IMPROVING MY COMP PREP

The owner of ADELAIDE HEALTH & FITNESS, the wonderful Joe Mammone is assisting with my training for competition this year

I’ve known Joe for a long time as we both instructed at the same gym for several years. He had his business then and was building a reputation as a great instructor and trainer who was popular with many of the gym members. In fact many of the members also attended his gym for his quality one-on-one training.

Last year I did all my weight training on my own but Joe helped with my body fat testing as he was one of the few trainers I knew who did skin folds with callipers and this was my preferred method for body fat monitoring. He came to watch me compete, along with some of his clients that knew me from the gym. (Adelaide is a very small, everyone-knows-everyone city)

Anyway circumstances are such that I need to do one gym session a week, but not necessarily more so Joe was a logical solution to my problem. (I’m still doing my own programming for the remaining weights sessions, cardio and diet – for now at least.) I’m taking time out at lunch time on Fridays which is a win / win as its not a busy time for Joe. Its also giving me the necessary incentive to steer clear of Friday morning tea (VERY IMPORTANT) and then stay on track over the weekend. There’s nothing like some in-your-face-accountability to help one to stay on track. He knows my starting weight but by seeing me weekly there'll be cold hard evidence of whether I'm progressing or not.

So I’ve had my first session with Joe today and we do back, some machine leg work (I still do a lot of leg work at home) and abs if time permits. We started with “Ok can you do chin ups?” at which point I thought “B*ST*RD, he’s picked the hardest exercise to start with and I cant do them unassisted” so I warned him that he’d have his work cut out for him as he’d be doing most of the lifting/assisting and there was significant weight there to lift. We both survived it though.

It was a great session, tough but inspiring and I’ll have some serious DOMS tomorrow I can tell. WOOHOO. I love this feeling and will really look forward to training with Joe for that extra push.

I’m also planning some dietary changes and have a question:

Does anybody know of a protein powder that is suitable for cooking with that doesn’t contain artificial sweetener or sugar (or maybe just a little sugar relative to the content of the product)? I normally use a soy protein for cooking into my morning oats (WPI does NOT cook in well) but it has artificial sweetener AND sugar in it. I also love my oat/protein pancakes which require protein powder. But If anybody has an oat/protein pancake recipe that doesn’t need protein powder but still packs a decent ratio of protein to carbs then I'm all ears for that too.

Any advice would be very welcome.

Look forward to blogging more on the weekend.

Cheers all

Magda