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 – 6 weeks out.
I had a different start to my week which began Sunday evening. I was given a re-feed on Sunday night (normal re-feed) however I didn’t move much throughout the day. On a normal day, I’ll normally hit between 20,000-25,000 steps along with 60 minutes of cardio and weight training. When carbs go in on these types of high active days I see/feel the benefits. I decided to hit a little pump session on Sunday evening at a local gym while making use of their steam room and sauna facilities to just ‘chill out’. The best night sleep was to follow! It was beneficial to burn some calories and push a little blood around my body before the re-feed. Mentally was relaxed and physically ready to start another week.
Monday morning I woke a little heavier as usual. I had a big back session planned with heavy repping dead-lifts to use up the carbs from the night before. Mondays are always one of my longer days in the week with work plus the cardio and training added on top but it’s a great way start to the week! However, stupidly Monday night when I should have been trying to sleep I had a look at this year’s registration form for the show. I found that the junior category is under 21 years, I’m 22. This obviously meant I couldn’t do the juniors which I had planned to do and had my mind set on. Looking back this isn’t a big problem or a problem which I could change but it massively affected my sleep as I kept thinking ‘what am I going to do’. The lesson I learned from this is sleep time is for sleeping! And don’t worry about things you can’t affect!
Tuesday morning I weighed in at 75.3kg (lowest all prep). This Tuesday was the hardest day I’ve had so far. I was still worried about not making the age for the juniors and I felt very tired and sloppy all day. I did my normal posing session at ‘Body Limits Gym’ and looked very flat and seriously struggled with the session. Afterward, I had a push session planned and it got worse, I couldn’t get a pump at all and didn’t enjoy much of the session. I did my best to zone into the session and just made sure I ticked the boxes even though I didn’t feel great. When doing the post workout cardio I nearly passed out, I felt very dizzy and legs went weak and jelly like. I just stopped for a minute then made sure I completed the rest of my cardio. My mindset is unless I get carried out ill tick all the boxes I have set. This isn’t added into the blog to make people think ‘wow he’s savage or hardcore’ because the truth is I’m not. I’m just focused on completing the tasks I’ve set myself. It breaks down to me stepping on that stage being the best I can be, I want to have no regrets in any aspect of my prep so this means ticking the boxes every day. No matter long it takes or how I feel, as long as there ticked I’m one step closer.
Wednesday was check-in day with my coach where I weight 75.3kg (lowest all prep), I sent in my pictures and told him about what happened yesterday during posing and training. We planned to drop out the last 2 meals of the day and add in burger and fries to fill me back out. This worked out really well because I had an evening leg session planned where for pre-workout I had 3 rice cakes with jam, had a great hamstring/glute session and enjoyed the burger and fries afterward where my body put it to good use! The following day on Thursday I weighted 0.9kg heavier which was expected. I did some posing in the morning and looked a lot fuller than the day before. This goes back to what I said in the previous blogs about sometimes the scales are not always the greatest way to track progress. Thursday we still continued to Carb up by halving the protein in each meal and doubling the carbs. I made sure I trained in the evening again to use these extra carbs and to put them to good use. I Planned a heavy compound back session with heavy reps but lots of dropsets/ negatives ect… I looked very round and full with veins popping through my body. I didn’t sweat much in this session which shows my body was using the carbs rather than over spilling and trying to get rid of them. This happens when people pump up backstage before a show; they have far too many carbs and start over spilling and sweating when pumping up.
Friday was back to normal with food. I felt refreshed after the last couple of days with the extra carbs and also a couple of really good heavy sessions completed. I had another check in Saturday where the coach was happy with my weight (76.2kg) and looked very dry and hard in my pictures. I was told to await instructions for another high day Sunday and more instructions for the week ahead if needed.
Currently, I am eating 5 meals a day and cardio is 30 minutes fasted in the morning on the Stairmaster and another 15 minutes post workout with 15 minutes intervals. Overall this week has many ups and downs looking back however the main thing was every box got ticked every day so we are another week closer and I will look forward to what awaits me this week!
