America's Strongest Woman!!!

Today is a bit of departure from my normal posts in order to congratulate my friend Rebecca Lorch on her big victory at America’s Strongest Woman last weekend. I am so proud of her hard work and determination and can’t imagine a better post for #motivationmonday.

While I work with a mostly general population client, I do have a small group of athletes that I work with due to my experiences and relationships from my own athletic pursuits. Working with Rebecca was such a privilege because I got to support her and her coach Alec Pagan who is, in my mind, the best up and coming coach in strength sports. Alec and Rebecca had already set up her training protocol for the 5 month preceding the contest so all I had to do was help them come up with a nutritional and supplemental strategy. Luckily, Rebecca has an MS in Nutrition so it was going to be a great collaborative effort.

The most important focus for us in this was to slowly bring bodyfat down while continuing to build muscle and strength. This is no small order, of course. Luckily, Rebecca has put this goal above all others and when you prioritize something the way she has, it becomes easy to do the hard things. Alec and I talked about volume progressions to match caloric demands and deloads. We had planned refeeds for both psychological and physiological breaks along the way. We planned out weights in advance and it was really fun to be able to predict where we were going.

There are very few experiences like that of setting up a goal, putting systems in place, and executing. Regardless of the outcome, as a team we really nailed it on all fronts. The process was damn near flawless. Of course, seeing Rebecca get the big win didn’t suck.

If there is one big lesson for all of us in this process, it’s that we can really achieve great things if we truly want them and are unafraid to dedicate fully to them. Most of us don’t want anything as much as Rebecca wanted this win, and that is ok. But with just 70% of the effort she put in, you or I could see change that is unrecognizable. And that is pretty damn cool.

Congrats again Rebecca. I am so proud to have been a small piece of this journey and to call you a friend.