The Experiment: Phase 3 - Cutting

This is part 4 of an 8-post series. Continued from here. <- The link to the previous post has been fixed and is now working. I strongly recommend reading these posts in order, as they build up on one another, and the information in one post is relevant to what happens in the next. They were all written as the events were happening.



We were 4 weeks out from the show.

I showed up for the week's first session with Trainer to the cheerful announcement of, "Things are going to change from here on out!"

"I figured," I said. I had been expecting a change; the further along you are in a competition prep for this sport, the harder it's supposed to get. This had been discussed in the beginning.

Cardio was now increased to 7 days/week, no rest days anymore. Strength training would be all days except the second low carb day: on that day I would only do cardio. In other words, strength training would be 5-6 days/week depending on how the 4-day carb cycle fell.

Boooo one less day of lifting!

Trainer went over the details of the diet changes: protein macros would remain the same, fat and carb macros would decrease by 25%. In other words, this was a calorie reduction. (To about 1600-1800, which is still the high end of what used to be maintenance for me. Again: NOT A STARVATION DIET.)

The exception was that on the extreme days there would be some bigger reductions: on the high carb day, I was not allowed fat at all (try finding fat-free non-dairy, non-ovo animal protein sources. I dare you. Even tofu has fat in it) and the low carb days were now going to be...

ZERO carb days.

As in nothing. Nada. None allowed. Beyond keto diet: the keto diet allows a reduced amount of net carbs.

I burst out laughing because I initially thought he was joking. But then remembered that there are versions of carb cycling where carbs are completely eliminated on the low carb days.

He grinned brilliantly when he saw me realize he was serious. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and frowned at him, "Okay, so what did you eat on your zero carb days?"

His staples on those two days of the 4-day cycle had been ground beef and chicken, and that had been pretty much it.

I rolled my eyes. Meat with a side of meat sounded lovely. >.< But I reminded myself that this was all my own idea; no one had pushed me into doing this. And I had been warned well in advance that the diet would be fairly off-the-wall during the last month: this is the norm in this sport. It was only a month of this. And also: I had been slowly reducing the carbs on the low carb days on my own already, so this was the next logical step anyway. I was glad I had  been weaning myself off of them: going cold turkey to zero carbs would have been brutal, especially on work days.

We then got to work on the day's training.

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Later that afternoon I was at the grocery store with Carlos. I actually already had the basics of what I would need at home for the new diet modifications but I was trying to be creative and round it out because I refused to eat ground beef all day on every zero carb day. While scouring the aisles, it really dawned on me then that three days of the four in the cycle were now going to be complicated. I had this moment of panic, "OMFG I can't eat anything!!!"

I suddenly felt like this.

And then I kicked myself, "DUDE. You're a foodie. You're good at this. You have options! Think outside the box!"

Fat-free dairy, super-lean ground turkey and chicken breasts went in the grocery cart for the days when carbs were allowed. Fresh mozzarella had been my bestie for snacks on low carb days prior, and I now confirmed with absolute glee that most other cheeses have zero carbs as well. "CHEESE!" I squealed at Carlos, "I can have CHEESE on the zero carb days!" Reduced fat snacking cheddar cheese also went in the cart. And real sausage has zero carbs also. Eggs and sausage for breakfast! And pork chops. And turkey bacon. Moar steak. All of those I could have on the zero carb days. (I chose the leanest versions of all of these. I do not like fatty meats. Never have.)

Sounds about right for a no-carb day. -_-

I was also supposed to reduce fiber on the days where I was allowed carbs: there are multiple reasons for this but part of the reasoning behind it is that you want foods that are easy to digest so your body is spending less energy on processing food. This also kind of made my head spin because all of my usual carb sources are high fiber: fruits, veggies, whole grains, etc. I reached for the white rice, the corn-based pasta, and then...

"I CAN HAVE MIGAS FOR BREAKFAST!!!" Corn tortillas went into the shopping cart, along with fat-free sour cream, egg whites and salsa. "I WIN!!!" I did a happy dance in the middle of the aisle.

Carlos just laughed. Obviously he was not carb cycling with me but I made portions of both proteins and sides for him and he decided how he wanted to combine them on the weekends when we were both working so he benefited with some of these less-typical-for-me more-"manly" food choices...

No comments on this one.
But Trainer might have warned about velociraptor irrational behavior on zero carb days...

A sodium reduction was also in order: sodium is greatly reduced towards the end of competition prep to help prevent water retention. This was another thing I had to double-check on labels, and of all the limitations was probably one of the tougher ones for me personally, despite also knowing about it in advance. This is the part of prep where marinating meats was discontinued because it added sodium to them. I played more with seasonings that did not contain salt, especially those of the spicy variety. Wasabi, mustard and red pepper are examples of seasonings that would come into play for a brief period during this part of prep.

My point with telling you guys about this? With some creativity, I was still able to find variety within the new limitations I had been given. Again, this was tough, yes. But it had its purpose. Literally all of these changes had their reason for being implemented at this point in time. Like I said before: this is one of the toughest sports to train for because what you do with your nutrition makes such an enormous difference in the outcome. This is part of why I chose it. You absolutely cannot cheat your way through the nutrition portion of it, which is why discipline is such a huge component of this sport. Showing up at the gym is actually the easy part. 

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The next training session fell on my first zero carb day. Carbs are a source of glycogen, aka fuel, for your muscles. This is why so many athletes carb load: you make sure your muscles are fully stocked with glycogen for maximum efforts. (It also applies to horses competing in endurance.)

This knowledge was applied to the low carb and now zero carb days: I could train hard the morning of the first zero carb day because it takes anywhere from 24-72 hours for the human body to burn through its stored glycogen. (This is a pretty fascinating thread on the subject. All are opinions, but fascinating nonetheless. Studies on the matter seem to be all over the place though, so I'm not linking to those.) No heavy training on the second zero carb day because glycogen stores would be much lower, so it would be far easier to hit a wall energy-level wise. I had hit the wall already on those days. It was no fun. The point of zero carbs is to force the body into burning through stored fat. Again, there are studies both for and against this. Trainer uses it because he's researched it. In my case, it worked: I lost both water weight and fat.

Hence the term "cutting": you are cutting the fat out of your body.

Accurate.

Anyway. We worked only arms that day, but wow did arms get worked.

"So how's your first zero carb day going?" Trainer asked with a grin as he was upping the weight on the barbell I was going to be preacher curling.
"Well, eating is redundant because I'm just as hungry as I was when I first woke up," I said. It's a strange sensation to look at food and know that it's not going to make a dent in how hungry you are. It's just going to make it a tiny bit more tolerable. He really had not been kidding about hunger becoming my constant companion.
"People think protein is filling but it is so not," he said sympathetically. Remember he's done this himself: he laughs because he knows exactly what it's like.
I agreed: "No. It's fiber that will fill you up. And fat might delay hunger pangs."
Trainer's finger got pinched by the weight plate he was sliding onto the bar. "OW!" he exclaimed, "That's what I get for laughing over your zero carb suffering!" he muttered with a sheepish grin.
I laughed, "That's karma for you."

My veins were on fire that day. As my body fat % continued to drop, they had been getting progressively more noticeable throughout my body but especially on my arms, legs and neck. On this day I had bicep veins that cast a shadow due to the nature of the workout and Trainer kept excitedly making comments about it, which I found invariably funny.

Heck yes! :D

The workout was finished with suspended bicep curls followed immediately by a burnout that involved holding two 10-lb dumbbells in a flexed position with elbows away from my body for an unknown amount of time. 10 lb dumbbells should not be challenging but my arms were done done DONE by the end of the one hour training session.

Trainer decided to get a photo of the burnout and barked corrections while I tried to keep my arms from falling off. There was one moment where I decided he was faking taking the photo because it was taking too goddamn long and I started making threats of bodily harm to him...which then made me snort with laughter: throwing a dumbbell at him like I was threatening to do was impossible. The only direction I was going to be able to throw anything right then was straight down. I then couldn't threaten anymore because I was shaking too hard both from the effort and from laughing.

He got a photo alright. Of that precise moment when I started laughing uncontrollably. Which I stole off of his gym Instagram page (with due credit given. Spoiler alert if you click on that link though!) because I worked damn hard for it! :D

Veins decided to hide for the pic but whatever.
The caption was, "I told Saiph to stop smiling, it's catabolic. Only game faces!"

There is a group session after mine. There is one particular guy in the group that always arrives a little early and he seems to use my condition as a gauge for how difficult their session is going to be afterwards.

I was finishing stretching when he walked in, said hi and then commented, "You look like you barely worked out!"
I roared with laughter. First because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to lift anything else for the rest of that day. Second, because I cool down fast: that's all he was seeing...and third because I had already been told what the group was in for. My current condition was not a good gauge!
Trainer smiled mischievously. "Maybe she's stronger than you!" he said to the guy.

I walked out of the gym still laughing.

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I had already ordered my suit for the show...they are technically like 2-piece bathing suits, except they are made of other materials, usually lycra, and usually shimmery with a ton of bling. The more bling, the more expensive the suit is. I looked at what everyone usually wore, researched the different online options for ordering, settled on one online store that offered free alterations, and ordered mine after stressing over the measurements: I was still supposed to drop more inches but having never done this before, I had no way of knowing in advance what my final measurements would be. The company's customer service people were lovely and told me to just send basic measurements, which I took multiple times over the course of three days...I was literally shrinking day by day. I sent them my newest measurements and crossed my fingers.

The suit arrived a week later. It was the deepest dark blue velvet with a splattering of glitter and Swarovski crystals: I wanted to look the part but also be a little different and velvet was legal but not a popular fabric choice. I thought it looked stunning. And thankfully the bottoms were just snug enough that I could lose the expected additional inches from around my hips and have the suit still fit. But finally being able to see myself as I would look at the end brought up all sorts of other questions: I was thrilled with everything from the waist up and halfway down my thighs to my feet. My butt and upper thighs were in above average condition for a normal fit human being and like I told everyone: I would happily have stayed in my condition 6 lbs ago for the foreseeable future if there weren't show plans on the schedule (a perspective that I made sure to check in with constantly throughout this experiment: it was crucial that I remember that the way I was going to look in the end was not going to be permanent)...but these areas from the waist down needed a LOT more work still before being shown off mostly exposed onstage in front of hundreds of people. I wondered how on earth that would happen in four weeks.

The day the suit arrived. I looked tiny, skinny and with no definition and it was temporary:
this was the way I looked on the second zero carb days. I know there are women out there that would kill to look like this, but this actually freaked me out: too thin! I called it my 14-year-old-boy look. But it was 100% temporary: as soon as I ate carbs again, my appearance would do a 180.

Case in point: the way I looked on a high carb day that same week. 

Seriously: the only difference is what I had eaten. You are what you eat.

OMG SO TRUE

Knowing that this is the stuff your brain does when prepping for this made it a whole lot easier to  ignore the little voices that kept saying all of these...And I think showing the photos of the process also helps illustrate how truly different you could look from one day to the next.

I bumped up my heart rate target for cardio, aiming for 120-130 bpm range over the course of the weekend immediately after my suit arrived. Nothing crazy: I was still on the treadmill walking at the same speed, but I ramped up the incline to engage all those posterior train muscles. I also started doing my strength training warm-ups on the Stairmaster. And I increased the amount of BCAAs I was taking: I had been taking them 3x/day; I increased them to 4x/day with the goal of preserving as much muscle as possible with the higher-intensity cardio. Remember this.

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At my following training session 3 days later, I told Trainer about my concerns re: areas that still need work. He said there was still time. And he then happily put me through one of the most grueling lower body workouts he had had me do to date.

As I was doing walking lunges with 15 lb dumbbells in each hand down the entire length of the gym and back, I realized that the overhead fans were off. There had been a nice indoor breeze earlier.

"Did you turn those off??" I glared at him.
"I turned the exhaust off," he said innocently. "It's chilly. You don't need it." And then he gave me that grin as he turned away.
There is AC in Trainer's warehouse-converted-into-gym but at that moment I did not feel it. Sweat was dripping slowly from my hair onto the back of my neck: Leg Day workouts, especially where lunges are involved, are supposed to spike your heart rate and body temperature. I knew what he was doing: making my body work harder by making the environment a titch warmer. I also may have made the mistake of telling him in the past that I hate the heat, even though this is precisely the #1 reason why I LIKE working out outside in the summertime: because it is an opportunity to make things more challenging by adding heat and humidity. This was nothing compared to what I would do on my own...but still: "Cheater!" I shouted back at him as I methodically continued lunging my way down the floor. He laughed.

I debated just defiantly switching on one of the floor fans: I very much could have done that. But instead I rose to the challenge and didn't. I decided that my "OMG it's so hot!" mindframe was ridiculous: it was mental! All of it was mental! Even turning off the exhaust was part of the psychological game. This was no harder than being told to drop my stirrups for an entire jump lesson.

So instead I just focused on one step at a time. One foot in front of the other. One lunge after another. No pause, no thinking about how much longer until I finished because there were going to be more sets after this one, and I'd rather just think about this current set. I'm a strange person that way: I make lofty goals and then set them free, and instead think about the first step in getting to that goal, as if that first step was the end goal. Once the first step is complete, I focus on the second step. And so on and so forth. If I start focusing on an end goal, I'll obsess about it and will never make it there; the journey has to be as important as the goal itself. Just like on trail at a 50-mile ride: I never think about completing 50 miles, I think about getting through the next mile of the current 15-mile loop. I never would have attempted 50s otherwise. One mile at a time. That is all.

The journey is even more important than the end goal because only the present truly exists: you have to enjoy the journey. That's all that life is, really: a journey.

I slowed my pace down because the only thing rushing was going to do was wear me out faster and make me all that hotter, and focused instead on keeping my breathing deep and regular. And while my legs felt like lead and I could feel the rivulets of sweat trickling down my back, I suddenly was not overbearingly hot anymore. I glanced at my heart rate monitor on my wrist and confirmed: yup, my heart rate had dropped a tiny bit. I tried not to smile smugly because God knew what Trainer would have me do next if he noticed.

Mind over matter ftw!

After completing all walking lunge sets, I got to finish the workout by pushing and then pulling the Sled of Death down the length of the gym in both directions, x 3. (In case you were wondering, this day's session consisted of: double sets of weighted barbell squats, both narrow and sumo stance x 4 sets each; single-leg glute bridges 10 each leg supersetting with 15 straight-legged deadlifts with 50 lbs x 4; supersets of side lunges with a 30 lb kettlebell 10 each leg x3, walking side lunges with a resistance band around my ankles while carrying the 30 lb kettlebell, 10 in each direction x3, and 15 jump squats with a resistance band around the ankles, x 3. The sled was the icing on the cake. Weights were not as heavy because cutting during the last phase before a competition usually = reduced strength. It's the irony of this sport: the fitter you look during prep, the weaker you are. The human body is not, and I mean absolutely NOT, meant to be perfect! You sacrifice function when you aim for form. Interesting, no?)

This motherfucker is called a weight sled. I hates it to hell and back and Trainer has TWO of them. And I get to slide it across astroturf, which has even more traction than regular carpet. One 45 lb plate is enough. I can't even imagine doing it with these many plates...
But OMG it will get your rear in gear in no time. It's considered to be even better than squats. I could feel every separate glute muscle for 48 hours after this workout...

There were so many times that I doubted I could do what he wanted me to do, but the reality is that every single thing he directed me to do throughout this whole process was well within my realm of capability, even when it sounded super hard, even when it sounded next to impossible. He never asked me to do anything that I couldn't do: he set me up for success every single time. So every single time I chose to unwaveringly do what I was told, I discovered something new about myself in the process: I was much more of a badass than I had ever imagined. My positive reinforcement throughout this entire endeavor was consistently realizing that I COULD do the thing. It was incredibly empowering. This ability to be able to read the trainee well enough to challenge them while still setting them up for success that will build their confidence, is the hallmark of a good trainer, be it of people or of horses. Not every trainer has this ability, as noted in my first post of this series.

After what felt like years later, I plunked myself down on the floor at the end of the session and took my sweet time stretching out every muscle I could in my lower body. Everyone from the group was running late, so Trainer sat on one of the wooden boxes that are lined up along the wall to wait for them. While stretching, I peppered him with more questions about the world of competing that tend to fly out of my brain when I'm focusing on not dying during a workout. And we discussed the rest of Phase 3.

He did end up changing my cardio: I was still going to be doing an hour of it 7 days a week, but he bumped up my target heart rate to 120-130 bpm and switched it from the treadmill to the Stairmaster. Werk dat butt.

I would be using it the day before Leg Day, on Leg Day itself, ANND the day after...

I was also increasing BCAAs from 3x/day to 4x/day. Once again: I had decided to make small changes on my own that ended up being the correct changes in the right direction, right before those changes were made official! :)

BUT: I was also to do rear leg lifts while on the Stairmaster. He added this fun fact at the tail end of the conversation with that wicked grin. I gave him a withering look. "Alternating 5 with minutes regular stair climbing? Or every 10 minutes?" I was hopeful.

"Nope! The entire hour doing leg raises." And he pretended to go up stairs while doing rear leg lifts and looking at his watch. He sat back down again after his little performance.

Wise guy. I couldn't help laughing.

The one guy from the group was the first to arrive, as usual. He saw both Trainer and me sitting down talking and did a double-take. "What, chill-out session today?" he asked.

I laughed and laughed and said nothing. Trainer just grinned. I suspected Trainer was in a particularly sadistic mood and had just been warming up with me before it was the group's turn...

Once home, I showered and then collapsed in bed for a 2-hour nap before officially starting the day.

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BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

I leap to wakefulness to reach over Carlos to the far side of the bed to slam off the ever-loving blare of the alarm clock.

It is 4:00 am on a work day morning. A Monday, which is my Friday.

I plunk face-down back into my side of the bed so the pillows can muffle my groan. Not that that would have roused Carlos, since the alarm didn't touch him. The man would sleep through a nuclear war.

My body feels like it's been stomped on by gnomes all night after the physical strain of working an insane Sunday ER/ICU shift. My feet are still throbbing from working the day before and my hamstrings are sore from the Stairmaster. This current day stretches out into infinity as I try to imagine it in advance: the one-hour drive into Virginia, where I hit the gym next to work so I can strength train hard for an hour, shower at the gym, shove a protein shake and some semblance of food into my face, then haul ass into work for a 13-14 hour shift...and then drive an hour back home to the gym by our apartment so I can do cardio for another hour. And then go home and shower. And then have dinner, which will be the one meal of the entire day where I get to actually sit down and enjoy my food. Which is often just a can of salmon or tuna because opening a can is easy and at the end of the day I don't even want to nuke anything in the microwave.

All of that has to happen before I can be back in this spot, in bed in the dark. I am so tired.

"Why do you do this yourself?" 
"Because it's hard. Because I want to know I can do this."
"But why though? Why can't you be a normal human being? Why do you have to do this hard thing?"
"Because there is no such thing as "normal"! Because I want to know that I can go above and beyond. Stop asking questions!"
Apparently even at 4:00 am my inner self can be philosophical.

Stumbled upon this one while writing this post and just had to feature it here because it made me laugh so hard.
Also: it's a Pitbull! <3

I don't have time to think about the possibility of saying, "Fuck it all" and drifting back to sleep because then the alarm on my phone goes off. I fumble in the darkness for my phone, turn off the alarm and fling myself out of bed before I can have second thoughts again.

I scramble into my workout clothes which were carefully laid out three days ago in advance along with everything I else I would be wearing on my 3-day workweek, toss my pre-made lunch and snacks into my giant lunchbag, heat up coffee, grab a bottle with my pre-made pre-workout (I need All the Caffeine for 4:00 am mornings and my body never got the memo that you're not supposed to combine coffee and pre-workouts...but such is the norm when you've grown up drinking nuclear-strength Puerto Rican espresso), my overnight oatmeal, my gym bag, water bottle, stethoscope for work, say good-bye to a sleeping Carlos knowing he won't remember, and rush out the door.

When you really care about something, you make the time. *shrug* 

I blast Pandora in the car on the long drive south. I feel like I never do wake up. This is a day where I'm allowed carbs but they are not making a dent in my energy levels. I slog through the workout. It's Back Day and I find myself having to reduce the weight I'm lifting so that I can complete the assigned number of reps. My brain and my body are in agreement: both are begging for sleep. I push through anyway and later realize that maybe I could have kept the weight up if I'd rested between sets like I was supposed to...but I had deliberately avoided resting because I was afraid my exhaustion would win out and I would just give up.

YES PLEASE

Work. One of my patients weighs 85 lbs and has difficulty walking. He is a post-op patient and he is having such a hard time. He is an old large-breed mutt and I insist on sling-walking him outside as scheduled: to not walk him would be to his detriment. Old dogs, especially large-breed dogs, don't always do well after major surgery because just being recumbent for as little as 24 hours can be enough to worsen arthritis to the point of incapacitating them. My guy is on day 3 post-op. We are slammed-busy so I don't bother asking for help because I might be waiting for hours for someone else to be available; I just sling-walk him outside myself. He is more than half my body weight and I have to engage every shoulder and upper back muscle to help him walk. He doesn't do anything outside; just stands in a daze. I wait, talking to him, "Go pee. Go potty," trying to land on the right combo of words his owners might use to encourage him to do his business outside. He just stands there, confused. I feel so sorry for him. I bring him back inside to the run I had just cleaned and help him settle down...only for him to urinate all over the clean bedding I had laid out for him prior. I want to just sit down and cry helplessly. But ain't nobody got time for that. I slide the sling back around him and carefully hoist him back out of the run so I can clean the floor of the cage again and lay out fresh bedding once more. It's not his fault. It's never the patient's fault. My poor dude is so out of it from his pain meds, neither his doctor nor I are sure he's even aware of where he is. We've been tweaking his doses for the last two days and are still working on it: the doctor depends on my feedback on our patient's status to know whether he should continue trying or not. Thankfully by the end of the day my doctor nails the right combo of pain meds on the head and my patient is able to get up with more ease, focus on his surroundings, and actually do his business outside like a normal dog.

I am on my fifth wind by 6:30 pm, when I walk into the elevator with our giant roll-away bin to take the ICU dirty laundry downstairs to the basement to be washed in our industrial washers. I fist my hands, place them against the elevator wall with palms against the cold metal, and then press my back hard onto my knuckles, which helps release some of the knots. There isn't a single fiber or joint in my body that doesn't hurt right then. I close my eyes and relax, wishing the basement was 20 floors down instead of just two, because within 30 seconds the doors open and I have to step off the elevator.

We get a rush of emergencies around 7:00 pm, all critical, all requiring we step away from the hospitalized patients to stabilize the incomings. I find myself perched on one of the ICU wet tables, taking turns with our head ER doctor doing chest compressions on a giant Anatolian Shepherd that has come in for heat stroke. He is the first heat stroke of the summer. The dog is enormous, both longer, taller and heavier than I am, requiring maximum physical effort to keep the blood pumping through his body with our own strength while we try to bring him back to life with CPR. Two minutes is the longest you should do chest compressions before switching out with someone else to continue. Dr. B and I are the fittest on the floor: we can each go on for longer than that if required. But even then we can't bring the dog back and it's a good thing: there are some things that no patient should come back from, and one of them is heat stroke of this magnitude.

We clean up afterwards, I catch up on my treatments, and round my patients to the overnight tech that will be taking them.

I clock out at 8:45 pm, almost an hour past the time my shift is supposed to end. It is 9:30 pm by the time I swing into the gym by our apartment to do the prescribed hour of cardio on the Stairmaster. It is midnight by the time my head hits my pillow at home. If you're counting, I just had a 20-hour day. I am off the next day but I don't get to sleep in tomorrow because I have a session with Trainer at 6:00 am.

I am unconscious before I can think about the fact that I'm going to be running on only 5 hours of sleep the next morning.

The purpose of me showing a glimpse of a work day during this time is not for you to feel sorry for me. Nope: the point of it is so you understand how this was an added variable. My job is tough both mentally and physically, and I still got through the added workouts and diet restrictions successfully, even when I was bone-dead tired on work days. I didn't whine, I didn't complain, and I didn't make excuses: I still got it done. This sport is a completely different experience for a person that has a regular desk job. 

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I ultimately ended up moving trainer sessions to 8:00 am whenever possible, which meant my brain was actually awake for training. At 6:00 am, especially on Tuesdays after working my weekend shifts, my brain felt like a giant static screen. My body would be awake thanks to caffeine but it would be a wonder I could string together sentences in either language because I was functioning on half a neuron going, "Buzz-buzz-buzz.." At 6:00 am I would have questions about the training or the diet or the show, but would promptly forget them while working out because my brain couldn't both word and tell my muscles to fire.

If you're wondering if this was the part where "this is hard" caught up to me, you are absolutely correct.

In my world, when the going gets tough, the tough gets funny. It's a defense mechanism learned from working in the veterinary ER for so many years: gotta keep the sense of humor flowing.

The workouts continued changing. The super slow reps from the beginning were banished from training sessions during this phase: we were now working to failure. "Failure" in strength training refers to pushing through until you literally cannot do it one more time. Didn't matter the number of reps. I was to continue until I couldn't do any more, and then Trainer would help me eke out another 5 reps or so.

I closed my eyes in anticipatory dread when he described the first of these workouts. It was Shoulder Day of course: my nemesis. I was pretty sure he was adding a psychological component to this because he didn't always describe in advance what we would be doing, nor did he often describe it with so much glee.
"This will be fun!" he said with an enormous grin in response to my expression.
I snorted. "Of course it will be fun! It will be fun for you, who gets to watch me suffer."
He laughed. We both knew this was true: training people for this sport really is something he enjoys because not everyone can take it. And then there is the fact that I do enjoy being worked beyond my perceived limits. I can still pretend to complain about it though.

Five. He said 5 more.

Despite there being a thread of real dread over this session, Beast Mode me had shown up to play, and I was immediately firmly determined to kick this workout's butt. And so this is how we discovered that my body rapidly adapts to anything. The first set would be brutal. The second set would be less so and I would go on longer than during the first set...so Trainer would pass me heavier dumbbells. The third set would then majorly suck, while I would think to myself, "How was the first set so hard?" It blew my mind.

I was on my last set of front raises and heavily relying on my lats to push my arms up because my shoulders were done. Trainer was sitting on the bench in front of me, ready to assist with the last reps once I couldn't continue anymore.
"Stop using other muscles!" he chided with a smile, "You'll reach failure faster and this will be done sooner."
"Yeah. Except regardless of when I get to failure, you'll still work me just as hard beyond failure." I was grinning: I was being a smart-ass.
Momentary pause from him. "You're not supposed to think rationally when you're working out!" But he was grinning too. That was the best he could come up with. I didn't laugh because I wouldn't have been able to lift any more.
"That's what happens when my brain is awake," I replied. But the entire point of my being there was to work, and work hard, so I did do as I was told. :)

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Trainer was leaving on vacation for a week right when I was set to be three weeks out from the show. Time was ticking by so fast!

I arrived at 8:00 am for the last one of these sessions before his trip. I was supposed to be coming in after the group training now so I was surprised to walk in a few minutes early to discover Trainer by himself, sitting down at one of the wooden boxes lined up by the wall. He was twiddling with his phone but he looked up when he heard the door and said hi. There was something subtly off about the environment and I couldn't put my finger on it.

"How are you?" I asked brightly.
"Good," he responded, but there was a pause before he said it and his expression seemed alarmed.
By then I was maybe 6 strides away and could now see that his entire body was trembling violently, his hair dripping with sweat and the veins standing out in stark relief across his arms.
"Are you okay???" I asked him
"I'm not sure," he said, standing up. He was breathing hard.
For a second I wondered if I would need to call an ambulance...and then noticed the red weightlifting belt around his waist and matching shoes that had taken the place of his usual neon sneakers. And saw the equipment that was laid out at the far end of the gym: the new Farmer's Walk handles were fully loaded and ready for action.
"You were training for Strongman," I said, finally putting two and two together. It's his next competitive goal; he's been slowly collecting the equipment for it. (If you don't know what Strongman is, this is the best explanation I can find for the sport.)
"Yes. Stringing all of those movements together is hard!" he exclaimed, and went on to explain why. I won't deny that ever since learning what Strongman is when he first told me about it, I might have decided I could be interested in it...especially since he is going to have all the equipment required to train for it. So I listened with pricked ears now. But also awe as he rapidly recovered within minutes while talking: Jesus, this is how he trains himself??? I was kind of glad I hadn't seen him post-workout earlier because I might have run away screaming (lol) but at the same time it was...inspiring. If he can work that hard on his own, I certainly could too, and this was exactly what I needed to see at the best moment possible: I had been afraid I would not train as hard while he was out simply because the last two weeks of 7-day workouts were starting to catch up to me in terms of true general body soreness and exhaustion, and there were still a couple more weeks to go.

This would not be the most mind-altering part of this particular session though. It was the Leg Day version of the previous Shoulder Day I described above, with the goal rep number = whatever it took to reach failure. Except there was no help beyond that point: I was to squeak out another 5 reps all by myself.

He was playing the alternative rock station on this day on the Bluetooth speakers and I just wasn't feeling it.
"Soooo...if you're going to kill me with leg work, I have a music request," I said.
"Yes?"
"Do you have a Pitbull station? Or Flo Rida. Something like that. Kill me to club music."
He laughed. "I wouldn't be caught dead with a Flor Rida station." But he picked up his phone, fiddled with it for a minute, and Pitbull's "Bon Bon" blared through the speakers.

When you live in South Florida for as long as we did, you get Pitbull shoved into your ears whether you like him or not. You either assimilate and learn to love his music or you leave. 
We left but the damage was already done: both Carlos and I not-so-secretly love his music. I have a lot of his songs on my more upbeat workout playlists.

Grinning from ear to ear, I got to work.

And I did it. I did it all. Halfway through it I was having to consciously think about walking, and getting onto the bench for hamstring curls elicited giggles because it was Not Graceful at All. (I don't complain during workouts, I do as I'm told and just laugh when my body stops working the way I expect it to!) But I did it.

And then I pushed the sled...followed by being strapped into a harness so I could alternate with pulling it. While sprinting. Pulling the sled with the harness was surprisingly much easier than pushing it. So I had a blast sprinting across the gym floor on my formerly tired legs. Where did this power come from????

Kanye West's and Daft Punk's Stronger

We still had 10 minutes left though, and I wondered what else Trainer had up his sleeve.

The answer was isometrics. Isometric exercise means "no movement". Planks are an example of an isometric exercise where you hold a basic push-up position for x amount of time. So now Trainer had me go into position for a Bulgarian split squat with one foot resting on one of the wooden boxes behind me while he timed it. I was not told for how much time and I didn't ask because I didn't want to know.

Bulgarian split squat.
I got into this position and held it indefinitely.
You think regular squats are challenging? Try this.

Working the left leg was hard. Working the right leg was impossible. To my utter frustration, I could not hold the position for more than a few seconds when it was my right leg supporting my weight. He noted that it was not surprising since I favored my right leg so much more: it was tired.

Wait, what?

I would later realize that yes, I do use my right leg a lot more than I use my left...the result of years' worth of guarding the left hip that was crushed by the horse that flipped over on me when I first moved to the mainland. Funny how old injuries like that can have such lasting effects over such a long period of time.

I didn't get a free pass though: I got to do regular isometric squats instead. Just squat down on both legs and hold until I could not anymore.

Later while I was stretching (and stretching and stretching: if you lose flexibility while strength training, you're doing it wrong) Trainer and I discussed the plan for my week while he was out. I told him I was still concerned over my lower body maybe not being up to speed by the show date. While they were above average for a normal athletic human being, my butt and upper thighs were not quite what I would consider competition material just yet. There is a certain level of definition that you should have before stepping onto a stage with only 7" of fabric covering your nekkid bum.

Of course I'm using a photo of Nicole Wilkins again. Again, she is an IFBB pro, which is international-level pro.
But you see what I mean. Obviously it takes YEEEEEEARS of training to develop a lower body like hers...but you can appreciate exactly how little that tiny piece of fabric covers!

Trainer said we still had time. The plan going forward was that I was going to be working legs to some degree every day while he was gone.

The other plan was for me to take a posing class. He had been trying to arrange this with one local trainer but so far no response. So he presented the alternative option: to go see another trainer he knew that had her own studio down in D.C. and is a long-time competitor. I told him I had no problem with driving down to do this. I really wanted someone who competed in Figure herself to take a look at my posing.

He sat for a minute on his phone, looking thoughtful. I realized he was flipping through photos, photos of the trainer in D.C. from her preparation for a show a couple of years prior.

"Look," he said, showing me a particular set of photos. "This is her during what is probably the final week of her competition prep. She's been doing this for years," he continued. "You see her upper body?"
I looked at the photos. The trainer had a pretty impressive back and shoulders. I nodded.
"Yours is really close to hers. And she's been competing for years...and you're just starting! You're ready." He said it in that same quiet, matter-of-fact tone that he always used whenever I let a sliver of insecurity show through.
I looked at him, at the photos, then finally at my reflection in the wall of mirrors across from us.

An athlete looked back at me in startlement. I saw the strong traps, the sweep of her shoulders, the striations across them that now showed even when she was at rest. The veins running down her arms. The curve of tricep. The wide back offset by the small waist. The swell of quads that had never looked like this before, not even during that one summer she spent posting the trot stirrup-less every day at riding camp when she was 14.

The person that stared back at me was unlike any reflection I had seen before in real life. I had only met her before in my drawings, when I used her to illustrate the way I would have wanted to look if I could have re-designed my body.

Circa 2002.
Right down to the caramel highlights in my hair, which I had completely forgotten about until I stumbled upon this drawing for this post.

Except...I had already done it.

In that moment, I saw what the outside world was seeing.

That athlete in the mirror...she was me.

Photo on the left is from the week prior to the events described in this section.
The drawing on the right is from the year 2000, my second year in college. 17 years prior, without knowing it, I predicted the way I would look now.

"If you're fine with spending a day in D.C., I think you'll have more fun with this trainer anyway," Trainer continued with a smile, bringing me back to the present.

I agreed to it and he texted her right then and there. He said he'd let me know when she responded.

He had no clients after my session and we left at the same time. Once outside I turned to him, wincing as I spoke, "So there's a sled at my regular gym..."
"Yeah?..."
"Do you want me to work on pushing it this week?" I knew I was going to regret offering this.
"Sure. Do 18 reps of 20 seconds of effort." He had that evil grin.
"How often should I do it?"
"How many days can you do it?" he asked.
"Three." I had picked up an extra shift that week at work, so I had 3 days off instead of 4.
"Then three days it is," he said, still grinning.
This was in addition to cardio and strength training.
I wished him fun on his vacation and got into my car shaking my head. "You are insane," I said out loud to myself.

I did it though. I pushed the sled and did the cardio and the strength training and all the leg work erryday. By this point we had reverted to an even slower tempo for reps than at the beginning and it was the sorest I would be during this entire prep. I was walking funny for 8 days straight from it all and by the end of the week I had started a trend at 3 different gyms where women were getting on the Stairmaster and doing rear leg extensions while climbing it (I wish I was making that one up...I'm not.)

Shanna volunteered of her own accord to demonstrate the leg raise Stairmaster trend for blog purposes.
*insert laughing emoji*

Every time I wanted to just stop, I remembered how hard Trainer could push himself on his own. And so I attacked the next thing that needed to get done with a vengeance.

I wanted to die from exhaustion by the time Sunday came around, but I couldn't believe the changes in my lower half by the end of that week. Thighs and butts are not supposed to change that quickly and I hadn't really been expecting mine to, but they did.

As proof for Trainer, Shanna took a video of me pushing the sled. As of this writing, it's had more than 60 hits on IG. Note: this was the 8th of the 9 rounds. If I look tired, it's because I was. #tofinishistowin #henceiwon

Given how fast my lower body changed, I might have to admit to secretly loving the sled now...

And then Trainer came back and we were only 11 days out from the show. *Gulp*

Never thought I'd be quoting Arnold, of all people...but this is so freaking true.

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Continued here