12 Days Out Update Video - Road to Vancouver Open

I made another walk and talk video, this time talking about what's going on 12 days out from the Vancouver Open Fitness Contest I will be entering into after over a year and a half off due to my open heart surgery to replace my bicuspid aortic valve and aneurism of the aortic root.

I go over how I am feeling in terms of energy and hunger. Where I am at body composition wise (what my body fat percentage is, what my skeletal muscle tissue is and what my weight is currently). I also talk about a resent carb refeed I had and how that effected me in the gym and with water weight.

For the most part I a feel I am right on track and so will keep things as they are since they still seem to be working. If anything changes, I will make whatever adjustments I need to and that could even be adding in more food or potentially reducing some of the activity I am doing depending on how I feel and look.

Legs and Arms Workout 2 Weeks Out Vancouver Open

I have been asked fairly often to post more training videos especially when I am in Contest Prep, it can be hard as I am in there doing my best to get the job done and capturing videos does break up the workout a bit. My Insta360 GO2 camera does make it a bit easier to get those quick videos and so here you are... a rare Leg and Arms Training Day. I show only one set of each exercise that I did. For Legs I always hit a compound exercise like a press or squat or the likes and then I add in some extensions and curls, generally about 6 sets of each. For Arms I just pick one exercise and crush it with around 6 or so sets.

Keep in mind I do a similar Legs and Arms workout a total of 3 times per week, just like when I do Chest, Back, Shoulders and Calves. Abs and/or core is always added in at the end of every workout.

55 Years Old Post Open Heart Surgery 2 Weeks Out

Here we are two weeks out form the Vancouver Open, the time is really flying by fast and we are getting really close now. Only two more weeks to get in peak shape and right now I feel I am on track and where I want to be. I know being the biggest version of me is not going to happen but I do feel like I will come in perhaps as conditioned if not maybe even more conditioned than I have ever been and that is not an easy task as there have been a few shows where I nailed my conditioning so that is a hard bar to beat but I will try nonetheless.

Any way, you be the judge as it gets harder and harder to be objective the closer I get to the contest, as the cutting game does begin to play with ones mind and skew reality just a bit. I still have some work to do and I am looking forward to the final results.

One of my Favorite Contest Prep Dinners

This will be short... I wanted to share with everyone one of my favorite go-to contest prep dinners that I enjoy any time for that matter! But since it is a really high protein, low fat and low carb meal it works really well during a contest prep hitting my macros really well.

All you need is some halibut as your main protein source or some other white fish, some veggies like broccoli, onions, peppers or a salad to go with it. And for the add-ons I like to use some salsa and parmesan cheese as a topper.

Can You Really Trust Your Fitness Tech Devices?

I for one love a tech device that can help provide me with valuable information relating to my health and fitness. Info like how many calories I am burning, how many steps am I taking, how many active minutes am I achieving daily, how many miles am I walking and of course then there is the food tech devices and apps that help us track our food and macros so we can figure out exactly what we need to consume to balance our health and fitness activity goals.

The question is, should we really be trusting these fitness tech devices to be accurate and are they perhaps giving us too much or too little confidence in dialing in exactly what we need to do to balance everything health and fitness related.

In this walk and talk video I explain some of the shortcomings certain fitness tech devices have that can skew a reading and make you believe you are on or off track when in fact the info may not be accurate due to limitations of the fitness tech devices.