Ep. 016 Should You Compete? My Thoughts and Opinions After Being In This Industry For 6 Years
I've been having a lot of conversations with you guys about competing and have been turning a lot of you guys away as clients. I know a lot of people are confused about this! In this episode, I will lay out the no list and yes list, as well as my opinion on the state of the industry.
I started in this crazy world of WBFF Pro competitions 6 years ago. My first experience at competition was anything short of traumatic and it was in that first training experience that I began developing disordered eating. This was a cycle that took me several years to break and was only perpetuated by competing. After a handful of poor experiences and coaches who weren’t meeting my needs, I chose to coach myself. I did 5 more shows in the span of 2 years and then decided to exit the world of competition and phase into the world of coaching others.
There are 5 distinct reasons why you should NOT compete and I firmly stand by these. If you have even a small part of you that falls into any of these categories, it is my personal opinion that you should not compete.
you have or have had at any time, an eating disorder or disordered eating habits
you are doing it to lose weight- this lifestyle is meant to prepare you for competing, not lose weight
you are not financially stable (competing can be upwards of $2000 per show!)- you need to be able to invest in a high quality coach as well
you don’t have support (from either your family or a team)
if you have a hyper type A, controlling personality that could negatively affect your ability to compete- aka you become to controlling over what your body needs to look like
My yes list is much shorter. Honestly, the yes list is not really even a yes, so much as a “it depends.” Competing is hard on your mental state and on your body. The best advice I can give you, is to make sure you have a great coach who will work with you through the competition, and then afterwards as well to do some reverse dieting.
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