Spring 2010 Contest Run Up

Training
521

That’s wonderful Stu.

Congratulations - you clearly deserved it. : )

522

definitely… noticeably thicker! did you make any changes in terms of carb up or anything before hitting the stage compared to 2 weeks ago?? great job big guy!

523

It’s awesome to see you get the credit you deserve after you got robbed in the last show. You definitely earned it.

524

Sweet jeebus, Stu! Your girlfriend got it right on when she said you blew everyone else away!

525

Thanks for the the positive comments guys. Obviously I had a nice dinner last night (Big ol’ Steak, sweet potato, bloomin’ onion, Giant Reeses PB Bar - My girl found this one! - walnut brownie, and just about everything else not nailed down), and today have basically treated as a high carb/refeed day (pancakes, ravioli etc), with no training involved, sort of trying to let my body rest a bit.

The goal on the horizon now, is a show in Plattsburgh, NY on 5/29. I had planned to do this as a masters pro, but found out last night that even though I won the Masters 35+ last year, the ‘Masters Pro’ status only applies to the 40+ classes… LUCKILY I won the Overall and now get to compete in the OPEN PRO! :smiley:

Sooooo…

After the last show, I used the day after as a high day, and then just shuffled between low and medium days during the week. This time though, I don’t really think I need to get any leaner (I dropped about 2 lbs between the A.C. show and this past one), so I’m going to skip my usual interval work this week, probably keep 20 mins steady state every morning just to keep things humming along (has worked well as far as allowing me to keep cals a bit higher than last year). Calorie wise, I’m actually going to up my numbers about 100 cals a day for the next two weeks, and add in an extra 25-50g of carbs, just enough to actually stimulate my metabolism. Then I’ll drop the numbers back to where they were (2400 cals, 150g carbs on medium days), and resume the intervals. Should work nicely,… actually, as this last show had now become my Pro Debut, I don’t think there are actual weight classes, so it’s just a matter of conditioning, which I realize that at about 172-174 I bring a pretty decent combination of size and conditioning.

SHould be very interesting to see how things work out,… and to be honest, at this point, there’s absolutely no pressure on me at all. If you place as a pro, you place, and if not,… who cares, you’re a pro already, and the prize money is practically nothing in natural bodybuilding anyway. Once this show (5/29) is out of the way, I’m going to take June and July and try to recomp/add a little bit of size (within reason), and then focus on a couple of shows in the Fall, in a different Federation (Cordova made sure to comment on my facebook with the very same suggestions about 12 seconds after I updated my status last night! -lol)

S

526

Simply amazing, it’s awesome to see such hard work and dedication bring such great rewards. Congrats Stu! You have been doing a great job keeping us up to date and I hope that continues.

527

Congrats!

528

Awesome job Stu! Congrats!

529

Congrats Bro!

530

Congratulations Stu, it must be very gratifying to have all your hard work pay off.

531

Hey Stu,
From your pics, I feel that you were definitely able to get your quads to pop, especially compared to your first show two weeks ago. That’s awesome, you were really aiming to do that going in and that is just what you did. Congrats to your win Stu!

532

Here’s the Mens overall, I’ll try to get other clips as well.

S

533

HAHAH! Good goin stu! I like how you had your own cheering section.

534

I shut got fucking shivers when they called your name man, well done. Fucking awesome. Looked twice as good as the previous show, even though they were only 2 weeks between. Crazy.

535

Congrats Stu!

I was going to compliment you on the pictures on page 21, but then my eyes were distracted by Debra D’s nice new profile pic. :slight_smile:

536

OKay,… so even though the pressure is somewhat off for my next show (5/29), I’d still like to do well in it. I guess looking at how I’ve just stepped up my game each time I’ve been onstage, makesme want to do equally well in my pro debut (I’ve been on quite a streak here!). There aren’t weight classes in the pro division, so I don’t have to worry about making weight, just about brining my best package… which at this point I feel is around 173 lbs (I was about 174 for the April show, and 172 and change for the may one).

Obviously if I were a lb or two heavier I don’t think it would be horrible,… I think the real goal of competing in natural federations is to win the pro qualification, not really what you do afterward (not a whole lot of big name pro shows for natties). I decided to skip my interval work this week, as my body is beaten down from two shows fairly close together.

Also, none of my weight work has been pushed to extreme degrees,… definitely more than just pump sets, but not to the point that I’m usually gritting my teeth and furrowing my brow.

That being said, this week was/is my as well as my girlfriend’s birthdays. I did enjoy a nice birthday dinner last night, and plan to go out Saturday night for my girlfriend’s celebration as well. On both days though, every other feeding was/will be clean, and strict (egg whites, cottage cheese, FINiBARs, MAG-10 etc…).

The other days of this week will be what my numbers were 2 weeks out from each of the shows I did (2400 cals, 150g carbs - oatmeal + FINiBARs only)… basically ‘medium’ days. Starting next week (3 weeks out from the pro debut), I will resume some short interval work, as well as my carb cycling approach.

I’m sure the little ‘bump ups’ this past Sunday (very carb heavy), last night’s dinner, and this ocming Saturday’s dinner, will serve not only as psychological boosters, but physical ones as well.

S

537

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
OKay,… so even though the pressure is somewhat off for my next show (5/29), I’d still like to do well in it. I guess looking at how I’ve just stepped up my game each time I’ve been onstage, makesme want to do equally well in my pro debut (I’ve been on quite a streak here!). There aren’t weight classes in the pro division, so I don’t have to worry about making weight, just about brining my best package… which at this point I feel is around 173 lbs (I was about 174 for the April show, and 172 and change for the may one).

Obviously if I were a lb or two heavier I don’t think it would be horrible,… I think the real goal of competing in natural federations is to win the pro qualification, not really what you do afterward (not a whole lot of big name pro shows for natties). I decided to skip my interval work this week, as my body is beaten down from two shows fairly close together.

Also, none of my weight work has been pushed to extreme degrees,… definitely more than just pump sets, but not to the point that I’m usually gritting my teeth and furrowing my brow.

That being said, this week was/is my as well as my girlfriend’s birthdays. I did enjoy a nice birthday dinner last night, and plan to go out Saturday night for my girlfriend’s celebration as well. On both days though, every other feeding was/will be clean, and strict (egg whites, cottage cheese, FINiBARs, MAG-10 etc…).

The other days of this week will be what my numbers were 2 weeks out from each of the shows I did (2400 cals, 150g carbs - oatmeal + FINiBARs only)… basically ‘medium’ days. Starting next week (3 weeks out from the pro debut), I will resume some short interval work, as well as my carb cycling approach.

I’m sure the little ‘bump ups’ this past Sunday (very carb heavy), last night’s dinner, and this ocming Saturday’s dinner, will serve not only as psychological boosters, but physical ones as well.

S[/quote]

How do you maintain muscle mass between shows while staying fairly cut up?

538

Some people will obviously try to stretch out what they’ve been doing, as far as their daily numbers, and the cal deficit they’re in. What I do is to actually first, make sure I get a few high carb days, with no weight sessions in there (because I know my body is beaten down pretty hard at this point). Then depending on how much time I’ve got, I actually add in some calories and carbs each day. I still keep the high and lows alternating, but my medium days get a little bump up, which in the state my body is in, actually can stimulate your metabolism even more. Obviously it’s always on a case by case basis, but you need to think about how high, or for how long you can raise the numbers, before having to bring them back to what they were, or possibly lower depending on your conditioning in the earlier show.

S

539

You look great in the video Stu. The guy to your right (left in the video) looked a little bigger than you but you were definitely more cut and better at posing. Do you know how much he weighed.

Got a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

  1. I saw you said you won’t be gaining as much this time around, but in general how do you go about adding back calories/decreasing cardio? Just adding a few hundred per week and decreasing cardio slowly?

  2. What’s your opinion of this, regarding HIIT:

[quote]

Let’s look at where not to put it…

  • Do not put it on your off days… putting it there would be the natural tendency of most people, but you want those days to recover. High intensity energy systems work is very draining on the body. So if you put it on the off days you will not recover optimally and your performance and growth will suffer. Not to mention that leg work follows the off day and doing high intensity ESW the day before intense lower body work is not the best of ideas.

  • Do not put it on the upper body days… a lot of people would also consider this option. They reason that since you didn’t hit the legs on that day, they will be fresh for the cardio session. The problem is that putting the high intensity energy system session there (the day after your lower body work) will hurt your recovery from the lower body session.

So that leaves you the two lower body days to put the session in. I would personally not put it on monday because it involves a lot of heavy lifting and performance in the ESW session might be compromised. On the other hand, thursday is dynamic work, which normally goes well with intense ESW. So I would personally put the ESW session the same day as the lower body dynamic work (thursday), ideally in a separate session during the day (after the strength work, not before). And Friday is an off day so it’s best to put the hardest training day on Thursday. [/quote]

I’ve heard both ways, I’ve only ever done it on off days though. I would imagine you would want to eat a hell of a lot more on leg + HIIT days compared to off days

540

[quote]pumped340 wrote:
You look great in the video Stu. The guy to your right (left in the video) looked a little bigger than you but you were definitely more cut and better at posing. Do you know how much he weighed.

Got a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

  1. I saw you said you won’t be gaining as much this time around, but in general how do you go about adding back calories/decreasing cardio? Just adding a few hundred per week and decreasing cardio slowly?

  2. What’s your opinion of this, regarding HIIT:

Pumped, careful taking that advice out of context. The specific question for that answer was:

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