Pro Men

As I type this (12:30pm on Saturday), the Pro Men’s Bodybuilding class in on stage being judged.

I’m on duty at the ticket table, but I’ve managed to stick my head in the auditorium a couple times.

Those guys look absolutely amazing.

These are the guys Bodybuilder Hubby would normally compete against.  But he’s not onstage today because he’s running the show.  This means he picks the judges, and you can image how it would go over if the guy who picks the judges got on stage…  Gee, I wonder who would win.  (Or how many people would complain if he did win, even if he deserved it…)

But if he were on stage right now, I would be an absolute nervous wreck.  It’s a huge group of guys – 12 Pro Men.   And, looking at that group, I have no idea who will win.  They look amazing.

There’s a guy whose legs look like they are carved out of bronze – just ridiculously good.  But his abs aren’t the best up there.  There’s another guy who has is really ripped, but has sort of smallish calves.  The judges split the group into two, which usually means top half and bottom half, except that one of the guys they put in the group I thought might be bottom half looks really, really good from where I’m standing, so who knows.

There certainly are several who I think could win.  Wow.

Competition - Day 1

I don't know who won yet, but hundreds of other people probably do know by now.

Tonight was the first night of the Bodybuilder Hubby's bodybuilding competition.  Actually there weren't any bodybuilders on stage tonight.  Tonight was all about the Figure girls.

We had five classes for Figure, four based on height and one, the Masters class, for competitors over age 35. 

There were a lot of things that went really well.  The audience turn-out was fantastic, and there was a lot of energy in the room.  The competitors looked amazing!  The judges certainly had their work cut out for them.

There were some glitches that I'm hoping we'll learn from to prevent in the future.  The show started a little late.  I don't know why yet.  I was busy selling tickets and didn't even realize that the show hadn't started on time.  Hopefully whatever the reason for the late start was is something we can plan for and keep from happening next time.

The only other thing that didn't go according to plan was the Figure classes - the groupings based on height.

We spent a lot of time trying to determine how many classes there would be and what the height cut-offs would be.

We looked at all the applicants we had as of last Sunday, five days before the contest.  Ideally, all of the competitors would have registered by then.  Or at least most of them.

We list out everyone by height, and then look for ways to group them so that each class ends up being about the same size.  So the height divisions are different every year depending on how many competitors there are and on their heights.

So this year it made sense to have four groups:
6 people - 5 ft 1 inch and shorter (Class A)
9 people - 5 ft 2 to 5 ft 4 inches (Class B)
8 people - 5 ft 5 inches (Class C)
10 people - 5 ft 6 inches and taller (Class D)

We try not to have more than 10 people in a group because the more people you add, the harder the judging gets and the longer the competitors have to stand on stage.

We thought this would work well, expect then we ended up with several late applicants, most of whom, for some reason, were tall, so Class D got bigger.

Then today at registration, all of the competitors are measured for height, and three of them from Class C were a different height than they had put on their application and had to be moved.  So Class B ended up having twice as many people as Class C, which I'm sure feels really unfair to the competitors, but which we were just sort of stuck with for tonight.

We have, however, already talked about ways to prevent the same thing from happening again at the next contest.

Tomorrow will be a long day: Bodybuilders, Bikini competitors and Pro classes.  74 competitors, I think.  Judging in the morning and awards in the evening.

I left tonight before the awards were announced to take care of some things for tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to hearing how the scores turned out.  

And I'm planning on having the results, including the judges scores, posted on the contest website by Sunday evening.

Good luck, tomorrow's competitors, and Congratulations to today's!

People I "Know"

Only two days until the contest! Anyone else getting excited?   J

The thing I’m looking forward to most is just having the chance to reconnect with people.  Generally, the competitors and others involved are hard-working, dedicated, goal-oriented, competitive-in-a-friendly way kind of people.  I’m looking forward to cheering for many of them.

But this year, as I was going over the list of applicants, there were three names in particular that got my attention.

I was born and raised in this area, so I’ve seen first-hand how much things have grown and changed.  20 years ago, if I went to the grocery store or to see a movie, it was pretty much a guarantee that I’d see people I know. 

This is no longer the case.  So many people have moved here that being a native makes me something of a rarity.  (Bodybuilder Hubby is a native too.  He and I were born in the same hospital where his dad and our kids were also born.  He and I went to the same high school too, though he graduated before I got there so we didn’t meet until years later.)

The town where we live now is practically a suburb of the bigger city.  (I still hesitate to use the word “city,” since it’s never going to be that big, but we are finally getting a Nordstrom’s Rack, which totally counts for something!)

But the area where we live now used to be really rural, surrounded by farmland.  I had a friend in grade school who lived here, and we didn’t like having slumber parties at her house because it was too far out to get a pizza delivered.

Things have changed.

But some things haven’t.

Three of the competitors new this year are people who I’ve either known since they were little or whose families I have some connection with, going back to those more-like-a-small-town days.

#1 – There is a Figure competitor who is married to a guy I’ve known since he was five.  He was in the same frat as my brother in college.  And his older brother, the competitor’s brother-in-law, was my first “boyfriend” when I was 7.  We even held hands one time.

#2 – One of the Bikini competitors comes from a family I’ve known for a long time.  Her dad ran the sound booth at the church for Bodybuilder Hubby's and my wedding.   Her mom is (was?) a teacher I worked with several times.  And her brother was one of my fifth grade students back when I was a 22-year-old, just-starting-out teacher.  Her mom was always really pretty, so it fits that the daughter is now a Bikini competitor.

#3 – There is a new bodybuilder who I have known since he was a toddler.  His brother and my brother were good friends in grade school – in the same class, on the same little league team, if I remember correctly.   Being the mature older sister, I was asked on several occasions to babysit for the now-competitor and his brother.  I remember making a fort in their living room out of blankets. 

He’s the one I think I’m least likely to recognize.  It’s hard enough to recognize someone you only knew as a small child two decades ago.  It’s harder still to recognize anyone when his or her face is covered in Dream Tan.

(On the flip side, there are a bunch of competitors I only know from contests.  If I ever saw them without the fake tan stuff, and wearing normal clothes, I’d probably walk right by and not have a clue who they were!)

But with this competitor, if I do recognize him, I’m pretty sure I’m going to greet him by saying something like, “Hi, you probably don’t remember me, but I used to change your diapers.”

Yup.  This is going to be fun. 

New This Year

Each year, Bodybuilder Hubby adds something to the bodybuilding contest to make it even better.  Last year it was video screens: one out front for the audience to see the competitors more closely, and another in the back so that the competitors could watch the other classes on stage.  It went over really well, and the same company will be setting it up again this year too.

For this year, we have several new things, most noticeably the added “Bikini” division, for which we’ve had 22 competitors register.  (We’re up to 115 competitors total!)

We’ve got a couple other changes that I think the competitors will be happy about:

Competitor Line-Up Now On-Line

We get lots of questions from competitors about what order the classes will compete and about how many people are in each class.  So this morning Bodybuilder Hubby suggested posting the line-up on the contest website.  Which I did.

http://www.ngaidaho.com/Competitor_Line-Up.htm

There’s no reason not to let everyone know.  It’s not like we try to keep it a secret until the last minute.  And it could help competitors mentally prepare for when they’ll be on-stage.

The only problem is that there will possibly be changes, and we don’t want anyone to be upset if the order now on-line isn’t exactly how things turn out.  It will probably change.

The biggest reason will be due to the height and weight measurements taken at registration.  There are usually at least one or two bodybuilders whose weight on the day of contest bumps them to another weight class.

And, on occasion (but for reasons I’d can’t begin to understand), we get Figure competitors who tell us they are one height, but then - when they are measured at registration - are another height.  Seriously, why wouldn’t a person just know what height she is?  Who knows, but a different height might mean being moved to a different height class.  Thus, a change in the line-up.

We hope that the line-up on Saturday will be the same from morning to evening.  It can be really confusing if it changes.  But sometimes the judges might decide that for some reason it would work better a different way, so a change it made.  We’ll do what we can to make sure everyone is aware.

But for now competitors can at least get an idea of how things will go.

Bodybuilding Routines

Another new thing that I’m happy about is that this year EVERY bodybuilding competitor will get to do his or her routine to music at the evening show.

Bodybuilder Hubby competed in a contest earlier this month where he got this idea.

Instead of taking the time to have the competitors in a bodybuilding class all line up on stage together to be introduced and do poses, instead, each competitor will come on stage one at a time, be introduced and get to do their routine. 

Then the top five will come out together for awards.

This way, every bodybuilder gets his or her moment to shine and show off for the family and friends who come to watch.

As a side note, after just under thirty hours of work, the contest programs were sent off to the printer yesterday.  Then one page was resent this morning after I discovered a mistake in the numbering for the Figure Masters class.  (Should be fixed now.  Whew!)

I noticed as I was flipping through the pages that we have one Figure competitor’s body used in five different images in the program.  She should get some special award just for that, I think. I wonder if she’ll recognize herself since four of the pictures don’t include a head.

That sounds unnecessarily creepy, doesn’t it?

Today and tomorrow I’ll be working on judges’ packets and notebooks, labels for goodie bags and other random contest prep.  And trying to catch up a little on the work for my actual job that I got behind on while doing the program.

Oh, and I’ll be putting together the notebook for the MC with all the competitor bios and thank-you’s to be read at the contest.   So, competitors, if there’s someone you forgot to thank, go add it to your application today, because after tomorrow night it will be much harder to make changes.  Though if you say please and bring me a Starbucks grande non-fat latte, I’ll change whatever you want.  J

16 Boxes of Trophies

As I type this, sixteen boxes of trophies are being taken off the UPS truck and stored in our garage.

 Bodybuilder Hubby will have the privilege of sorting and assembling the trophies this weekend.

Ordering the trophies involves a certain amount of gambling.  Trophies are expensive, so we don’t want to end up with a bunch that we don’t need, especially the parts that are engraved with the date, because we can’t use them again.

But the trophies are ordered several weeks before the contest when we don’t yet know how many competitors we’ll have.

(As a side note, as of last night we had 110 competitors registered!  If everyone shows up, this will be our biggest show yet, and – to the best of my knowledge – the biggest natural contest Idaho’s ever had.)

For example, we haven’t yet decided how many Figure classes there will be; it depends on how many competitors sign up.  We want to avoid having classes with 17 competitors like we did last year.  That was way too many in one group, making it really hard for the judges and making for a really, really long time on stage for those girls.  (Sorry!)

So, assuming that we have the same number of competitors this year, we’d need another full set of trophies so we can have four classes instead of three.  But, we’ve added a Bikini division this year too, so maybe some of the competitors who would have done Figure will do Bikini instead, meaning we might end up only having three classes and therefore only needing three sets of trophies.

Who knows?

So Bodybuilder Hubby makes his best guess and the trophies are ordered.  Hopefully we’ll have just the right number of competitors to be able to give away them all without needing to order more.

Actually, the UPS man just told me that he only delivered 14 of the 16 boxes.  He thinks the other two must be on another truck that should be here this afternoon.  Hopefully!

Eaten an Egg Lately?

If you’re preparing for Bodybuilder Hubby’s bodybuilding, figure and bikini competition (which is next week!), then you’ve likely had more than your fair share of eggs this last couple months. 

Eggs seem to be a staple of many competitors’ diets.  Egg whites in particular are a great source of protein.   Eggs are cheap and readily available.  And eggs can be prepared in a bunch of different ways and with all sorts of things added in to create some variety: herbs, veggies, meat, and - Bodybuilder Hubby’s favorite - hot sauce.

I sometimes joke that Bodybuilder Hubby’s contest is held in the spring simply because eggs always go on sale for Easter.  Before we had kids, grocery shopping was something Bodybuilder Hubby and I did together – practically a date night.  When he was prepping for a contest, we’d often buy a pack of five dozen eggs and just as often hear comments from the checkout clerk about how we must have such a big family to need so many eggs.  In reality, there were two of us, and those 60 eggs wouldn’t last five days in our house.

After we had kids, we discovered another major benefit to Bodybuilder Hubby’s excessive egg consumption:  Eggs cartons make the world’s best ever blocks.

Egg cartons can be stacked in all sorts of different ways.  They make towers and walls and mazes and caves and other fun things.  And no matter how many fall on you, you don’t get hurt.  They’re pretty much free, and if one gets destroyed, no problem!  Just toss it in the recycle bin, because Bodybuilder Hubby probably already has three more ready to add to the pile.

At one point in time we had something like 120 cartons in our block pile. 

The spring when our kids were 1 and 2, I’d put together a new egg carton block design while the kids were sleeping and then let them find it the next morning.  I’d always let our daughter in to see it first because as soon as the boy got in there, he’d live up to his nickname: Bulldozer Boy.

For cheap, easy, active fun for young kiddos, egg cartons can’t be beat.

As a side note, earlier today we had our 99^th competitor register for next week’s contest.  Who will be the 100^th?  Register today because late fees kick in tomorrow!

Not competing?  Tickets to see the show are now on sale at idahotickets.com and Select-a-Seat outlets. 

Contest T-Shirts

I just finished the contest t-shirt design for this year!

Well, actually, that’s only sort of true.  I finished two versions, which we are now showing to a handful of friends to get their vote (one I like, one Bodybuilder Hubby likes).  It’s basically the same image, but one has a “distressed” look and the other doesn’t.

I’m happy with the design; it turned out a lot like I’d orignally pictured in my head.  It took me a little more than 10 hours total, so I’d better be happy with it!

I’d post a picture, but even once we pick one of the two images, there still might be changes made when they’re actually printed.  It seems like my t-shirt images always change when they get printed.

Last year the big problem was color.  I had made a design for a white t-shirt, with an image that was black and this turquoisey, aqua blue.

I had been really pleased with last year’s image.  I used a black oval background and the images of Bodybuilder Hubby and one of my sister’s best friends from junior high, who just happened to be a figure competitor and who was gracious enough to let me have some pictures of her to use.

Well, it turns out that in screen-printing, there are a limited number of choices for colors.  They had a jade green and a royal blue, but nothing like the turquoise-aqua I wanted.  I picked the available color I thought was closest, and the final shirts looked pretty good, just a little off how I’d pictured them.

Then on the post-contest survey, one of the competitors, a bodybuilder guy in his early twenties, commented that the t-shirts “weren’t cool enough.”

Ouch.

Really, I’m not surprised that someone would say that.  I would be more surprised if my design aesthetic was anything like a 20-year-old bodybuilder’s.

I like clean lines and simple shapes - modern, elegant, you know.

The best example of how what I like and what the typical bodybuilder likes differ happened with the other shirt I designed last year. 

I was asked to put together a design for a shirt for one of our sponsors.  I made an image that I thought looked great.  Bodybuilder Hubby’s arm over a black circle.   Simple but striking.  A little bit artsy.  I liked it.

I sent the image off to the sponsor to do with what they wanted.

And what they wanted, apparently, was dragon tails.

Dragon tails.

All around my clean, well-designed circle were dragon tails.  Or at least, something that looked like dragon tails.  It’s kind of hard to tell.

Um, okay. 

I’m sure there were competitors who liked it better that way.  And I’m okay with that.

I mean, really, the world would be a really boring place if everyone liked the same thing.

So, for this year, hopefully there will be a lot of people who like what I’ve done.  And hopefully the people who don’t like it won’t complain anywhere where I can hear them.

Now to do the image for the “Staff” shirt.  Oh, and to make the image for the back of the shirt with all the sponsors’ logos.

Okay, so maybe I’m not almost done.  But getting closer!

Three Weeks Out

Three weeks from right now I’ll probably be helping pack things up as Bodybuilder Hubby’s bodybuilding contest comes to a close.  Our first Figure-on-Friday-Night experience will be over.  On Saturday, by 10pm, we’ll be on hour 15 of day 2.  But Saturday night is one of my favorite parts of the whole thing.  By that point, we can pause for a bit, look around at the audience and the competitors and just enjoy the show.  We’ll have gotten to see winners congratulated, hear friends and families cheering and, hopefully, just generally be surrounded by happy people.

At this point, however, three weeks out, I’m in my home office alone, trying not to freak out too much about how much has to be done in the next three weeks.   You ever get to that point when you have so many things to do that you feel almost paralyzed to do any of it?  So you end up writing a blog?  Here I am.

This week I’ll be finishing the design for the t-shirt and putting some updates on the website.  Hopefully I’ll have some new ads to put in the contest program, the thing I know will take up the most of my contest-prep hours.

I had a bunch of ideas that I wanted to try out for the contest this year – things to make it even more of a show for the audience.  Bodybuilder Hubby (who, of course, sees things more from the competitor’s standpoint) didn’t think there was a need to make any big changes.  Why fix what’s not broken?  Well, I’ll push for my ideas next year again anyway because even not-broken things can be made better.  For right now, though, I’m glad to not have those other things to worry about.

The registration is still going really well, a handful of new ones each day.  It’s hard to say how many we’ll end up with total.  Last year we had a total of 106 competitors, and 25 of those waited to register until the weekend before the contest.  Close to half of the registrations came in the last two weeks.

Why people wait, I have no idea.  Maybe they’re waiting to see if they end up in as good of shape as they hoped?  To compete they’d have had to commit to training and diet months before, so who knows.  Maybe it’s just a procrastination thing.

I’ll be most curious to see how many first-time competitors there will be.  Bodybuilder Hubby was already competing when I met him, so I don’t know what that thought process was like for him to decide to get on stage that first time.  I would imagine it’s a nerve-wracking decision for most people.  There’s nothing easy about putting yourself out there for other people to either (or both) pick apart and praise.  I’m a little proud of people who are willing to try it out.

My favorites are the women who come in competing as masters (over age 35) for the first time, and it turns out they’ve only been working out for 6 months, but they feel good enough about their progress – and about themselves – to show off.  Love that.

Good luck to the newbies, and to experienced competitors as well.  I know your next three weeks will be busy too.

Contest Magic

Bodybuilder Hubby is competing in a bodybuilding contest today. 

For a long list of reasons that starts with two preschool-aged kids, I’m not there to cheer him on, though he’s got friends and fellow competitors there who I know will do a good job of yelling his name from the audience.

If there was some way I could magically teleport myself to that auditorium to see Bodybuilder Hubby on stage, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  I want to see how he looks.  And I want to see how the other guys on stage look next to him.

There’s one thing that I’ve learned watching years of contests:  There’s no magic formula for being ready for a competition.  The same routine and diet won’t bring about the same results in two different competitors; it won’t even bring about the same results in the same competitor from one contest to the next.

There are so many other factors that make a difference: stress levels, hormones, all those other little things that are part of daily life make a difference.  New job?  Stress levels are up, and it shows in your body.  Had a bad case of the flu last winter?  Your body reflects that too.  Everything matters.

Over the years, Bodybuilder Hubby has experimented with what works best for him.  But every year the results are just a little different. 

Bodybuilder Hubby gains something like 30 pounds or so during the off-season, though this, like everything else, varies.  There have been years when I swear he drops the weight by doing nothing more than blinking – the fat just seems to fall off of him.

There are years when he ends up doing cardio (such as running on the treadmill) multiple times a week for weeks leading up to the contest.  But there was one year when he did cardio only six times in the months he was getting ready to compete; that year he just didn’t have too do any more than that.

Over and over I’ve seen competitors look absolutely fantastic one year and not so great the next, and vice versa. 

The thing that baffles me the most is how much a competitor’s body can change just on that one day of competition.  I’ve seen over and over again a competitor on stage in the morning looking just fine, but then they came back for the evening show looking absolutely amazing.  Whatever they did – or more likely, whatever they ate – made a huge difference in a matter of hours.

This can be good and bad.  The judging happens in the morning, but the awards are given at the evening show.  So, it seems like every year, a competitor will get on stage in the morning and be placed appropriately in something like 3^rd or 4^th place, but at night, that same competitor suddenly looks better than everyone else on stage so the audience is all shocked and upset when he doesn’t end up in first.

This is why competitors need to encourage friends and family to come to the morning part of the competition.  That’s the part that matters most.

So, for today, I know how great Bodybuilder Hubby looks.  I know how hard he’s worked.  But I don’t know what the other guys on stage look like, so I get a little nervous.  Of course, I want him to do well so that everyone else sees how amazing I already know he is.

Good luck today, Bodybuilder Hubby.  I love you!