DCNINJA

It is hard to find good quality non-leather gloves and strike pads. I have an all-vegan fight center, and we are constantly looking for new gear.

Cut all starchy carbs and grains. Drink at least a gallon of water each day. post photos lets see how yu look. Also get someone to work on posing with you. This close minimum 1 hour a week. Also get someone to help you with your final show prep. You need to make sure yu push any extra water. What show are you doing?

It finally happened. After years of heavy iron I have an injury that prohibits me from lifting serious iron. By serious I mean any. So I asked my therapist what I could do. It turns out I can bike. I can run. I can swim. Since I can't compete as a bodybuilder and all I can do is the sort of stuff triathletes do, I decided to start training for a full length triathalon. So I am shopping for advice. Thanks in advance.

Bike am will not hurt your size and or strength. Look at all of the top iron trainers who use it. I especially like bike am when getting close to competition. It leans me out without wasting muscle, and it is restorative.

I think you are relying on a lot of protein supplements. Might want to start looking for other sources. The foods are all clean so that is not too much of an issue. Also I like your food schedule. Great job. You are looking at an April show. Let's call it 20 weeks out. At 28% body fat you want to lose about 1% point per week. That is doable at your weight. Know some weeks more loss and some less. Athletes, especially you ladies get mad when they don't see the scale numbers dropping. I trained a woman once who lost more than fifty percent of her bodyfst, but was mad because the scale numbers went up. She went on to do very well in her first bodybuilding competition. The moral of he story is the number that matters is not weight, but percentages. Once you drop below about 15% that will start to matter less, and eventually it is really a mirror test. How good does your physique look becomes the whole battle. You don't say how much water you are drinking. I recommend a gallon per day. As to how much card you need I recommend getting a map test done. This will tell you how much fat you burn vice carbs when doing cardio. If you can't get a test where you live, then look at how much of a deficit you are creating between your maintenance calories and your burn. Hope this helps. Best of luck to you in your competition.

Just voted. Good luck.

I am heading to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Does anyone have any vegan favorite hangouts there? Thanks

Awesome! You look great. Robert and I did that show last year. We should both be glad we didn't have to go head to head in a posedown with you. Congrats again on a great showing.

A lot of talk on diet here. I agree with most of it. Eat more protein. Take in good carbs like oatmeal. Best diet advice ever is to drink more water (1 gallon a day min.). Make sure you are getting enough nutrients. What do your workouts look like? Are you dead assing around on machines or do you hit it hard to failure on things like deadlift, squats, presses, and the like?

SNC is a great place. The staff is very knowledgeable and helpful. I stop in every time I am in PDX, which unfortunately is never often enough. I cannot recommend them enough.

WIthout drugs, not sure if that is possible. Unless your workouts are on the under achieving side.

I'm with Vegan Essentials here. I find athletes doing this alot, especially women. Sorry ladies, but this is a problem many of you have. The more workouts are better or the I'll cut calories to nothing and lose all my fat myth. Men have the half rep myths and a few others. What happens when your body "thinks" it is starving it will hold as much fat as possible and even sacrifice that hard earned muscle. So go back to what you were eating that was working. If you have a week or two of plateau don't worry. I do it, all my athletes do it, it happens. You have to make small adjustments, and anything below 1500 calories has me a little concerned that you are too restricted. Get your calories back up and see what happens. Remember six meals or more a day evenly spaced with about 250-300 kcal each.

The good news is the bosu ball boys will never get in my way. No way to squat deadlift, clean, or do pullups on them. The guys who recommend them to me remind of the guy with 11 inch arms telling me I was training arms wrong. THankfully since then I have discovered iPod.

A pro bodybuilder once told me there is no such things as overtraining, only under eating. LOL. I think she may have been a little tongue in cheek, but she was on to something. I find if my nutrition is tight, over training is much less likely to happen.

Stability balls. I mean really. Anything on a stability ball is a waste of time. Almost as bad is the dude who comes in and does nothing but adductor and abductor. Their bodies never change for one simple reason, but they cannot figure it out.

Four weeks out from competition. Hitting it hard. Doing a little cardio here, not a lot, but 30 minutes three or four times a week. I like to keep my weight workouts so intense that I am in the fat burning zone the whole time. My cardio is walking on a treadmill and keeping my pace at 4.0-4.5. This keeps my heart rate at 115-130. I also do some wind sprinting. Jog a quarter, then sprint a quarter or hit a hard half. I am hitting posing almost daily to keep my muscles hard, and intense posing burns fat. Nicole is hitting it hard too. She is putting up some respectable numbers, and she is getting cut for the NYC show. Yesterday was shoulders and arms followed by posing. We did not have time to hit tanning or cardio, so today will be tanning and cardio after lifting. Results are good. I need to weigh in since my last weigh in was over a month ago. My bet is I am roughly 184. Nicole has moved a total of seven pounds since she started dieting at 12 weeks out. With a three inch increase in shoulder width and a four inch drop in waist, I am jealous as hell.

I wish I could have spent some time with you and LNG last time I was in PDX, but I broke a tooth while I was, so I was a little less fun and decided to hermit up so to speak.

One more each. Should have tanned for this. The lights are pretty harsh, and I am so pasty white. UGH.

Some great backs out there. Two more to add to the mix.

His diet looks a lot like my old omnivore diet. I was eating a lot of chicken and rice. Egg whites were a big protein source. When I started to go veg, I went to mock meats, and transitioned that way. If I was going to make a suggestion for this diet as omni, I would suggest making one or two meals a day vegetarian with mock meats. I might also suggest salmon or tuna for healthy fats.

Great job. Keep it up.

Jessi, How is your little kitty buddy doing? I hope you are getting some donations. I know how hard it is to pay for expensive vet procedures. Best of luck to you. Steve

Did I call it or what? Jay was simply awesome. He more than made up for last years disappointing pre-judging showing. This year he looked the best he has ever looked. What a great performance.

I am back on stage in seven weeks. This has been a good year. Racked up some trophies, and had some fun. This time Nicole will be competing with me in her first competition. Since she started training with me her waist has shrunk three inches, and her arms have grown one and a half inches. Her shoulders are three inches bigger making for a dramatic taper that looks great when combined with her arms. On her last physical assessment she hit 20 more pushups than the previous time. Pretty good since the last time she reached a maximum score for her push ups. My focus for this show is better traps, more detail, and to come in a little leaner.

I love Grape Ape.