As I wind down to the final week of preparation, I have my extremely important checklist out:
1) DIET √
2) CARDIO √
3) ZERO BODYFAT √
4) POSING ROUTINE √
It's that time of year again. People are asking me what I think about this-or-that bodybuilder, how I think they'll place, and what they need to do to improve. This line of questioning seems to be lot more prevalent in my life when the bodybuilding contest season approaches and 2011 is no different. With anticipation at an all-time high for the season-opening IFBB Flex Pro on February 19th, I felt it was my duty to give you my pre-contest blow-by-blow of the competitors and, finally, to speculate on where they may eventually place.
On January 28th, The NPC Ironman Naturally kicked off the 2011 competitive physique season; a season that promises to see in a tremendous expansion of the National Physique Committee (NPC) as we know it. This year, we'll see the addition of a Womens Physique and Mens Physique Division. While Womens Physique will add back a little "muscle and conditioning" to the current Figure class, Mens Physique will do just the opposite; it'll remove the extreme size, ultra conditioning, and posing round from Mens Bodybuilding. While many people have already outwardly criticized Mens Physique as being a terrible thing to happen to bodybuilding competitions, I think just the opposite.
With 2 weeks to go till the FLEX Pro, I've begun my purification process. Every evening I light a huge bonfire in my backyard, do some Indian chants and incantations, and I channel my Indian spirits (ed note: Ben believes that all black people have a little Indian blood in them). Just last night, while in the backyard, as the sweat trickled down my face and I gazed through the beads of water that dripped from my eyebrows, I had a premonition! The Showstopper has been reborn!
I just got back from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Tuesday Night SMACKDOWN at the Nassau Coliseum here in Long Island, New York. I've been to at least 10 of these events, already, and I'm still amazed by the incredible spectacle that that the WWE is able to assemble on a bi-weekly basis. Monday Night Raw and Tuesday Night Smackdown are weekly stables on cable television but to witness it, first hand, in person, 5 rows back from the sweat, blood, and hand-to-hand combat is just something else.
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