Before You Compete, Live Like a Bodybuilder for 6 Months

And So one piece of advice that I really wish more coaches would give is don't jump straight into prep.

Spend at least, at least six months living the lifestyle first, because you don't want to prove that you can survive prep.

You want to prove that you can actually sustain bodybuilding.

And I think a lot of people and like I know I did this too.

So I'm definitely like talking to my younger self here.

But like a lot of us discover bodybuilding and we immediately want to jump in and sign up for a show.

And you end up going from like 20 or 30 percent effort to 110 percent everything.

all like firing on all cylinders overnight.

So suddenly you're tracking everything, you're doing cardio, you're posing, you're meal prepping, you're taking all of these supplements, and you're changing every single habit all at once.

And I think that that is why we see a lot of burnout happen.

It's why we see a lot of people leave the sport with a bad taste in their mouth.

And I just I would really I really wish that most coaches would actually just tell you like up front, hey, we can definitely do this, but we need to take the time to actually build the lifestyle first.

So what I see as a coach is a lot of cheat meals.

They end up turning into binges.

Um, we have like free meals that end up just going off the rails or, you know, people are white knuckling through the week, they get to the weekend and because they've just gone from like zero to a hundred, they end up just completely losing it.

Um, I see a lot of poor relationship with food, like food issues develop because you've never had to pay this much attention to food.

at all before.

And now when you're in a prep setting, that's all you're paying attention to.

So your relationship with food starts to crumble.

Body image issues start to come up.

GI issues, hormonal changes.

And then once you're done with prep and you get off stage, you just quit bodybuilding completely.

That is a cycle that I've seen as a coach and I've seen on Instagram.

I've seen videos on YouTube of people talking about how they tried bodybuilding and they'll never do it again.

And I think that genuinely, if you just took the time to live the lifestyle, it would solve so many of these things, so many of these issues.