11 Weeks In

Hello! Thought I'd give a quick update and comment on the direction of my improvement season. I'm currently doing a quick mini cut; just finished up week 3 of 4. Here's my progress pics from Monday.

mini cut week #3

I've been enjoying my improvement season so far. I believe I'm 11 (?) weeks in. The registration for the 2016 WNBF Washington State Natural (which will be my pro debut) just opened up. It's set for April 16 -- that makes it 31 weeks out. I'm very, very excited. :)

Training has been good. I've been incorporating an upper/lower split 5-6 days per week and being flexible with rest days as needed and taking lots of time for just enjoying life. My mom was in town for a week and we spent a good amount of time at the coast together. I have some small trips planned for this month and am just overall enjoying the flexibility in my life and the freedom that comes with really loving what you do. Prep can be a grind, but the love for hitting my training sessions and hitting my nutrition is truly a passion, and I think it's most appreciated during an off season when you realize that you GET to do these things. Each day is an opportunity to get to do what you love simply because you love doing it and look forward to it.

Before the mini cut, I had gradually been building up training volume on glutes and shoulders, which are two areas I'm working really hard on. With the mini cut, I've tapered down volume a bit, and will be moving in to a strength phase here shortly as calories come back up.

I'm approaching this improvement season with the lessons I've learned from my last one. One of the biggest take aways is that I'm keeping it a good bit leaner (goodbye dreamer's bulk, LOL!) which will ultimately give me more time building and in a surplus and less time spent dieting. I plan to be in a building phase until December, at which point I'll do another quick mini cut, and then back to building again. I plan on doing a quicker prep, starting some time in February. This is the tentative and rough outline for this improvement season, although it's always adaptable and will be manipulated as needed. 

I'm really excited to put in some work and make some improvements in my physique. I'm looking forward to what's ahead and sharing my journey here. I haven't been writing too much lately, and I miss it. I'm realizing that I don't have to have anything profound to say. (Haha, seriously though.) Just sharing my thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc. is enough for me. I enjoy the outlet of writing, and I miss it when I'm not reflecting on and writing about things in my life. So here we go, and I'll continue to update along the way.