It took me about a week to write this little review up. I had to sit and reflect a bunch on my experience. It was truly a unique experience. While it was not my first bodybuilding show, it was the first time I actually did it, or at least attempted, to do it properly. 

I had done a bodybuilding show in my early 20s, but I had no idea what I was doing. I grew up watching bodybuilding idols on TV and movies and thought it was just about lifting weights to achieve that look. I was just young and muscular. I didn’t understand the training properly, didn’t practice any posing, didn’t have a coach, and just kept training like normal, put on a bottle of self tanner, and stepped on stage. I definitely messed everything up and had no business even stepping on stage. 

This time around I did all the research on what the bodybuilders do, came out with an entire plan, and followed it. It worked very well. Mind you, most people diet for several months for the show, I had a little over a month to get ready. I was already lean, I just needed to put some final touches. 

I hired a local coach to work on my posing. It was MUCH harder than I thought. I was familiar with the poses, but the tiny little intricacies of how to rotate limbs and flex muscles differently in order to maximize the display was very hard. Not to mention doing it without a mirror for feedback took some practice. I had 4 sessions with a coach and practiced at least 30 minutes a night. I was fairly confident in my posing ability and my coach said I did pretty good as well. So at least I had one part down. 

When I started prepping for the show I was already sub 6% body fat (verified by DXA) which is normally good enough to step on stage so I wasn’t concerned about getting much leaner. Unfortunately, because of genetics, I do tend to store more fat on my back and hamstrings, so I actually needed to drop some more fat in order to display better muscle definition on my rear poses. That wasn’t very hard for me. Loosing fat has never really been a challenge. I know exactly what works for me. 

Having never really worked on my “beach muscles” directly meant I needed to bring up my arms and shoulders. I train strongman and functional fitness. My goals have always been about being functionally strong, not really about how I looked. Being jacked and lean was a side effect of being an athlete, not the goal. So I started adding in some Bicep, Tricep, and Side Delt work. I hit one of those muscle groups every day. It ended up making a noticeable difference, I had added almost an inch overall on my arms. Which is impressive in a month, not to mention after over 2 decades of training. Unfortunately, having my arms always sore made it a little harder to continue my regular training. Which I continued up until the day of the show. 4 1-hour sessions of my StrongFit based training principals. 

I was still feeling great, living my live as normal up until the last week. The last week is the most important part, this is what normally is called “peak week” you work on dropping all the water from under your skin to maximize the muscle display as well as carbing up to pull as much water and carbs into your muscles to make them look as full as possible. Dropping water is nothing new to me, I had to do it all the time when I competed in strongman to make weight classes. But dropping water for aesthetics is a little different than dropping water for a weigh in. Mostly it’s the carb up part. I never enjoyed dropping water, I prefer restriction over indulgence. I can easily go 2 days without food or water, having to drink a ton of water and eat a ton of food was a big undertaking for me. 

Basically, I drank 12-16 litres of water for several days, while on zero carbs, and did depletion training to burn off all carbs I still had in my body. On the final day of water loading I started loading up on carbs. This is something I am not accustomed to, I normally eat about 150g of carbs a day. I was now eating over 500, while still drinking a massive amount of water. While this might sound enjoyable to some people, I was in absolute misery. Despite eating healthy carbs, I was really not feeling well. My blood sugar was through the roof, I started to feel lots of stomach discomfort and gas. I attributed it to the high amount of carbs. It wasn’t just the carbs. 

I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease many years ago. I had completely reversed it through my eating. I would always eat the same food every day, and never changed that for years. It completely slipped my mind that this carb up, healthy or not, could cause a flareup. It definitely did, starting a carb up on Thursday it just kept getting worse. By Friday morning it felt like my intestines had been filled by a bike pump. I stopped all carbs and tried to resume my normal food. It helped a little, but damage was already done. It would probably take a couple weeks for the inflammation to die down. I was very uncomfortable. After the show all I wanted to do is eat a good steak and resume my normal eating. 

A week later, I am still bloated and feel pressure, but it’s getting better every day. So lesson learned on that aspect. Stick to what works for my body and my health. 

Now how did I find the show? Personally, I had a blast. Luckily I had some people I knew who were there to help me not make a complete fool of myself. There is lots of rules and procedures to follow. There are many competitors and they are on a tight schedule. I was relaxed, laughing, and joking backstage. Some people looked like they were having fun, but honestly, most looked really stressed and miserable. Talking to some of the other competitors, they had been on a restrictive diet for over a year. I couldn’t imaging what that would feel like. They were super nervous about how they looked, how other competitors looks, you could see everyone checking each other out backstage wondering if they look better or if they are in the same division or not. 

Talking with other competitors I was blown away by their eating, training, and mindset. It has nothing to do with health, just the illusion of health. Many of the competitors only maintain that shape for a very short period of time, quickly going back to “bulking” when they get fat again and try to put on more muscle before they start the whole cycle again. After talking about training, most of them just do isolation exercises on machines where their primary focus is just developing a particular muscle and nothing to do with actual strength of athleticism. In fact, talking to some of the physique competitors, they refused to deadlift as they were worried it might make their waist “blocky”. 

Their eating also had nothing to do with health or performance, it was all about weighing and measuring every last thing they ingest, bordering on an eating disorder. Plus certain foods like sugar free soda and things like sugar free jello are “calorie free” so you can eat as much of those as you want. It was also all temporary, you only eat the bland restrictive foods when dieting down for the show. You have to wait until after the show to eat all the food you have been restricting from yourself. Some of the competitors even had a list of the foods that they were going to eat, it seemed to keep them motivated. That is definitely bordering on disordered eating. 

Back in the “golden era” of bodybuilding, they were athletes. They would train functional compound movements with a barbell, many would even also compete in Olympic Weightlifting. In fact, there used to be competitions, such as Mr. America (Organized by Bob Hoffman),  where they would have to lift and also show off their physique. The organizer of the competition saw that if the focus was only on how they looked that it would take away from the importance of weightlifting. They would hang out at Muscle Beach in California and workout on the beach as well as doing gymnastic and balancing acts. It was truly impressive. The Mr. Olympia (Organized by Joe + Ben Weider) changed all of that. Now the focus was just on what they looked it. Actual feats of strength or athleticism were never combined again for bodybuilding competitions and the Mr. America organization quickly faded away. 

Unfortunately now many of the competitors just use machines to focus on developing a muscle maximally, and are hardly athletic. Not to mention the massive rise in drug use, it seems everyone is on a bunch of different substances. Steroids to build muscle, stimulants to help burn fat, some at crazy amounts. All of this instead of training hard or sticking to a cleaner diet. I can understand at the professional level this might be required, but at an amateur show, this is surely not needed. There is not even any prize money, all you get is a medal, and about 50 people in the audience possibly cheering you on. 

Now I don’t feel like shitting on an entire industry after just one experience. But to me, it just seems very backwards. Its all about how you look for one particular day, after months of restrictive, unmaintainable dieting, dropping water, spending a ton of money on perfect hair, makeup, and a severely overpriced bikini / posing suit. To buy over charged pictures from the only licensed photographer, so you can show friends or family what you looked like on that particular day. 

Maintaining that look is nearly impossible for most. The restrictive diet they follow to get there is mentally exhausting and slowly eating away at your body. For some of the men it might be maintainable, as men can sustain a much lower body fat percentage, for the majority of the women being that lean is definitely unhealthy and not maintainable. Most of the women will have to drop to such a low body fat level that their periods will stop. 

To make matters worse, the are continually adding new divisions for men and women, with lower standards, to get more people to register and compete. For example, they have mens physique, where the competitors just have to show off their “beach muscles” and get to wear board shorts and their legs don’t even count. The latest addition, an ironic name, the wellness division for women, where they are primarily judged by the quality of their glutes. They used to have a fitness division, where the women had to perform a fitness routine, including gymnastics moves and dance, there were no women in that division at this show. 

I have been always about training like an athlete, and you end up looking like and athlete if the rest of your life, diet and sleep, are in order. You will be healthy, able to maintain it year round, and have the energy and the athleticism to be useful in everyday life. There are no real ups and down, you continuously improve, and you feel great. Again, probably biased in my view as I am surrounded by people who are transforming their bodies and lives in front of my eyes everyday. Seeing them gain confidence, athleticism, health, and longevity, all while trying to live a healthy active lifestyle. 

Definitely my last bodybuilding show, but if they ever bring back an athletic aspect to a competition, I would debate doing it again. For me a purely subjective competition leaves too much to the unknown, why did that person win over that person, not to mention the standards change every year. Whereas an objective sport is very clear, who did it the fastest or picked up the heaviest object. 

The one thing that I discovered that I have never heard anybody talk about, is the armpit noises. Going onstage requires you to shave off all body hair, so I also had to shave my arm pits. Well I have no idea how people live like this, besides being itchy, my armpits keep “farting” when I do certain movements. I guess thats just another little dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about.