- Welcome to video two and mistake number two,
which is biggest mistakes competitors make
in regards to their training.
So, much like mistake number one,
which is all about nutrition,
this mistake does predominantly relate to planning.
However, there are other mistakes
that people make with their training,
which is hard to do for this video,
specifically, around execution of technique,
form, all those things that are often true.
People might have a lagging body part
and they might be doing a lot of the exercises
that are gonna help that body part,
but they're performing them incorrectly.
But what I wanted to focus on with this video
is the structure and kind of thought process
that I go through when I do get a competitor
and how I set up their training.
So, let's get into it.
The mistake fundamentally is poor forethought of planning
the program to go into that comp.
So, what I do see a lot of
is people will go on like a bodybuilding.com
or they will find a friend who may have competed
and simply copy their program and do their program
and hope for the best kind of thing.
And that, I mean, not gonna say it's a recipe for disaster,
but it is the definition of a cookie cutter program.
So, let's talk about how to actually structure a program
for a comp to get you up on stage
and looking your very absolute best.
All right, so there are two factors
that have to be considered when starting, or really anyone,
but particularly for competitors.
Is one, where are you starting,
and two, where do you wanna be and by what date?
Because that informs our training cycle
of how long we actually have to play with.
So, I'm gonna give you two examples.
One, I'll give you an example of a girl
who I trained in 2014, 2013.
Danny who went on to win the Vic's,
and I trained her for about eight months.
And then there's Janet Kane,
who I've coached for over a decade
and she won multiple titles,
and pretty much everything when we were coaching.
She's now retired from competing.
So, the two different examples,
and the reason I wanna use those examples
is because Danny was,
let's use Danny's example first, right?
So, I think we met around, I'm gonna say April,
May or something like this.
She was planning the comp for October
and she wanted to compete in the Vic's, which she won.
Where she started from, structurally,
her body was not sound.
So, what I mean by that is there were a lot of dysfunctions.
She had the butt wink, she didn't brace her core.
She's very tight, she had protracted shoulders
and as a result from her physique, she had great shape,
but her back and the details around her back,
weren't quite where I saw they could be.
Her shoulders were good,
but they weren't as capped as they could be.
She had good shape in her legs,
but they weren't as big.
So, there were structural things in her, I suppose,
and this is where a lot of competitors
they don't look at structural assessments,
they just go straight into how I look.
But structurally, if you are able to perform these movements
you are gonna have muscles around those structures,
which is gonna make you look better as well.
So, and also the other thing is,
if you structurally are able to perform an assessment test,
like say an overhead squat test,
overhead squat test, body weight squat,
if you can perform well on these markers,
then we're gonna also be able to train you a lot harder
and you're gonna be able to stay
injury free for a lot longer.
So in this case, Danny, she structurally,
didn't score very well, right?
So, where I started her phase
is I knew in starting her phase,
I knew I had about eight months.
So generally speaking, for a competitor I'm gonna do
at least one month is gonna be one program, right?
Ideally I want 3 months to every phase,
but program one to program.
I think the first two months, about eight weeks,
I rushed those cycles a bit faster,
because I had to get her ready on stage.
But I knew from the get-go that
her last program, her last two programs,
were gonna be centered around fat loss
or around getting her as lean as possible.
So, I knew this phase of training
is gonna be super high reps,
it's gonna be lots of super sets,
because the goal is to get her
as lean as possible in that phase,
which meant that backward planning to where we started from,
I only had I think it was about eight weeks,
about eight, six to eight weeks,
to address the structural issues that were present.
Now, I could obviously, keep some of that
in the program going forward,
but I knew 100% in this phase here
we're gonna be doing more machines
we're gonna be doing higher reps
and we're gonna be trying to get in her as lean as possible.
With that said, I wanted to phase out
getting her as much muscle as possible,
which then left me with about three months or so
to build that muscle.
So, I had to then phase her nutrition
to make match both those,
'cause here she's gonna be in a deficit,
and here, I can get her in a slight surplus.
So, I'm looking at this taking kind of
a helicopter approach and saying,
all right, well, this is where I want her to be
at this time to get her at this time.
And she was relatively, she was quite ectomorphic,
she was relatively lean.
So, I knew getting her lean wouldn't be
that much of an issue and I could probably get her lean
in about six weeks, if push came to shove.
So long as we were planning with her nutrition.
So she obviously wasn't, she was eating,
but if I need to get her really lean,
I could have got her in that window
of that six to eight weeks, if that makes sense.
The rest of the time I wanted to focus on
building muscle, building strength,
because I knew in planning Danny's comp,
getting her lean wasn't the issue.
Having the muscle to stand on stage next to other girls
and looking, I suppose full and muscular,
that was gonna be the issue.
So that's where I planned her training.
Now, looking at Denny's physique,
I knew things that's gonna let her physique down
is her upper back and her shoulders.
So, in her programming we did two days a week,
she was doing upper back and shoulders.
So, these are the things priority.
So, the way you look at a program,
the way you prioritize things,
is gonna be based on two things.
Structurally, what are your deficiencies structurally?
'Cause structure is always gonna take precedence,
over everything, right?
Even the way you look.
And the reason for that, if you're not moving well,
you're at a much higher rate of injury.
So, I mean that's my personal
as well philosophy on those things,
is I wanna make sure we address structure.
But then the other part of that,
is when we're getting up on stage,
is how do we actually look
and what are the lagging body parts
that when we get up on stage,
what are the things are gonna let us down,
and making sure that they're not
the things that let us down.
So, those things also.
So for Danny, it was her upper back and shoulders
that really took a lot of precedent.
Obviously, legs as well were important,
she was competing figure, figure comps as well.
So that was obviously important.
So we kept that in.
But there was a huge focus on
her upper back development and her shoulders.
Now, if I talk about a different client, Janet,
and how I approached her.
Now, I've trained Janet for over 10 years.
So, she was already in advance.
I was thinking about her programming
in 12 months at a time.
So, the way I'd approach Janet's comps
was very, very different,
because there were some structural things
and maybe niggles would come out from time to time,
'cause she'd always, you know, she's a beast.
One of the hardest training athletes I know,
hardest training people I know.
So, she was a beast.
So, sometimes she'd have niggles here and there.
So, I would plan her training very differently.
So, from the time that she stepped off stage.
So, I'd always plan like if, so she's done a comp,
that's the start of a new phase,
because I knew before a comp,
I knew exactly what she was doing before a comp.
Again, what most people do before a comp,
which is lots of super sets, higher reps,
getting people as conditioned and as lean as possible
and working on those lagging body parts.
So, when Janet would step off stage,
I would plan a week maybe two weeks of deloading,
planned deloading, we reduce the volume back,
let her body recover,
then would go into a next phase.
And those phases were always strength.
So, I would milk Janet's strength phase
and skill acquisition phases
for as long as possible until the next comp.
So that means is that she finished competing,
let's say, usually it'd be November that should finish comp.
October, November is when she'd finish competing,
because she'd go to nationals and these kind of things
and sometimes internationals,
and depending on the dates,
but usually around November 1st is kind of when we plan it.
'Cause then you'd have a deload, that would be the end.
So, then it would have probably before her first comp,
she had the qualifier, let's say usually in February.
She'd have to be lean again in February.
Sometimes she would skip the qualifier,
which gave us more time.
But either way, I would plan in her strength work first,
because I knew all things considered,
if I can get Janet stronger,
she's gonna lift more weight in her hypertrophy phases.
So again, so if we think about it like this,
we've got our structural phases,
we've got our strength phases.
Or sorry, structural phases, skill acquisition phases.
They kinda go together.
Skill acquisition phases also do go into strength phases,
because strength is obviously, a skill as well.
So the squat and the deadlift particularly.
Then from our strength phases,
we go into our hypertrophy phases.
Where we're really focusing on building muscle.
And then from our hypertrophy phases,
we're going into our conditioning phases
where the goal really is to get as lean as possible.
Now, the key thing here is that most people,
again, approach training same way they approach nutrition
thinking they can burn fat all year round
and just do this conditioning piece.
And for the large part, like that's what Janet,
her propensity, was to do a lot of conditioning work,
'cause she liked staying lean.
But I knew if we just focused on this conditioning piece,
she's not gonna build the muscle
to improve upon her physique next year.
And the other thing is that strength component
getting her stronger is gonna gonna cross over
into that hypertrophy component,
'cause she's gonna be able to lift more weight
when we hit that hypertrophy phase,
which means that she's gonna be able to get,
she's gonna present a better physique
a bigger physique, a more muscular physique,
next time she steps up on stage.
And that is the goal, obviously,
when you're training a competitor for over 10 years,
is to improve upon the effort year upon year.
And that's basically, how we did it.
So, that's a lot in this video.
So, that's the biggest mistake,
is think about your and so,
if I give you those examples, right,
and we bring it back to you
of when you're approaching a comp.
Again, if you wanna work with us, absolutely.
But the thing is you wanna look at where are you starting
and obviously, you need someone
who are supposed to assess you.
That's really what you're gonna be paying for
when you come to professional,
is to assess you structurally.
And what other movements that are gonna clean up
structurally and get you injury free
and moving and lifting as heavy
and as training as hard as possible,
because we want you training hard.
Make no doubt about it.
Hypertrophy, the consistent thing across studies,
is if you need a study to prove this,
but to build muscle, you need proximity to failure,
which means is how hard are you pushing the reps
till you can't do another one.
So, if it prescribes 10 reps, you know it's 10 reps, not 11,
and if you're able to push to 10 reps,
you're gonna get better results.
And if you say, oh, it's 10 reps
and you can actually get 12.
So, proximity to failure is absolutely important
and what's gonna keep you healthy
and keep you training hard proximity to failure
is working on that structural piece
and working on that strength piece
and making sure you're moving correctly.
So, in setting it up, you probably will need to see a coach.
And obviously, that's what we do here at Enterprise Fitness.
And then being able to assess you,
structure it correctly into phases,
but where you're starting from and where you wanna be.
And then filling in the gaps, keeping in mind
the worst thing you can do for training
is go into the mindset that you need to be burning fat
or training for fat loss all year round,
because then you're just gonna be spinning your wheels.
I hope you have enjoyed this video.
Stay tuned for tomorrow.
Tomorrow we're gonna be talking about
the third biggest mistake,
which is being narrow focused on just how you look.
Stay tuned.