Hey Brett! Congratulations on winning the overall at the NPC Mr. Missouri. What, if any, changes are you going to make to your training for the North Americans? I gotta ask you, what prompted you to compete at the Missouri State? I saw you won the o...

Answer: Thank you for your question. First of all, I want to take this opportunity to thank my family and the 1st Phorm team for all of their support. I am so fortunate to have the backing of my fiancée Gillian who has competed herself and knows the rigors of contest prep. I consider myself extremely lucky to work for the best supplement brand on earth, not only for the products that help me put together the best package for the stage, but because the guys behind the brand, Andy & Chris, are very close friends of mine and have always given me tons of support and encouragement.

To answer your question, I didn’t actually make the final decision to compete at the NPC Missouri State until about 2 weeks from the show. Since I was adhering to such a strict diet and I was getting into shape fairly quickly, I wanted to use this show as a warm up to work on stage presence. As some of you may know, I am not the most comfortable bodybuilder on stage. There is always a gamble when you compete 6 weeks out from your target show. My trainer and I didn’t want to do anything to disrupt the prep for the North Americans, my target show on September 1st. The only changes we did make to the protocol was increasing the water intake to 2.5 gallons from Monday to Thursday during the week of the show. Cardio stayed the same, 30 minutes after training with the last weight workout being the Wednesday before the show. Diet stayed the same as previously blogged. I weighed in at 219 pounds at weigh in the Friday night before the show. We had cut the water to ½ gallon by Friday evening with all water cut at 8:00pm. In the morning, I joined my trainer for a top-secret carb loading breakfast and then it was 2 thick coats of stage tan and off to pre-judging. I felt I looked better at prejudging after the night show but I guess it was good enough to hold on for the win. After the show, I spent some much needed time with Gillian, and my son Brady and came off my diet until Tuesday morning, eating everything in site. I got my weight back up to 230 pounds and geared up for round two.

The real reason for competing at the NPC Missouri State was that I envisioned my son Brady up on stage with me sharing the overall award. He is my pride and joy and that is exactly how it unfolded. Totally priceless!

I got some feedback from a judge after the show who told me that although the overall was unanimous, it was still close. I did feel that the light heavy weight looked good and gave me some competition in the overall. However, after reviewing the pics, I do believe I was the best bodybuilder on that stage that night. There is no doubt if I bring that same package to the North Americans, I will get eaten alive. Between now and then I will absolutely make some positive refinements in my physique. As I write this blog, I have 5 weeks in which to do so. I have always believed that you can’t grow in a dieted state but my calories remain at 4800/day, thus, I am working on continuing to improve the following areas: mid-back thickness and lower lat thickness (lots of deadlifts); hamstrings (lots of straight legged deadlifts incorporated into my twice weekly hamstring training); and deeper quad separation.

To answer the latter part of your question, yes, I am nationally qualified from my win at the NPC Muscle Mayhem in 2009. This qualification saw me through all of the remaining months of last year up until May 2011. Depending on how the North Americans go, I may decide not to compete next year. If I want to come back and compete in 2012, I will now hold eligibility up until July 2012 and I will qualify for Jr. Nationals that year. I know that’s a lot of planning ahead but you never know what the future holds—especially in this sport!

On a side note, I want to give a big thank you to photographer Jason Caine who took the awesome pictures at the show that you see above. Jason, you have mad skill in what you do! You can make a piece of dog shit look good!

Until next time, be consistent and stay balanced!

Brett

The post Hey Brett! Congratulations on winning the overall at the NPC Mr. Missouri. What, if any, changes are you going to make to your training for the North Americans? I gotta ask you, what prompted you to compete at the Missouri State? I saw you won the overall at the NPC Muscle Mayhem last May so aren’t you already qualified for national bodybuilding competition? Were you just “trophy hunting”? appeared first on 1st Phorm.