Competitions and goals

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 ❤

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Peak week prep

Above with my friend Peet, measuring my body fat this Friday. I was then on 5 mm fat on my belly.

Now I have just entered the final week of preparation for competition this Saturday. Peak week is hard both mentally and physically but the knowledge of pizza or a huge steak with fries and bearnaise sauce Saturday after the competition keeps me going 🙂

I have had a few questions about what I eat while prepping for competition, so I will write a bit about it. I want to say that I am no professional in this field but I am using advise from professionals along with what I see works on my body. Many things can be right so it is also about learning what works for each individual.

This time round I have not been as low on calories as previously and I have not done any cardio either. I wanted to keep a bit more “fat” on me for peak week. Week 6 down to week 2, I have been eating

• Breakfast: 4 scrambled egg whites, 60 gr oats in water with a kiwi
• Snack 1: 25 gr of almonds and 70 gr tin tuna or a Quest protein bar
• Lunch: 80 gr basmati rice or sweet potato with 80 gr chicken or fish
• Snack 2: 25 gr of almonds and 70 gr tin tuna
• Dinner: salad of lettuce, cucumber and red or yellow pepper with 120 gr chicken or fish (I don’t eat tomatoes or carrots as they contain lots of sugar)

Saturday cheat day. I don’t go crazy but a bag of Swedish candy and a pizza for example. This past weekend, being the last one before competition, I had no cheat day allowed.

Now peak week is a whole different story. This Monday-Thursday I am cutting all carbs from my diet and only eating protein, this to remove the last body fat. So…

• Breakfast: 4 scrambled egg whites (and a spoon of peanut butter yeeeeey, happy days )
• Then the rest of the day I eat purely tuna or chicken with nothing else. The snack meals 70 gr, lunch 100 gr and dinner another 100 gr and one more spoon of peanut butter with lunch!

On Friday I start eating carbs again (carb loading) to give the muscles a fuller look for competition Saturday. I will stick to basmati rice or oats as my carb source since they work well with my stomach. Also, the last night before competition I have a pack of crispy bacon with dinner and instead of chicken or fish a 120 gr low fat steak. This again to feed the muscles for stage.

This last week is also time to water load. This means that I am drinking 6 litres of water today Monday, 5 litres tomorrow and Wednesday, then by Thursday I cut water down to only 0.5 litres and Friday also 0.5 litres but only up until lunch. After that no more water until after competition Saturday afternoon. You may wonder why we do this… Reason is simple. When your body is empty of water the muscles show better and you get a leaner look. If you give your body overload of water for a few days and then cut it, the effect will be even bigger as the body has got used to all the water coming in so it stops retaining any liquid and suddenly the water intake stops. This helps create the “dry” look, we want for stage.

I know this is probably a lot of information to take in if you are not in the fitness game so please, feel free to ask me any questions. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers 🙂

Now it is bed time for me, as when on no carbs, I get a head ache and feel very tired…good night xxxxx

 

 

 

Pose training

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.

This weekend I have spent both Saturday and Sunday pose practising. As everywhere in life, first impression is very important. The first step up on that stage is everything. The posing is not at all as easy at it looks. Believe me. It takes hours and hours of hard work to get it right. Hit every pose and wait a few seconds, fast is not good. Bum out, belly in, no breathing, big relaxed smile at all times and a nice flow between the pose changes. It need to look completely effortless. I watch many youtube videos from the big IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness) championships over and over again. Then I adapt my ‘favourites’ poses to make them match me and my personality. After that it is just to do them over and over… and over again until you can hit those poses sleep walking. My main issue is the relaxed smiling while holding my stomach in and not breathing more than through my nose in tiny sips haha. Give it a try and you see just how easy that is lol.

And the hands, another important part. Hands that are placed wrong will cover muscles and ruin the whole pose. Also hands that are very tense and in awkward angles will take the focus off the body. Relaxed hands that follow the body flow is what I want to achieve. They tend to tense by accident when I can’t breathe properly haha. Everything is so damn syncronised that your mind does things automatically. I am working on breaking those patterns. And I will improve since last competition. That is what it is all about! Practise makes perfect ,-)

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Don´t stay in your comfort zone

Last weekend I went to the UK for some me time. Of course there was no way I could stay away from the gym 😉 Luckily my friend over there is a big gym fan too. He pushed me so hard:-) It was great!! I was completely wrecked haha. Not only did I learn some new things but most of all I realized that this last year I have been training within my personal comfort zone. I have honestly thought that I am training like a beast and can´t do more when in reality I CAN DO SO MUCH MORE. It´s funny how we can block ourselves mentally thinking we can´t do something. This weekend I was pushed out of that comfort zone and gained new confidence and motivation. I have now been back home for 3 days and every morning this week, I have upped the weights on every single exercise! How about that??!!

So my tip for this week is to get someone to push you out of your normal routine and try some new exercises and give you the balls to put more weights on. It´s not only good for the muscles but more than anything for our head!! Feels awesome 🙂

Below is my Sunday back routine that I can still feel today! And another video showing a different way training those important hamstrings!

 

 

 

 

Marbella beach power walks

Apart from eating loads of Christmas food, we have had time for some beautiful morning power walks along the promenade between Puerto Banus and Marbella and also to San Pedro. It is the best way to start the morning. It is so peaceful and the sunrise over the Mediterranean is mesmerizing. We get time for some girls talk while burning off the Christmas food and there are so many fitness exercises that can be done along the way. The best cardio for fat burning is to power walk. It is much better than running! Once warmed up by with the power walk and fresh mind, I continue to Panatta Gym for my daily gym routine. It has been a lovely 2 weeks of holiday with family and sporting activities to enjoy! Today I am back at work again, hungry to sell some properties:-) but I will keep my beach walks to my weekend activities 🙂

 

My best hamstings exercises

Hamstrings

Hi there! Today I have a day off work so I went a bit later to the gym for a change. Later to the gym means more people haha…for good and bad. Today was good because I bumped into my best friend Roslin and she joined me for a killer hamstrings work out 🙂 Hamstrings is so nice on women, that little curve on the back of you upper leg really makes a difference. A year ago I didn’t have any but with hard work it gets done. Here is a video of my favorite exercises to get there:

Have a great day xxx

 

X-Force gym, come to Marbella!

During my Stockholm visit, I went training at X-Force in Vasastan. As I had been once before last year, I kind of knew what was waiting me, but I still got surprised when I ended up with muscle ache for almost 4 days afterwards. Especially my abs where in bits lol.

The difference from the gyms we are used to is that their machines are built to increase the negative strain on the return movement. Sounds odd, yes, but it actually make sense. Basically the  difference when training at X-Force is that you feel the weight resistance mainly when you go back as 40% more weights are added on, and you need to make the return movement very slow. Activating our negative muscle power for 5 seconds during this return movement gives such a big difference in result that you need only a one day work out/week to achieve the same results as from a traditional gym work out. Good eh?!! I absolutely loved it and just wish they will open a franchise here in Marbella soon:-)

 

 

 

Get back to training- easy or not?

 

We all get that autumn flu that totally knocks us out. I was in bed for 5 days flat and on antibiotics. Do you feel it is hard to get back training again? I hear many people say: “I don’t feel up for it yet, let’s wait until I can give 100%. Yes, let’s start Monday again.” And so it goes. My trick is to start as soon as I am fit enough to go back to work, whatever weekday that may be. The more you wait the harder it gets. Why wait for Monday?

The first days, it is important to not over do it.  I start by doing 2 exercises for each muscle group with many reps and less weights. I stick to that for the first 3 times and then I get back to my normal training routine again. It is also really good to take some Probiotics after having taken antibiotics. It will get your immune system back on track. Another good thing is to powerwalk. A nice walk along the beach or in the mountains makes wonders for both body and mind!

 

 

Marbella Fitness Life part 2

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.

You need to have a strong will power and while prepping for competition you focus only on that. You need a lot of sleep and the mood is not the best haha. But on competiton day, when the blingy bikini and the tint is on, I look myself in the mirror and think: Wow, how proud I am for standing here now. I did it!

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