve now decided to pursue my Personal Training Certification. I have always loved studying the human body, kinetics, biology, etc, and now that I’m writing fitness and nutrition articles for publication, I’m researching daily both training and nutrition findings, and I love it..Life is great! I now realize how important nutrition is in the off-season. Last winter was my first “off-season”, and though I did some great work reshaping my body, I was still pretty uptight about staying really lean, and didn’t put as much muscle on as I could of. I thought of the off-season as more of a break from dieting, and didn’t eat to “grow”. It wasn’t until April that I really started to push a proper diet, but by then I was starting to get into show prep mode. Now, I’m already calculating my macronutrients, timing my meals, and timing my starch meals in particular, around my training sessions. I get it that you have to eat in a particular way in order to fuel muscle growth. I get it that you have to train in a particular way, in order to fuel muscle growth. I’m the “biggest” I’ve ever been, weighing in at about 115 lbs, and 11 % BF, but I still fit into my 00 Abercrombie jeans, and I can still see my ab wall and quad lines, but I feel the difference. I’ve never had a glute shelf like this before! I feel like it’s become it’s own separate entity!!! And I can see my shoulders out of the corner of my eye when I’m brushing my teeth. That’s kind of crazy! My coach had to counsel me a few times, to tell you the truth, because I was so afraid of gaining too much body-fat, and I missed my ultra-lean competition body. But he convinced my to maintain my current protocol, and I’m finally now starting to see the change. My muscles are getting incredibly sore after the workouts, (they don’t usually), and I can almost visibly see the change before my eyes. I’m also way stronger than before. For instance, I’m now doing 4 x 10 pull-ups where before I struggled to do 3 x 7. I went up 5 lbs on my 35˚ incline side lateral raises, a huge jump. And that was easy too. If this gym had 17.5 lb weights, I would start integrating them in. And I’m really hitting my abs hard twice a week with a pretty insane program using weights and cables, and I have an 8 pack coming in, something I never thought I would have. So that really has been great to see as well. I feel like my better understanding of weight-training, and combining that with intelligent nutrition, is going to quickly get me where I want to be heading into next year’s competition season.
I’m not trying to change categories, I’m still aiming for Fitness Model, but based on feedbacks from judges, I want to go in with a fuller shoulder cap, a bigger glute shelf, fuller abs, and a fuller hamstring belly. Last year I stepped on stage at 109 lbs and 8 % BF. By my 3rd show, and 4 months of dieting, my forearms were non-existent, my shoulders were smaller, my glutes lost their roundness, and I just didn’t feel “full and tight” onstage. This year I am shooting for 113 lbs and 8 % BF. I will post each months nutrition and training split, and end-of-month progress pix. If you have questions about my program, or about the science behind gaining lean-muscle, please email me and I’ll answer them in a blog for everybody. Thanks for dropping by, and please stay in touch. Your support means the world to me!
You can find my articles in: Inside Fitness Magazine, where I will writing about Whole Foods Nutrition, Yoga and Bodybuilding, and anything pertinent to holistic health.

xo

Michelle