Road to Canadian Nationals 2017 - What Are My Goals?

A year later and another go at the Canadian Nationals competing in Men's Masters Physique. So why do it again since last year I got 1st place in my tall division? Well last year I did not win the overall category which is where the winner of each height category go head to head to see who the overall class winner is in Men's Masters Physique.

Last year it was a close one but long story short I didn't win the overalls. This year my goal is to take first in Men's tall again and then go after the overall win which would award me with the elusive IFBB Pro Card! What's so good about an IFBB Pro Card? It really would be more of an achievement thing then something that would be of practical use for me since an IFBB Pro Card would allow me to compete with other IFBB Professions throughout North America. Keep in mind this is an Open category so I would be competing against all ages, young and old like me :)

After last year going head to head with the young bucks in the Open category at the Nationals, I realised that I am just too small to be competitive since that is the way the class is going at least for now. Either way I would still be totally honored to win an IFBB Pro Card and may even compete in an IFBB Pro show or two to show those young bucks that us older fellows still got it!

Road to Canadian Nationals 10 Weeks Out Update Video

Time for another update and there are some topics I wanted to share with everyone. I have been rather busy working on a project over the last month and a bit converting a 40 foot shipping container into a new office and airgun shooting range. This has taken up a lot of my time and energy since I have been doing most of the work with a a little outside help here and there... Well for the most part the inside is all done and it's move in time. On a positive note all the extra calories I have been burning working on this project have really helped to shed some of the fat :) Maybe even a little too much this early on? With the CBBF Canadian Nationals 10 weeks out, I still need to put on some muscle before I get into hard cut mode.

Moving on to the Actofit Fitness Band, so far it has been really durable and does for the most part a good job at being a fitness tracker. I was hoping to get right into the activity or exercise tracking right away but as I quickly found out, you need to train the Actofit Fitness band first by recording yourself doing each exercise you plan on having it track. This was a bit of a shocker for me since this would require several days of setup as I do literally a different exercise every workout every day of the week. So I may plan on splitting my review for the Actofit into tow parts, the first part going over basic fitness tracker usability and then when I have time later on I will record some exercises into it and see how it does in terms of tracking exercises, reps and sets.

Actofit Fitness Tracker Unboxing First Impressions

Most fitness trackers these days pretty much track all the same dynamics, stuff like step counting, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking and basic overall activity. One area most of these fitness trackers don't seem to track very well are actual weight lifting workouts, they simply don't understand what your doing since it is not step based and unfortunately even the built in optical heart rate sensors don't work well for tracking your heart rate when you lift weights.

Here is where the Actofit Fitness Tracker may just have something up its sleeve to fill in this weight lifting gap where most activity trackers fall short. The Actofit Fitness Tracker is the world's first fitness tracker that automates comprehensive workout tracking & provides actionable insight. Using machine learning algorithms Actofit goes deeper into advanced motion tracking to identify 75+ exercises, count reps, evaluate form, measure heart rate, calories burned and more to auto-log comprehensive sessions & granular workout statistics; allowing you to evaluate data to make informed decisions.

I will be testing the Actofit Fitness Tracker over the next couple weeks and see if it can really back these claims and actually perform as promised.

You can checkout more info on the Actofit Fitness Tracker over on their website and pre-order one.

Garage Gym Workout: Squats Lunges and Deadlifts with Darren

I have been training lately with Darren, my Crossfit partner from a few years back. Darren has a nice free weight setup in his garage with a rack, bench, bars, lots of plates and some dumbbells. It's a great setup to do the classic compound movements and it's really awesome to have a partner to push me!

Darren and I are pretty close in strength and fairly close in age, I am 48 and Darren is 54. I have been wanting to show some more training session videos and so now it looks like I will be able to again :)

In this first Garage Gym Training Video we hit legs and do a variety of squats, lunges and even some straight leg deadlifts to finish off.

Road to Canadian Nationals 2017 - It Begins!

It has officially begun! Today was the first day of my contest preparation for the 2017 Canadian Nationals where I will be competing in Men's Masters Physique and defending my first place title :) I have more to prove this year, my hope is to not only take first place in the tall division but also win the overall 1st place and get my IFBB Pro Card. I was super close last year but it was not meant to be...

I feel I am in my best starting shape ever sitting around 195 pounds at around 8% body fat. Overall I am healthy with no serious injuries. I feel stronger than ever and I have around 14 weeks to lose about 3% body fat and put on about 5 or so pounds of muscle. Since my weight cut will be almost non existent as I hope to walk on stage at 195 pounds, what I need to focus on is hitting my nutrition and working harder than ever in the gym. My goal this year is to be in my best shape ever and leave no question to the judges when I walk on stage and stand with all the other top athletes.