Saturday, June 29, 2013

Back to my roots: Part 1

When I began to gear up for USPF Nationals earlier I went in with only that meet in mind (ok, so maybe I was going to do a USAPL meet too, but I quickly came to my senses). I wanted to have a great day on the platform and redeem myself from a shitty showing I had a couple years ago.

But something happened along the way. I began getting the bodybuilding bug again. But why? Well, lets rewind about a year ago..........

July 2012

I was sitting in the press pit at the inaugural Wings of Strength and NPC Tim Gardner Chicago Extravaganza in Rosemont, IL. Helping cover the show provided me the opportunity to not only talk to pro's but some amateurs as well. At this point I was working for Flex Magazine for a couple months and was just soaking in the atmosphere of watching various shows and filming workouts of other competitive bodybuilders, women/men's physique competitors and figure girls. As I was sitting down in the press pit, I was thinking to myself of how cool it would be to participate in a pro/am show. Standing on the same stage that the pro's would use. But that thought quickly went away when I thought of the work involved

"Man.....lots of cardio? No Chipotle? No PIZZA?!?!?! I'm good dawg........"

So the beat went on. Just heavy training and being pretty liberal with my eating.

Mr. Olympia 2012

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Mr. Olympia as part of Flex Magazine (or swole up water-boy, whichever you prefer) and once again was provided a unique aspect to see the pinnacle of the sport. I saw how athletes approached the biggest show of the year. I once again thought to myself of how cool it would be to get a warmup suit, be briefed on how the show will go and pump up backstage before showing my wares off to a crazy audience. But once again, I was afraid of taking the first step of competing in an NPC local show........

"Bro, your'e broke, you have a lot of fat to lose and you have to give up what little social life you have. Sit the fuck down!"


Larry's best supporter is Larry, right? So I listened. And stayed sitting the fuck down.

March 2013

I started prep for Nationals around this time, give or take a few weeks, and was getting stronger. I was feeling good and decided to start doing some fasted cardio to bring my weight down a bit. Well, one morning per week turned to two, two mornings per week turned to three and three turned to five. I'm not sure why it happened but then the thought popped in my mind....

"Larry, your last show was 2005. How long are you going to wait for the prefect situation? Just do it. Your'e going to be broke either way this summer, you may as well accomplish something you've been wanting to do." And with a little nudging from my friends Marisa Inda and Troy Smith, I started cleaning up my diet for a run at the NPC Tim Gardner Extravaganza held that July. There was one issue though. USPF Nationals was the first weekend of May. The show was scheduled for July 6th (which currently is next week) and if we do math, that leaves me with about 8 eight weeks to basically pull a rabbit out of my ass. So now, here come negative Larry again.

"Thats a lot of work. You have to be super focused and can you do it?"

It happened to be a chance conversation with a classmate of mine at UNL named Paige that made me think a bit about doing the show. She also sent me a rather encouraging Facebook message telling me to go for it, because she saw what I posted and that my heart was still in the sport.

 I also remembered a conversation I had last year with someone who was preparing for a show. What was said triggered something in me a bit and I'll never forget it. I normally don't let a whole lot of things rattle me, but this did. I'm paraphrasing as the convo took place more than a year ago........

"You can't do both. You have to be big and fat for powerlifting."


Oh really? Lets see about that hypothesis. Game the fuck on.

I cleaned up my diet and kept doing fasted cardio. I kept telling myself to not go overboard because my main focus was the meet. Once that was over, I could drop the hammer and go full bore into contest prep. I didn't care about how much it was going to suck. I didn't care about how much money it would cost. I didn't care I wouldn't be able to eat my favorite foods the first half of summer. All that mattered was standing up on that stage knowing I gave my all...........but lets rewind to the Nationals.


May 2013

With my programming done by the crazy Jennifer Petrosino of Elitefts.com, I felt at my all time best. I did a weight cut to 220 and went in to set some records.

That didn't work out too well, as evidenced by my performance in the video.




I bombed............I cried.........I had to show my face at the NPC IL State as a semi fat powerlifter who is trying to be a bodybuilder. Not only that, I had to explain to people what bombing out meant. You live, you learn, you move forward.

So with the meet over, I rested and ate up on Sunday and began my prep on Monday for the show. So basically everything was switched up and my program had more tempo based training, heavy eccentric and timed sets. All of which made a difference. Sometimes I took the liberty of changing things based on the day and how I felt, sometimes I didn't. But the best part about the program Jenn put together is I stayed pretty strong throughout. I was still able to squat 500 in knee sleeves (high-bar so I was pretty much all quads)

My cardio consisted of what I like to call the "King Kamali special" which was two hours a day, 6 days a week. Optimal? Absolutely not, but very "cleansing" to me. So I kept doing it. Add that with the training I was doing and you get the pics below of where I started doing prep at, as compared to now




The pic on the left was the Monday after Nats, the pic on the right was Monday morning before cardio. Perfect? No. 100 percent in shape? No.......but that wasn't the goal. What I wanted to accomplish and how I went about will be explained in the next installment. Until then, I have to fuck this stepmill up.