Muscle Ventures Podcasts

In this podcast, Nancy and I discuss show day, her mental and physical states. You can download the 8.6 MB Quicktime movie by clicking on Nancy's picture. As you will discover listening to the podcast, the daytime part of the show was anything but smooth. First the show started an hour late. Then, there were big delays in the middle of the daytime show because there were something like 30 women competing in the shape competition (this part of the interview was edited out for brevity; we ragged on shape a lot).

However, Nancy reports that her mental and physical states were both good that day and that she was ready to compete. She also confirms that she was a little uptight due to the delays. My observation was that she was a lot uptight. I decided not to approach her on that topic show day because I did not want to derail her.

Additional Links

• Show day never seems to run smoothly and is always filled with anxiety as related in this humorous account by a male competitor.
• Hugo Alvarez provides a synopsis of his training regimen for a 2001 competition that he won, emphasizing the importance of mental endurance.
• Tom Venuto reports on an almost exultant feeling show day, the other aspect Nancy reports on in this podcast.

In this podcast, Nancy Arnold and I talk about the parameters of the evening freestyle performance in women's bodybuilding shows. The video then transitions to Nancy's freestyle performance in her April 29, 2006 show (Quicktime, 5.7 MB; Google Video, after a slight hiccup at the start the picture is fine).

As Nancy mentions in our discussion, there is not a lot of weight given to the freestyle performance. Fortunately, this show kept the women's bodybuilding freestyle performance. The entire women's bodybuilding evening show was dropped from the 2005 Olympia, the premiere professional bodybuilding show, in favor of a fitness model contest.

I liked Nancy's freestyle performance. It was quite creative and well-choreographed. As stated in the rules, she was given 90 seconds from when her music started. You will see that she ranges the whole stage and introduces several non-mandatory poses, including the archer (pictured) and the side ab which ended the routine.

In this podcast, Nancy Arnold and I (Bud Gibson) discuss the ideals women are trying to attain in bodybuilding and her will to compete. You can download the high fidelity 10 MB Quicktime movie by clicking on Nancy's picture or you can watch it without downloading on Google video (garbled for the first four seconds but afterwards fine).

In the series leading up to Nancy's competition, we have had several discussions with participants on the health of women's bodybuilding. The simple story is that women's bodybuilding is seriously challenged. At the highest level, it is taking a back seat to less rigorous competitions like shape or even model search. At the local level, shape competitors are outnumbering female bodybuilders by three to one, at least if Nancy's competition is any indication.

The rap against female bodybuilding, and now sometimes even the highest levels of shape, is that competitive pressures lead to unnaturally low body fat levels and muscular development. As a result, female bodybuilding in particular is less attractive to athletic women, and they choose not to compete in it. Since the number of competitors drives the economics of the local competitions, promoters are naturally driven to favor alternatives, contributing to the decline.

So, why does Nancy choose to compete in bodybuilding. Her reasons are complex, but at the simplest level, she is attracted by the extreme discipline and the sport's intensity. The video provides details.

In this podcast, Nancy Arnold and I (Bud Gibson) discuss our upcoming periodization training program (Quicktime, 6.3 MB; Google Video, no download). Periodization is a new thing for us and indeed is somewhat infrequently used in bodybuilding.

So, what is periodization? Simply stated, it is a way of varying your training program so that you optimize your sports performance. Of course, optimization implies you are working toward a goal. In Nancy's sport of bodybuilding competition, the goals are all aesthetic: how large are your muscles; how defined are they; etc.

How does one define these kinds of aesthetic goals into a periodization program? Well, the key is to understand that a goal like large muscles translate into lifting heavier weights, and a goal like increased definition coincides with increased endurance. What these realizations have led to for us is a program we found in Planet Muscle. The program includes mass building and power lifting for gaining strength and muscle mass. There are also endurance phases.

Additional Links

• Our particular program from Planet Muscle is not online, but this program provided by Beverly International gives a good outline of what we intend to undertake.
• Periodization can be applied to many sports, and this book provides some solutions as well as theory. It is written by Tudor Bompa, the leading authority on the topic.
• Varying your workout based both on objective and subjective measures of performance can help avoid injury.

In this podcast, I (Bud) track Nancy at the mid-Michigan Natural Bodybuilding competition held April 29, 2006 (Quicktime 21.1 MB; Google Video, no download but much lower quality). Nancy competed in both the masters and open portions of the competition, taking fifth in the masters and first in the heavy-weight division of the open.

The video shows Nancy's 60 second posing routine in the masters competition (first photo on the left). In this routine, she did the seven compulsory poses: front double biceps, front lat spread, side triceps, side chest, rear double biceps, rear lat spread, and ab and thigh. Nancy is currently doing a series on compulsory bodybuilding poses in our video analysis section.

In the second segment of the video, we see Nancy's complete open, heavy-weight competition (second photo on left). This included quarter turns during which the judges evaluated her resting physique, her compulsory poses, and the 60 second routine.

In the third segment of the video, we see Nancy's freestyle performance, already shown here once by itself. In the fourth segment, we see the awards ceremony (poor video quality) where Nancy received fifth place in the masters.

In the fifth segment, we see Nancy in a posedown for the women's overall competition after she had won the heavy weight (third photo in the series). The posedown provided the judges an opportunity to see the two competitors, who had been in different weight classes, together.

Finally, we see a series of stills of Nancy with Mary, her coach, me, her training partner, and Jim, her husband.

Additional Links

Michiganbodybuilding.net covered this show extensively.

• Here are all of the competitor results.
• Here is a photogallery of all of the competitors.

In this podcast (Quicktime, 24 MB; Google Video, no download but lower quality), Nancy Arnold and I (Bud) go over the strategy we are going to use to measure 1RM (single rep maximums) for three exercises, bench, deadlift, and squat. We then show ourselves performing the 1RMs and finally wrap up with what we have learned.

As both Nancy and I mention on our blogs, the idea behind 1RMs is to provide a consistent strength benchmark so that we know if we are making progress. The other thing is that it makes us more comparable with other lifters.

The overall periodization program rotates through mass, power, strength, and endurance with the emphasis on the first three. Endurance is largely oriented toward maintaining a good balance between lean muscle mass and fat.

We did encounter some difficulties. First, our reference books did not really talk a lot about how to calculate 1RMs. Basically, you have to do a warm-up set of full body exercises. Then you ease into the 1RM by doing multiple reps at 50% then three at 75%, then 1 at 85%, and finally you go for the max and increase from there if you can. If you have never done 1RM before, then you base these percentages on what you think your 1RM might be.

Second, consultation of the photos in the upper left corner of this post show that we appear not to have descended enough in squat. Further, we had trouble generating the power necessary on the bench. My strong suspicion is that these are technique issues that we should work on.

• Bud
  • Bench: 180
  • Deadlift: 220
  • Squat: 220
• Nancy
  • Bench: 120
  • Deadlift: 125
  • Squat: 120

Additional Links

• This article, mentioned in the podcast, provides one strategy for measuring 1RMs.
• Serious Strength Training by Bompa and company is serving as our periodization reference.
• This powerlifting relative strength calculator allows you to compare your combined performance on the bench, deadlift, and squat with others while taking into account factors like body weight, age, and gender.