After competing in Malaga in April, placing second in my category, the real goal was last weekend at the Andalusian Championships in El Coronil near Seville.
After I had entered my first competition in May 2015, I was determined to improve my flaws and come back even better. It has never been so much about winning against the others, (even though a medal is always nice of course) but it has been a competition against myself. At 40, my goal is not to make a living of fitness competitions, then I would have started much younger. I enjoy perfecting my body to what I want my body to look like. It is a fine line between muscles and toning mixed together with my femininity. I love looking like a woman and therefore I don’t necessarily want to gain too much muscles on my back and arms while I want a bigger butt and a flat, lean stomach for example. I have easy to gain muscles on my upper body while my legs have taken me a lot of hard work. I try to purely maintain my upper body while I have been training legs 3 days a week, heavy weight and so much glue exercises to grow the butt I think is perfect. It is a great satisfaction to both feel and see the result of all my hard work.
In El Coronil, I feel I was at my absolute best form so far and I aimed at just that. Be the best of what I can be.
So what next? Well, my fitness future is to stay healthy and happy, to enjoy my daily gym routine and improve some things and maintaining some. To feel great is the biggest goal of them all ❤
First week of serious diet has passed by very fast. I am lucky having a fast metabolism so as soon as I cut the fat out, my abs start showing through. I need to stay very vigilant as I don’t want to get too lean either. I can easy be stage ready a week or two to soon and that is not good at all. Last competitions I was way to dry with only 4 mm fat on my belly. I want to get down to 6 mm this time to not have my veins popping.
The other day I wrote about how I got back to the gym and how great it makes me feel. So to continue from there, I want to tell my story of starting to compete in bikini fitness at the age of 38. Many of you probably ask yourself: “What the hell got into her?” I actually don’t really know myself to be honest 🙂 I know that among the amazing new friends I met at the gym , two girls were competing in fitness themselves and they both encouraged and motivated me. They made me feel like I could do it too. I like achieving goals and that is probably what made me go for it. At first it was just a thought but once I decide to do something, I do it 100%. I was introduced to a well known Spanish trainer, Hector Defez and he set up a 3 month training program including cardio along with a tough diet plan. I have a very strong upper body but my legs and bum were lacking size so the training program included leg training 4 days/week. The following 3 months were really tough but mainly fun 🙂 It was so amazing to see my hard work pay off! It was like fine tuning a car haha, every little detail matters. Each meal is carefully measured and weighed. One thing I must say is, I wasn’t really hungry. I ate 5 meals/day of just the right quantities. It was just like fueling a car. The problem was the munchies, omg, haha, I was dreaming of cakes. We measured my body fat with calipers and I went down from 8.5 mm at the front belly and 19 mm at the back on the 7th February to 4.5 mm belly and 8 mm back the day before competing 1st of May 2015. To give you and indication, the fat on a normal hand is aprox. 3 mm. Another important part is the posing. Presentation is everything and the posing is very hard. Belly in, bum out, straight back and a relaxed and effortless smile to go with it.
Marianne Steneholm 