The Part of Bodybuilding Nobody Talks About - Jake Hellman

So I think something... that hopefully will be useful to others is that uh competing and the toll that it takes on you is a very different experience for everybody um and you know how hard prep is uh prep is always going to be hard right um getting getting stage lean is always going to be difficult and if everybody needs to be in the same caloric deficit they're all going to feel that that you could say the same amount because you have to be in a deficit.

Even if someone's eating a thousand more calories, they're still in a deficit, right? And so their body is still dealing with the same inputs.

But it's a little bit more nuanced than that, in my opinion, because there's a lot going on under the hood.

The caloric deficit is one thing, but then how your body deals with that caloric deficit is another thing.

And based on, you know, let's say genetics and a whole bunch of other factors, everybody's body is going to deal with that differently.

And so, I do think for some people prep is to get to the same level of stage lean and be in the same deficit.

For some people prep always hard, but might be a little easier.

And for some people might be harder.

And I don't know where in the world I fall on that spectrum and it doesn't matter because I can't change it.

And there's no point for anybody to think about where they are because you can't really change your body in that regard.

But I do know that I'm a pretty driven person as are most competitors.

And so kind of whatever the protocol was that we needed to follow, like, that's what I was going to do.

I mean, Steve knows this.

In prep, basically, I think everything was hit basically every single day.

And that's just who I am.

And I'm sure for many competitors, that's who they are.

But because of that, you certainly can put your body in quite a disadvantaged state.

You know, you're putting it through a lot of hard things.

uh, at the end of the day.

And if you're mentally able to do that, you know, maybe physically it takes more of a toll for some people.

Maybe they're physically, it doesn't take much of a toll, but mentally it's really hard.

And honestly, that's why a lot of people do fail out of preps because mentally it's just too hard.

So we all have, this is the same thing with symmetry size conditioning.

We're all dealt different cards and you just have to deal with them.

Um, and what I, I learned in talking to others certainly is that, um, prep was hard for me.