Late Blooming Blog

I was supposed to start this blog back about March 10th (after my birthday weekend) when I started preparing for the 2007 Team Universe. Well, somehow I got ridiculously busy with more personal training clients, my preparations for my show (the OCB Texas Shredder Classic) and dealing with some personal issues, and here I am 3 months later with the 2007 NPC Lonestar Classic middle weight title already under my belt, and I’m just now starting the blog.

I have some (not so good) pics from the start of my prep in March and some really good along-the-way pics from late April. I got talked into competing in the Lonestar even though I wasn’t ready, but that turned out pretty good anyway.

I will be competing in the NPC South Texas Championships in San Antonio on June 30th (promoted by Prince Fontenot) as a final tune up for the Team Universe. I’m shooting to be at 2.5% bodyfat (by my digital Skindex calipers) for the South Texas and 2.3% for the Team U. I rarely have a problem with the foods I’m eating on my diet, but this year I’m really having a hard time dropping the alcohol completely. Yes, contrary to what you may have heard, I am human ☺ Be that as it may, right now I’m measuring at 2.8% on my Skindex and weighing 171.5 in my boxers, first thing in the morning. I’d like to weigh-in for the Team U at 165.25 lbs to be in the welterweight division, and step on stage at about 170.

So, today I started the day with a 2 mile walk at 6:30am. I trained back with my friend, Brenda Mikalajunas, at 10:30am. I felt good! It was an excellent workout!

I started with 8 sets of straight leg deadlifts (in the power rack working from the knees up) in sets of 15 reps finishing with 2 sets at 405 lbs. Next was lat pulldowns 4 sets of 10-12 reps, really squeezing the lats at the bottom of the movement. Then came seated cable rows 140X12, 160X12, 180X12X10. I had a great pump by this time but we had more to do. High pulley rows were next 4 sets of 10-12 reps, again squeezing the back hard in the fully contracted position. We finished with 4 sets of 12 of straight-arm pulldowns to really isolate and finsh off the lats. By the end of the workout I was in a perpetual lat spread!