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At the beginning of this year I knew that I would step on stage and I also knew that I would likely not step on stage in peak condition and that more than likely I wouldn’t even be close to my “A Game.” Maybe some people would have chosen to bag the competitions altogether, but that was not an option for me. For a couple of reasons:
I don’t know if I can describe what it’s like to wake up each morning, groggy, trying to focus your eyes and still in that state of half-asleep…and within moments you realize it wasn’t a “bad dream”, it’s all very real. Your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach and your eyes well up with tears. The desire to lie back down and pull the covers over your head and cry yourself back to sleep is strong, incredibly strong.
Having the stage as a goal got me out of bed every morning. It kept me from sinking into a depression. It kept me focused on protecting my children and staying strong no matter how much I wanted to crumble. The stage wasn’t about a trophy this time, the stage was the end result of my strength and demonstrating to my children that we never give up on something we love, something that is important to us, something that drives us to being better as a person.
I stood in court twice the week before the Emerald Cup. My adrenals had been on overload for several months already, but those days and 2 weeks prior to contest it seemed like my body was in “fight or flight” mode daily and sometimes multiple times each day. Both times I stood in court the week before the Emerald Cup I thought to myself…”Maybe I’ve got to bag it.” Knowing I was not where I needed or would have normally wanted to be. I thought about it a lot. Long and hard. I obsessed over it as some of my closest confidants can attest…even as much as the day before…”maybe I shouldn’t do this.”
It was very hard for me to check my ego at the door, to go into the Emerald Cup and Empire Classic not so much as a “competitor” Read more [...]
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Tagged bikini, Bodybuilding, Competition Coach, contest prep, Craig Productions, Emerald Cup, Empire Classic, fearless, Figure, figure competitor, fitmom, GNC, inspiration, Julie Anderson, Julie Michaelson, Julie Michaelson Training, NDS Nutrition, NPC, NWCCTan, Ribic Productions, Team JMT, Washington Ironman
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In celebration of Mother's day I'd like to share with you how I got into lifting in the first place. Yes my first training partner was my mother!!! I had great but very weird parents (explains a lot right there doesn't it?). I was in shape most of my life growing up in Granite Falls and constant sports and then we moved to Bellingham and I ate the same but didn't have access to the great outdoors like I did in Granite so put on a bunch of weight. I read a Jack LaLane book on calories and became anorexic even before that became a term. I got down to 600 calories a day of butterscotch candies and during my growth spurt in 8th grade shot up close to 6 foot and down to 86lbs. It took my father yelling at me to eat to bring me to reality and then when I went to a new High School in Mt. Vernon I looked like a human stick figure.
My mom bought me a set of weights at Sears and a can of Weider weight gain powder. I bought a Jack LaLane book on diet and I saw a Muscle and Power magazine at some drug store with Frank Zane on the cover and that was all she wrote. I wanted to be Zane. He had the intelligence as a teacher like my father and the gorgeous wife and the hair style and killer bod that was ultra symmetrical. Yahtzee! I had found my visual goal. This started my ongoing love affair with bodybuilding that has now lasted 44 years. Thanks mom!!!
My mom would come to all my shows and sports events and yell so loudly that once she got kicked out of one of my high school wrestling matches. She was so awesome. She had played sports all thru high school and college while my father had no interest whatsoever. Mom would watch the games on TV with me and my friends and scream at the refs when the Sonics would get bad calls. This is where I learned my "sportsmanship" where I quickly became known as the worst whenever I lost at anything. I would throw full on tantrums and one time when I placed second in a bodybuilding show that I thought I should have won I smashed my trophy Read more [...]
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Oooolala! Hour plus 15 cardio yesterday. Gotta get it up to 2 hours a day and twice daily ab sessions. Beastmode is on and I'm already seeing results. It's always a trip to me how when that "switch" flips on inside you can literally feel it and all of a sudden your priorities shift and your visualization kicks in. When I owned gyms I used to coach special olympics and work with one clinically obese person a month who I would sponsor with training, supplements, membership, etc. We used to help people who were more than 100 lbs overweight and I used to get cards from them years later about how they either kept it off or were struggling. The first thing I ALWAYS did as a trainer was to spend three one hour sessions teaching them how to visualize and finding and ON button for their NEED to lose weight. We used to get people to buy cruise tickets and a bikini and tape them to their fridge and that put a deadline to the goal and gave it URGENCY! That's the trick in any kind of life ambition in life is to put a deadline on it. That's what it took for me with the 2014 Ecup. I know that I have to lose all my weight NOW and then hold it and let the muscle come back and tighten the skin. What is the urgency in your goals? Why do you HAVE to accomplish them rather than simply WANT to? What will it cost you if you don't accomplish them? Set a deadline and start moving away from pain as your primary motivator instead of moving toward pleasure. Humans will ACT INSTANTLY to avoid pain while moving toward pleasure can take forever. Learn the difference and then practice visualization like you would sets and reps. Put up a calendar and pictures of your goal and involve as many senses as you can. Hear the roar of the crowd as you pose and WIN! Feel the trophy in your hands and see the looks of pride on your family's faces. Smell the oil and the sweat. Watch others training and winning. Seek out other's stories of success and victories and feel them and take them into your heart. Do Read more [...]
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The show is over. You did well, meaning that you achieved your goal of reaching your best look ever, and even possibly placing or winning! Great job!! But now the bigger question to be asked is…Now What? But before I ‘go there’, I wanna give those of you who don’t care about how much weight and fat you gain post-contest an opportunity to quietly click out…you can go now. No one will notice or say anything………..still here? Okaaay…you’ve been warned…
Ahhhhhhh Lil’ Weedhoppahs, the hardest thing about post-contest rebounding is actually the beginning, if that makes sense. The more 'away' from contest shape at the beginning of the diet, the harder it is to diet down and get IN contest shape, as you already know. You put everything into the diet, training, and cardio because you've got tremendous discipline, willpower, determination, and focus. Once the show is over and the focus is gone, poofffff...there goes the discipline! Newton's third law says it best - "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction", meaning, in our world, the harder you have to diet down, the harder you'll rebound on the back end when the show/season is over. Or will you…???
There’s a few things I need to get off my chest first here...
Not every trainer/Competition Coach knows what he/she is talking about. Be careful of the coach/trainer who gives you unstructured post-contest advice. What do I mean? I’m sure many of you have heard these words…”Your show is over. Enjoy yourself. Eat whatever you want. Don’t worry about being in contest prep/contest mode right now”. Yada, yada, yada, ad nauseum Any coach who offers this advice to his/her client(s) needs to be immediately fired. Seriously. How can a coach literally abandon a client who has spent several months suffering to dial down, listening to and following every bit of advice, and when the client needs the coach the most to keep him/her (ESPECIALLY her) on task Read more [...]
I hate looking at pics of myself from my past as I can't believe I didn't stay in shape and build on it and I let my injuries and my illness break me down. I tired to comeback but never followed thru all the way. This is a shot from my modeling daze when I ROCKED the camera. Elaine will vouch for me as Blue Steel back in da day. Now they have to use a WWWWWIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDEEEEE angel lenz. Only the amazing April Greer would be able to get ALL of me in the photo at this stage in my "development". 20 sets of front and side delta today plus traps. Kdog's side caps were so pumped she looked like Gary Strydom. The goal is for me to compete in the 2014 Ecup and then have Kimberly come back in 2015 and take the tiara. She's a whopping 4 OH! now so she's raring to go. At this weight I hate going to the gym and just want to starve myself down to something semi presentable and then go for it but I'm gonna do it right this time and lose fat not muscle so stinking cardio and abs and REALLY BEEEEG SHIRTS are the order of the day. They do come in handy as we were able to shelter ourselves beneath the shirt "tent" today when it un ceremoniously poured Washington state style rain for a bit here today. Made me homesick-NOT! Don't get me wrong, I love Washington but i lived there so long I started to rust. No, no, no, it's da beeeech for me man. Gonna build up to 2 hours a day of cardio and 2x 20 minute to half hour ab sessions a day until I make weight. I promise to post progress pics once I'm 205 in about 3 months and then every other month after. I always worry that if I post pics then Bill or Ron will do unsavory things with them so very cautious. Nudge nudge, wink, wink. Okiedokie, that about wraps up tonight's rambling post so time to sack out and get up and do it all over again. Da bones dey be a creakin' but the Spirit is willing so let's do this!!! Live in the light! Josh out Read more [...]
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Ah the Ecup. As KimKong calls it: the Grand Daddy of them all! I completely agree with that. I trained my a$$ off today as a year from now I’m a gonna walk on that stage and reclaim a couple of things that really matter to me. I haven’t competed since the 80′s and I’ve been trying to get back on that stage for years now but I keep getting injured and dying and trivial stuff like that that keeps me from stepping up onto that hallowed ground. Not going to let anything stop me this time. The goal is to get down a hundred pounds in the next 3 months and then stay there and tighten up right up to the show. I’m going to try to put back on muscle and lose fat staying at the same weight for 9 months. Two hours of cardio a day and twice a day ab sessions. Weights 7 days a week for about 45 to 60 minutes a pop one muscle group a week. Constant posing and visualization and psychedelic drugs (just seeing if you were paying attention 
). Gonna feed on my past successes in the gym and posing dias and use that along with my psycho friend Mark Francis and our similar viewpoint that it’s better to break it than leave it with anything left, to dominate the weights. I’m all 50 shades of PUMP in the gym and beastmode is what I set for my warmups and then I really turn the volume up and break off the knob. Congrats to all the Ecup competitors and to Brad and Elaine for yet another Granddaddy show. Hungry for what’s mine and coming to get it. One year, one rep at a time. Live in the light peeps and carve out your own destiny.
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One thing that I have learned, I am on a journey. I am on a journey called life. Life is THE journey. The goal should be to learn to love the journey and not rush to the destination.
So many times we set a goal. We set that goal and we put a timeline on it. We write it down. This is what all the success coaches say to do, right? So we do it. Then what happens? One of two things.
One – We focus so much on achieving that goal. We rearrange our daily routine to facilitate what we need to do to achieve this goal. We become consumed by the goal. Time goes by and pretty soon we reached the goal. When that happens we feel good, accomplished, and successful. Right? Yeah, for a moment. And then what?
The goal has come and gone and we are now just there. We focused so much on the goal that we forgot to embrace and interact with the journey. Life is the journey, embrace the journey not the destination. So what is the second option?
Two – The rest of us. With that I mean most of us. Well we don’t accomplish the goal. Why? Not because we don’t want to or that we didn’t try. So many factors around us affect us in ways we cannot control. So then goal day comes and goes. What does this do to us? Well, we feel terrible. A failure. Just another loss. Over and over again this tears us down until we could care less about setting a goal anymore.
So what if we learn that life is a combination of one and two. What if we accept the fact that life is THE journey not the destination. What if we learn that if we embrace everyday, every circumstance, all good and bad and make them our own. We grow from them, learn from our successes and from our failures. This allows us to grow into a person, a soul that is in touch with the journey. We become resilient as we move toward our goals. We realize that the path to success is NOT a straight line, but a line full of curves, circles, backtracks, mountains, Read more [...]
I titled this post Christmas Eve because this entire week I have pretty much been feeling like a kid on Christmas Eve who can't sleep and just wants it to be morning to see if Santa came! I am sooooooo excited to get all dolled up tomorrow morning and step on stage and show off all of my hard work. I have been trying to rest and relax these last couple of days as much as possible but have woken up multiple times each night out of excitement and probably a little hunger :) I completed my last lifts Wednesday morning and finished up my last cardio and posing practice this morning and in a couple of hours I will start painting on my tan.
The beginning of the tanning process is usually what makes me feel like the show is really here. It's when I really start giving myself the pep talk about how I need to just relax because I have worked as hard as I possibly could have and I remind myself that it is time to have some fun and really enjoy and remember ever minute of the next couple of days. I am definitely having some bittersweet feelings because as much as I have been wanting the show to hurry up and get here, it goes by so fast and I know I will almost immediately be jumping into my prep for the USAs in July! I am continuously reminding myself that although this show is a HUGE deal but it is not just the end of the road for me but one more step to furthering my future as a figure competitor.
If you are competing, I hope you are feeling ready and prepared and that you have given your all to this prep. You can't control the judges but you can control bringing your best package to the stage. Remember to have fun and savor every moment! (even if you trip and fall onstage, at least it will be fun to look back and laugh right? ;) ) Brad and Elaine always make sure to provide an amazing experience for every competitor so take advantage of all the perks and extras that come with competing in the Emerald Cup! There really isn't any other show like it.
See you onstage Read more [...]
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I opened up my inbox this morning and saw the email from Brad and Elaine. As we say in the ‘hood, “Uh-oh…S*** just got real!” Even though I’m not doing the show, the final week always hits me just the same. I’m anxious for my team competitors. I’m nervous for my friends. I have butterflies just like I’m gonna compete. I can’t describe it. For some, it’s an overwhelming sense of apprehension, fear, and trepidation. For others it’s an overwhelming sense of pride, accomplishment, and ‘Get-er-dun’ mindset. For all, this should be a joyous, fun occasion! Carpe Diem…seize the moment. Enjoy the ride.
Many first-time competitors are entering into uncharted territories. Heck, even seasoned competitors will be nervous. That’s perfectly normal. If you’re NOT nervous, then something’s wrong. Every pro athlete, when asked if they get nervous, or still get nervous, before a game, match, fight…anything, says, “Yes, I still get those butterflies in my stomach. But once the game starts, I calm down. The butterflies go away, the nerves calm down, and it’s game on!”
I’ve had my share of Emerald Cups – too many to remember actually, but if I could offer one word of advice to everyone, it would be to have fun!! Over the years I’ve seen so many competitors lock themselves away in a mental closet. Don’t do that. Remember, you’ve done your work. You’ve put your time in. You’ve suffered through a brutal diet. You’ve endured up to 2+ hours of cardio. You’ve pushed harder on weights than you ever have. Now is NOT the time to be stuck in that mental cave. Oh sure, we definitely want to step correct, with our game face on, but for many of us, this is as far as we’ll ever go in this competitive game. The next level is not our reality. So enjoy yourselves! Laugh, joke, smile, have a good time…ENJOY YOURSELVES! It’s okay, I promise. You won’t lose your look by saying Read more [...]
I promised myself that I wouldn’t blog about anything too personal during this prep to the stage. I felt that I just needed to keep my circle tight and buckle down and be more private this time, while providing whatever inspiration or support I could to others. Clearly, I broke that promise in my last post and I’m about to go and do it again right now. What can I say?!
I’ve been having a rough week. Not because it’s peak week but because I’m discouraged that I’m not where I would like to be. I’ve known this for months. My body has been under more stress than I think I could have ever imagined…from the emotional and mental stress of the situation with my kids, to a major medical issue in addition to the physical stress of everyday life as a busy mom of 4 and a competitive bodybuilder. I’ve debated over the last few days – should I get on stage? To be honest, not having my children there has really taken the wind out of my sail. I’m doing this show for them and it is very sad for me that their little faces won’t be there for me to see in the audience when I am up on stage.
This morning one of my close friends and fellow bodybuilder, Erin, texted me to check in on me. When I replied and told her I was discouraged with where I was she said: “Keep working hard and know you’ve done everything right. Most importantly you’ve been there for your kiddos.” And as usual, she said just what I needed to hear at just the right time. I recalled something I saw on Dr. Phil yesterday while I was doing cardio – there was a daughter on the show who was talking about being abused by her father and her mother knowing about it and doing nothing. I can’t understand and I certainly can’t relate. But I guess it’s reality – some moms don’t fight. So rather than beating myself up about not being lean enough or my skin not being tight enough, this was a good reminder to me: not all moms do what I did. Not all moms fight. Fighting is hard but in my Read more [...]
Posted in Julie
Tagged bikini, contest prep, Craig Productions, Emerald Cup, Empire Classic, fearless, Figure, fitmom, GNC, inspiration, iriefitgirl, Julie Michaelson, Julie Michaelson Training, NDS Nutrition, NPC, NWCCTan, Ribic Productions, Team JMT
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