Our athlete Rory Golden is going to compete this year and we have decided to follow his journey. A diary from start to finish, 18 weeks out until stepping on stage.
Rory Golden - The Prep files
Blog – 11 weeks out.
Heading into the new week the first couple of days were planned to remain the same, as the weight and check in pictures were good on Monday morning and the coach was happy with what he saw. The plan was to assess again on Wednesday morning with another weigh in and check in pictures and possibly look to increase the cardio and maybe drop some food intake.
The only unexpected change was waking up on Monday morning feeling bunged up like I’ve caught a cold. Throat was very sore and my nose was blocked which made fasted cardio that little bit harder. I battled through the morning and started to train legs in the afternoon where I had to pull the plug on my evening clients for the day. I know training legs probably wasn’t the greatest idea although at the time I felt well enough to do so. I found that my body reacts better when moving around and exercising in terms of pushing towards recovering rather than lying still in bed, however sometimes you need to think of the long term and I knew if I had a long night working and a short night sleep my symptoms would only get worse the next day and could lead of me having permanent days off of work and training.
The next day my symptoms didn’t get worse thankfully and I was able to get another productive cardio and weight session completed.
Wednesday morning check-in was good and a slight increase in cardio was added by 10 minutes post workout. This brings it to a total of 60 minutes per day, 30 minutes fasted in the morning and 30 minutes post workout. The week ran very smoothly and very quickly again!
Personally feels like these weeks are flying by at such a quick rate. No injuries or decrease in training performance which is so important to see that things are being dropped at a good rate and I shouldn’t be suffering like crazy this far out.
Sunday morning I was very lucky to take part in a posing class at ‘Body Limits gym’. Posing is one aspect of bodybuilding which is seriously overlooked. Everyone says you can have the best physique on stage however if your presentation is off or you can’t show your package through a lack of posing practice, posing conditioning is criminal due to it being under your control.
Tonight (Sunday) is also my last cheat meal of this prep as from next week I will move onto re-feeds instead of a cheat meal. Re-feeds last year work brilliant for me, as the hammer will start getting dropped it’s now time to push and sadly I will miss the one cheat meal a week however it won’t last forever. You have to understand you eat for a purpose, to get the results.
Next week the food will be dropped again and a possible couple more changes in cardio but the focus for next week is to take each day as it comes and tick all the boxes I have set and enjoy the process!
