FIRST BODYBUILDING COMPETITION: 1 MONTH AWAY

 January 8th, 2012 @ 200 lbs and 13.1% bodyfat

Down to about 7% bodyfat for competition day

This is a blog about my training. I have been a personal trainer since January 2010, and have made leaps and bounds in skill and knowledge of fitness and wellness since then. I've come to realize that your progress is made by setting goals. Currently, my goal is to compete against California's best physiques in the 2012 San Jose NPC Men's Physique Competition. My choice to do this was made because I run in circles of people who always say "Oh, I could step on stage any day and win a bodybuilding competition." I was also guilty of this, so I decided last October to live up to my bragging and see if I could really do it. This is not a lifetime commitment to being a bodybuilder or competitive athlete or fitness model, it's just my current goal. I am reaching for it and becoming a better and stronger athlete for it. Will I win? Maybe. Will I fall dead last? MAYBE! I am still enjoying every minute of training and enjoying looking my best at the peak of beach season! The competition is July 14th and this last month is the final shredding stage for me to look my best on that date for those judges and everyone coming out to support me. It's been a fun ride. This blog entry today is about what I do to train. 

Bodybuilding is 80% about what happens in the kitchen, 20% in the gym. My meal planning was done by Ed Bauer of EdBauerFit and PlantFit in Portland, OR. He is my vegan bodybuilding hero turned vegan crossfitting hero. 

Ed Bauer from NewEthic Vegan Strength and Conditioning

Strength training and mass building was coached by Ed Evans, long-time associate of Greg Glassman pre-dating official Cross Fit days. While I was bulking up several months ago, he pretested me and decided to prescribe me his design called MASS PHASE III. It is not available online, but is an amazing Excel file he created with 28 weeks of workouts, 3 days on, 1 day rest, gradually increasing weight, decreasing rest, following an undulated periodization model. Many of the body parts were hit twice a week, but if they were, it was with different exercises and repetition ranges. Periodization is sometimes viewed as "randomness" but the method of science behind it is genius. When we used to do less weight on one exercise, we would do a supplemental exercise that same day that would push the muscle that usually pulls and get a phenomenal antagonistic muscle group development. (yes, many of these things took me a few years to finally truly understand) Anyway, I just mean to say his MASS PHASE III was well-timed and helped me pack on several pounds of muscle and increase my absolute maximal strength.

Brown rice and weight gainer ALL DAY ER'RY DAY

Those 28 weeks were grueling, but changing it up from "bulking" to "cutting" has been even worse! The workouts aren't dealing with as much weight, but the dieting is insane. Before I get into that, I will give links to a few of the routines I've been following to make the final tweaks to my deltoids, bis and tris and obliques. Those are the parts I will really be judged on in the physique division, and the ones I'm hitting 3x per week now. Along with MASS PHASE III, I have done:

 Six Weeks to Sick Arms, 

ANIMAL Hellraiser Shoulders, 

Olympic Lifting,

 and now just straight up hypertrophy sets for maximal 

definition in these last 4 weeks until competition.

Bodybuilding questions cannot be answered in a few sentences between sets at the gym. I've been that teenager asking the big guys and shredded gals questions about "How did you develop THAT?" time and time again. Some of the time they were nice and said, "Well, try this exercise..." But I realize now that trying that one exercise is not how they got to where they were. It took so much more than that. The real answer to my question would have to start out with, "Ok, well here was my goal at 26 weeks out, once I chose an exact date to achieve it, then I broke it down into bulking and cutting, during bulking I did this and this and this, then now during cutting I am doing this and this, but only when I do this and this and haven't done this and this"

Honestly that's how it is. My workouts are determined by my supplement timing, which is determined by my meal timing, which is determined by my sleep schedule. And that changes every single day! It's really a strategy of hours and calories and math.

This morning I had a large focus on serious AM cardio because my coach (Ed Bauer) said I needed to be doing at least 40 minutes of it pre-breakfast to get my body in the proper fat-burning zone. So I set my alarm last night, subtracted 9 hours from that, decided on what time I needed to be getting to sleep, then timed my night time protein shake to be taken so it would have the exact amount of time to metabolize while awake before it digested slowly over night and so on and so forth with the PM supplements and...I'm just going to post a picture of my powders. So you have some understanding of how many micronutrients and vitamins and concentrated superfoods I'm taking currently.

Creatine, Carnitine, Glutamine, Arginine, Lysine, Flax Oil, 

2 kinds of Caffeine Anhydrous and 2 kinds of Protein

Here is my defense of my decision to take so many supplements and spend a great deal of 1) Time researching and understanding what they all can do and are doing for me and 2) Money to keep buying them:

Can you get protein, amino acids (lysine, glutamine, carnitine, arginine) and creatine from foods? Yes. Do I want to eat 88 Brazil Nuts and 6 bags of flax seeds a morning? No. I'm training to look the best I've ever looked in my entire life in a month, and try to look better than tons of other guys who are training to do the same. Getting the proper doses of these foods to maximize my lean muscle mass is what I'm going to do. And yes, once these tubs are empty, I'm taking a month off!

That all being said- that was just my tubs of powder. Ready for my pills and vitamins? I also take a slew of these to reduce inflammation (2-3 workouts everyday will cause it), defend against illness and blood fibrins, keep a healthy gut and digestion rates amicable (need to process all of the food I eat), and keep my brain functioning top notch to tell all of the other systems to fire properly. 

Here is my totality of vitamins and supplements that I currently take. They are all timed exactly per how the instructions recommend, and not a penny was wasted on something I didn't know how to use or what to use it for. Also, thank you again to my Aunt Marusia Marrapese from Lori's Natural Foods in Rochester, NY who educated me on several of these products and hooked me up with the dosing I needed to maintain my health while striving for this goal. Part of my training included serious running where developed a bone chip and she promptly sent me a package with a barrage of Serrapeptase, Silica, Magnesium and Lysine to help heal it. Ya know what? The injury was sustained on April 7th and I have not had any pain after the 6 week mark of holistically healing by her recommendation and supplements. Thank you so much Aunt Marusia!

Multi-Vitamins, Testosterone Booster, Serrapeptase, Thermogenics

A towering view of my supplement regime as I train in my last 4 weeks to competition

This grouping is thanks to companies who sample out their products to folks like me who are "friends of friends" or "relatives of friends" and are also striving to achieve athletic prowess on "restricted" diets (plant-based, gluten-free, diabetic, etc)

Ethan Borg is a colleague of Marusia Marrapese and helped me implement Qi Infusions
to my natural healing for my bone chip. Thank you for sending these infusions, Ethan!
Giacomo Marchese from VeganProteins.com have me several samples of Sun Warrior  and Vega
performance powders to share with my client-base and experiment with during training. Thanks G!

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I am not the only one who takes pictures of all of the supplements they use! Check out some of the pictures that Veganbodybuilding.com had its users send to their forum!

There are a ton of supplements that help herbivores achieve their muscle-building goals without the consumption of animal products, but there are also tons of supplements that are just concentrated animal products themselves. Sometimes you can be confused and wondering if this capsule is vegetarian or not, or whether this gylcerin is the vegetable kind or not...
I am not the guru about products being vegan or not. If it is not stated on the bottle, I would suggest calling the customer support line to find out where all of their ingredients are from. My barrage of supplements now is pretty well-researched and took a closer look at some of the bottles and found some easy things to look for if you're looking to be strictly plant-based with your choices in supplements:

Along with this company being herbal supplements, they
are sure to mention that they use "Vegicaps" (meaning
from vegetables and not animal gelatin)

"no potential animal contamination and no animal by-product source"
(see the very middle of the image)

"suitable for vegetarians"

"vegetarian"

"Raw Vegan"
(raw means uncooked, and never heated above 116 degrees)
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So that's what real training is like. The two hours I just took to write this was between my AM cardio, and my mid-day strength training workout. I ate some almonds and soy protein while I typed and uploaded pictures, and now I'm ready for my pre-workout shake with Creatine in it. Just another day following my instruction sheet:

I I've told you everything I do and all of it is public information - anything else and I'd have to kill you :) I am doing this competition, already with the future in mind (no more bodybuilding competitions for a WHILE) and going to plow on through summer very goal-driven. I hope you do the same, and I am here for you! My training business Herbivore Athletics is cranking as strong as ever- offering group exercise classes in the Santa Cruz area, personal training all throughout the Bay Area, and nutrition coaching. My website is on its way to being up and rolling in the next few weeks.

Happy #PRIDE day everyone. Best in health and life enjoyment, Billy Prusinowski

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